The New Yorker:

On the national-security adviser’s sudden ouster

By Ian Crouch

Perhaps it’s no surprise that Donald Trump—who has redone the Oval Office in neo-Versailles gold, claimed monarchical powers as his Presidential prerogative, and encouraged florid tributes from followers that would make a Bourbon blush—had quite the Marie Antoinette moment on Wednesday. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio, clad in the Trump-homage uniform of dark-blue suit and extra-long red tie, looked on worshipfully, the President dismissed concerns about spiking prices for consumer goods that economists expect as a result of his trade war with China. “You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’ ” Trump said, conjuring an image of empty stores and a gift-giving season without all the cheap toys from China that Americans have grown used to in the past few decades. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.” Putting aside the question of why Trump thinks anyone would give their kid thirty dolls, the point was clear enough: Who are the peasants to complain about the high cost of dolls, or cake for that matter, when the king has wisely decided to upend the global economy on their behalf?

The occasion was a Cabinet meeting, meant to celebrate the first hundred days of his second term in office, or, as Trump put it in his opening remarks, “the most successful first hundred days of any Administration in the history of our country.” His Attorney General, Pam Bondi, later suggested that Trump was actually being too modest. “Mr. President, your first hundred days has far exceeded that of any other Presidency in this country ever, ever,” she told him, before explaining that government agents on his watch had seized so much of the deadly drug fentanyl that they had already saved an incredible “two hundred fifty-eight million lives.” If that were true, it would be a hell of a feat in a country of only three hundred and fifty million people. None of his other advisers were quite so sweeping in their claims, but around the table they went, offering praise for his leadership, his support, his “profound positive impact.” “It’s an honor to serve you in this Administration,” Mike Waltz, his national-security adviser, said, “and I think the world is far better, far safer for it.”

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