It’s the War of All Against All In Washington DC

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There’s a lotta fighting going down in Washington DC lately. Let’s review. First up, Steve Bannon has suffered a few reverses lately, and apparently he blames Jared Kushner:

After some unflattering Bannon coverage, a “close Bannon ally” says: “I see some bad press in [Jared’s] future.” https://t.co/dB1gfkwgXw

— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) April 6, 2017

LOLOLOLOL. The good news for Bannon is that Jared can probably generate plenty of bad press all by himself. It shouldn’t be too hard to push a little bit more. The bad news for Bannon is that, according to Jonathan Swan, the Jared wing of the White House “thinks the Bannonites are clinically nuts.” In the Trump White House, that’s saying a lot. Marcy Wheeler has the right response:

If these two want to have their power struggle in a public Hunger Games fight to the death I’d be okay with that. https://t.co/Yh5pNofWpp

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 6, 2017

In other news, Devin Nunes has finally stepped aside from the House investigation of Trump’s Russia ties. Nunes’ erratic behavior and bizarre press conference a couple of weeks ago has finally prompted an ethics investigation for possibly revealing classified information. Nunes claims he’s the victim of “left-wing activist groups,” but the ethics office says it did this all on its own. In any case, he’s pretty angry about the whole thing. So now we have Republican wars in two branches of government:

With Nunes ethics complaint, GOP congressman predicts a “holy war” https://t.co/3HmCrzNYBK

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 6, 2017

And it turns out we also have a war between both branches of government:

A Thursday evening meeting between top aides to President Donald Trump and House Republican leaders turned heated when the White House officials exhorted Speaker Paul Ryan to show immediate progress on the GOP’s stalled plan to repeal and replace Obamacare….”It was really bad,” said one person familiar with the meeting. “They were in total meltdown, total chaos mode.”

It’s just like Renaissance Florence. The palace intrigue is delicious, isn’t it? And now, your moment of Zen:

Excruciating: Comey tries to explain to a Republican that if Putin wanted Clinton to lose, he wanted Trump to win pic.twitter.com/QtqzKi6dR6

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) March 20, 2017