Trump Is Angry About Being Called Angry

How I needled a crooked corporate executive into getting fired, and how Nancy Pelosi seems to be doing the same to a crooked President.

Insurance sales was not easy for me. I suspect it wasn’t for many of my co-workers. But I was young, in my twenties, and I needed the job.

I believed in the concept of shared risk. It sort of fit in with a vision of community. And I got good at selling insurance.

They eventually made me a manager. It was a caretaker position. The company was shifting marketing focus and ours was the only office left in the entire direct sales division. They were planning to close it all down and transfer everyone to nearby locations.

A Vice President, we’ll call him Mitch Caremi, oversaw the transition.

He was a bit of a bully. I shielded the staff from him, for the most part, pulling him into a room where he could bark his astute, derogatory, observations about others in private.

Once I made the mistake of calling him “Mitch” instead of “Mr. Caremi.” He eventually forgave me, although it took a while.

On the last day, he assembled employees and gave the news.

Commissions on recent sales would not be paid to agents. In fact, since the office was closing, all insurance sales would be counted as having been canceled, even though payments and coverage would continue.

In those days, when an insurance policy was canceled in the first year, the agent would have to pay commissions back to the company. So pretty much everyone could be forced to pay back most of their previous year’s income.

But don’t worry, Caremi told the staff. Since he was a generous guy, he would not take action against employees after they were transferred. But all commissions that were scheduled to be paid would be canceled. And that was that.

So I made two visits to the home office. One was to the President of the company, where I made a plea for basic fairness. It became clear he was not about to get involved in a complaint by a low level employee against a Vice President. So, my next visit was to friends I had made in the underwriting department. They secretly updated paperwork so the staff, by this time transferred and scattered, would be paid what they had earned.

And I decided that I would dedicate myself to getting Mitch Caremi. I knew just how to do it.

Every two weeks I wrote a short note on the back of a business card and sent it to him as if we were equals. Each message began “Dear Mitch” and contained some friendly comment. Once, I thanked him for mentioning a bit of science fiction. I told him I had just finished reading it and liked it a lot. Another time, I told him how much I appreciated his encouragement back in my old position. Once, I gave him a bit of advice on his golf game.

I needed no calendar reminders. Every two weeks, I wrote a friendly sentence or two on the back of a business card, and mailed it to my good friend Mitch.

And, every two weeks, a friend of mine, a secretary working close to Mitch’s office, called me. What in the world did I do to Mr. Caremi this time? He was screaming at his workers to find a way to get that little twerp, Burr Deming. He complained to my new bosses about many thousands of dollars I owed to the company over canceled policies that had not really been canceled. The secretary asked me if I knew what was on a business card he was pushing into the faces of other executives. He was becoming known as a bit of a maniac with a weird obsession.

Sometimes, my secretary friend told me, some humorous wit would speak the magic words, “Burr Deming” just to get rise out of him. My name was becoming known in high corporate places. I had become part of a recurring joke in which Mitch Caremi was part of the punchline.

Eventually, the angry fixation on a minor employee in a nearby sales office got to be too much for upper management. My secretary friend called to tell me Mitch had been informed he was no longer employed. He was forbidden even to go back to his office. He was escorted out of the building by security guards. His personal effects were boxed and mailed to him.

I am reminded of my old friend Mitch Caremi, pretty much everytime I think about the success with which Nancy Pelosi needles my President.

A few months ago, President Trump issued a non-negotiable demand. Congress must send him billions of dollars to build a giant wall to keep refugees from applying for help. In December, at a meeting with President Trump, she irritated him right after he ostentatiously invited her to speak:

I think the American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything.

And that you should not have a Trump shutdown.

Donald Trump reacted.

A what? You said Trump?

Pelosi would not back down. And our President was left with,

Oh.

It was weak and he knew it was weak. It became evident just a few minutes later that he had been stewing over the warning, the gentle warning “that you should not have a Trump shutdown.”

As he sparred with Chuck Schumer, my President decided to show them both that he was not about to be intimidated, by that warning or any warning.

I will shutdown the government, absolutely.

He would not only shut down the government, he was not afraid of anyone blaming him. In fact, he would proudly take on the blame.

So, I will take the mantle. I will the one to shut it down. I’m not gonna blame you for it.

So there! You’re not gonna push ME around. I’m not afraid.

And so the shutdown began. The Trump shutdown. And it was the Trump shutdown because he had said so, to the whole world.

In January, Nancy provoked the President into ending the Trump shutdown. The Trump shutdown had affected security, so the Trump State of the Union Address would be postponed until the Trump shutdown ended. The annual Trump moment in the sun was threatened. So Donald Trump caved.

And now, just this past week:

Nancy Pelosi was asked to characterize a meeting she had held with Democratic leaders. They had talked about how to respond to Donald Trump’s stonewalling, his orders to staff, former staff, and all government officials to stonewall Congressional investigations into misconduct.

We believe that no one is above the law, including the President of the United States. And we believe that the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up — in a cover-up. And that was the nature of the meeting.

And there was another meeting with the President, and another threat of a shutdown. President Trump would not work with Congress on anything, anything at all, until all investigations of wrongdoing ended. He repeated the ultimatum a few minutes later, publicly, at a press conference.

You probably can’t go down two tracks. You can go down the investigation track, and you can go down the investment track or the track of let’s get things done for the American people.

Nancy Pelosi described previous encounters as part of a Trump strategy that simply does not work, even from his point of view.

First, pound the table, walk out the door. What?
Next time, have the TV cameras in there while I have my say.
That didn’t work for him, either.

The needling had its effect. My President just wasn’t going to take it. He was especially angry at the implication that he had ever been angry. It was clear that Pelosi was referring to a strategy that included past behavior. She gave an account of the infrastructure meeting, the one that ended abruptly with the President staging a walkout within a few minutes. Her portrayal was brief. She had described his behavior in seven words.

And, now this time. Another temper tantrum.

Then came this:

I pray for the President of the United States. I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country.

Mr. Trump could not stand it. As he had in the past, he assembled his senior staff so that they could all testify to the press.

The President of the United States quizzed each staff member about his emotional stability during that meeting.

To Kellyanne Conway:

Every time I go into a room, if there aren’t cameras they come out say Oh, he was yelling, he was screaming. Kellyanne, what was my temperament yesterday?

Nancy Pelosi did not say that he was yelling or screaming in that meeting.

To Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

Sarah, we’re just talking about the meeting yesterday. The narrative was I was screaming and ranting and raving. That it was terrible.

Ms. Pelosi did not say he had been screaming and ranting and raving.

What was my tone yesterday at the meeting?

To Mercedes Schlapp:

Mercedes, you’re always a straight talker. You were in that room yesterday? What was my attitude when I walked in? Did I scream?

To Larry Kudlow:

What was my attitude yesterday at the meeting?

Back when I was learning about insurance, a constant late night respite was talk show host Johnny Carson. Around Thanksgiving four decades ago, Johnny was reminded that Doc Severinsen had recently gotten divorced and would not be spending the holiday with his family. So Johnny Carson asked Doc Severinsen if he would like to come by the Carson house.

Severinsen went on a comedic riff about the awkwardness of the invitation.

When you ask an employee, in front of 15 million people, Do you want to come to the house for Thanksgiving dinner, what am I gonna say?

Noooooo.

You know what I say? I say…

He slapped the table for enthusiastic emphasis.

Yes, Mr. Carson, I’d love it!!

As the laughter died, Johnny asked more seriously, and got an instant reply:

Can you come?
No.

My President got his expected replies, and none of them refused the invitation to honor the boss.

Kellyanne:

Very calm.

Mercedes:

Very calm and you were very direct.

Larry:

You were very calm.

Sarah:

Very calm.

As Brian Williams at MSNBC summarized:

Good, so it’s decided.

It was something out of the movie Airplane.

You were calm, Mr. President, totally.
Totally!

You were calm, completely.
Completely!

You were calm, altogether.

ALL together!

The entire chorus:

You were calm.

Such is the state of national leadership in the United States of America.

Many thanks to our friend and partner Burr Deming at FairandUnbalanced.