MEDIA/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Call it the ‘Omarosa Effect.’ If you work in the White House, you now have to leave your phone in your office if you are going to a meeting in the Situation Room. That new policy comes on the heels of Manigault Newman releasing more secretly recorded audiotapes of conversations she had during the year she spent in the White House. It also comes amid an ongoing witch hunt — to borrow a term — over who wrote an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times that was scathingly critical of the President. And on the eve of the release of Bob Woodward’s ‘Fear: Trump in the White House,’ which casts President Donald Trump as badly out of the loop and kept that way by a handful of senior staffers who are concerned about what he could do to the country…This sort of paranoia and backbiting is the direct result of Trump’s management style. He’s made no secret of the fact that he likes to watch his advisers fight it out over policy. He also purposely plays favorites and seems to change his views on people at the drop of a hat. John Kelly was going to bring order to the White House as chief of staff. Then Kelly was on the outs because he was limiting Trump’s ability to be himself. Then Trump said Kelly had agreed to stay on as chief of staff for the entirety of his presidency. Then Kelly might be the person who wrote the op-ed. And on and on and on.”
–Chris Cillizza, “The White House staff snake pit just keeps getting more venomous,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, September 10, 2018 8:12 pm