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

[KaraBulut]

In the Orwellian world of the Trump Administration, another fact-based official is expected to leave the Pentagon. Undersecretary John Rood made the mistake of telling Congress that Ukraine had made significant reforms which disagreed with lies told by Agent Orange, the self-appointed "Chief Law Enforcement Official of the United States".

Crickets continue to chirp on the Republican side of the Congress.

Top Pentagon policy official expected to depart administration [CNN]

The Pentagon's top policy official is expected to depart his post soon, according to two sources familiar with the matter. John Rood, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, lost support among senior national security leadership and has been asked for his resignation, one of the sources said.

Rood is the Pentagon's top policy official and oversees aspects of the Pentagon's relationship with US allies and partners. Rood was involved in certifying to Congress that Ukraine had embarked on significant reforms to justify its receipt of $250 million in security assistance. That certification undermined one of the justifications -- concerns about corruption in Kiev -- that some members of the Trump administration made to defend blocking aid to Ukraine.

 

[KaraBulut]

Somehow, Trump has managed to find the one gay member of the diplomatic corps who is both incompetent and obnoxious. Oh, let's make him Dan Coats replacement as the DNI so that he can coordinate 17 intelligence services in spite of his lack of knowledge in the area!

Since Trump made him "Acting Director", he won't go through the Senate confirmation process. Wake up Congress- you need to fix this loophole in the Vacancies Act!


Trump’s Choice for Intel Chief Leaves Officials ‘Blindsided’ [Daily Beast]

Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist, does not have any direct experience in the intelligence field—a fact that triggered alarm bells for some.

President Donald Trump’s announcement that he had selected a loyalist and political ally as his administration’s next intelligence chief quickly raised eyebrows Wednesday on Capitol Hill among Democrats already concerned about the state of Team Trump’s attitude toward the intelligence community.

On Wednesday night, Trump tweeted that Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany with a long history in the orbit of Trumpworld, would be named as the next acting Director of National Intelligence. The term of the current acting director, Joseph Maguire, was slated to expire on March 12.

The president’s appointment of another acting official to serve as the chief overseer of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies allows him to effectively bypass the Senate confirmation process—which a full-time nominee would be subjected to—in order to install his preferred person for the post. Grenell has already been confirmed by the Senate for his ambassadorship.

 

[KaraBulut]

So... there was an Acting DNI- Joseph McGuire- that the new Acting DNI Richard Grennell is to replace.

The previous Acting DNI was Vice Admiral McGuire- someone who was selected by the previous DNI Dan Coats- and McGuire had come out of retirement to work for Trump. McGuire was one of the rare people that had been selected to work in the Trump Administration who was actually qualified for his position (probably because Trump and Pence didn't select him). McGuire retired from the United States Navy as a Vice Admiral in 2010 after 36 years of military service. He had been the Deputy Director for Strategic Operational Planning at National Counterterrorism Center in the last years of his active duty.

Vice Admiral McGuire was fired from the Acting DNI role by Trump. The circumstances are murky but it appears Trump was angry that staff working under McGuire had testified to the House Intelligence Committee and Trump didn't like it.

Trump lashed out at acting DNI Maguire over alleged staff disloyalty: report [The Hill]

President Trump erupted at acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire in a meeting last week over concerns about Maguire's staff's loyalty, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The reported incident occurred shortly before Trump announced on Wednesday Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell would take over from Maguire as the acting intelligence chief.

Trump decided against nominating Maguire for the post on a permanent basis after learning a member of his staff, Shelby Pierson, gave a classified briefing last Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee regarding election security, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Someone needs to say it: Trump is mentally ill and is unfit to be President.


A couple of other related stories that hit the news today but were buried under the Bernie nonsense...

Russia is looking to help Trump win in 2020, election security official told lawmakers [CNN]

The intelligence community's top election security official delivered a briefing to lawmakers last week warning them that the intelligence community believes Russia is already taking steps to interfere in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump win, three sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Last week's briefing, led by election security official Shelby Pierson and first reported by The New York Times, addressed the overall picture of Russia's efforts, including hacking, weaponizing social media and attacks on election infrastructure, one of the sources said.

The briefers said Russia does favor Trump, but that helping Trump wasn't the only thing they were trying to do as it was also designed to raise questions about the integrity of the elections process, the source added.

So, someone offered Assange a Presidential pardon to coverup the Russia interference story....

Lawyer for WikiLeaks' Assange says he was offered a US pardon for denying Russian hacking [CNN]

Lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told a court on Wednesday that a witness statement application claimed that then-California representative Dana Rohrabacher went to visit Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on the instruction of the "President."

According to the statement described by Fitzgerald, Rohrabacher's mission was to offer Assange a US pardon, if he would "play ball" by saying the Russians had nothing to do with the leak -- an assertion Assange had previously made.

 

[Sausy]

If this was ANY other administration, it would have crashed and burned already. Unfortunately, Trump and his Republican enablers appear totally bent on crashing and burning this country. Fuck the economic news that benefits overwhelmingly the wealthy..fuck the stock market. Our institutions and culture are being corroded daily one one-time unfathomable move after another. And one day not too distant from today, we WILL feel it coming down.

 

[rareboy]

...and the rest of the world will feel it just as badly when the US fails because of this regime.

 

[rareboy]

 

[KaraBulut]

6. Republicans in Congress say nothing.

 

[rareboy]

I ran across a brief piece yesterday about how the Intelligence community is losing their shit over this ouster and appointment.

Granted, US intelligence community is more than a bit of an Oxymoron given their past spectacular fuck-ups over the last 5 decades...but surely there must be an old box of exploding cigars around the CIA that can be modified to be a literal take-out McDonald's hamburger?

If they don't release the pee tapes and his tax returns soon (and even then it probably no longer matters), Trump will literally burn down all the intelligence agencies in this purge and replace them with the cast of villains he just sprung from Gotham prison.

 

[KaraBulut]

I ran across a brief piece yesterday about how the Intelligence community is losing their shit over this ouster and appointment.

Granted, US intelligence community is more than a bit of an Oxymoron given their past spectacular fuck-ups over the last 5 decades...but surely there must be an old box of exploding cigars around the CIA that can be modified to be a literal take-out McDonald's hamburger?

If they don't release the pee tapes and his tax returns soon (and even then it probably no longer matters), Trump will literally burn down all the intelligence agencies in this purge and replace them with the cast of villains he just sprung from Gotham prison.

Sadly, we're now in that place where the US media starts making a shit-load of money off Presidential campaign stories. The number of Bloomberg ads has surpassed the number of Pharma ads on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. All those millions being spent on advertising are going to ad buys and the journalism is being replaced by endless interviews with 20 somethings standing outside some campaign stop in Nevada and South Carolina.

The intelligence agencies and the former members of the Administration know where the bodies are buried. For some reason, those stories aren't being leaked and when they are leaked they aren't getting around the Bernie/Biden/Buttigieg click-bait stories that the media is pushing 24x7 to gin up their ratings.

Perhaps the Democrats need to do hearings and buttress it with a "Housewives of Washington DC" series featuring all the wives of the Congressmen... and ask the Kardashians to host it. Maybe that might break through all the perpetual distraction and get a few Fox News listeners to hear the truth?

 

[KaraBulut]

A recap of Defense Department departures since former Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper was put in charge of the Pentagon after General James Mattis resigned.

1. Mark Mitchell, Acting Assistant Defense Secretary for Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict - resigned Oct-2019.
2. Steven Walker, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Director - resigned Dec, 2019.
3. Richard Spencer, Navy Secretary - forced to resign by Esper in Nov, 2019 for "going around the chain of command" and dealing directly with the White House.
4. Randall Schriver, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs - resigned in Dec, 2019.
5. Mick Mulroy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Middle East - resigned Dec, 2019.
6. Jimmy Stewart, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness - resigned Dec, 2019
7. Kari Bingen, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence - resigned Dec, 2019.
   Tina Kaidanow, Senior Adviser for International Co-operation - resigned Dec, 2019.
8. Eric Chewning, Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense - resigned Jan-2020
9. John Rood, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon - asked to resign by Trump in Feb, 2020 for knowing too much about the Ukraine extortion scandal.

 

[KaraBulut]

Just pointing out that this thread about the chaos in the Trump Administration staffing is over 1,400 posts.

Richard Grenell, the controversial Ambassador to Germany who is also the Acting Director of National Intelligence (which has become an oxymoron under Trump's leadership), fired the #2 person at the DNI.

Andrew Hallman a 30-year US Intelligence veteran with a master's degree in International Affairs, was another well-respected expert. Hallman was forced out by Grenell last week. In contrast to Hallman, Grenell has no qualifications for a job anywhere in US government intelligence (other than the nose that he has burrowed into Trump's rectum).

In Aug, 2019, Hallman had replaced another intelligence expert, Sue Gordon, who was forced out when Trump had the hare-brained idea to appoint the last unqualified DNI candidate, Rep John Ratcliffe (R-TX), after Trump saw the handsome Rep Ratcliffe on the TV. Later, Ratcliffe was determined to have embellished his resume' and the nomination was withdrawn (even though Rep Ratcliffe remains in Congress because lying on your resume' is just okay these days).

The law says that when the DNI position is open, the Acting DNI is the #2 in the position, so Trump not only was not following the law in appointing Grenell, he also had to force out yet another highly qualified intelligence Assistant Director to accomplish this tomfoolery.

So, we are now at a place where experienced intelligence professionals can't tell the truth and will be fired if they don't agree with Trump's demented world-view that Russia and North Korea are good but Germany and our other Allies are bad.

More departures expected at nation's top intelligence office [CNN]

Some top intelligence officials are looking to leave following the recent upheaval at the office that oversees the 17 intelligence agencies of the US government, including the controversial appointment of Richard Grenell as the nation's top intelligence official, a US official told CNN.

Grenell has said he is only temporarily filling the position of acting director of American spy agencies, but he is already making his mark. Grenell, a President Donald Trump loyalist, is also still serving as the US ambassador to Germany. After his appointment to the intelligence post this week, officials at the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) made calls to US diplomats in Germany inquiring about Grenell's leadership style, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Earlier this week, Grenell quickly forced out the number two intelligence official in the US government, Andrew Hallman, a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed to CNN. Hallman was an intelligence veteran and well respected in the intelligence community.

 

[KaraBulut]

From an article published over the weekend...

Trump’s Efforts to Remove the Disloyal Heightens Unease Across His Administration [NY Times]

From the beginning, his administration has been a turnstile of people who fall in and out of favor with the president. Including those with “acting” designations, he is on his third chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser, his fourth defense secretary, his fifth secretary of homeland security, his sixth deputy national security adviser and his seventh communications director.

And in case you're wondering about what we're doing to prepare for a possible coronavirus pandemic...

Nonetheless, the tumult and anxiety come at a time when the Trump administration confronts enormous challenges, including the coronavirus outbreak, Iranian and North Korean nuclear development and Russian determination to play a role again in America’s next election. Democrats, for example, have expressed concerns about the administration’s ability to respond if there were a severe coronavirus outbreak in the United States, noting that a global health security expert position on the National Security Council has been left vacant for almost two years.

Senators Call on Trump Administration to Immediately Fill Global Health Security Position [Global Biodefense]

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) and 26 of his Senate colleagues called on National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien in a Feb. 18 letter to appoint a qualified, dedicated, senior global health security expert to the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) to address and coordinate administration efforts in response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus and other global health security threats...

Schatz and the senators urged immediate action because the top global public health position at the NSC has remained vacant for almost two years.

 

[rareboy]

Again...we always need to remember that one of Trump's and his donors' goals is to literally destroy the federal state apparatus.

And of course, Trump believes that no experience or qualifications are necessary...in fact it is a detriment to the dismantling of federal departments and moving the US toward an oligarchical autocracy.

So far, it is going very well. Another 4 years and the Federal government will be gutted, except for defense and Americans will literally have only the President and his small inner circle to rely on for all policy and decision making. Which means that the decisions will become increasingly idiosyncratic and extreme. We've seen all this before around the world.

 

[KaraBulut]

And of course, Trump believes that no experience or qualifications are necessary...in fact it is a detriment to the dismantling of federal departments and moving the US toward an oligarchical autocracy.

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:

 

[gsdx]

^ What is the red and white flag he's wearing on his lapel pin and the symbol beneath his pin?

(I'm having a seizure looking at his tie.)

 

[KaraBulut]

^ What is the red and white flag he's wearing on his lapel pin and the symbol beneath his pin?

(I'm having a seizure looking at his tie.)

The State flag of Iowa:

Not sure about the saber pin. It's a little too gaudy to be a military pin.

 

[gsdx]

^ Thanks. I zoomed in on the pin but couldn't see the blue side banner and the eagle was barely identifiable.

 

[KaraBulut]

Adventures in Mini-Me. Some psychologist should look into why Trump has a thing for young, telegenic men. Call it Jerry Falwell Jr Disease.

A new senior leader at the White House personnel office: A college senior [Politico]

The White House has hired a college senior to be one of the top officials in its powerful Presidential Personnel Office, according to three administration officials familiar with the matter.

James Bacon, 23, is acting as one of the right-hand men to new PPO director John McEntee, according to the officials. Bacon, a senior at George Washington University pursuing a bachelor’s degree, comes from the Department of Transportation, where he briefly worked in the policy shop. Prior to that role, while still taking classes, he worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he was a White House liaison, according to two other officials. At HUD, he distinguished himself as Secretary Ben Carson’s confidential assistant, according to two other administration officials.

 

[rareboy]

I'm surprised that Trump would hire such a short man in a bad suit.

It is getting pretty bad though when there are so few people to choose from that the choice is someone who has to do their homework after.

 

[KaraBulut]

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. They're not even trying anymore... Jul-2019 post #1194

Trump again taps Ratcliffe to serve as intelligence chief [The Hill]

President Trump has tapped Rep. John Ratcliffe to serve as his next director of national intelligence (DNI), reviving an appointment of the Texas Republican that previously derailed last year.

Trump had initially appointed Ratcliffe to serve as his intelligence chief in July, but the Texas congressman withdrew from consideration weeks later amid media scrutiny that he padded his résumé as well as bipartisan concerns about his experience.

Still, tapping Ratcliffe a second time suggests Trump is intent on having his House ally take over the helm of the intelligence community.

Can someone get Trump a subscription to Men at Play so he can get this "looks good in a suit" fetish satisfied?