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| Bob Woodward and the man being called "an idiot" by some members of his own staff |
Allegedly, he's also surrounded by a patriotic Republican "resistance" - folks who are bound and determined to do everything they can to "preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office."
It's unprecedented in American history.
High level members of a sitting president's own staff working inside the White House, actively working to prevent the chaotic narcissist who hired them from doing any more damage to the nation than he's already done.
Like many Americans trying to absorb all this news, I'm equal parts relieved and dumbfounded.
The Times op-ed comes a day after advance copies of journalist Bob Woodward's new book "Fear: Trump In the White House" (a devastating expose on the inner workings of the White House under Trump) were leaked to reporters ahead of it's publication next Tuesday.
The anonymous op-ed backs up the portrayals of a dysfunctional White House and a staff astounded by Trump's idiocy and inability to grasp complex issues or even stay on topic in meetings.
True to form, Trump has only lent credence to these stunning accusations by lashing out in ways that simply reinforce the perception that he's a completely incompetent moron with the attention span of a "fifth or sixth grader" who is totally unqualified to sit in the Oval Office.
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| Brett Kavanaugh brushes off Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland, FL mass shooting |
Sources tell CNN that Trump also allegedly ordered an internal "West Wing Witch Hunt" to uncover leakers on his own White House staff.
Yet at the same time, according to a Vox.com article by Zack Beauchamp, Trump is trying to claim that Woodward's book is part of a left-wing plot hatched to torpedo Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Unfortunately for Trump, his (latest) conspiracy theory is undermined by that that fact that, as Beauchamp noted, the publication date of Woodward's book on Trump was set well before the Kavanaugh hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee were even scheduled.
One of the things that strikes me as remarkable about all this, is that Trump has only been in office about nineteen months - yet his actions are apparently so reprehensible to his own staff that a number of them have formed this "resistance" within the White House described in the NYT op-ed.
Earlier today I was reading the news that the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office announced that they will not pursue sexual assault charges against actors Steven Segal and Kevin Spacey because the alleged incidents took place back in the 1990's and the statute of limitations to charge them has already expired.
In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations, when actor Anthony Rapp publicly accused Spacey of trying to initiate sex with him when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26, and Spacey publicly acknowledged the incident had happened, at least ten other accusers made similar claims against the Oscar-winning actor.
I couldn't help but wonder, where was the internal "resistance" movement to confront and stop Spacey's reprehensible behavior?
Or the behavior of any number of high-profile actors, directors, producers and agents in Hollywood for that matter?
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| Actress Rose McGowan (left), her ex-manager Jill Messick and producer Harvey Weinstein |
One of the problems with having a magazine habit in todays multimedia, digital-heavy world is that they can (literally) stack up when you're busy.
So it wasn't until last week that I finally got to read Chris Gardner's interview with actress/ activist Rose McGowan published in the May 9th issue of the Hollywood Reporter.
McGowan has become one of the central figures in the #MeToo movement that emerged in the wake of the downfall of producer Harvey Weinstein after she became one of the first of many well known actresses to go public with accusations of sexual assault against the one-time Hollywood mogul.
A role for which she's been alternately praised and vilified by members of the entertainment industry.
Gardner's THR article is definitely worth a read if you're interested in getting a more in-depth understanding how McGowan's public accusations against one of most powerful figures in Hollywood have changed her life and career.
Aside from Weinstein's criminal sexual appetites and his employing Israeli security agencies to spy on, intimidate and professionally discredit some of the actresses who accused him of rape and assault, one of the most disturbing claims McGowan made in the article involves her former manager Jill Messick.
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| Rose McGowan, Jeremy Davies and Ben Affleck in a scene from Going All the Way (1997) |
"Harvey attended the premiere of...Going All the Way, in which she [McGowan] has a topless scene. After it came onscreen, McGown claims, she saw her then-manager Jill Messick turn and nod to the mogul.
It was Messick who set up the meeting the next morning between Weinstein and McGowan at the Stein Eriksen Lodge that McGowan says ended with her being sexually assaulted in a hot tub."
As a former actor I have no illusions about the kinds of things people will do, or the depths to which they will sink, to achieve fame, money or power in the entertainment industry.
But the idea that a professional adult talent manager who gets paid to help manage an artist's career would knowingly send a young, 24-year-old actress to a meeting in a hotel room with a Hollywood producer with a reputation for demanding sex from young women, disturbed me.
In all fairness, Messick (who took her own life back in February) publicly denied McGowan's accusations that she knowingly sent the actress into the meeting with Harvey Weinstein knowing he would rape her.
But yet as Gardner reports, in 1998, a year AFTER McGown was raped by Weinstein and paid $100,000 as part of a settlement agreement, Messick took a job with Weinstein's company Miramax.
Call me a cynic but I don't believe in coincidence when it comes to things like that, and McGowan claimed that Messick protected Weinstein in exchange for her job at Miramax.
By the way, after taking the position with Weinstein at Miramx in 1998, Messick went on to produce a number of films including She's All That (1999), Frida (2002) and later Mean Girls (2004) - (after she'd left Miramax in 2003).
Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Steven Segal and Jill Messick are just a handful of the high-profile figures in the entertainment industry who allegedly (by their actions, non-actions or silence) were part of the rampant culture of sexual abuse that's come to light in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
Again, members of Trump's top staff formed a "resistance" to stop his behavior after only nineteen months in office - so where was the "resistance" in Hollywood and the entertainment community when the kind of sexual abuse suffered by actors like Anthony Rapp or Rose McGown has been going on since the early part of the 20th century?
Was Trump's behavior just that bad?
Or was Hollywood just that complacent with an abusive status quo?
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