Attorney General Sessions is left twisting in the wind. Secretary of State Tillerson can’t name his own staff and is totally undercut on Qatar.  Secretary of Defense Mathis in the midst of conducting a 6 mos review of transgender policy, finds the President just banned transgender from the Military. Trump boosters pointed to President’s cabinet as the administration’s great strength.  Instead, this highly accomplished group is in the process of losing their well deserved reputations.  Still it’s hard to have much sympathy for them. Were they unaware of Aesop’s Fable of the” Frog and the Scorpion”. The well-meaning but foolish frog gives a scorpion a ride across a river. Halfway across the scorpion stings the frog, dooming them both . When the frog asks why, the scorpion said it was his “nature”. In other words , what did the frog expect? He’s a Scorpion for god sake.What did these fine people expect? Didn’t they already know Trump’s “Nature”?

Add Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who claims to have spent years in congress working on a replacement for Obamacare, but brought forward together with his former Congregational  companions a disaster. Trump is just now starting in on him. Of course Trump himself never mastered the problems of health care and was therefore almost useless in trying to pass legislation. Don’t expect to hear Trump taking any blame. That always lies elsewhere Does anyone feel comfortable in the Trump Administration? Maybe that’s why the administration has so many unfilled positions.

In any case, the latest Senate try at Obamacare repeal died in the middle of the night with a  dramatic John McCain thumb down. One doesn’t have to disbelieve the Senator’s dislike for the legislation to also see just a little pay back. Surely Trump knows what goes around comes around. Shouldn’t Trump and his base have realized John McCain owed the President nothing. McCain didn’t get mad, but he did get even. There is a reason people avoid out loud nastiness. It just may come back to bite you in the butt. It did here. Whatever McCain’s reasons, it does put the door to a compromise on health care slightly ajar. Of course, we offer  DAVE’S PLAN TO REFORM THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT as a winning compromise.

The dumping of Chief of staff Reince Priebus is just Poetic Justice. In our post A Tale of Two CEOs: Stumpf & Priebus we pointed out his failure to protect the institution in his care, the Republican Party. Many people had called on Priebus to demand that all the primary candidates release their taxes. They feared Trump’s refusal meant his contained a time bomb if exposed might be worse than Watergate. To protect the party he through the National Committee should have  made the demand. If Trump complied and nothing was found, wonderful. If he still refused as he continues to do till this day, one might assume there was something there so bad he would give up the Republican nomination rather than disclose. In that case the party would’ve dodged a bullet. Instead Priebus ignored the threat and looked to enhance his own future. Now Trump is tearing up his administration trying to find a way to stop Special council Muller from getting into his finances, especially his taxes. Everyone is sitting on pins and needles on what Muller might find. The bomb could go off and blow up the party.

Meanwhile it appears the RNC links, Ptiebus, Spicer, Dubke and Walsh in the White House have been purged. Will the current party chair Ronna Romney McDaniel wake up, smell the coffee and pull back from the substantial support the committee gives the administration? It may already be too late to save the party from blowing up with Trump when the bomb goes off. Distance may be the only hope Is she another Priebus looking to feather her own nest or a leader who looks to protect the institution with which she has been entrusted? Priebus’s fate should be fair warning. It’s literally a character check.

One can’t ignore the entertainment value of a newly appointed communications director Scaramucci destroying both Spicer and Priebus only to be destroyed himself in a matter of days by the new Chief of Staff Kelly. The next act in the show is probably the  destruction of Kelly. Given what has already happened to others in the administration, why in the world would John Kelly take the job? He must be convinced he’ll be the one frog this scorpion won’t sting. Betting on Trump changing his “nature” hasn’t worked up till now and it’s a poor bet for the future. It’ isn’t if Kelly will fall, but betting on when. After all, a submissive Trump just won’t play at his base rallies and it just isn’t in his”nature”.

A note: Charlie Gard has passed away. Our feelings on this case were made clear What Charlie Gard Tells Us about Us. Since last October Charlie’s parents have sought alternative care for their child. In December they contacted  Dr. Michio Hirano of Columbia University Medical Center who offered an experimental treatment. This Doctor recently received permission  to examine Charlie in the UK only to find it was now too late. Any window of opportunity had closed over the intervening months. This just proves again, the lack of timely care just isn’t best practice. Running out the clock on patients appears to be a feature of single payer health care.  Is this what we want for our loved ones?