Mediaboss Marketing

To be clear: This is, on its face, dumb. Trump seemed to be trying to type "coverage" and misspelled it. As he often does. Then he fell asleep and didn't correct the mistake until he got up in the morning. We've all been there! (OK, not all of us. But me.)

While spending time trying, as Trump suggested, to figure out what "covfefe" means is a waste, it's far more worthwhile to take a big step back and look at the situation that leads to the President of the United States tweeting, poorly, at 12:06 a.m. about the bad press he gets.

What we have today -- and, really, what we have had since the day Trump came into the White House -- is a deeply isolated President who spends lots of time, particularly at night and in the early morning, watching TV and tweeting.

That lack of discipline reveals that there is simply no one who can tell Trump "no." Or at least no one whom he will listen to.

The animating idea behind many of these staff stories is how the people Trump brings in will affect how he acts and governs on a daily basis. That is a false premise. The simple fact is that no staffer exists on the planet who can tell Trump something he doesn't want to hear and have him take it to heart.

That's 100% right. Trump doesn't think he needs advice. So changing the names of the people giving it to him doesn't really matter.

Trump's ongoing Twitter presence is a perfect example of all of this.

Time and time again, Republican elected officials have politely suggested that Trump use Twitter less and differently. Use it to rally his massive online support base behind policy initiatives rather than as a tool to exact revenge on people Trump thinks have wronged him. White House staffers have done the same, occasionally floating the idea that, at one point or another, Trump finally "got it" and was going to tweet differently from there on out.

What it should prove is that Trump is neither willing nor able to change his stripes. He is a 70-year-old man (he will be 71 on June 14) who has had much success in his life. And he believes that the way in which he was elected president -- against all odds and doing everything traditional politics says not to -- is an affirmation that he is the only person who really understands his supporters and the mood of the country.

That assumption is what leads him to ignore advice from advisers about, maybe just maybe, putting down his phone at, say, 10 p.m. -- or never picking it up at all. Trump believes in Trump -- first, last and always.

Staff will come and go. But to expect anyone to change Trump in any way is to ignore, literally, his entire adult life.

Which means more "covfefes." Maybe many more.

Read more here:
'Covfefe' tells you all you need to know about Donald Trump - CNN

New York Times

Donald Trump's Insult to History New York Times The tectonic plates of Europe are shifting, and President Trump is at the heart of this upheaval. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany bluntly made that point on Sunday when she said, The times in which we could rely fully on others they are ... Donald Trump Is Picking a Fight With Germanyand It Will Not End WellThe Nation. Germany Can't Stop Marveling at How Dumb Donald Trump IsGQ Magazine President Trump just threatened Germany over trade. Here's what you need to know.Washington Post Slate Magazine (blog) -National Review -Quartz all 2,022 news articles »

Excerpt from:
Donald Trump's Insult to History - New York Times

New York Times

Kabul, Donald Trump, Scott Pelley: Your Wednesday Briefing New York Times President Trump is poised to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement, two officials with knowledge of the decision said, a move that would make good on a campaign pledge and that would severely weaken the landmark 2015 accord. White House officials ...

See the original post:
Kabul, Donald Trump, Scott Pelley: Your Wednesday Briefing - New York Times

Donald Trump and Jared Kushner arrive for a meeting at the White House on Feb. 23.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

President Trump is deeply unpopular. His foreign triphis first such visit to Americas allies abroadwas marked by turbulence, ending in a spat with Germany. His legislative agenda has largely stalled, with little movement on either tax reform or his health care bill. His budget, released last week, was widely condemned and criticized, and hes facing a potential battle over the debt ceiling.

Jamelle Bouie isSlates chief political correspondent.

Adding to the omnishambles is scandal. The investigation into the ties between Russia and his campaign has ensnared his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who allegedly proposed a secret communications channel with Moscow, located within the Russian embassy in Washington. In terms of Trump figures who are under the most serious scrutiny, Kushner seems to have surpassed former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned his position over his ties to the Turkish and Russian governments and who is a subject of the FBIs inquiry into the Trump campaign. None of this even touches the crises of Trumps own making, like his firing of now former FBI Director James Comey after having allegedly instructed him to drop the investigation into Flynnan overt effort to stop the Russia inquiry that appears very clearly to have been an attempt to obstruct justice.

Until and unless the special counsel investigation of Robert Mueller yields legally actionable fruit beyond press leaks, these problems are politically surmountable. That would, however, require focus, humility, and a willingness to change course. In this White House, those qualities are in short supply. Indeed, there's no evidencefrom either his life or political careerthat Trump has the self-knowledge or discipline needed to turn his presidency around. Which is why, in the face of this storm, Trumps solution is typically superficialthe president wants better PR. Rather than displace or remove the largely amateur advisers and confidants that have enabled his worst impulses, Trump will try, instead, to sell himself harder.

Trump is ignorant, erratic, and largely disinterested in the details of governance.

To that end, the president plans a media staff shake-up, which began on Tuesday with the resignation of his communications director, Michael Dubke, after just three months in the position. The Washington Post reports that Dubke, along with press secretary Sean Spicer, have been under sharp criticism from Trump and many senior officials in the West Wing, who believe the president has been poorly served by his staff, in particular in the aftermath of the Comey firing.

The thinking, then, is that a stronger communications staffled, perhaps, by former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossiecould better defend the president and advance his priorities in the face of criticism and scandal. If these crises were superficialquestions of appearance and rhetoricthat approach might work. But Trumps problems are deep-seated and substantive. The president ultimately wont be able to rebut Russia allegations with sharp tweets and an aggressive war room, not when he faces an independent FBI and general counsel investigation. A better sales job also wont improve his legislative prospects, not when Americans have turned decisively against bills like the American Health Care Act. Just 8 percent of Americans want the Senate to pass the House version of the bill, 29 percent want the Senate to reject it outright, and 26 percent want major changes, according to the latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Top Comment

Republicans: always thinking it's their message. More...

Above all, a communications shake-up does little for Trumps actual problem, his temperament. Trump is ignorant, erratic, and largely disinterested in the details of governance. His contempt for the truth, domineering instincts, and preoccupation with loyalty are authoritarian-minded and ill-suited to a fundamentally democratic office, whose power depends on cooperating with other parts of government as much as it rests on its formal authority as articulated in the Constitution. Even if Trump really were the businessman he claims to beeven if he had actual success in building things, rather than the image of success promoted through savvy branding and reality televisionhe would be in over his head at the White House.

As it stands, Trump is a man of few skills and worse instincts, whose political problems are largely of his own making and who lacks the self-knowledge to correct the course of his flagging administration. Nothing except a clean and competent administration might be able to change his popularity, which has flagged since the start of this administration. All the spice in the world cant mask the taste of spoiled meat.

See the rest here:
Donald Trump Thinks He Can Fix His Presidency With a New Communications Team, Is Deluded - Slate Magazine

New York Times

Donald Trump's Twitter Comedy New York Times The president offered Americans a bit of levity on Wednesday morning amid his broadsides about the Russia investigation and complaints about fake news, closing out a busy day of tweeting with the message, Despite the constant negative press covfefe..

See the rest here:
Donald Trump's Twitter Comedy - New York Times