On Tuesday, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided some of the most explosive testimony we’ve so far heard during the January 6th hearings when she shared some never-before-heard details of what was happening in the West Wing as rioters attacked the Capitol. The picture she painted of Donald Trump in particular was not a pretty one.
According to Hutchinson, Trump’s petulance was on full display on January 6, 2021, as he allegedly threw a series of temper tantrums over everything from his gun-toting supporters not being allowed into his Stop the Steal rally (he was purportedly confident that they weren’t there to hurt him) to being told that he couldn’t go to the Capitol to take part in the insurrection with his peeps (the story of Trump attempting to grab the steering wheel and choke out a Secret Service agent with his free hand will go down as part of his sh*tty legacy).
While several Trump loyalists (and Trump himself) have attempted to paint Hutchinson as a know-nothing assistant looking for her 15 minutes of fame, other White House insiders who know Hutchinson, including Trump’s one-time acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, stand by Hutchinson and her credibility.
Yet, that a septuagenarian toddler was in charge of the country for four years should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. Hutchinson’s testimony that January 6th wasn’t the first or only time she’d seen or heard about Trump pitching a fit reminded many people, including The New York Times’ Peter Baker, of the 2021 revelation that among his staffers was a person known as “The Music Man,” whose job included singing show tunes to the then-president whenever he was overly cranky.
“When Trump descended into rage, his staff resorted to summoning an aide, nicknamed the Music Man, to play favorite show tunes they knew would soothe him, including ‘Memory’ from the Broadway musical ‘Cats.’” https://t.co/Tsj2xapxtq
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) June 29, 2022
This anecdote was first shared in late 2021 by Stephanie Grisham, the one-time White House press secretary and Melania Trump’s eventual chief of staff. Last year, Grisham dished on life inside Trump’s wacky White House in her memoir, I’ll Take Your Questions Now, and she spoke with Baker on Tuesday, where she essentially confirmed that Hutchinson’s admissions tracked with what she witnessed as part of Team Trump.
“His temper was scary. And swift,” Grisham told The New York Times. “He’d snap and almost lose control.”
While many people probably didn’t take Trump for a Broadway guy, he is apparently a huge fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cats in particular. In fact, in 2020, Webber sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trump for using “Memory” at his rallies. In 2016, he received the same negative reaction from the creators of Les Misérables after Trump played “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical at another rally.
While Grisham never stated who “The Music Man” was, The New York Times speculated at the time that it was Max Miller, a then-aide to Trump and Grisham’s ex-boyfriend.
(Via The New York Times)