How Mark Meadows Became the White House's Unreliable Source

[Nevilledog]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/04/mark-meadows-trump-covid-425912

In January 2013, after an unsuccessful attempt by Tea Party conservatives to overthrow House Speaker John Boehner, a rookie congressman from North Carolina slinked into the speaker’s office complex inside the U.S. Capitol. Mark Meadows had not voted against Boehner on the House floor. But he had participated in the plotting—and word had since leaked out naming him as one of the conspirators. Frightened that he would be exiled to the hinterlands of the House, the freshman sought an audience with the speaker.

“He’s on the couch, sitting across from me in my chair, and suddenly he slides off the couch, down onto his knees, and puts his hands together in front of his chest,” Boehner recalled to me. “He says, ‘Mr. Speaker, will you please forgive me?’” (This incident was witnessed by several people, including Boehner’s chief of staff, Mike Sommers, who described it as “the strangest behavior I had ever seen in Congress.”)

The speaker took pity. He figured Meadows was just a “nervous new member who wanted to be liked” and told him there was no harm done. The two men carried on fine over the next couple of years—until Meadows surprised his colleagues by voting against Boehner’s reelection in 2015. “And then he sends me the most gracious note you’ll ever read, saying what an admirable job I’ve done as speaker,” Boehner recalled. “I just figured he’s a schizophrenic.”

That’s one diagnosis of Meadows—and trust me, there are plenty to go around in Washington. Friends would describe him as a respectable player—calculating and slippery but decent to a fault. Enemies would liken him to a political sociopath, someone whose charm and affability conceal an unemotional capacity for deception. What both groups would agree upon is that Meadows, the 61-year-old White House chief of staff, is so consumed with his cloak-and-dagger, three-dimensional-chess approach to Washington that he can’t always be trusted.

*snip*

[brush]

1. He'll be out soon because he gave a sober assessment of trump's condition to reporters...

contrary to the rosy picture his sycophant doctor gave.

trump is said to be outraged by it. If he gets control of his faculties after the dexamethasome wears off, Meadows won't last long