It’s not that Emperor Baby Fists has been calm this week. It’s just that I need to give myself a break from writing about him every so often. This week has been particularly awful because the emperor has been going berserk ahead of the 100 Days of Bigly mark. He’s been flip-flopping on NAFTA, tweeting threats to federal courts, showing how little he understands of how the judiciary works, proposing giant unfunded tax cuts for himself and his cronies and ordering a “review” of how he can make it more difficult for minority students to get a college education. I wasn’t going to write about any of that because I’m exhausted. Easy D is exhausted too. He sat down with Politico for an exclusive and… woo, this is a mess. You can read the full piece here (it is ROUGH), and here’s the opening:

The 70-year-old leader of the free world sat behind his desk in the Oval Office last Friday afternoon, doing what he’s done for years: selling himself. His 100th day in office was approaching, and Trump was eager to reshape the hardening narrative of a White House veering off course. So he took it upon himself to explain that his presidency was actually on track, inviting a pair of POLITICO reporters into the Oval Office for an impromptu meeting. He sat at the Resolute desk, with his daughter Ivanka across from him. One aide said the chat was off-the-record, but Trump insisted, over objections from nervous-looking staffers, that he be quoted.

He addressed the idea that his senior aides weren’t getting along. He called out their names and, one by one, they walked in, each surprised to see reporters in the room—chief of staff Reince Priebus, then chief strategist Steve Bannon, and eventually senior adviser Jared Kushner. “The team gets along really, really well,” he said. He turned to his relationships with world leaders. “I have a terrific relationship with Xi,” he said, referring to the Chinese president, who Trump recently invited for a weekend visit at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Finally, he rattled off the biggest hits of his first three months and promised more to come. It was classic Trump: Confident, hyperbolic and insistent on asserting control.

But interviews with nearly two dozen aides, allies, and others close to the president paint a different picture – one of a White House on a collision course between Trump’s fixed habits and his growing realization that this job is harder than he imagined when he won the election on Nov. 8. So far, Trump has led a White House gripped by paranoia and insecurity, paralyzed by internal jockeying for power. Mistrust between aides runs so deep that many now employ their own personal P.R. advisers — in part to ensure their own narratives get out. Trump himself has been deeply engaged with media figures, even huddling in the Oval Office with Matt Drudge.

Trump remains reliant as ever on his children and longtime friends for counsel. White House staff have learned to cater to the president’s image obsession by presenting decisions in terms of how they’ll play in the press. Among his first reads in the morning is still the New York Post. When Trump feels like playing golf, he does — at courses he owns. When Trump feels like eating out, he does — at hotels with his name on the outside.

As president, Trump has repeatedly reminded his audiences, both public and private, about his longshot electoral victory. That unexpected win gave him and his closest advisers the false sense that governing would be as easy to master as running a successful campaign turned out to be. It was a rookie mistake. From the indignity of judges halting multiple executive orders on immigration-related matters—most recently this week—to his responses to repeated episodes of North Korean belligerence, it’s all been more complicated than Trump had been prepared to believe.

[From Politico]

Newt Gingrich goes on to say, “I think he’s much more aware how complicated the world is.” Like, Bigly is 70 years old and he’s only just NOW realizing that the world is a complicated place. How old were you when you realized the world was a complicated place? I think I was a teenager when I started feeling the largeness of everything and how much I didn’t know. Bigly never had that, I guess. The only generous argument I can make is that every president feels overwhelmed in his first few months. But yeah, the Bigly Administration is a chaotic mess and Donald Trump is Chief Agent of Chaos. He’s too busy watching Fox News to actually learn about anything. He’s too busy playing with his big-boy trucks to actually negotiate anything.

Photos courtesy of Getty.