Management Under a Mad King: The Courtiers Who Try to Clean Up.
'Governance' has become a matter of threats and decrees straight from Donald Trump's id. Three examples. And meanwhile, Jeff Bezos destroys a crucial American institution.
White House staffers, “clarifying” Donald Trump’s latest midnight decree. (Or more precisely: A woman sweeping up horse manure after a Hyde Park event in London ten years ago. Photo Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
It’s hard to be in Washington DC at this moment and react to anything except the devastating news that Jeff Bezos, with more than $250 billion at his personal disposal, and Will Lewis, the discredited Murdoch/Fleet Street refugee Bezos brought in to run (and ruin) the Washington Post, have today announced what is effectively the Post’s demise. Their statement starts out by announcing the elimination of two the paper’s strongest and most popular sections—Sports, and Books—and goes downhill from there.
The paper’s stellar, and usually tight-lipped, former editor Marty Baron—successor to Ben Bradlee, Len Downie, Marcus Brauchli—put out a blistering statement this morning. Baron said that “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations.”
It seems to me that this day stands alone.
Its only rival would be whatever day it was on which Jeff Bezos converted himself from the man who stood by Baron in his toughest calls at the Post (as Baron detailed in his autobiography), and once sponsored an extraordinary pro-journalism Super Bowl ad, narrated by Tom Hanks, to the courtier who grovels before Donald Trump and parades around at fashion shows with his new wife.
Jeff Bezos could have done absolutely anything in the world. He has chosen to destroy. And to spend $75 million on the Melania movie, including the $28 million payoff directly to her.¹
Unlike this era’s other great destroyer, Bezos does not even have the excuse of being insane.
There will be more on this front. For now let’s move quickly to three other illustrations of the risk of putting so much power into the hands of so few.
‘White House officials clarified…’
Donald Trump has clearly lost control of his emotions, his contact with reality, and such fidelity to truth as he ever had.
This is a problem for everyone on Earth: That a furious 79-year-old has asserted one-man authority to disrupt the world economy, destroy historic alliances, sell pardons to criminals, and conceivably start a nuclear war.
It’s a problem in a specific way for the subset of people on Team MAGA—within the White House and on Capitol Hill—who realize that much of what Trump says each day is literally insane.
This is a for-the-record post, to note three recent examples of Trump saying and ordering things that his own people know are insane, and where this leaves the rest of us.
1) February 3, about elections: States are ‘agents’ of the federal government.
Yesterday in the Oval Office, as part of his standard “stolen election” riff, Donald Trump said that if “Democrat” states couldn’t clean up their elections, then federal authorities would exercise their right to step in. As he put it:
If you think about it, the state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway.
If you think about it, the states are in fact not an agent for the federal government in elections. If you don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway, it is because the US Constitution explicitly says that this is a job for the states.
To wit, from Article I, Section 4, Clause 1:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.²
Everyone else in the US government knows this. Nearly everyone on the MAGA team realizes it’s a problem that the sitting president either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, how the Constitution works. And so could never pass a naturalized-citizenship test.
Thus they pirouette around this awkward reality. Last week, they had to pretend not to have heard Trump’s comment, after the Alex Pretti murder, that no one should be allowed to carry a loaded gun to a public rally. (Notwithstanding the Second Amendment, the NRA, Kyle Rittenhouse, and many others.)
This time, the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, tactfully said after Trump’s comment that he personally was “not in favor” of “nationalizing” elections. Karoline Leavitt used her trademark deflection to say, reassuringly, that Donald Trump “believes in the Constitution.” And that his real point was concern about “election integrity” and the desirability of “nationwide standards” toward that end.
Fine. But that’s not what he said. And apparently not what he thinks, or knows.
2) January 29, about aircraft: How to cut off travel throughout much of the US, via one nighttime tweet.
Six days ago, something brought an arcane aspect of aircraft regulation to Donald Trump’s attention. It is arcane, not worth going into here, and not the kind of thing a normal president would be bothering with. The issue involved certification timetables for private-jet aircraft in the US, versus those in Canada. Some explanatory links are below.³
However he got wind of this issue, Donald Trump apparently decided that it was one more way in which Mark Carney and his Canadians were showing him up, and one more instance of foreigners cheating Americans.
Therefore Trump declared, online, an immediate grounding in the US of “all Aircraft made in Canada.” Plus a 50% tariff on imported Canadian jets that sell for tens of millions of dollars.
As Trump put it in a Truth Social post last Thursday night. (Emphasis added.)
Based on the fact that Canada has wrongfully, illegally, and steadfastly refused to certify the Gulfstream 500, 600, 700, and 800 Jets, one of the greatest, most technologically advanced airplanes ever made, we are hereby decertifying their Bombardier Global Expresses, and all Aircraft made in Canada, until such time as Gulfstream, a Great American Company, is fully certified, as it should have been many years ago…. If, for any reason, this situation is not immediately corrected, I am going to charge Canada a 50% Tariff on any and all Aircraft sold into the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”
As I write, Trump’s post is still online. And it still is insane.
Why? Because “decertifying” means that planes could no longer legally fly in the United States. And if implemented, this decree would have effectively ended air service to hundreds of medium-sized and smaller-city destinations across the country.
The “major” carriers like United, Delta, American, and Southwest carry people among the big hub cities, on big Boeing and Airbus planes. But at least 400 other US communities—Wichita, Dayton, Duluth, and so on—get most or all of their air service from a “regional” carrier. These flights are usually ticketed and branded as American, Delta, or United. But they’re operated by separate smaller companies, and nearly all of their service is via smaller jets or turboprops.
Bombardier is one of the two globally dominant suppliers of these planes. The other is Embraer, based in Brazil. Boeing and Airbus don’t make planes like these. On a typical day, more than 600 Bombardier CRJ regional jets are in flight over the US. Bombardier itself employs in the US some 3,000 people directly, and says it buys from 2,800 suppliers. (The aircraft-building business is globally integrated, and very complex.)
This means that Trump’s edict, if anyone took it seriously, would cut off all but the biggest cities in the US from crucial business, medical, touristic, and other ties.
Of course Trump did not know this, just as he doesn’t know about elections or gun laws. Of course he had not thought through this whim. But how could the rest of the world know that this was just ranting, even though it came from a sitting president?
The CBC in Canada had an immediate followup, based on talking with people who had thought through the consequences:
John Gradek, a lecturer on aviation and supply chain management at McGill University in Montreal, told CBC News he was “flabbergasted” by Trump’s outburst, given the ramifications for the industry…
“There’s probably been some misunderstanding about the impact that such a decertification of Canadian aircraft would have on the U.S. domestic air services currently operated by U.S. carriers,” he said…
It does not appear the FAA has the legal authority to revoke certifications for planes based on economic reasons, as it can only do so for safety reasons under existing regulations.
Eventually Reuters got an unnamed source “in the White House” to clarify that the statement would apply only to future planes from Canada, not the ones already going to Montgomery or Fresno. Phew! The New York Times reported the “clarification” clown shown this way. Emphasis added.
The president said on social media that he would decertify “all aircraft made in Canada,” a move that would ground thousands of planes and upend air travel in the United States. But industry officials said federal regulators clarified that his statement was meant to apply only to new aircraft certifications….
The Federal Aviation Administration, which issues aircraft certifications in the United States, referred questions about the statement to the White House, which did not respond to a request for clarification… Two industry officials said that federal regulators had advised that the statement was intended only to refer to new certifications. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the government’s guidance.
In short: The president is insane. And we’re left with “officials” who are afraid to be named, to serve as grownups in the room.
3) February 2, about Harvard: How the word ‘backtracked’ infuriated Trump.
For nearly a year now I’ve chronicled the MAGA assault on Harvard—so famous, so fabled, so rich. And Harvard’s rock-ribbed determination, starting last April after some initial hesitation, to resist. Some early entries in this series were here and here.
I also chronicled the “Harvard about to cave” series in the NYT, as detailed here. In short, I thought many items in this series gave too much weight to unnamed sources on the Trump team, who wanted to promote the idea that not even Harvard could stand up to them—and made its capitulation seem ever-imminent.
Thus I did a double-take two days ago, on Monday evening, at this headline on the Times’s web site. ...
