Trump Burning the White House (#190)

Around the World, the White House has become the iconic symbol of power of America, as recognizable as the Statute of Liberty. For two centuries the building has been the symbol and seat of 'American Power' as the residence and working space of the most powerful man in the World. And from that building has emanated some of the most significant moments in American history as each President led America onward towards its eventual greatness the World has come to acknowledge, and which now the Americans seem to take largely for granted.

The White House, the symbol of the power and greatness of America is now under siege, by circumstance and by chance, as one of the most improbably elected ‘nationally’ destructive Presidents in modern history, burns the institution down (figuratively speaking), and destroys its reputation and credibility by the nauseating lack of basic morality and ethics, and the sheer vulgarity and crassness of the behaviour of its current occupants.

Donald Trump’s tasteless and ill-advised behaviour is now legend. Moving into the White House as the 45th President of the United States did not make him rise to the occasion but instead through his crass and unprecedented un-presidential behaviour he brought the Presidency down to his level. The White House, the institution, whose reputation was built over 200 years, and has stood the test of time as the most noble, highest seat of power in the America, has been brought to its lowest levels in six months of its prime occupant taking residence.

When the British set fire to the White House in 1814, during the War of 1812, the damage was repaired and the building restored. Donald Trump and his team’s behaviour has damaged the White House more gravely, as it is the long standing reputation and reverence for the institution that has been severely tarnished, which is much harder to repair.

Today, the White House stands for insincerity, infighting, unethical destructive behaviour and ongoing ‘chaos’, the word most often repeated to describe this Presidency’s first six months.

But of late Donald Trump brought in a new and different level of crassness that has shocked even the most ardent supporters of this President, in the form of an overtly ambitious, loyalty, ideology switching, morally-bankrupt, political favour-seeking, foul-mouthed ‘hit man’, by the name of Anthony Scaramucci, known to his friends as the 'Mooch’, to whack some of the White House insiders that have fallen out of favour of this most fickle and disloyal of Presidents. The discarding of these ‘spent’ early supporters and current White House insiders was undertaken as a Mafia hit through a contract hire in the form of the Mooch.

The immediate casualties have been the Press Secretary and acting-Communications Director Sean Spicer, who resigned upon Anthony Scaramucci’s taking up the post of Communications Director, and was immediately shown the door; and the second whack job was the Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, who was publicly humiliated in the most foul manner, with the most foul language by the Mooch, till Priebus had no choice but to meekly tender his resignation, which Trump accepted with great alacrity.

And it would seem, White House insider Steve Bannon, Trump’s prime strategist till now, may be the additional target, as he was the other recipient of Scaramucci’s foul mouthed attention.

The replacement Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, explained away the Mooch’s most public foul verbal assault on Priebus and Bannon as simply the expression of ‘passion’ and ‘colourful language’ that won’t happen again. But the fact that it happened at the level of the President of the United States, and was not condemned by the President, or in any particular form of outrage by the governing Republicans, but was from all accounts, at the behest and with the obvious blessings of the President, is the most shocking and grievous part. Even for those of us who never bought into the shallow life and lies, and the tin foil glitter of the 'Donald’, his reckless use of the bully pulpit of the Presidency has been simply stunning. Even we hadn’t quite plumbed the depths of Trump’s moral degeneracy, or the self-serving tolerance for the destruction of the ‘Office of the President’ and ‘the White House’ by the Republican majority.

The World has been recoiling from the rising stench of wide spread moral decay in American politics for some time now, but that decay is now daily on open display, with Donald Trump always being able to sink it to a new lower levels that hadn’t been ever thought possible before. The use of such tactics, as bringing in Scaramucci the 'Mooch’ to ‘whack’ Sean Spicer, Priebus and others, are more suitable in a mafia gang than in the highest offices of the land, and have damaged the image of the White House in an irreparable way. The Presidency of the United States has been brought down to the gutter level by Donald Trump that has sent shock waves reverberating around the World, and stripped the White House of its mythical power and dignity.