And Another One Heads Out the Revolving Door

White House communications director and former Fox News executive Bill Shine just became the fifth holder of that thankless title to get the ax (i.e. “resigned”) in a little over two years, an unprecedented turnover, although he somehow lasted for nine months, a lot longer than his predecessors. It seems that his major accomplishment was to kill off the daily WH press briefings, which have now become a rarity, another sign of the siege mentality engulfing the Trump White House. Of course neither Trump nor his cronies will ever admit (or even understand?) that the main problem behind Trump’s generally bad press coverage (aside from Trump Propaganda Inc., a.k.a. Fox “News”) is not how the message is handled, but the message itself, i.e. how the majority of Americans view what Trump and his administration actually say and do. Although certainly not unique to this administration, there has been by necessity an unprecedented WH effort to spin/lie their way out of the numerous cabinet level scandals and Trump’s many outrageous statements, tweets and actions. I wonder if they actually understand that the majority of people paying attention figured out a long time ago that for all of their screaming about fake news, basically nothing coming out of the Trump White House can be believed. Trump reportedly believes that no one can handle his messaging as well as he can himself, having done so for decades in his business career, including calling reporters and pretending to be someone else! He is probably right, since he is still able to hold a Svengali-like influence over his still sizable base despite all of his blatant (to everyone else) lies, while the rest of us have had his number from the beginning of his campaign, and there isn’t enough lipstick in the world to make his pig look like anything else! Of course, one could argue that he doesn’t need a communications director as long as he has Fox!

Meanwhile, after the recent major tease about its imminent conclusion, we still don’t know anything more about the status of the Mueller investigation and whether there will be any more indictments. Paul Manafort just got off with an incredibly light sentence for his financial crimes, although hopefully his upcoming separate sentencing in DC for conspiracy and other crimes will hopefully add more prison time (up to 10 years) for this unrepentant dirtbag.