I don’t want to shock you, but it turns out that the same White House that was howling in outrage over a comedian today was reeling from an inner spat among top Trump aides that involved the word “b*tch.”
I know.
Naturally this occurred within a group of White House communications staffers. Nothing but the best communicators. And because the leadership is so stellar over there, this was an underling referring to her own boss.
White House communications aide Kelly Sadler, the one who made the comment about Senator John McCain needing to be quiet because he was going to die soon from brain cancer, Chief of staff John Kelly, director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp, and principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah were all in the Oval Office with Trump to discuss “leakers.”
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Sadler dismissed Senator McCain’s objection to Trump’s CIA director nominee Gina Haspel, saying it “doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” a source familiar with the closed White House meeting told Reuters weeks ago.
After telling Sadler she wouldn’t be fired for her nasty comment about McCain and that he is no fan of McCain, Trump asked Sadler to name the prominent leakers, she pointed to Schlapp, who is her boss. This was all reported by Axios five days ago.
What’s new is that the inner fighting in the castle formerly known as the White House reached new levels of dysfunctional. “Two sources recounted that Schlapp remained heated, saying that in separate conversations detailing what happened in the Oval, she referred to Sadler as ‘a bitch,'” The Daily Beast reported.
Naturally, Schlapp “vehemently denied” this leak in a statement to The Daily Beast.
So the White House that wanted Michelle Wolf fired from life for calling out Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ “smokey eyes of lies” and now today wanted Samantha Bee fired for using the c word of Trump adviser Ivanka Trump, is okay with the hateful racism of Roseanne, the Muslim conspiracy- smearing of this president and many of his advisers, and his own top communication aides mocking John McCain’s terminal illness and calling one another “b*tch.”
Since this happened fie days ago and was reported by the Daily Beast yesterday, the White House knew their own staff were in the news using misogynistic curse words as insults, but still climbed on their high horse about a comedian.
It’s not just the hypocrisy. It’s not just the erosion of norms and civility. It’s the fact that Trump is such an incompetent leader, he eggs on his own staff in the in-fighting by asking them to point fingers at other staffers in front of him. Of course no one is loyal to the President. He does nothing to compel it and everything to repel it.
Have we bottomed out yet?
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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