Trump Hires Sexual Harassment Facilitator Bill Shine as Comms Director

[Arkansas Granny]

the interminable 17 months that Donald Trump has been president, the administration has struggled mightily to find and keep a communications director. Sean Spicer held the job for about 45 days before he was replaced by Mike Dubke who resigned after just three months. Spicer was then brought in as acting director, only to quit in protest when Anthony Scaramucci was hired. The Mooch lasted a grand total of 10 days, until an on-the-record obscenity-fueled rant to a New Yorker reporter went viral and he was canned. His successor, Hope Hicks, stuck it out the longest—225 days—until she quit and hightailed it back to Connecticut. Since March 29, 2018, the role has been vacant, considering the fact that it’s a thankless job in which one will ultimately be blamed by the president for being unable to curtail stories about what a train wreck the administration is. But praise the gods of right-wing cable news, Trump has finally found someone willing to run his press shop.

ABC News reports that Bill Shine, a former Fox News co-president, has been offered, and has accepted, the role of deputy chief of staff for communications, with a formal announcement from the White House expected by the end of the week. In tapping Shine, Trump is effectively solidifying the idea that Fox News is state-run TV—a political sandbox where Trump floats his dumbest ideas in the morning, tweeting back and forth with the hosts of Fox & Friends, and then gets to hear his moronic ramblings echoed back to him at night as received wisdom. The ex-executive is still tight with primetime star Sean Hannity, who’s well known to be the president’s most trusted unofficial adviser, and favorite pre-bedtime phone call. “He’s already outsourced a lot of his communications stuff to Fox News,” a Republican close to the White House told Politico of Trump. “He has a tremendously close relationship with Hannity, so he’s going to put Hannity’s guy in there.”

But while Shine may bring more experience to a comms job than, say, the Mooch—not to mention the millions of devoted Fox viewers who are likely to get behind the pick—he does potentially come with one teeny-tiny problem:

. . . some of the president’s allies fear that he’s bringing in a target of the “Me Too” movement who will focus more attention on the president’s own problems with women.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/bill-shine-white-house-fox-news/amp