Andrew Harrer/CNP via ZUMA
Sean Spicer put his foot in it today over Syria. You can google the details if you want, but basically he used the words Hitler and gas in the same sentence, and you just know that’s not going to end well.
Instead, let’s turn to the next generation of Trumps:
Eric Trump has said he is “sure” his sister Ivanka used her influence over their father to encourage the US president to launch military action against Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
….“A lot of times people will say yes just because you happen to be the boss,” he explained at the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Ayrshire. “I think the beautiful thing about family is you play on a little bit of a different dynamic and once in a while you can pull them aside and say: ‘No disrespect but you might want to think about this or maybe you crossed the line here.’
“I think it gives you a sounding board who is a little bit more unconventional than the 37 people that might happen to be standing round a table at that one time who just want to appease.”
I’m sure Trump’s staff will be delighted to hear themselves described this way.
And I’m pretty sure Eric is wrong anyway. First off, my guess is that virtually everyone in and out of the West Wing was in favor of bombing Syria. Hell, even most Democrats were in favor of bombing Syria. I very much doubt that Ivanka’s deep maternal instincts (“Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence”) made her a unique moral influence in this case.
Second, those 37 people Eric talks about aren’t “appeasing” his dad. They’re mostly very clever, very experienced people who are manipulating his dad. They do this because that’s what people in the West Wing always do, and they have an easier time of it than most because Donald Trump is so childishly easy to manipulate. We all saw Hillary Clinton do it in the debates, practically sending up semaphore flags as she baited him, and you could tell that even Trump understood what she was doing. But he responded exactly as she wanted him to anyway. It was pretty astonishing to watch. Too bad about that whole James Comey thing.
