The White House's 'Adults'
DAVID A. GRAHAM 3:43 PM ET
... The president did not offer any sympathy for Porter’s victims.
Trump’s reaction conflicts with the White House’s attempts to control the damage from Porter’s departure, amid accusations of physical and verbal abuse from two ex-wives. On Friday morning, Chief of Staff John Kelly held a staff meeting in which he tried to portray the White House as taking accusations of domestic assault seriously, and argued (against all evidence) that he had acted swiftly and decisively when he learned the accusations were credible. A White House spokesman also tried to convince the press on Thursday that the administration deplored domestic abuse ...
Trump's choice to side with Moore and Porter is inseparable from the many accusations of sexual harassment and assault lodged against him, as well as a recording in which he boasts about sexually assaulting women. The president has denied any wrongdoing. Yet while he grants the presumption of innocence to men like Porter and Moore, he does not grant the same presumption to others — such as the Central Park Five, young men of color who Trump wanted executed in the 1980s, and whose innocence he has refused to accept ...
What’s remarkable about the Porter episode is who it sweeps in: Porter, Kelly, McGahn. These were the purported adults in the room. Those ejected from the White House thus far had tended to come from the ranks of career partisan political operators (Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Mike Dubke) or the wild-eyed outsiders (Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka). But even people who had recognized that Kelly was not a moderate had viewed him as at least a relatively competent administrator. The Porter episode exposes some of his weaknesses ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/new-kids-on-the-block/552911/
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