Loading ...On any given day in the Trump administration, it’s nearly impossible to tell who’s up and who’s down. But the longer term trends are clear. For months there were rumors about the imminent demise of the dynamic trio of Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, and Sean Spicer, and for a long time, despite the rumors, nothing happened. But then the Mooch happened, with an apparent mandate to get rid of the nationalist wing of the White House and, in kamikaze fashion, he was able to accomplish the mission along with his own self-immolation. When you start hearing in the media you’ve pissed off Donald Trump, that is probably a leading indication that a bullet with your name on it is in his chamber.
That, I dare say, is precisely the position that my old friend Gary Cohn now finds himself inhabiting. He is in Trump purgatory. Two weeks after he called out the president in the Financial Times for his ill-considered remarks in the aftermath of Charlottesville, Cohn has not yet been fired. Quite the contrary, in fact. He is acting as if his days in the White House aren’t numbered. In a nifty bit of shadowboxing, Cohn seems to be actively engaged in working with Congress to draft a tax bill designed to lower tax rates and give another windfall to the top 1 percent.