Guess Who’s Trying to Get Donald Trump Up to Speed?

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The original story (first paragraph of quotation) is from the Wall Street Journal. The rest is from the Washington Post. If I did not love my country so much, and if I weren’t so concerned about our allies, and if I weren’t so worried about the influence of Vladimir Putin and other strongmen around the world, I would have to laugh. As it is, I need to be driven to my knees and pray that God will be merciful to us.

There seems to be an idea with some that winning the election automatically sanctifies Trump, but praying blindly is no better than voting blindly. “Oh God, open Donald Trump’s eyes to his own ignorance” would seem to me to be a good place to start. (And by the way–that horrible Barack Obama, who supposedly has waked up every morning for the past eight years wondering what he could do that day to bring about America’s ruin, is planning to meet more often with Trump than is usually the case with an outgoing and an incoming President, because he has realized how clueless Trump is.)

“During their private White House meeting on Thursday, [President] Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.
The man ran for president for a year and a half, and is surprised that the presidency is such a big job. Meanwhile, his aides were under the impression that the Obama staffers would stick around and be working for them now.”

“This is appalling, but it shouldn’t be surprising. Those of us who actually contemplated a Trump presidency during the campaign were particularly disturbed not just by Trump’s ignorance, but also by the fact that it was accompanied by a certainty that he knew everything he needed to know, despite the fact that he knew virtually nothing. He would regularly claim that he was smarter and more knowledgeable than everyone who actually had experience in government and policy, despite never having served a day in government or spent a moment thinking about policy.

“Asked whom he consulted on foreign affairs, he said, ‘I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.’ On fighting terrorism, he said, ‘I know more about ISIS [the Islamic State] than the generals do, believe me.’ I suppose that any day now he’s going to unveil that secret plan to defeat the Islamic State, which he said was ‘a foolproof way of winning,’ but he couldn’t tell us what it was because then the Islamic State would know and it would be ruined. Even Republicans knew that he was just lying.”