To say the Trump administration has a problem with leaks is like saying the Titanic had a problem with, well, leaks. It’s an understatement the size of the Heart of the Ocean and it doesn’t embrace the over-the-top spectacle or the lifeboats full of former administration members that are seated by class they do not possess. The current White House—a grand icon filled to the brim with grifters from steerage—has been springing leaks at Titanic VHS tape two levels since before the inauguration, spilling the beans on in-fighting and the president’s quixotic shambling to the media at every opportunity. Though seemingly every person who leaves the White House immediately pulls of a Scooby Doo villain mask and reveals themselves as a covert source and lover of liberty, the administration official most frequently labelled a leaker is Kellyanne Conway. Or, as the sailors in the crow’s nest called out upon seeing her on the horizon, “Iceberg! Dead in the eyes!”
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That charge is once again being lobbed at the advisor to the president, this time by former aide Cliff Sims, who has followed the familiar administration pattern of working for an obviously bad man and then quitting and/or being fired and then writing a book about how he knew the bad man was bad. In an excerpt of his new money grab recently published in Vanity Fair, Sims writes, “Some of us told ourselves it was all done in the service of a higher calling—to protect the president, to deliver for the people. But usually it was for ourselves.” To which I respond: no duh.
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It is truly remarkable that these people think that they’re breaking news by informing the public that a bunch of obvious charlatans working for a decrepit former reality show personality and low-level mob boss perhaps did not have the country’s best intentions in mind. Stop the presses! Literally, stop them all. Everybody just take a nap.
In his excerpt, Sims spends most of his time targeting Kellyanne Conway, whom he describes as “a cartoon villain brought to life” and “perennially cloaked in an invisible fur coat, casting an all-knowing smile, as if she’d collected 98 Dalmatians with only 3 more to go.” And yes, I have filed an injunction against Sims for his use of Confusing Shade. Why is the coat invisible? Where are these Dalmatians being kept? Can I see them? Are the other three going to be hard to find? Does he realize that the point is not to collect them all like Pokemon? And finally: what?
It’s a hard time for America. Ah, for the good old days when political tell-alls by venial scam artists had the crackling wit of a Dorothy Parker takedown, or at least a contestant on Drag Race: All Stars. Make America Shade Again!
Sims goes on to describe one memorable interaction with Conway in May of 2017 when he was summoned to her office to type up a response to Mika Brzezinski’s claim that Conway would frequently trash talk Trump the minute the cameras were off. Sims says that Conway asked him to use her Macbook to type up a rebuttal and while he was trudging away, trying to find new ways of lying, her iMessage app, linking her phone and her computer, revealed that she was engaged in multiple text conversations with members of the Fake News Media, trashing administration officials and making the president look like “a child she had to set straight.” It’s a high tech reveal straight out of the seminal hacker film The Net starring Sandra Bullock. There’s a certain clumsy poetry to Conway outing herself in a move that belongs in the corporate self-own hall of fame alongside accidentally replying-all with an email that reads “Can you believe this idiot?” and throwing your Slack gossip in the wrong channel.
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Conway responded to Sims’ allegations with through a statement, saying “While it’s rare, I prefer to knife people from the front, so they see it coming,” which is definitely not an original thought but will, nonetheless, be her Real Housewives tagline whenever this sinking ship finally goes under.
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