Let’s be honest here for a moment — no one expected Donald J. Trump, a washed-up reality TV “star” and real estate “mogul” living on his dead daddy’s dime, to actually become the President of the United States. Even all throughout his 2016 campaign, it just was not something we ever saw happening. Yet, here we are. With a big push from crazed, brainwashed Republicans and more than a little help from Russia, the man managed to not only make it to the White House but stay there four long, hard, troubling years.
However, it oftentimes seemed as though even members of Trump’s own cabinet and party ultimately took him about as seriously as we did when it came to recognizing him as a point of genuine, legitimate authority. Over the months and years that Trump was in office, and even more so now that he’s not, insiders have revealed the way they were forced to work around the man who tortured this country for four long years — essentially nodding their heads in agreeance with everything he said, to keep his temper low and his ego fat, before going on to do what was necessary, despite what the then-president had to say about things.
With all that being said, I don’t know that anyone really realized the depths to which Trump’s “people” essentially ignored him.
Recently, Colonel Alexader Vindman, who testified against Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial regarding his attempted extortion of Ukraine, penned a piece for The Atlantic, in which he shed even greater light on just how ridiculous Donald’s demands were — to the point that no one took him seriously even when they probably should have.
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Vindman detailed the infamous Ukraine call Trump held with Zelensky and went on to explain:
The fact is that because Trump never provided any policy guidance, nobody in responsible circles—people far senior to me—ever took his remarks seriously.
They’d wait to see if anything more substantive confirmed what he’d said, continuing, in the meantime, to pursue agreed-upon directions. Because Tim Morrison, my new boss at NSC, had also directed that we continue on course and not treat anything the president might say as a change in policy, there was really nothing else to do.”
Vindman’s revelation makes it clear that even the professionals within the National Security Council put virtually zero stock into anything said by the President of the United States under Trump’s term. In fact, they pretty much carried on about their lives just simply pretending that he didn’t say anything. Until finally, Trump decided to follow through on something heinous — like the extortion of an entire foreign nation in an effort to acquire dirt on his political opponent.
It truly still baffles me how this man ever spent four years in a position so powerful as the presidency. I will never understand.
You can read Vindman’s full piece here.
Featured image via Flickr – Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0/screen capture
