With each passing day, it is increasingly evident that Donald Trump’s grip on reality is slipping in ways that threaten to engulf even some of the most trusted and loyal sycophants within his inner circle.
The week ended with huge questions about the futures of two former Fox News stars who have been fixtures within the White House firmament. In both cases, attempting to maintain a fact-based relationship with Trump has led them to come a cropper.
Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, is a proven rottweiler, willing to go to the mat for Trump on every issue, rain or shine. A former judge and prosecutor in New York, she made her name on Fox News zealously defending and promoting Trump’s antics from the moment he flirted with the idea of seeking the presidency.
Today, she serves as his hand-picked top prosecutor in Washington, DC, and finds herself fighting to stay in her post because she has no evidence to pursue a trumped-up prosecution against a three-time Olympic canoeist falsely accused of vandalising the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.
In a court filing late last month, Pirro conceded that the Department of Justice could not proceed with the prosecution of David Hearn, who was facing the prospect of a 10-year jail sentence for the destruction of government property. Trump insists that the problems besetting his renovation of the Reflecting Pool lie with “vandals” rather than his own swimming pool contractor, who was awarded a no-bid $6.8m (£5m) contract to refurbish the landmark.
