Incompetence, Again
The son’s response to the invitation, “I love it,” will become the iconic summation of the Trump apparat’s attitude toward the assistance the president received from Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Almost as instructive were the number of outright lies the Trump camp concocted to try to disguise the motivation behind the encounter. Their story changed as New York Times reporters developed more information as to what happened. The White House initially seemed to think it could get everyone to buy its fiction that the conversation — which also involved Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — had focused on policy toward Russian adoptions.
The administration’s marriage of incompetence and corruption was captured with a popular refrain on Twitter that may someday become a book title: “The Gang That Couldn’t Collude Straight.”
At Foreign Policy, Ian Volner writes about the Trump Wall:
The other finalist, who asked that his name be withheld, is more blunt. As he puts it, “It’s been a real mess.” In more than three decades of soliciting and executing large-scale government construction projects, including multiple structures along the southern border, the contractor says he has never seen a bidding process so chaotic and rudderless as this one. “The lack of coordination, the lack of funding — they’re just not ready for prime time,” he says.
