In The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg urges former Trump appointees to go public with the truth about the White House:
Since the beginning of this nightmare administration, we’ve been assured — via well-placed anonymous sources — that a few sober, trustworthy people in the White House were checking Donald Trump’s worst instincts and most erratic whims.... Through strategic leaks they presented themselves as guardians of American democracy rather than collaborators in its undoing....
Increasingly, however, the people who were supposed to be the adults in the room aren’t in the room anymore.
... if from their privileged perches these people saw the president as a dangerous fool in need of babysitting, it’s now time for some of them to say so publicly.
She singles out Rex Tillerson:
“Rex is never going to be back in a position where he can have any degree of influence or respect from this president,” my Republican source said. Because of that, the source continued, “Rex is under a moral mandate to do his best to burn it down.” That would mean telling the truth “about how concerned he is about the leadership in the Oval Office, and what underpins those concerns and what he’s seen.”
... If Tillerson came out and said that the president is unfit, and perhaps even that venal concerns for private gain have influenced his foreign policy, impeachment wouldn’t begin tomorrow, but Trump’s already narrow public support would shrink further. Republican members of Congress like Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, might be induced to rediscover their spines and perform proper oversight.
Nahhh.
Why would whistleblowing by Tillerson (or any other departed Trump staffer) influence public opinion in a way that other Trump revelations haven't? We might imagine that the information in Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury caused a deterioration in Trump's poll numbers, but that's not true. The first excerpt from Fire and Fury, with many of the book's most alarming revelations, was published by New York magazine on January 3. Trump's poll numbers at that time, according to the Real Clear Politics average were 40.4% approval, 55.9% disapproval. His poll numbers now? They're up slightly: 41.1% approval, 54.2% disapproval.
Does Goldberg think Tillerson's word would carry more weight because he's more respected than Michael Wolff? As Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen notes, he isn't respected by Trumpers. Nguyen notes
the generally ecstatic reception in MAGA-land to the news that Mike Pompeo, the hawkish, Harvard-bred director of the C.I.A., would be replacing Tillerson as secretary of state. “It’s the revenge of the nationalists,” Posobiec told me. “I wouldn’t say he’s like an America First guy,” he conceded, “but he was a Tea Party guy, and he’s definitely more of movement conservative.”
Bannon responded to Tillerson’s ouster by texting a reporter, “Come on dude!!!...end of the globalists !!!”
The worldviews of the deplorable rank-and-file might not be as well developed as Bannon's or Posobiec's, but the deplorables know one thing: An enemy of Trump is their enemy. Anyone who openly turns against Trump will become the Antichrist in MAGAland -- and, therefore, in the right-wing media.
No Republican officeholder would dare to cross the MAGA hordes, so Tillerson revelations won't lead to increased congressional oversight -- at least not before the next Congress is sworn in.
I'd love to find out what Tillerson knows. Maybe he'll start leaking. But no act of forthrightness on his or any ex-Trump aide's part is going to save us from this president as long as Republicans control Congress. Republicans will never put country over party. It would be political suicide.
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog
