Obviously, nobody has yet dared to tell Trump that he did something both ludicrous
and vile by accusing President Barack Obama of wiretapping his campaign; instead, administration officials spent weeks trying to come up with something, anything, that would lend substance to the charge.
It’s clear the White House is proposing huge tax breaks for corporations
and the wealthy, with the breaks especially big for people who can bypass regular personal taxes by channeling their income into tax-privileged businesses — people, for example, named Donald Trump.
Every report from inside the White House conveys the impression
that Trump is like a temperamental child, bored by details and easily frustrated when things don’t go his way; being an effective staffer seems to involve finding ways to make him feel good and take his mind off news that he feels makes him look bad.
According to The Times, this left Treasury staff — who were nowhere near having a
plan ready to go — “speechless.” But nobody dared tell him it couldn’t be done.
Let’s not act as if that thing released on Wednesday, whatever it was, was something like, say,
the 2001 Bush tax cut; I strongly disapproved of that cut, but at least it was comprehensible.
The reason I use scare quotes here is that the single-page document the White House circulated
this week bore no resemblance to what people normally mean when they talk about a tax plan.
But that would require a certain level of maturity — which is a quality nowhere to be found in this White House.
The answer, according to the White House, was yes, or maybe no, or then again yes, depending on whom you asked and when you asked.
So why would the White House release such an embarrassing document?
