In a sense, Donald Trump seems like the former President of the Galaxy ("a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who's really in charge"): narcissistic, vain, not terribly bright, and uninterested in details to an unprecedented degree for someone holding his office.
That's all very funny in a Douglas Adams novel. But in real life, it's actually terrifying:
President Barack Obama’s remarks about Donald Trump in his Monday press conference contained some of the most ominous words I’ve heard since news networks began calling the election for Trump early last Wednesday morning. But you may not have heard them.
In a tense environment where reporters, government workers, world leaders, and anxious citizens and immigrants understandably are scrutinizing every Donald Trump tweet and utterance and leak, Obama’s closing thoughts on the presidency and his successor will be given short shrift. But the things he says about the transition contain critical information about its progress and his confidence that, on the other side of it, things will run smoothly.
Obama’s warning to Trump, and everyone who stands to suffer for his errors, is that living in a rhetorical fantasy will backfire on a president. “Regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up,” Obama said. “And those aspects of his positions or predispositions that don’t match up with reality—he will find shaken up pretty quick, because reality has a way of asserting itself.”
Because of the unique and awkward position he finds himself in, Obama can’t trash the incoming president or sow panic about the country’s coming stewardship. But it isn’t normal for an outgoing president to have to tell the incoming one he should follow the law, and that aspects of his temperament might get him into an economic crisis or a war or a massive corruption scandal. It’s certainly not normal for him to warn the public about it, however subtly, either.
Meanwhile, only a week since the election, Trump's transition team is eating its young:
We're hearing various blind quotes about a 'knife fight' in the transition team. Those quotes can be a dime a dozen. But remember, the Trump campaign is build on men who are driven by aggression as ideology and instinct. It's hardly surprising that infighting would amount to a "Game of Thrones" type scenario as another source called it. But what does seem clear is that the Bannon/white nationalist wing of the administration is trying to root out mainstream Republicans, except for ones who have fully taken the Trump yoke, like Priebus.
You have two totally inimical and contradictory groups here - the Trumpist party, made of the desperate and the extreme, and the mainstream GOP. Most House Republicans are jumping on the Trump Train. But confirmations go through the Senate. The amount of chaos and nonsense to come out of this is going to be immense. And it's just starting.
The good news is, it's hard to be fascistic when you're this incompetent. And hey, maybe they'll improve?