As President Donald Trump flew to West Virginia for a rally Tuesday night, he carried heavy cargo—a conviction for his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a guilty plea from his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, an indictment of one of his earliest endorsers Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and a story about his National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow inviting a white nationalist publisher to his birthday party.
Infamous for his mercurial temperament, Trump is likely to explode at any moment with a barrage of angry and possibly self-incriminating tweets. As his aides whisper nervously about the possibility of his future impeachment, they’re doing their best to keep the volcanic President distracted, according to a Tuesday Politico report.
Many staffers told Politico that Tuesday was “one of the darkest days” for Trump’s presidency, and fretted that the legal peril so many Trump associates have found themselves in could lend credence to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, just by nature of the taint of criminality smearing the White House.
Some are reportedly worried that all of the scandal will add fire to the Democrats’ desire to impeach him, adding that Tuesday’s turmoil only makes it more important for Republicans to hold the House and protect the President.
As one former White House aide phrased it to Politico, now staffers are just working to “minimize the amount of self harm” Trump could do to himself in his rage. The plan is to keep Trump distracted with golf and rallies, to give him less time to stew.
“He’s almost like a volcano, which sometimes blows off steam without taking out the village below,” the former official added. “The busier he is, the less likely he’s going to get in these moods and watch TV and get more and more angry.”
