If you were a disgruntled employee of an utterly dysfunctional operation, and you wanted to revenge yourself on the incompetent at the top of the company depth chart, you might arrange for the wide world to know that the incompetent in question is also a very lazy slug who could care less about the obligations of his job.

Welcome to the United States Government, Executive Branch Division. From Axios:



Some days, Executive Time totally predominates. For instance, he had 1 hour of scheduled meetings on Jan. 18 (with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin) and 7 hours of Executive Time.

The day after the midterms, Trump's schedule had 30 minutes for a chief of staff meeting and more than 7 hours for Executive Time; Former chief of staff John Kelly introduced the concept of Executive Time because the president hated being locked into a regular schedule. "He's always calling people, talking to people," a senior White House official told us. "He's always up to something; it's just not what you would consider typical structure."



This is an astounding lack of institutional loyalty and a whopping piece of professional sabotage. Down at Camp Runamuck, also according to Axios, they're running scared, wondering whence the next knife in the back will be coming. We are getting to the point where people who want careers in government after this all passes will start to burnish their relationships with their media pals.

This is going to get Borgia ugly. Food tasters are going to get rich.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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