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Presidential Chaos
The Trump White House is in a perpetual state of dysfunction and chaos. Trump kicked off the past week with a series of attacks on Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General and long-time loyalist, for recusing himself from the ongoing investigation of Russia’s interference with the 2016 election. There are tricky arguments, pro and con, on whether Sessions should have removed himself the investigation. But nothing can excuse Trump’s barrage of immature and abusive tweets against a key member of his own team. The upshot is an impasse in which Sessions cannot resign and Trump dare not fire him.
The President followed his Sessions tirade with an ill-considered tweet haphazardly announcing a ban on transgender people serving in the military, which everyone from a blindsided James Mattis on down regarded as a gratuitous insult to many transgender soldiers who have served with distinction. His tweet of course carries no legal consequence, but it puts everyone in government in limbo until the President either issues that foolish order or is, once again, talked off the ledge by his few remaining sensible advisors.
Then Trump appointed the pugnacious and vulgar Anthony Scaramucci as his communications director, who gave a profanity-laced interview with the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza before being ousted from his role at the urging of Trump’s new Chief of Staff, John Kelly. Still, Scaramucci’s appointment was a major disruption. It set in motion the resignation of Trump’s beleaguered Press Secretary Sean Spicer and the sacking of Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff. We can expect more speeches like Trump’s over-the-top political diatribe at the Boy Scouts jamboree, which prompted Michael Surbaugh, the Scout’s CEO, to issue an apology to the boy scouts and their families for the President’s misbehavior.



Last Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Memphis to talk crime, drugs, and violence, all of which are as abundant here as the barbecue. Last year, Memphis experienced a 43 percent spike in homicides, prompting Sessions to remind one and all that, “these aren’t just numbers:”

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