In Trump’s world, even revenge needs an audience.
And what a week it has been!
The scandals. The leaks. The spectacle of Trump’s inner circle turning on one another.
It is beginning to look rather like the first Trump term all over again.
In the Royal Court of MAGA, everyone has a history, everyone has something to lose, and the most dangerous person in the room may be the one who knows everybody’s secrets.
After all, in Washington, it isn’t what you know that makes you powerful. It’s what you know about everyone else.
And darling, somebody’s been talking.
The leaks are becoming weapons
For almost two years, the Royal Court of MAGA was remarkably well-behaved.
Whatever rivalries and resentments existed, they were largely kept behind closed doors.
But now, with the midterms approaching, Washington’s most powerful clique has decided that loyalty is so last season.
They are turning on one another and letting the chips fall where they may—even if a few land straight in the Democrats’ laps.
What makes the spectacle particularly fascinating is not so much the scandals themselves as the psychology of the personalities Trump has always chosen to surround himself with.
After all, why stab someone in the back when you can do it in front of an audience?
Voulez-vous self-destruct? Apparently, oui.
President Trump has always had a weakness for larger-than-life characters: the flamboyant, the ambitious and the gloriously combative.
Discipline can be imposed, at least for a while. Personality, however, is considerably harder to suppress.
You can dress it up, tell it to behave and persuade it to observe the occasional rule of court etiquette.
Sooner or later, the very qualities that secured someone a place in Trump’s inner circle come roaring back—generally at the most inconvenient moment, and before a prime-time audience.
What makes this week different is not that the rivalries exist. It is that the instinct to keep them private appears to be giving way to the temptation to self-destruct.
With the midterms approaching, Democrats have found themselves with front-row seats to a spectacle they did not have to produce.
When the enemy of people becomes useful
Now the leaks are flowing, the knives are coming out, and naturally, nobody seems content to settle a score in private.
But what interests me rather more is where these stories are coming from—and where they eventually land.
The Kimberly Guilfoyle story surfaced in The Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail.
The Alina Habba story, meanwhile, has found its way into the liberal media—the very institutions MAGA has spent years denouncing.
Until, of course, they become useful.
Apparently, the press is perfectly acceptable when you need someone to deliver your ammunition.
There is something wonderfully absurd about a political movement that can spend the morning denouncing the media and the afternoon relying on it to settle its private vendettas.
But beneath the spectacle lies a rather more serious question: What happens when the pursuit of personal revenge becomes more important than the responsibilities of public office?
The Habba-Grenell detonation
People close to Alina Habba describe her to me as “impulsive and emotional.”
But in taking her quarrel with Ric Grenell into the public arena, did she stop to consider that allegations intended to wound her adversary might also invite some rather unwelcome scrutiny of her husband’s business interests?
For in Washington, the trouble with throwing political grenades is that nobody gets to decide where they land.
At the heart of this particular feud is an allegation involving funds intended for the Kennedy Center.
An allegation, let us be clear, and not an established finding of wrongdoing.
But in the ruthless arithmetic of Washington politics, that distinction is unlikely, by itself, to stop congressional Democrats from asking questions.
The handling of money at an institution such as the Kennedy Center is precisely the sort of matter that can become the subject of congressional scrutiny.
And what happens if Democrats take control of the House in November?
Could the Kennedy Center become the subject of congressional hearings, with Alina Habba, her billionaire husband and Ric Grenell summoned to answer questions?
Because a congressional hearing is an altogether different beast from a Washington media feud.
Committees can demand documents, examine financial relationships and, where legally authorized, compel testimony through subpoenas.
What begins as a quarrel between political allies can become a formal examination of money, influence and the conduct of people close to the president.
Habba may have gone for maximum damage against Grenell. But once allegations involving money, political power and Trump insiders enter the public record, the people who launched them do not necessarily control where the questions go next.
The trouble with detonating a political bomb is that the shrapnel has a most inconvenient habit of flying in every direction, including back toward the person who lit the fuse.
Being impulsive and emotional can be wonderful qualities for a passionate love affair.
In politics, however, it is generally better to remain cool-headed—and take out your enemy the British way.
Behind the scenes.
There is an art to political destruction.
And it does not always require an audience.
But Washington, particularly Trump’s Washington, seems increasingly convinced that unless a fight is conducted in public, preferably with the cameras rolling, it has not really happened.
The Greek drama gets a Balkan act
And just when you thought the cast of this particular Greek tragedy could not possibly grow any larger, enter the Balkans.
I am now hearing that Kimberly Guilfoyle may be only the tip of a rather substantial iceberg.
There is also a Balkan dimension to this story, with a lobbyist moving through some of the same political and diplomatic circles, turning up at the same tables.
Washington, Athens, the Balkans. Different capitals, overlapping cast members and a world in which politics, diplomacy and private interests have a remarkable habit of finding themselves in one another’s company.
And as for our Greek drama, I rather suspect the final act is still some way off.
The people closest to power know where everything is buried
What fascinates me about actors inhabiting Trump’s political universe is that they seem to thrive on the drama. Perhaps that is the inevitable consequence of spending enough time around a president who turned reality television into a political language.
In Washington, as in show business, there is one rule that appears to survive every scandal.
The show must go on.
But there is a weakness built into that model. The people closest to power are also the people who see the most. They know who was in the room. They know who called whom. They know which relationships are genuine and which exist primarily for the purpose of transaction.
And when such people fall out, they rarely arrive at the battlefield empty-handed.
In Washington, it is not always what you know that makes you powerful. It is what you know about everyone else.
That is why the leaks matter.
Not merely because they damage the person on the receiving end, but because they can leave behind something far more durable than a few days of scandal: a trail of documents, allegations, unanswered questions and lines of inquiry that may acquire a life entirely independent of the quarrel that produced them.
There is, however, one rather important difference between reality television and Washington.
On television, when the season ends, the cameras stop rolling, the contestants pack their bags and everybody goes home.
In Washington, the scandals may fade and the protagonists may even congratulate themselves on having survived another splendid little bloodbath.
But the consequences have a peculiar habit of following them.
And sometimes, they arrive with a subpoena.
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