Bravo, Steve Schmidt
Both he and Nicole Wallace have become interesting and engaging talking heads on MSNBC. Hard to believe they were part of the team that brought us Sarah Palin.
"Anyone in politics or government who works for Donald Trump, whether on the payroll or in some other supporting role, is forced to make a sacrifice. Working for Trump means that one’s credibility is likely to be damaged, so there is a kind of moral calculation that any Trump supporter must make: Does working for him serve some higher purpose that outweighs the price of reputational loss?"
"We learned this week that, even if you maintain the most sympathetic view of why these ex-generals continue to serve Trump, there is no way to work for him without paying the Trump tax on one’s reputation."
has Steve Schmidt ever given a mea culpa for creating the political climate that gave us Trump? The Donald is only a short step from his boss's foisting Sarah Palin on the country. He helped create a world in which dumbness and lying were no longer seen as barriers to the Oval Office.
ml1 said:
has Steve Schmidt ever given a mea culpa for creating the political climate that gave us Trump? The Donald is only a short step from his boss's foisting Sarah Palin on the country. He helped create a world in which dumbness and lying were no longer seen as barriers to the Oval Office.
"Schmidt, above all others perhaps, has understood the resonating impacts of the Palin candidacy. In what were largely overlooked remarks at a recent forum on the 2012 election sponsored by The New Yorker, Schmidt acknowledged that Palin has had a “destructive impact” on both the tenor and substance of the American political process:
I think that she helped usher in an era of know-nothingness, and mainstreamed it in the Republican Party to the detriment of the conservative movement... And I think her nomination trivialized American politics, and had a lot of results that I’m not particularly comfortable with. And, of course, you know, I had a very personally difficult relationship with her during the campaign. But it was a mistake. There’s just no two ways about it.
GL2 said:
"Working for Trump means that one’s credibility is likely to be damaged, so there is a kind of moral calculation that any Trump supporter must make: Does working for him serve some higher purpose that outweighs the price of reputational loss?"
https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/john-kelly-and-the-dangerous-moral-calculus-of-working-for-trump
What IS the higher purpose? During the Nazi era, Jews who worked for Hitler were hoping to be spared.
cramer