TRUMP HIRES THE BEST PEOPLE!

Donald Trump does so many frighteningly awful big things that it's easy to overlook how little confidence his handling of the small stuff inspires. So I'm savoring Betsy Woodruff's Daily Beast story about the material Trump's staff gave the the candidate for a speech in wealthy Loudoun County, Virginia -- America's richest county, a place "replete with defense contractors, engineers, and rocket scientists."

... Trump seems to think it’s part of the Rust Belt. Towards the end of his speech -- to an atypically preppy, professional, clean-cut audience -- the candidate bashed the county economy.

“You’re doing lousy over here, by the way, I hate to tell you,” he said.

That is empirically false.

He then listed a number of factory closures, including Ball Corp., which was five hours away in Bristol, as far from Loudoun as you can get without leaving the state. And he mentioned the closure of a Smithfield Foods Inc [plant.]

“Anybody used to work for Smithfield?” he asked the crowd.

It’s almost certain none of them did. The Smithfield plant that closed was in Hampton Roads, Va. -- three hours from Ashburn, in the southeast corner of Virginia....

“Stanley Furniture closed its plant,” he continued.

Stanley Furniture did indeed recently close a plant, in 2014. That plant was in North Carolina.

He also mentioned the closure of a plant owned by Invista, a Koch Industries company that produces fabric and carpeting. That plant was two hours from Ashburn, and it closed eight years ago.

It's easy to imagine that Trump as president would pay no attention to the nuts and bolts of the job -- he'd leave the boring stuff to Republicans in Congress (which would be bad enough), or turn much of the tedium over to the vice president, as a recent New York Times story suggested:

... according to [a John] Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer ...: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

“Making America great again” was the casual reply.

But if Trump were to involve himself in mundane matters at all, he'd screw those up -- or, rather, they'd be screwed up by the incompetent, unqualified staffers he'd employ as much as by Trump himself. (Y'know, he's the guy who says he'll hire "the best people.") Think about this speech. Trump isn't winging it. Some underling prepared this list of supposedly locally relevant plant closings for him. Someone thought the job was competently done.

A Trump presidency wouldn't just be awful in apocalyptic ways. It would be awful in small ways, too. It would be a symphony of awful.