Sycophancy Sweepstakes Winner: South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem

Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, reporting for The New York Times:

Since the first days after she was elected governor of South Dakota in 2018, Kristi Noem had been working to ensure that President Trump would come to Mount Rushmore for a fireworks-filled July 4 extravaganza.

After all, the president had told her in the Oval Office that he aspired to have his image etched on the monument. And last year, a White House aide reached out to the governor’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore? […]

In private, the efforts to charm Mr. Trump were more pointed, according to a person familiar with the episode: Ms. Noem greeted him with a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore that included a fifth presidential likeness: his.

In a couple of months, this particular anecdote is going to evoke tears. What kind of tears, we shall see.

★ Monday, 10 August 2020