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

[KaraBulut]

And...she's finally getting out of the West Wing.

But Kellyanne, maybe more than anyone else helped create the monster Trump and probably helped save his ass so many times over the last 3.5 years.

She paid all that money for the plastic surgery and now she won't be on Fox daily showing it off. Pity.

She and George need to be at home. They have 4 children. The oldest child, Claudia, has been on social media trashing her mother and her mother's boss. Claudia is 15 years old (but looks older), so her social media posts couldn't be posted here. Basically, she's been saying her mother's job has ruined the family and that her mother is a fame-whore who puts her job ahead of her family. Kellyanne and Claudia have been battling over social media with Claudia commenting on her mother's posts. For example, when Kellyanne posted about Herman Cain's death, Claudia replied asking, "...yes it is sad but wasn’t your administration complicit in his death?".

After Kellyanne was listed as one of the speakers at [STRIKE]Trumpfest[/STRIKE] the RNC Convention this week, Claudia was on social media saying that she was going to run away (again) and that she would be seeking to be an emancipated minor to get away from her mother's "abuse".

One of the few remaining traditions has been that the Press generally gives privacy to government employees' family, especially minor children. Twitter, Instagram and TikTok have given Claudia Conway a way to bypass the filter and get her anti-Trump and anti-Kellyanne message out on the internet.

There's some irony to Kellyanne having her own daughter beat her at the media game that Kellyanne has specialized in.

 

[TX-Beau]

Buh Bye Kellyanne - leave the key n your way our.

I find it endlessly diverting that she was knee-capped by her own kid. Claudia must take after daddy.

 

[KaraBulut]

...Claudia must take after daddy.

Claudia's comment was that her Dad is more conservative than she, but they find themselves on the same side these days (of issues, not Kellyanne, that is):

 

[smokeshadow]

Emily Miller, top spokesperson for the FDA is out after 11 days on the job

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmoveme...nstalled-by-white-house-after-plasma-debacle/

 

[Dystopian]

The State Department’s Acting Inspector General Stephen Akard is resigning from his role after less than three months on the job.

Do they even bother sitting down at their new desk before they jump ship at this point?

https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...dgEP0--8a3Ei24nIV4UoS2_QF1DYq6EZlKuB2LI-vt_2c

And still there are months to go with Pompeo likely to still do more lasting damage to the State Department.

I believe he served his purpose. The report exonerating Pompeo from any wrong doing in selling billions in arms to the Saudis was recently released. Delving too deeply into this and other potential lapses on the part of the Secretary got his predecessor canned.

 

[Dystopian]

The legacy of Reagan's "Government is the problem" speech. When conservatives realized they couldn't shrink the government, they decided to just make it look as incompetent as possible so that they could continue to say, "See... government is the problem".

Here's an example of contrasting how Democrats view government vs how Republicans view government:

The Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics in the United States Department of Agriculture is a big title for the person in the USDA who controls an annual research budget of $3 billion dollars. The research is directed toward trying to figure out how to better grow food and how to adjust farming practices to prevent losses due increased drought-flooding cycles caused climate change. This UnderSecretary is also responsible for a lot of data collection about farming, farm markets and agricultural finance.

The UnderSecretary in the Obama years was Catherine Woteki, who had a PhD in Human Nutrition and 40+ years of experience in agriculture and nutrition research. She was previously an UnderSecretary for food safety in USDA in the 1990s. After leaving the Clinton UDSA, she was dean of agriculture and professor of human nutrition at Iowa State University and the head of the Agriculture Experiment Station. She had also previously worked for Mars, Inc (the food company known for M&Ms) as their chief research scientist. She took on the Research UnderSecretary job in 2010 and served until 2017 under Obama.

Trump nominated Samuel Harvey Clovis Jr. for the UnderSecretary position. Clovis has a Doctorate in Public Administration but no science background. Sam Clovis was best known for being a conservative radio pundit from Iowa known was describing climate science as "junk science" and saying that there was no scientific consensus on climate change. Clovis had run for several Iowa state offices and had lost every time (aside: one of his campaign staff was Matt Whitaker who would later become Acting Attorney General when Sessions was fired). Of course, Clovis was a Trump supporter during the 2016 campaign. He was forced to withdraw because of some of the information about his involvement with the Russians that was uncovered in the Mueller investigation.

Here's Dr Woteki:

Here's Dr Clovis:

Wonder what the sword lapel pin in for? Googled for it and the closest was about Star Wars. Doubtful.

 

[Dystopian]

Let's pause for a moment and consider how sad the bottom of the barrel for candidates for Trump appointed positions has become.

After going through FOUR Department of Homeland Security Secretaries and Acting Secretaries, Trump is having to get an DHS Undersecretary position confirmed so that he can make that new Undersecretary the Acting Secretary of DHS. It's so bad that Trump is out of appointees that are eligible to be Acting DHS Secretary that he has to add an Undersecretary so that he can have an Acting Secretary.


Senate starts clearing path for DHS designee Wolf [Politico]



We've now reached the "Chad" level of candidates. Guys who use Brylcreem and apparently don't own razors.

Acting Sec'y of Homeland Security Chad Wolf. Waded into the proverbial swamp for eleven years as a lobbyist assisting clients obtain contracts with TSA....where he had been Assistant Administrator for Security Policy for the preceding 3 years. Born in Jackson MS and grew up in Plano TX. He believes there is no systemic racism in law enforcement across the US. The majority of his efforts for weeks have been suppression of demonstrations across the country protesting a non-issue. Thankfully he didn't call the concept a "Hoax". A good ol' Southern boy denying there is a race problem with the police. This betrays a lack of insight which for someone in his position is more than concerning. Okay, Chad. No racism (statistically the police kill white folk, too.) There is however a murder problem that has not been addressed. How secure is The Homeland if our police shoot the Homies (citizens of the Homeland) in the back and strangle us to death in broad daylight caught on video and nothing happens? Dear friends, the fact that the Acting Secy of Homeland Security can't identify a systemic problem with race or killing citizens in the US may somehow contribute to the surviving citizens believing they have to take to the streets to get the BLM message out there. Maybe the White House just hasn't heard. They kinda missed the Covid thing for quite awhile. However this is Trump's guy and like his employer he will ignore the overarching social problem in our nation. Instead we will shamelessly change the conversation to the lawless demonstrators so Trump can assume the role of the Law and Order Candidate (the irony of which can not be overemphasized).

 

[KaraBulut]

Emily Miller, top spokesperson for the FDA is out after 11 days on the job

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmoveme...nstalled-by-white-house-after-plasma-debacle/

Former Ted Cruz staffer, gun advocate and reporter for OANN (Trump's new favorite loony news source). She sounded perfect Trump appointee to work for the FDA.

She almost beat The Mooch's record of 10 days working in the White House media shop.

The announcement of her appointment:

Former One America News correspondent Emily Miller gets senior FDA post[ [Salon]

Emily Miller, a gun-rights advocate and former senior correspondent for the right-wing One America News Network (OANN), has been appointed as assistant commissioner for media relations at the embattled Food and Drug Administration, Miller confirmed in a tweet.

It's unclear what Miller's qualifications for the FDA post are. In her career at OANN, she was accused of fabricating quotes from Hillary Clinton and peddling conspiracy theories alleging that the Obama administration used "smart gun" technology, which permits only authorized users to access a firearm, as a way to "track law-abiding citizens."

Miller has tweeted frequently about the coronavirus pandemic over the last few months, but her understanding of basic underlying science and health issues appears limited.

And the announcement of her firing:

'She couldn't even pronounce convalescent plasma': FDA ousts spokesperson after 2 weeks [Politico]

Colleagues said that Miller, with no prior medical or science experience, was a bad fit inside an agency rushing to fight a pandemic. "There was an inability to do anything inside the agency," said one health official. "She couldn't even pronounce convalescent plasma."

The FDA had also faced growing criticism over its hiring of Miller, a former reporter for far-right One America News. She had worked in Republican politics, including for Sen. Ted Cruz, and had become a prominent gun rights advocate, authoring a 2013 book entitled "Emily Gets Her Gun: But Obama Wants to Take Yours."

FDA’s top communications role is traditionally filled by a career civil servant, and the job opening was initially listed as a position for career civil servants in April before being taken down. Miller was instead brought on as a political appointee, a decision that disappointed career FDA officials and raised further questions about the agency’s ability to withstand political pressure from the White House.

 

[KaraBulut]

And another one bites the dust at the FDA... after just 2 months on the job.

Second Trump appointee out at FDA amid credibility concerns [ABC]

A second Trump administration appointee has been ousted at the Food and Drug Administration in the wake of the agency's botched announcement about an experimental therapy for COVID-19, which medical experts said damaged the health regulator's credibility with the public.

An FDA spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that John “Wolf” Wagner, a political appointee installed by the White House earlier this summer, is no longer heading the agency’s office of external affairs. Instead, Heidi Rebello, a longtime FDA career official, has stepped into the position on an acting basis, overseeing all FDA public communications. Politico first reported the news.

He was there such a short time, I had trouble finding his picture.

 

[KaraBulut]

Someone has had the daggers out for Parscale. This is from a Business Insider article that came out in May when polls showed Trump's popularity declining:

• Companies owned by Brad Parscale — the president's confident and combative campaign manager — have already collected nearly $40 million this cycle.
• Parscale was doing coding and website design for the Trump Organization pre-2016, but from January 2017 to the end of March, he got $38.9 million through those companies, according to FEC filings reviewed for a new HuffPost report.
• Most presidential campaign managers make low six figure salaries, with Mike Bloomberg's being on the high end at $198,547.
• Parscale has made some notable purchases, including a Ferarri, a Range Rover, a $400,000 boat, two million dollar condos and a $2.4 million waterfront house in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Update: They're still blaming Parscale. Never mind that the entire Trump family (except Tiffany!) is on the campaign payroll.

How Trump's Billion-Dollar Campaign Lost Its Cash Advantage [NYT]

...Mr. Trump’s financial supremacy has evaporated. Of the $1.1 billon his campaign and the party raised from the beginning of 2019 through July, more than $800 million has already been spent. Now some people inside the campaign are forecasting what was once unthinkable: a cash crunch with less than 60 days until the election, according to Republican officials briefed on the matter...

Under Mr. Parscale, more than $350 million — almost half of the $800 million spent — went to fund-raising operations, as no expense was spared in finding new donors online. The campaign assembled a big and well-paid staff and housed the team at a cavernous, well-appointed office in the Virginia suburbs; outsize legal bills were treated as campaign costs; and more than $100 million was spent on a television advertising blitz before the party convention, the point when most of the electorate historically begins to pay close attention to the race...

There was also a cascade of smaller choices that added up: The campaign hired a coterie of highly paid consultants (Mr. Trump’s former bodyguard and White House aide has been paid more than $500,000 by the R.N.C. since late 2017); spent $156,000 for planes to pull aerial banners in recent months; and paid nearly $110,000 to Yondr, a company that makes magnetic pouches used to store cellphones during fund-raisers so that donors could not secretly record Mr. Trump and leak his remarks....

“If you spend $800 million and you’re 10 points behind, I think you’ve got to answer the question ‘What was the game plan?’” said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist who runs a small pro-Trump super PAC, and who accused Mr. Parscale of spending “like a drunken sailor.”

 

[KaraBulut]

The mudslinging over at HHS continues...

$2,933 for ‘Girl’s Night’: Medicaid chief’s consulting expenses revealed [CNN]

Seema Verma, a member of the coronavirus task force, spent more than $3.5 million taxpayer dollars on GOP-aligned consultants, a congressional report found.

When Seema Verma, the Trump administration's top Medicaid official, went to a reporter's home in November 2018 for a "Girl's Night" thrown in her honor, taxpayers footed the bill to organize the event: $2,933.

When Verma wrote an op-ed on Fox News' website that fall, touting President Donald Trump's changes to Obamacare, taxpayers got charged for one consultant's price to place it: $977.

And when consultants spent months promoting Verma to win awards like Washingtonian magazine's "Most Powerful Women in Washington" and appear on high-profile panels, taxpayers got billed for that too: more than $13,000.

The efforts were steered by Pam Stevens, a Republican communications consultant and former Trump administration official working to raise the brand of Verma, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The prices were the amount a consulting company billed the government for her services, based on her invoices, which were obtained by congressional Democrats.

They are among the revelations included in a sweeping congressional investigation chronicling how Verma spent more than $3.5 million on a range of GOP-connected consultants, who polished her public profile, wrote her speeches and Twitter posts, brokered meetings with high-profile individuals — and even billed taxpayers for connecting Verma with fellow Republicans in Congress.

The 49-year-old Verma, who advised then-Gov. Mike Pence in Indiana on health policy before joining the Trump administration, has strongly rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing in her consulting practices. In October 2019, she told a House committee that “all the contracts we have at CMS are based on promoting the work of CMS” and the spending was “consistent with how the agency has used resources in the past.”

She's right about the use of consultants at CMS but consultants aren't supposed to be used to "polish public profiles" at tax-payer expense.

 

[KaraBulut]

Because of course they did... Pence's fingerprints again...

Professor who has questioned climate science hired at NOAA [The Hill]

David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware who is known for questioning climate science, has been hired for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The professor told NPR that he’s joining NOAA as their new deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. It’s not immediately clear what his specific responsibilities are or why he was hired, according to the news site...

Legates is known for using his position as an academic at the University of Delaware to cast doubt on climate science. In 2007, he was one of the authors of an academic paper that refuted previous findings about the role climate change plays in destroying the habitat of polar bears.

And he looks exactly what you expect him to look like:

 

[KaraBulut]

Poor Chad Wolf.

Judge rules Chad Wolf likely unlawfully serving as Homeland Security secretary and temporarily blocks some asylum restrictions [CNN]

A federal judge in Maryland on Friday ruled that Chad Wolf is likely unlawfully serving as acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and temporarily barred the Trump administration from enforcing new asylum restrictions on members of two immigration advocacy groups, according to court documents.

"In sum, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs are likely to demonstrate (former acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin) McAleenan's appointment was invalid under the agency's applicable order of succession, and so he lacked the authority to amend the order of succession to ensure Wolf's installation as Acting Secretary," Judge Paula Xinis' 69-page ruling said.

Xinis also wrote that "by extension, because Wolf filled the role of Acting Secretary without authority, he promulgated the challenged rules also 'in excess of...authority,' and not 'in accordance with the law.'"

From tennis scholarship, to congressional staffer, to lobbyist, to TSA head, to unlawful Acting DHS Secretary.

 

[rareboy]

Just. Fucking. Kill. Us. All. and. be. Done. With.It.

So what does it take to remove this fuckwad from his post?

Or does everyone just ignore this....like so many other egregious abuses of power under TrumpCo.?????????????????????????

 

[KaraBulut]

J...So what does it take to remove this fuckwad from his post?

A functioning Congress.

 

[Alistair]

A functioning Congress.

Or intelligent voters

 

[TX-Beau]

A functioning Congress.

Or intelligent voters

You don't get the one, without the other.

 

[KaraBulut]

A functioning Congress.

Or intelligent voters

You don't get the one, without the other.

Chicken or egg?

 

[rareboy]

Michael Caputo....on a leave of absence after coming unhinged on social media.

In the video, first reported by the New York Times, Michael Caputo, who is HHS' assistant secretary for public affairs, charged that scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "don't want America to get well." He also urged Trump supporters to load up on ammunition in preparation for a violent left-wing rebellion when the president wins re-election.

Caputo also said in the video he's been having health issues and that his "mental health has definitely failed."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...v6BEmENai3w7iJXGBjBcg94xlXbCSVGEOj0A-RhWd8v1Y


only the best people.

 

[KaraBulut]

...Michael Caputo....on a leave of absence after coming unhinged on social media.

I know I sound like a broken record but, remind me, why isn't Caputo in jail? He lied to Mueller and Congress about Russia, just like Roger Stone.

Caputo reacts to Mueller report: "All the haters can go to Hell" [WKBW - Apr-2019]

“In the spring of 2016,” the report reads, “Trump Campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky (who also went by the name Henry Greenberg), claimed to have information pertaining to Hilary Clinton. Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky. Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting.”

“He had a very brief meeting with the guy and told him to hit the road,” says Caputo.

The meeting listed in the report is the reason that Caputo was questioned by both Robert Mueller and lawmakers in both the House and the Senate.

The report points to “contradictory recollections” as to whether Caputo was actually at the meeting, which is something he strongly denies.