Donald Trump’s aides describe top members of the president’s administration as a cabinet of “morons,” his biographer says.
Author Michael Wolff, co-host of the Inside Trump’s Head podcast, revealed the root of the Trump administration’s struggles, according to those with a firsthand view.
“People within the White House have said to me, ‘Here in the moronocracy,’” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “And that’s what we’re seeing here. Why did Minneapolis happen? It happened because these are people who are morons.”
Their jobs, he said, are to keep Donald Trump happy. But this strategy backfired when it came to immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis, where federal agents shot and killed two people this month.
Unarmed mother Renee Good was shot three times in her vehicle on Jan. 7 by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot multiple times by at least two Border Patrol agents on Jan. 24. Video footage captured the death of both 37-year-old U.S. citizens, sparking nationwide outrage.
“How do you keep the president of the United States happy? He wants a show, he wants force, he wants to see things,” Wolff said. “They started the...social media process of filming these arrests...and partly because that amused the president. Now this has turned against them, and now people in the street and ordinary citizens, including the ones that they’re gunning down, are using their iPhones and filming these things and putting these videos out on social media.”
“This all began as a piece of performance,” Wolff concluded.
But Trump, 79, admitted this week the need to “de-escalate” the situation in Minneapolis, following Pretti’s killing. As part of that effort, he moved top Border Patrol agent Gregory Bovino out of the city. The change followed a posting spree where Bovino defended the shooting before losing access to his official social media account.
Trump replaced the “commander at large” in Minneapolis with his border czar, Tom Homan.
Meanwhile, infighting among some of Trump’s top officials doesn’t appear to be helping the matter. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have each tried to cast blame on the other for the deteriorating situation, which is polling poorly. Even Fox News viewers believe that ICE is “too aggressive.”
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Wolff added, “hates” them both.
“She hates Stephen Miller. She hates Kristi Noem. She hates everybody,” Wolff said.
When reached for comment, the White House questioned Wolff’s credibility.
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said.
Noem, 54, was in the room at Thursday’s roughly 80-minute televised Cabinet meeting. Trump, however, didn’t call on Noem to speak or even verbally acknowledge her.
Instead, the DHS secretary glared at Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler, 55, who used her opportunity to speak at the meeting to heap praise on the president.
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