Even if Trump’s ideology were not noxious, his incompetence is a threat to all around him. To say that it is amateur hour at the White House is to slander amateurs.

             – David Brooks, The New York Times, January 31, 2017.

It is Flashback Friday, and this quote, which was the entire post from this date in 2017, still resonates seven years later. Donald Trump no longer occupies the White House, but millions of Americans hope he will be living there again this time next year.

When David Brooks made his observations Trump had been president less than two weeks, but the pattern of the next four years was already entrenched.