Well, the possibility of a relentlessly stupid person becoming president of the United States

has been under-explored by screenwriters.

And then Donald Trump came along and went far beyond what Hollywood could ever imagine in

the presidency.

Prior to Donald Trump, the challenge for screenwriters and fiction writers would have been, first of all,

how could a profoundly stupid person be elected president of the United States? And then,

how could a profoundly stupid person get through a day on the job as president? The fictional

president, played brilliantly by Martin Sheen on NBC's Emmy winning series The West Wing,

was a wise and carefully

thoughtful president for whom I wrote several episode scripts over seven years of that series.

And if I were writing the character of a stupid present in a script, I would simply have had

the stupid president completely rely on a smart White House staff and a smart cabinet and just hide behind those people.

And absolutely, and I mean absolutely never talk to the press because a stupid president's stupidity would be immediately exposed by the White House press corps.

And on that point, I would have been very wrong because it turns out the stupidest presidency in American history has the stupidest White House press corps in American history, as far as we can tell.

And the press corps have become accessories, as they proved again today.

No one could have imagined that if we get the stupidest president of history,

we would also get the stupidest White House press corps collectively in history.

But that is where we are. Some individual members ofest White House press corps collectively in history, but that is where we are.

Some individual members of the White House Press Corps, and I want to stress this, remain excellent at their jobs. But they frequently don't get to ask Donald Trump a question in the

elbow-to-elbo-to-elbo question competition that occurs when Donald Trump invites them into the Oval Office, or, as it was today, in the elbow-to-elbo-elbo question competition that occurs when Donald Trump invites

them into the Oval Office, or, as it was today, in the cabinet room. It was the first time

the Trump cabinet has met since Elon Musk left his position that wasn't actually a cabinet

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