Trump Staff Picks, Co-Conspirators and the Revolving Door of Departures

[Sausy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

To me, the more I think about it the more I'm convinced Trump is more the useful idiot of the GOP more than the fearsome puppetmaster controlling them. Even from Mitch Mc Connell there is some pushback and skepticism regarding Ratcliffe's choice and lack of credentials. Trump's their meal ticket to the things they want most... military spending through the wazoo, slashing regulations and federal oversight of finance and industry, low taxes, pushback against climate change, right wing judges. They don't want him raising their ire against them because they want to keep their power, but they aren't going to go to extraordinary lengths to always kiss his fat ass.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

To me, the more I think about it the more I'm convinced Trump is more the useful idiot of the GOP more than the fearsome puppetmaster controlling them. Even from Mitch Mc Connell there is some pushback and skepticism regarding Ratcliffe's choice and lack of credentials. Trump's their meal ticket to the things they want most... military spending through the wazoo, slashing regulations and federal oversight of finance and industry, low taxes, pushback against climate change, right wing judges. They don't want him raising their ire against them because they want to keep their power, but they aren't going to go to extraordinary lengths to always kiss his fat ass.

The key to everything is the bargain to have Pence as the VP and Trump's list of judges that was published before he was elected.

Pence could never be elected as President, so they put him into the VP slot to run things while Trump became the rubber stamp for every crazy thing that their ultra-rich donors asked for. All of the rest of the Republican stalwarts that the RNC installed- Preibus, Mattis, McMaster, Sessions- they're all fired. Because VP is an elected office, Trump can't fire him.

Originally, Chris Christie was in charge of the transition and for selecting the Administration's appointee candidates. The story that Christie promoted was that he was given the boot because of his problems with the Kushner family. That's partially true. It's becoming more and more apparent that the original appalling secretaries and the wrecking crew that came with them came from Pence and the donor base. These latest losers are coming from Trump's Fox News watching habits, combined with the fact that no reputable Republican with any interest in a political future would get within 1000 feet of this dumpster fire. One only has to look at the legal bills for Hicks, McGahn and the rest to figure out it's a bad idea to take the job.

 

[Sausy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

I wonder with the pushback over Ratcliffe's nomination coming mainly from Senate Republicans(who claim to value professionalism over partisanship but won't lift a finger against Mitch McConnell's kibosh on doing anything substantial to certify we're employing all resources to fight Russian intervention in the 2020 election), who indeed would sign up for this who had any real deep experience and qualification. As you put it, look at all the legal shit that has to be dealt with. The only thing you can count on with being associated with Trump, no matter what advantages they get otherwise, they can't count on any semblance of stability or thoughtful, disciplined professionalism winning out. Today Trump went off on airline execs.. ordinarily, I'd be glad someone wasn't putting up with their shit. But Trump's performance today was typical... erratic, random...anything he sees as a flaw, or anyone who doesn't give him the asslicking he craves... he'll just turn on a dime and that person or group is out of favor, and you're in his bullying crosshairs now. A decade from now, will ANY of them look back and say it wasn't worth all the crap?

 

[rareboy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

^ The sad part is that until it affects them as a whole, the power brokers and GOP lickspittles will tolerate Trump because he has made it possible for a corporate kleptocracy to empty the vaults.

So they will put up with the insults and the jabs...knowing that tomorrow, this erratic madman will already be focused on his next target.

Hilter wouldn't have risen to power without the same type of complicity from the corporate industrialists in Germany in the 30's.

 

[Sausy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

The way has been opened, as I have said before, to someone with great charisma and personal discipline who channels, like Trump, white ethnic rage served with generous globs of fascism.

Trump is too petulant, cartoonish and erratic to be a genuine threat as a Supreme Leader wanna be. Yet look at our news cycle... look at our public standards of decency... dysfunction, chaos and bitter partisan division has become the new normal in the three years since the 2016 campaign. Then, most serious Republicans... the ones who hadn't lost their senses or thrown away any core sense of moral grounding... were dismissive of Trump and calling him out and denouncing him as a racist, bigot, charlatan, sexist pig, divider. They regularly warned how Trump values were not true core American conservative principles. Three years is a lifetime ago for how completely they've tied themselves to Trump... even on disagreements, when it comes to the basics they want, as rareboy points out, he's opened the vault for them and the priorities they most desire to see implemented and so far, despite their misgivings about his tariffs and his callousness in regard to migrants seeking asylum, at least to have their cases heard....business has been very good for them. A military/industrial complex running on all cylinders, much lower taxes particularly on corporations, slashing regulations(particularly basic consumer, labor, environmental protections), putting in conservative judges... Trump has been as good as they could have hoped for.

They may have a handle on appeasing Trump enough they still control things, but a new generation of Trump type politicians who don't have Trump's extreme narcissism, who have the discipline and who can present a pleasing face to the public... the people Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller inspire to destroy our institutions and remake America in their exclusive, white male centric image... those won't be so easily controlled. And the genie is out of the bottle now and putting it back will be a bitch. And will we recognize, if we can't defeat them at the polls in 2020, the country that we will become in the aftermath?

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

...Trump is too petulant, cartoonish and erratic to be a genuine threat as a Supreme Leader wanna be. Yet look at our news cycle... look at our public standards of decency... dysfunction, chaos and bitter partisan division has become the new normal in the three years since the 2016 campaign. Then, most serious Republicans... the ones who hadn't lost their senses or thrown away any core sense of moral grounding... were dismissive of Trump and calling him out and denouncing him as a racist, bigot, charlatan, sexist pig, divider.

Trump does have a lot of traits in common with other autocrats and fascists, both current and from history. Madeleine Albright had a book out last year that laid out the case and historical perspectives for why autocrats seem to be the trend in so many countries at the current moment.

Having witnessed a few of these guys come and go outside of the US, Trump does fit the bill. The most startling thing in what is happening currently is the cult-like following that has transformed the Republican party from a fiscally conservative, quasi-libertarian party into a party that doesn't seem to have any fixed ideology other than protecting their leader, retaining their seats (and the power that comes with) and doing the bidding of their donors. Anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-aid is either threatened with a well-funded Trumpian primary challenge or they resign/retire to spend more time with their family.

The statement yesterday by Mark Meadows (that was read by Rick Santorum?) is an example- it took him 3 days to speak up and when he did, it sounds like someone in the White House wrote it for him:

“I am friends with both men, President Trump and Chairman Cummings. I know both men well. Neither man is a racist. Period. Both love America,” Meadows said Monday in a statement.

“I think if we put aside partisanship with investigations we can find bipartisan solutions that will benefit not only Chairman Cummings’ district but the country as a whole. I’m committed to working to that end with both of them.”

Rebranding Congressional oversight as "partisan investigations" is the kind of thing that seems to be a defacto standard for showing fealty to the leader these days. Listen to other statements they make using the Trump language of "socialists", "fake news", disaster", "infested", "witch hunt", etc. All of this has happened in spite of their substantial losses in the 2018 midterm election. Unless Trump loses big in 2020, it's unlikely that we're going to see the Republican Party recover... they may go the way of the Whig party or be fractured into two different parties... and that might not be a bad thing.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

I wonder with the pushback over Ratcliffe's nomination coming mainly from Senate Republicans...

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr just released a statement regarding Ratcliffe's nomination:

America is better prepared for the threats we face thanks to Dan Coats’ leadership of our Intelligence Community. Over the last two years, he has served this Administration with integrity and sound judgment, making significant progress in addressing the shortcomings that left us vulnerable to foreign interference in our elections. He has also done a great deal to direct our attention toward growing aggression from Russia, China, and Iran, including testifying at our Committee’s annual Worldwide Threats hearing earlier this year. I am grateful for Dan’s service to our country over his long career as Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador, and as a former colleague in the Senate, and I wish him and his wife Martha a happy retirement.

I spoke with Congressman Ratcliffe yesterday to congratulate him on the President’s intention to nominate him to this post. When the White House submits its official nomination to the Senate Intelligence Committee, we will work to move it swiftly through regular order. In the meantime, I look forward to working with DNI’s Principal Deputy Director Sue Gordon, who has been a trusted partner to our Committee.

Rumor has it that Ratcliffe told some "Texas tall tales" during his Congressional campaign regarding his experience and background when he was in the Department of Justice, claiming that he prosecuted terrorists... ahem....in the Eastern District of Texas (not exactly a hotbed of terrorism). So far, Press investigations have found no terrorism cases with Ratcliffe's name on them.

Burr's statement is less than enthusiastic about Ratcliffe's appointment. It's also signalling that the law specifies that succession would be that Sue Gordon is appointed to be the acting DNI.

 

[rareboy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Trump does have a lot of traits in common with other autocrats and fascists, both current and from history. Madeleine Albright had a book out last year that laid out the case and historical perspectives for why autocrats seem to be the trend in so many countries at the current moment.

Having witnessed a few of these guys come and go outside of the US, Trump does fit the bill. The most startling thing in what is happening currently is the cult-like following that has transformed the Republican party from a fiscally conservative, quasi-libertarian party into a party that doesn't seem to have any fixed ideology other than protecting their leader, retaining their seats (and the power that comes with) and doing the bidding of their donors. Anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-aid is either threatened with a well-funded Trumpian primary challenge or they resign/retire to spend more time with their family.

The statement yesterday by Mark Meadows (that was read by Rick Santorum?) is an example- it took him 3 days to speak up and when he did, it sounds like someone in the White House wrote it for him:



Rebranding Congressional oversight as "partisan investigations" is the kind of thing that seems to be a defacto standard for showing fealty to the leader these days. Listen to other statements they make using the Trump language of "socialists", "fake news", disaster", "infested", "witch hunt", etc. All of this has happened in spite of their substantial losses in the 2018 midterm election. Unless Trump loses big in 2020, it's unlikely that we're going to see the Republican Party recover... they may go the way of the Whig party or be fractured into two different parties... and that might not be a bad thing.

The best thing that could happen is for both of the big parties to be split into 2 parties....but the Republicans really need to do this if they have any desire left at all to save the semblance of a legitimate, broad based party that represents the public interest instead of their own and their corporate owners' pocketbooks and privilege and the narrow interests of Christian Dominionists whose nihilism threatens the globe.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

The best thing that could happen is for both of the big parties to be split into 2 parties....but the Republicans really need to do this if they have any desire left at all to save the semblance of a legitimate, broad based party that represents the public interest instead of their own and their corporate owners' pocketbooks and privilege and the narrow interests of Christian Dominionists whose nihilism threatens the globe.

It might happen that the Democratic party will fracture with some of the more Left proposals that are on the table for discussion in the 2020 election. So far, the Democratic Socialists are just a Tea Party type movement within the party.

In some ways, there already was a Democratic fracture in the 1970s when the Religious Right and the Dixiecrats made the pact with Nixon as part of the "Southern Strategy". Prior to that, most of the Southern states were in a constant state of warfare between the labor movement and the socially liberal, conservative and evangelical wings of the party. When the Johnson signed the voting rights legislation in the 1960s, that put an end to that tenuous gentleman's agreement between the factions.

The head-scratching thing about the Republican situation is that it's clear that there's a fiscal conservative group that wants to break away from the Trumpians. But without any coherent philosophical base, what is holding the Trumpians together other than Trump and their xenophobia and racism? With the aging of that demographic, it would probably be short-lived... which might not be a bad thing. Populist movements seem to burn out quickly in the US system, if history is any guide.

 

[Sausy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Sue Gordon appears as qualified as anyone could be to get the National Security director job. I wonder what happens if Ratcliffe doesn't get past Burr's committee recommendation... the Texas sixed tall tales on his terrorist prosecuting exploits sure don't help his already shaky case any.

It's time for a major political realignment, I'd agree... what IS the Republican Party today? WE probably need three significant parties... including one of the center and that on the left to counter this move to the right. Hard though to get things going with winner take all congressional districts rather than proportional representation... and in today's culture where rigidly ideological organizations right and left challenge the primacy of party cohesiveness, can we build a new party system that is functional, practical?

I worry though there will somehow be a narrow repudiation of Trump in 2020, or even worse somehow a victory especially if the losing wing of the Democratic nomination process... either the establishment center/moderate liberal rebels against a progressive nominee or the progressive wing cuts out in protest of an establishment, consensus, "safe" Trump challenger being nominated. Despite Trump's still relatively low popular support in comparison to others attempting a second term, we Democrats can still blow things to hell if we give in to a vicious, bitter inner party civil war.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Speaking of appointees who want to dismantle the agencies they are in charge of...

A Lawyer Who Wants to Sell Off Public Lands Was Just Picked to Oversee 250 Million Federal Acres [Time]

A conservative lawyer and writer who argues for selling off the nation’s public lands is now in charge of a nearly quarter-billion acres in federally held rangeland and other wilderness.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt (see post #1187) on Monday signed an order making Wyoming native William Perry Pendley acting head of the Bureau of Land Management. The bureau manages nearly 250 million acres of largely wild public lands and their minerals and other resources in vast holdings across the U.S. West.

 

[rareboy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

And...Ratcliffe is out of the running....

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

And...Ratcliffe is out of the running....

Another unqualified candidate whose reputation is now trashed because they hitched their wagon to the Trump train.

At least he got out before his family got trashed in the process.

 

[rareboy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Well....who the hell is Trump going to park at the Kremlin now? Huntsman is one of the last adults in the room.

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, has submitted his resignation to President Donald Trump after two tumultuous years on the job, two U.S. officials and another person close to the diplomat confirmed to NBC News.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...U0lVX4GdOPWOX0kGm1VbOIQS-rsgEflPIqZajNNHW9S7w

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Well....who the hell is Trump going to park at the Kremlin now? Huntsman is one of the last adults in the room.



https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...U0lVX4GdOPWOX0kGm1VbOIQS-rsgEflPIqZajNNHW9S7w

Rumor has it that Trump and Putin discussed Huntsman's departure and I wouldn't be surprised if Putin submitted a candidate list for the replacement.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Assistant Secretary of State Kimberly Breier resigns [CNN]

Kimberly Breier, assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, has resigned, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Breier's exit comes after White House policy adviser Stephen Miller chastised her in an email chain over what he perceived to be a lack of commitment to defending the US' asylum agreement with Guatemala, The Post reported, citing a senior administration official. Breier, whose office was in charge of the Trump administration's attempts to control immigration from Mexico, also took issue with the power the White House exerted over immigration and trade issues, according to The Post.

Breier had been in public service for about a decade, starting with a national security position in the White House under Pres George W. Bush.

 

[Sausy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

^Miller is a real cancer here. He's an unlikely combo of being Jewish with relatives who died in the Holocaust, but enthusiastically, unequivocably stridently with the alt-right...if not an outright racist, incredibly insensitive and uncaring of other cultures that aren't white European based. Bannon left but he's a true believer who has Trump's ear... I don't think there has been a single incident reported that has Miller losing influence over Trump. Who the hell is going to want to work with them with a real professional background? They want either an ideologue or a total cipher who will do nothing but pursue the policies Trump/Miller supports to the letter.

 

[rareboy]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Pretty much this.

Having Baby Goebbels and a pathological narcissist and sociopath as the boss is only going to appeal to people of little or no moral character with few skills for the jobs they will hold.

We've already seen it for nearly three years.

 

[KaraBulut]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr just released a statement regarding Ratcliffe's nomination:

...I spoke with Congressman Ratcliffe yesterday to congratulate him on the President’s intention to nominate him to this post. When the White House submits its official nomination to the Senate Intelligence Committee, we will work to move it swiftly through regular order. In the meantime, I look forward to working with DNI’s Principal Deputy Director Sue Gordon, who has been a trusted partner to our Committee.

Burr's statement is less than enthusiastic about Ratcliffe's appointment. It's also signalling that the law specifies that succession would be that Sue Gordon is appointed to be the acting DNI.

Trump finally named an Acting Director now that the Ratcliffe nomination has been withdrawn. The law said that the Principal Deputy Director, Sue Gordon, would be the Acting.

Yesterday, Sue Gordon announced her resignation.

Trump names Joseph Maguire acting director of national intelligence [Axios]

Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon will leave her position on Aug. 15 along with outgoing director Dan Coats, President Trump confirmed in a tweet Thursday evening.

The latest: Trump announced on Thursday that National Counterterrorism Center Director Joseph Maguire will serve as the next acting DNI director starting Aug. 15.

Why it matters: Under federal statute, Gordon — who is widely respected in the intelligence community — was automatically supposed to assume the role of acting director upon Coats' departure. However, Trump never intended to pick her, and she dropped off a resignation letter at the White House on Thursday afternoon, sources tell Axios' Jonathan Swan.

Susan M. Gordon is a career intelligence officer, beginning her career with the CIA in 1980. She is widely respected in all levels of government as a straight shooter. However, she was not a Trump loyalist and apparently, that matters more than competency.

Something tells me that Trump didn't like her looks either.

 

[gsdx]

Re: Trump Staff Picks and Revolving Door of Departures

For what it's worth, Canada's Ambassador to the US, David MacNaughton, is stepping down. He began at the end of Obama's presidency, but now things have changed with the Trump regime:

"I have never done anything in my life that has been as difficult as this. Physically, emotionally. And part of that is just realizing what the stakes are," he said.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/david-macnaughton-ambassador-1.5240040