the trump White House is like a group of turkeys fighting over corn in the barnyard

Let me explain why I titled this article as I have. It goes back to when the company I worked for got it in their minds to do a motivation weekend for the employees in my office. As had happened many times before, they would do a presentation with the idea of motivating us to be out best selfs in the work place. What they inevitably would do, is give the parameters and talk big in the presentation and then, within months and sometimes weeks, they would break their side of the new agreement.
So it was that they call us into meetings and presented with a new way of looking at the business. According to the new vision we employees were to be “empowered”. Since workers can’t soar if the management are picky and look for problems instead of solutions, management’s side was that they were going to act like eagles, so that we employees would act the same way. Needless to say, management very quickly starting acting like turkeys and looking to place blame and tightening what we were empowered to do.
The body of this blog article i about the book Team of Vipers by Cliff Sims. Cliff is a conservative republican who believed, and somehow still seems to believe, in trump. Despite that general predisposition, he has a lot of harsh things to say about many of the staff.
For example:
1. Sean Spicer — a petty man who had to have his thumb on everything. He had no concern about those working for him and was much more concerned about his own power, and his circle of friends within the White House.
2. Kellyanne Conway — a truly conniving woman. No real loyalty to anybody including trump. Will go on Tv and defend trump to the max and cut him down on the phone behind the scenes. Plays both sides to put herself in the best light regardless of who she has to kick.
3. John Kelly — a vastly unhappy man who rants about how horrible it is to work in the White House to staff. He has become a part of the very toxic envirnment that he was brought in to fix. One of the more backbiting of the staff members. Sims traces this to the Rob Portman debacle, when Kelly defended Rob, but when confronted with criticism, turn around and tried to say that he fired Portman immediately which everybody else in the White House knew was a lie.
i disagree with him there. I think Kelly showed his rottenness much before that. When he told lies on Fredderica Wilson who defended her friend’s widow, I lost all respect for Kelly.
4. Sara Hucklebee Sanders — In Sim’s estimation, she is an basicly honest person having to do a job that requires some lies. She justifies it to herself by saying things like “that is all I know” or “I haven’t talked to trump about that fully”. That way, she thinks she can slide though and give the party line and not be responsible morally. I guess you know I don’t take a positive view of that as Sims does.
Though out the book, Sims insists on pointing out that he blames the people on staff. But you see, trump is the fountainhead of that stream. He is the one that picked these people. He is the one that chose time and again, people with their own agenda who would do anything to get their way…no matter who else they had to screw over within the White House.
The RNC people were against the campaign people. Jared Kushner and Bannon were hostile to one another except when they came together because of their mutual disdain for Spicer. Cliff Sims lost his job and another job in another department because Kelly didn’t like him and, in Sims opinion, fiddled with his security clearance as he had with others.
Sims is up front about the fact that he was guilty of the office politics also. He worked to get the Mooch into the White House because he thought the Mooch would be better than Spicer and would actually get the White House staff to actually feel appreciated and respected and work together. We all know how that worked out, and Sims went so far as to say that may be one of the reasons why he ruffled some feathers and ended up losing his position.
Unfortunately, Sims is a republican and a conservative so there are things I don’t agree with him on. He supports the wall, I don’t. He liked Bannon….I don’t. He doesn’t think that trump is a racist. I think trump is racist or at least advocates for racist policies. Sims believes in supply side economics which I think is wrong. No matter how many widgets corporations can make, if nobody can afford them, they are not going to sell. I believe in what I think would be called demand side economics.
Oh, and I blame trump himself for the confusion in his White House. The turkey or eagle traits of an organization starts at the top. Of course the staff spends most of its time covering its backside when they have a hostile and belittling work situation, just like where I used to work. So, to use that analogy, trump is top turkey. It is from HIM that the backbiting and stabs in the back originate from. Sims even admits that loyalty with trump is always one way. He demands but gives no loyalty.
Originally published at www.blogster.com.