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In Team of Vipers, Cliff Sims recounts his year and a half in a West Wing “out of control.”

This is the worst fucking job I’ve ever had.”

So snapped John Kelly on a March morning in the West Wing, according to a new book by Cliff Sims. The chief of staff was sitting in his office, a light-filled space where the White House swimming pool was just visible beyond French doors. “People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place,” Kelly told the small group of aides in front of him. “And the president knows it, too.”

One of those aides in Kelly’s office was Sims himself. In title alone, Sims was unexceptional—a communications adviser most notable for helping the White House in its efforts to overhaul the tax code. But by virtue of an uncommonly close relationship with President Donald Trump, starting on the campaign, Sims enjoyed access to many of this administration’s most telling moments—witnessing, for example, the former four-star Marine general come unglued under the demands of serving as Trump’s gatekeeper.

At times, Sims witnessed fellow staffers—Conway chief among them—take swipes at each other behind their backs. He calls Conway a “cartoon villain brought to life” who bad-mouthed colleagues to multiple reporters by the hour. He credits Stephen Miller’s survival to the speechwriter’s ability to play both sides of the “globalist/nationalist” divide in the White House. While then–chief strategist Steve Bannon viewed Miller as his “right-wing protege,” his ideological ally against the so-called globalists, Miller was cultivating a close relationship with perhaps the globalist in chief, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Sims writes of listening in on Miller “plung[ing] the knife” into Bannon’s back and “twisting it with relish” during a conversation with the president. “Your polling numbers are actually very strong considering Steve won’t stop leaking to the press and trying to undermine Jared,” Miller said, according to Sims. “If Steve wasn’t doing that, I bet you’d be ten points higher.”

More: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/obscure-white-house-aide-writes-stunning-trump-tell-all/581416/

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A kakistocracy is a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.