"Retirement Plan."

An Oscar-nominated short, by John Kelly:

And here's David Sedaris brilliantly admiring it, in "The Dream of Finishing One’s To-Do List in 'Retirement Plan'/In John Kelly’s animated short film, narrated by Domhnall Gleeson, nothing’s off limits when it comes to thinking about the future—particularly when there’s so much left to do" (The New Yorker):

"His decision to choose someone in his inner circle is a sharp contrast to his choice after first winning the presidency in 2016."

"Then, he selected someone with whom he had little history for the chief of staff role: Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee at the time. Most members of Mr. Trump’s extended orbit wanted to see Ms. Wiles as chief. She has close relationships with Vice President-elect JD Vance and with Mr. Trump’s family, including his two older sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric...."

From "Trump Names Susie Wiles as His White House Chief of Staff/The president-elect turned to his top political aide to fill a key post managing the White House when he returns to office" (NYT).

"Ms. Wiles, the daughter of the football legend Pat Summerall... kept [Trump's] world functioning as he was charged criminally four times in four courthouses, and steered him through primary victories, the aftermath of a criminal conviction, two assassination attempts and a change in his opponent just after the Republican National Convention. Ms. Wiles championed the former president’s effort to expand his coalition in the general election beyond the party’s older white base to appeal to Black and Latino voters who typically had not supported Republicans.... ...Mr. Trump’s previous picks for chiefs of staff... were chosen either because they were recommended by top Republicans in Washington, in Mr. Priebus’s case, or because they seemed likely to bring order to chaos, in Mr. Kelly’s case.... [On Election Night, Trump] tried, twice, to get Ms. Wiles to come to the microphone to speak. She declined. Mr. Trump praised her as an 'ice queen'...."

"[Ex-White House Chief of Staff John] Kelly has always seen the role we shared, that of White House chief of staff, differently than I."

"We both knew we were the only ones in the West Wing whose job it was to tell the president things he didn’t want to hear. But... I saw the role as one that would enable the president to be as successful as possible in fulfilling the agenda that got him elected. Kelly saw the job as that of a self-appointed overseer, charged with protecting the country against a president that those same people had elected...."

Writes Mick Mulvaney, in "I was Trump’s chief of staff — ex-aide’s Hitler claims are deranged" (NY Post).

This John Kelly replacement candidate, Nick Ayers, looks so much like a young Donald Trump.

I'm looking at "Top Pence aide resurfaces as leading candidate to replace John Kelly/Nick Ayers, Pence’s chief of staff, was initially seen as a potential Kelly successor this summer" (Politico). I can see what Trump sees in him:

"Woodward describes 'an administrative coup d’etat' and a 'nervous breakdown' of the executive branch..."

"... with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them. Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders. At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, including a special intelligence operation that allows the United States to detect a North Korean missile launch in seven seconds vs. 15 minutes from Alaska, according to Woodward. Trump questioned why the government was spending resources in the region at all. 'We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,' Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told him.... 'Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — "a fifth- or sixth-grader."'... White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was 'unhinged,' Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: 'He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.'"

From "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency" (WaPo).

"Let’s all give each other a pass, shall we?"

The awful politics around what Donald Trump said to the widow made me want to find a quote I know is in the archive. (I've blogged it twice.)

From "Half Empty" by David Rakoff (who was facing the cancer treatment of amputation of his left arm and shoulder):

A friend asks if I’ve “picked out” my prosthetic yet, as though I’d have my choice of titanium-plated cyborgiana at my disposal, like some amputee Second Life World of Warcraft character. Another friend, upon hearing my news, utters an unedited, “Oh my God, that’s so depressing!” Over supper, I am asked by another, “So if it goes to the lungs, is it all over?”...

But here’s the point I want to make about the stuff people say. Unless someone looks you in the eye and hisses, “You fucking asshole, I can’t wait until you die of this,” people are really trying their best. Just like being happy and sad, you will find yourself on both sides of the equation many times over your lifetime, either saying or hearing the wrong thing. Let’s all give each other a pass, shall we?

In a somewhat similar vein, in the NYT: "Trump’s Not Alone. A Lincoln Condolence Letter Stirred Controversy, Too."

If we make it too hard to talk to a person in dire circumstances, a lot of people will play it safe and not speak at all.

Indeed, John Kelly advised Trump against calling the widows of fallen soldiers. But that's not the kind of person Trump is. He goes ahead and speaks, even though it's often imperfect, and he knows he's got antagonists ready to jump on anything he says. I've regarded him as a free-speech inspiration ever since I had a dream about him — long before the election — in which I hugged him and thanked him for showing that free speech — with mistakes, straight from the human head — is much better than inhibition, self-censorship, and holding back until you've somehow arrived at the ability to get it exactly right.

Here's something Scott Adams wrote (in the WSJ) about Trump's imperfect speech:

When Mr. Trump smack-tweets a notable public critic... it violates our expectations of his office. That's what makes it both entertaining and memorable. He often injects into his tweets what memory expert Carmen Simon calls a "little bit of wrongness" to make it hard to look away. If the wrongness alarms you, consider that for years he has adroitly operated within a narrow range of useful wrongness on Twitter without going too far. That suggests technique. In the Twitter environment, strategic wrongness is jet fuel.

That's not about giving people a pass and tolerating wrongness. In this analysis, a little bit of wrongness is a good thing.

The Carmen Simon idea is: Impossible to Ignore. A different value of a little bit of wrongness is: Proof of Humanity. If you say things that aren't entirely correct, it shows you're not tightly scripted, that you are speaking the thoughts that are alive in your head right now. Perhaps when the President awkwardly connects volunteering for the military, understanding the risks, and the meaning of courage and, literally, it seems to say that the man signed up to die, the response should be something more like, Thank you for letting me see your imperfection, your humanity.

I believe that it's wrong to give this story air, but you might want to talk about it.

So I will give you the video: