In an astonishing admission, Donald Trump said Thursday that instead of hiring only "the best people," as he promised voters, he hired "garbage."
Trump also complained Thursday that these former appointees didn't follow his version of omerta after a new book revealed that he wanted to execute an unidentified White House leaker. Omerta is the ancient Sicilian mob tradition of killing those who talk outside their criminal gang.
Each day America's beggar-in-chief issues "Save America" statements via email. Most are petty, many deranged, but now and then, truth inadvertently comes through because of his utter lack of self-awareness, his emotional immaturity, and his rank incompetence as a leader, which I've shown for three decades to his furious denials.
Now the people he chose for his White House team are telling their stories of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the White House years.
Here is what Trump declared at 12:49 on Thursday afternoon:
Let's dissect this unintended confession.
First, many of the people Trump says are "all of a sudden" talking to reporters have been talking to them for months and years. Trump doesn't read books – or for that matter, his Presidential Daily Brief when he was president. Not reading more deeply than the cover of a book often leaves Trump badly, sadly — and when he was president — dangerously misinformed.
Had Trump cracked the spines of the bookshelf of tell-alls coming out now, he would know that the authors carefully cultivated these sources and won their trust while he was president.
Second, notice that people who worked with Trump and talk about him other than as he wants you to speak, then you are, in his words, "losers."
The reason Trump made oh so many people sign nondisclosure agreements, even some 2016 campaign volunteers, was that anyone who gets inside could see the truth about Trump: he is and always has been a fraud, the self-made man who blew daddy's fortune. The Don Juan was sued repeatedly for groping and allegedly raping women because he lacked the charm to seduce them. And now the billionaire beggar-in-chief reduced to pleading for alms from the people he says he loves, the "poorly educated" he did so much to hurt while in office.
Third, Trump is back to his "many say" devices, as if that lends credence to what he says.
The fact is that many say he is the worst president of all time. Many say he is a Kremlin stooge — and if the documents published in The Guardian Thursday are true, Vladimir Putin is among them. Many say he is a lousy businessman.
I could go on here with enough examples to fill three books—oh, wait, just today I finished my third Trump book, The Big Cheat, out Sept. 28.
Fourth, who conflates stars and garbage? There are great metaphors, there are mediocre metaphors, and then there are Trumpian trash metaphors.
But at least this one was honest trash in which Trump admitted, finally, that he didn't hire the best and the brightest, but a bunch of losers.
