Diligently Scotch-Taping Trump's "Legacy," Such As It Is, Back Together

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Abby Zimet, staff writer

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The pout seen round the world. Photo released by Angela Merkel's German ministry.

It turns out that our longstanding Western alliances, our fundamental Democratic norms, and the notion of rational, informed governance - without throwing tantrums with massive repercussions because you were gently trolled by someone smarter, cuter and better informed than you - aren't the only things the baby-man in the White House is busy shredding these days. Under the rules of his evidently infamous "filing system," Trump also regularly rips up papers and throws them away after he "reads" them, an act that is "radioactively illegal" - surprise! - under the Presidential Records Act, which mandates that documents of any administration, even a fake one, must be sent to the National Archives for historical safekeeping.

According to Politico, after White House staffers gave up trying to explain the notion of "illegal" to Trump, it became the task of several longtime, $65,000 a year aides in the early months of the administration to retrieve the shredded papers from trash cans in the Oval Office and residence, painstakingly reassemble them like a jigsaw puzzle using clear Scotch tape, and send them along to the Archives. First to get ripped into teeny tiny pieces, said records management analyst Solomon Lartey, was any negative article about the thin-skinned Toddler-In-Chief. It was, recalls Lartey, "the lowest form of work (without) actually having to empty the trash cans.” He also said "we weren't supposed to tell anybody - I guess they didn't want it to get out." 

And it didn't, until Lartey and a colleague were abruptly "terminated"an d forced to write fake "resignation" letters - an act he called "Kafka-esque." Tell us about it, all of it.L est we forget: But her emails!