It's Who He Is

It happened to President Trump's chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who with others

tried to talk Trump off the ledge. At one point, aides were sure Trump would make the announcement. Then they said he wouldn’t. Finally, sitting alongside steel executives, he did.

But Cohn quit his job after"iIn a meeting with steel industry executives, Trump announced plans for a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports."

He double-crossed Cohn and his allies by implying one thing when he spoke to them, then doing another.

Something similar happened to those bold students, fighting for an issue larger than themselves, and all persons interested in gun safety when, as Kevin Drum pointed out 

The White House on Sunday vowed to help provide “rigorous firearms training” to some schoolteachers and formally endorsed a bill to tighten the federal background checks system, but it backed off President Trump’s earlier call to raise the minimum age to purchase some guns to 21 years old from 18 years old.

….The Trump plan does not include substantial changes to gun laws….Rather, the president is establishing a Federal Commission on School Safety, to be chaired by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

….The White House plan released Sunday does not address the minimum age for gun purchases. Pressed by reporters about the apparent backtracking, a senior administration official said the age issue was “a state-based discussion right now” and would be explored by DeVos’s commission.

Joe Manchin hails from probably the most culturally conservative state in the Union and Toomey from one in which the opening day of hunting season is a holiday in many counties. However, they had sponsored a bill, which ultimately failed to pass, to extend background checks to firearms purchased at  gun shows and on the Internet. Yet, Trump accused them- "you're afraid of the NRA, right"- of being intimidated by the National Rifle Association. The following day, he held a "surprise late-night meeting" with the organization, which presumably told him something like "sit down and shut up." The President promptly complied.

Drum remarked "Who could have guessed that Trump would cave in to the NRA after all his tough talk? That is, other than everyone?" He came cheap- bought in less than 48 hours.





Trump caved, not only because the organization is one of his bankers, but because it's what he does. And now he has done it  to the first Secretary of State named (presumably) after a dinosaur, who

learned he was fired Tuesday only from a tweet by his boss, President Donald Trump, NBC News reported, citing State Department officials.

And to add insult to injury, Tillerson was basically an afterthought in that tweet, which first introduced Trump's new chosen top diplomat, CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Cowards generally have others do their dirty work for them, and Donald J. Trump is no exception:

NBC News reported that White House chief of staff John Kelly spoke with Tillerson by phone on Friday and told him that Trump intended to ask Tillerson to "step aside," according to two sources familiar with the situation.

On MSNBC's Deadline White House (with Nicolle Wallace), Jeremy Bash responded

The President did this via Twitter. He did this in a very cowardly way. He did this in a way only a small man would do, someone who doesn't actually want to deal with the consequences of telling someone that their employment arrangement is not working out and I wonder what signal it sends to our adversaries that the President is so petrified, to actually fire someone in person.

(Obviously, he meant not to fire someone in person.)

Tariffs, guns, Tillerson. Donald Trump has no backbone. File it along with racial bigot, misognynist, narcissist. Coward. And as for the reason Secretary of State Tillerson was fired:

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