After November 2016, I stated somewhere along the way that I was going to endeavor to guard against this blog becoming ‘one of those’.  Not that I have anything against ‘those’.  I think I’ve been a pretty good boy.

This article from ‘The Guardian’, however, is just too entertaining to pass up, and to celebrate yesterday’s Michael Flynn news, I include it here.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/01/trump-gossip-columnist-media-coverage-susan-mulcahy

When Donald Trump became a presidential candidate, Susan Mulcahy got a call from a former colleague at New York Newsday. “You’d better stock up on valium,” the ex-colleague said.

“It’s because I hated him so much,” said Mulcahy, the veteran gossip columnist who covered Trump for years at the New York Post, describing the call. “I would go ballistic if his name was mentioned in the office.”

Trump’s reputation as a liar now precedes him, but this week it reached new heights. In addition to reports that he regularly brags about winning the votes of a majority of American women – he did not – other accounts say that he has begun questioning the authenticity of the Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals.

It’s an over-the-top falsehood (the hosts of Access Hollywood have reiterated that the tape is authentic) but to Mulcahy, it is just par for the course with Trump. “Most people have an alibi or a backup plan; Trump doesn’t do that,” she told the Guardian. “He just says the exact opposite of what he did five minutes ago.”

No one can argue that Mulcahy didn’t warn them. “He’s a pathological liar. I’ve said that repeatedly and I’ve been saying it since the 80s. He has two sports, golf and lying, and that’s it. He just lies about everything.”

…  [click the link above to read the entire piece]

But Mulcahy, who gleaned her insights into reporting on Trump the hard way, does have some thoughts for those charged with covering the president today.

“Donald Trump should be treated like a very, very bad child in a preschool. Like the kid in preschool who really wants attention, so he throws his excrement against the wall? That’s Trump on Twitter.

“Bury the absurd outbursts and cover what is really happening. Don’t cover his personality and his statements on Twitter, because they’re ridiculous.”

Mulcahy said she wished there were a way to cover the actions of Trump’s administration without covering Trump himself. “He would lose interest in the whole thing, as soon as it wasn’t all about him,” she said. “He would lose interest in being president if you just covered those actions.”

For instance, she said, it was no coincidence that when hurricanes were pounding the Gulf, Trump was busy tweeting about players kneeling at NFL games. “He wants people not to pay attention to the fact that his government is not doing a good job of hurricane cleanup,” she said. “He’s very good at redirecting attention.”

She is damning about what she see as the president’s narcissism.

“He’s so excited to turn the TV on – it’s Donald everywhere and that’s all he wants,” she said. “He didn’t get into office with a plan, like: I want to accomplish these things. He just wanted to win – just like he wanted to make a major real estate deal and get the most tax abatements or whatever.”

She added: “He has no policies or theories, just a desperate, endless need for attention.”

Thirty years after she first began dealing with Trump, her observations remain apt.

“I certainly did not envision my comments about his lying to become relevant in this context so many years later,” she said. “I thought he would be a lounge act in Atlantic City about now. If so, he’d be happier, and the rest of us would have much less to worry about.”