The finger-pointing and sniping at each other that has consumed Donald Trump's inner circle as the harsh reality of running the country overwhelms them, led New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to put them under the microscope on Saturday.
With Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Elon Musk feuding with each other in public and embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's panicking as he ousts close aides and runs to Fox News for frequent confidence-boosting appearances, Dowd suggested things are getting ugly in the White House.
As Dowd wrote of Trump, "How do most Americans see his first 100 days in office? 'Chaotic' and 'scary' — not the paternal reassurance he might have hoped to engender with his cartoonishly macho style, his manosphere heroics and his swaggering U.F.C. and wrestling posse."
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Pointing to evidence of "gossiping, catfighting, backbiting and clawing each other’s eyes out," in the administration," Dowd wrote "... it is grimly entertaining to see this most 'masculine' of administrations reflecting stereotypes about female behavior that long kept women out of power," before quipping, "Trump’s macho crew, it turns out, is a vicious little sewing circle."
Singling out Trump's pick to be defense secretary, she asked, "If you don’t want an unstable creature at the top, particularly at that bastion of masculinity, the Pentagon, why would you hire Pete Hegseth?"
Referring to him as a "lightweight former Fox weekend anchor," she piled on with, "... the man in charge of a department with a budget of approximately $850 billion seems flighty and shaky, unable to find loyal consiglieres and unable to stick to the Pentagon’s classified message system, which is among the best in the world for a reason."
Getting in a final dig, she proposed, "Trump, who often casts by looks, may have liked Hegseth’s slick style and pretty face. But even the Emperor of Chaos must realize this Princess of Chaos has to go"
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