Trump Dump: Internal Policy (Thread I)

[The Romulan Republic]

I don't know what Trump has in mind, or if he even gives a shit at all, but Bannon has been pretty upfront about his belief that we are facing wars with China and the entire Muslim world. So considering that he seems to be Trump's main advisor, that should give everyone cause for concern when Trump starts ramping up the military budget.

Trump is also surrounded by Iran hawks.

But most of all, he's a sociopath who would sell the world out for his own advantage and ego.

I half-expect a war against Iran, or brinksmanship with China, not for any geopolitical necessity, but simply because Trump will want the war time President popularity boost (and the extra executive powers wartime Presidents tend to acquire).

[Flagg]

I'd wager Norks at present

Or he just thinks he is being clever by rattling the sabre a bit before opening negotiations. Problem is being a laughing stock doesn't help project toughness and the North holds some very good trump cards of their own.

Also remember how fast Trump talked back his not recognizing the One China policy bullshit? He might only follow through on targets he can bully without consequence, like immigrants from certain Muslim countries. The man is a total blowhard. I do believe he has settled lawsuits when he says he never does as well. Talks tough but folds in the end.

I think he lives in his own personal bubble of delusion, and then is surrounded by people in another bubble of delusion, all the way to the base we only don't euthanize because they are human beings and it's wrong (that last part is a joke, it's sad I need to point that out), like those Russian dolls within dolls.

So looking from the outside in it gets crazier and crazier until at some level close-ish to President Pussygrabber, you just leave the real world and end up in a place where Willy Wonka and Alice from Wonderland had a mutant freak child raised by Beatlejuice and the embodiment of LSD.

[FaxModem1]

Chicago Tribune

White House installs political aides at Cabinet agencies to monitor loyalty
Rick Dearborn
A shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency. The network reports to Rick Dearborn, left, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, according to administration officials. (Jabin Botsford / Washington Post)
Lisa Rein, Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post

The political appointee charged with keeping watch over Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and his aides has offered unsolicited advice so often that after just four weeks on the job, Pruitt has shut him out of many staff meetings, according to two senior administration officials.

At the Pentagon, they're privately calling the former Marine officer and fighter pilot who's supposed to keep his eye on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis "the commissar," according to a high-ranking defense official with knowledge of the situation. It's a reference to Soviet-era Communist Party officials who were assigned to military units to ensure their commanders remained loyal.

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Most members of President Donald Trump's Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged -- above all -- with monitoring the secretaries' loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration.

This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary's suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request.

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These aides report not to the secretary, but to Rick Dearborn, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, according to administration officials. A top Dearborn aide, John Mashburn, leads a weekly conference call with the advisers, who are in constant contact with the White House.

The aides act as a go-between on policy matters for the agencies and the White House. Behind the scenes, though, they're on another mission: to monitor Cabinet leaders and their top staffs to make sure they carry out the president's agenda and don't stray too far from the White House's talking points, said several officials with knowledge of the arrangement.

Inside Trump's White House, New York moderates spark infighting and suspicion
Inside Trump's White House, New York moderates spark infighting and suspicion
"Especially when you're starting a government and you have a changeover of parties when policies are going to be dramatically different, I think it's something that's smart," said Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser. "Somebody needs to be there as the White House's man on the scene. Because there's no senior staff yet, they're functioning as the White House's voice and ears in these departments."

The arrangement is unusual. It wasn't used by Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. And it's also different from the traditional liaisons who shepherd the White House's political appointees to the various agencies. Critics say the competing chains of command eventually will breed mistrust, chaos and inefficiency -- especially as new department heads build their staffs.

"It's healthy when there is some daylight between the president's Cabinet and the White House, with room for some disagreement," said Kevin Knobloch, who was chief of staff under Obama to then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

How the Mercer family's partnership with Stephen Bannon shaped the populist climate in 2016
How the Mercer family's partnership with Stephen Bannon shaped the populist climate in 2016
"That can only happen when agency secretaries have their own team, who report directly to them," he said. "Otherwise it comes off as not a ringing vote of confidence in the Cabinet."

The White House declined to comment about the appointees on the record, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters and internal operations. But a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, contested their mission of holding agencies accountable and said they technically report to each department's chief of staff or to the secretaries themselves.

"The advisers were a main point of contact in the early transition process as the agencies were being set up," the official said in an email. "Like every White House, this one is in frequent contact with agencies and departments."

The advisers' power may be heightened by the lack of complete leadership teams at many departments.

The long delay in getting Trump's nominee for agriculture secretary, former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, confirmed means that Sam Clovis, who was a Trump campaign adviser, and transition team leader Brian Klippenstein continue to serve as the agency's top political appointees.

"He and Brian Klippenstein are just a handful of appointees on the ground and they're doing a big part of the day-to-day work" said Dale Moore, the American Farm Bureau Federation's public policy executive director.

Every president tries to assert authority over the executive branch, with varying degrees of success.

The Obama White House kept tight control over agencies, telling senior officials what they could publicly disclose about their own department's operations. Foreign policy became so centralized that State Department and Defense Department officials complained privately that they felt micromanaged on key decisions.

After then-Attorney General Eric Holder made some political gaffes, Obama aides wanted to install a political aide at the Justice Department to monitor him. But Holder was furious about the intrusion and blocked the plan. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates pushed back against a top official the White House wanted at the Pentagon to guide Asia policy, wary of someone so close to the president in his orbit.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a Trump adviser, said the president needs to dispatch political allies to the agencies to monitor a bureaucracy that's being targeted for reduction.

"If you drain the swamp, you better have someone who watches over the alligators," Gingrich said. "These people are actively trying to undermine the new government. And they think it's their moral obligation to do so."

At the Transportation Department, former Pennsylvania lobbyist Anthony Pugliese shuttles back and forth between the White House and DOT headquarters on New Jersey Avenue, according to an agency official. His office is just 20 paces from Secretary Elaine Chao, the official said.

Day to day, Pugliese and his counterparts inform Cabinet officials of priorities the White House wants them to keep on their radar. They oversee the arrival of new political appointees and coordinate with the West Wing on the agency's direction.

The arrangement is collegial in some offices, including at Transportation and Interior, where aides to Chao and Secretary Ryan Zinke insisted that the White House advisers work as part of the team, attending meetings, helping form an infrastructure task force and designing policy on public lands.

Tensions between the White House and the Cabinet already have spilled into public view. Mattis, the defense secretary, and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly were caught unaware in January by the scope of the administration's travel ban in January. The president has been furious about leaks on national security matters.

Trump does not have long-standing relationships or close personal ties with most leaders in his Cabinet. That's why gauging their loyalty is so important, said officials who described the structure.

"A lot of these (Cabinet heads) have come from roles where they're the executive," said a senior administration official not authorized to publicly discuss the White House advisers. "But when you become head of an agency, you're no longer your own person. It's a hard change for a lot of these people: They're not completely autonomous anymore."

Many of the senior advisers lack expertise in their agency's mission and came from the business or political world. They include Trump campaign aides, former Republican National Committee staffers, conservative activists, lobbyists and entrepreneurs.

At Homeland Security, for example, is Frank Wuco, a former security consultant whose blog Red Wire describes the terrorist threat as rooted in Islam. To explain the threat, he appears on YouTube as a fictional jihadist.

Matt Mowers, a former aide to New Jersey Gov. Christie, who was Trump's national field coordinator before landing at the State Department as senior adviser, said through a spokesman that he "leads interagency coordination" among the White House, agencies and the National Security Council and "coordinates on policy and personnel."

Mowers sits at the edge of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's seventh-floor suite, dubbed Mahogany Row. But neither Tillerson nor his chief of staff are his direct boss.

Many of the advisers arrived from the White House with the small groups known as "beachhead teams" that started work on Jan. 20. One of the mandates at the top of their to-do list now, Bennett said, is making sure the agencies are identifying regulations the administration wants to roll back and vetting any new ones.

At the Pentagon, Brett Byers acts as a go-between between Mattis' team and the White House, largely on "bureaucratic" matters, said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

Career officials who work near the "E" ring offices occupied by senior Pentagon staff, suspicious that Byers is not directly on Mattis' team, came up with the Soviet-era moniker "commissar"to describe him, someone familiar with their thinking said.

Elsewhere, resentment has built up. Pruitt is bristling at the presence of former Washington state Sen. Don Benton, who ran the president's Washington state campaign and is now the EPA's senior White House adviser, said two senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

These officials said Benton piped up so frequently during policy discussions that he had been disinvited from many of them. One of the officials described the situation as akin to an episode of the HBO comedy series "Veep."

Trump's approach may not be so different than Abraham Lincoln's. Coming into the White House after more than a half-century of Democrats in power, Lincoln worked swiftly to oust hostile bureaucrats and appoint allies. But he still had to deal with an Army led by many senior officers who sympathized with the South, as well as a government beset by internal divisions.

Gettysburg College professor Allen Guelzo described Lincoln as "surrounded by smiling enemies," which prompted him to embed his friends into army camps as well as some federal departments.

"I think that presidents actually do this more than it appears," said Guelzo, adding that Lincoln dispatched Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army Montgomery Meigs to circulate among the Army of the Potomac to pick up any negative "doggerel" or insults officers made about him.

So, Trump wants to ensure his cabinet offices are loyal. That's not worrying at all.

[The Romulan Republic]

Another little step towards fascism.

[Ralin]

CEO Trump needs to keep track of all the departmental business of his new company.

[Flagg]

He can't even keep half the shit that flings out of his mouth straight, so it's not a shock he needs minions to keep track.

[The Romulan Republic]

Anyone else watch the hearings on Russia/Trump today? I caught just the end on CNN- lots of Comey getting questioned by belligerent Republicans and saying no comment, basically.

Also, Supreme Court nominee hearings start today.

[Imperial Overlord]

The cabinet can depose Trump with a vote, he's already pissed a lot of them off, and his administration has been an out of control dumpster fire and its not even two months old. It's not that surprising that he's got eyes on them.

[Simon_Jester]

Fascism relies fairly heavily on being able to enlist the loyalty of one's ministers. Trump's problem is that he doesn't actually have much in the way of loyalty from other powerful individuals within the state. All he's really got are the glorified minions who work for him personally and have no contacts of any real value outside the Trump campaign.

He can get someone like Sean Spicer to abjectly stand up and do whatever random little demeaning dance he says, every day for months, because Spicer depends on Trump. Someone like DeVos or Sessions doesn't have that problem. If Trump gets impeached or otherwise thrown out of office and replaced by Pence or any other Republican for that matter, they probably have job security.

So that leaves him in a position to frantically paste together a structure to maintain the loyalty of people who have very little incentive to lift a finger on his behalf. And he has no clue how to do this by the usual methods of earning loyalty. He's used to having his subordinates be loyal to him because he pays them a lot of money. All those 'apprentices' running around for fear of getting fired. But cabinet-level officials don't work for the money; they can walk away and have jobs just as lucrative. They're in it for the power to do the things they want to do. But with power comes pride, and people with pride don't like taking orders from a man like Trumpolini, whose bullying, abusive behavior doesn't inspire positive loyalty in his own people.

I mean hell, even a massively evil guy like Hitler could make his secretaries and cabinet officials believe in him, personally. That's a big part of how he got as far as he did. Trump doesn't seem to have anything like that.

[Gaidin]

Anyone else watch the hearings on Russia/Trump today? I caught just the end on CNN- lots of Comey getting questioned by belligerent Republicans and saying no comment, basically.

Also, Supreme Court nominee hearings start today.

Likely active case. He tore Trump a political asshole just by DOJ allowing him to say an investigation into Russia existed and had for God damned months Nevermind the fact the FBI and DOJ as a whole have no information anywhere from a case to an attempt to get any kind of warrant to...anything.... to support his wiretapping tweets (and the NSA don't either).

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, I figured that was at least partly down to not wanting to/not being permitted to comment on an ongoing investigation.

And seeing the utter discrediting of the wiretapping claims today was beautiful. I mean, we all know Trump is full of horse shit, but its nice to see him publicly called out for it in such a high profile manner.

[Flagg]

Anyone else watch the hearings on Russia/Trump today? I caught just the end on CNN- lots of Comey getting questioned by belligerent Republicans and saying no comment, basically.

Also, Supreme Court nominee hearings start today.

Likely active case. He tore Trump a political asshole just by DOJ allowing him to say an investigation into Russia existed and had for God damned months Nevermind the fact the FBI and DOJ as a whole have no information anywhere from a case to an attempt to get any kind of warrant to...anything.... to support his wiretapping tweets (and the NSA don't either).

I don't believe a word Cuntmey says, the piece of shit. If anything he's probably eyeball deep in what he's claiming to investigate. That's assuming there's an investigation at all, since he does have a history of announcing investigations that don't exist. After all, if he didn't then we wouldn't be saddled with President Pussygrabber.

[Gaidin]

Get over yourself and take the fucking win asshat.

Or.

Prove every claim you just made.

[Flagg]

Get over yourself and take the fucking win asshat.

Or.

Prove every claim you just made.

What "win"? There's no "win". Oooh, President Pussygrabber is being "investigated". I'm sure the Republican majority in congress will let one go forward, or if they do will take action based on its findings. It's not about "winning" or "losing", so grow up.

And I can't "prove" that Cuntmey announcing bullshit in the weeks before a presidential election cost Clinton said election, but I can say I believe it did. And if not, It sure as hell didn't help.

[Gaidin]

Dude, you're implying perjury in your last post. You don't believe a thing he says and the sheer vitriol implies intent. Get to work.

[Flagg]

Dude, you're implying perjury in your last post. You don't believe a thing he says and the sheer vitriol implies intent. Get to work.

No? I don't work for you or anyone else and I sure as fuck don't have to prove my beliefs. Especially not to someone who believes in such childish things as "taking the win" as if it's a sporting competition.

[Gaidin]

Then your posts mean shit to me and his testimony is fine if you don't want to do legwork. Burden of proof is a thing dude.

[Flagg]

Then your posts mean shit to me and his testimony is fine if you don't want to do legwork. Burden of proof is a thing dude.

I don't care what means shit to you and what doesn't. I don't believe testimony made by liars who abuse their positions to interfere in presidential elections. Aside from the fact that yet again an investigation into a Clinton resulted in there being no "there" there, any announcement could have waited until after the election.

So take your "win" as I laugh at it coming to nothing. Short of a special prosecutor and a congress willing to do more than wag their fingers and say how mad they are it all amounts to bullshit.

[Gaidin]

Cmon dude. Catch a dude lying under oath and you can trash his involvement in what's going down. Right now you're just saying "I don't like him so fuck him". The elections themselves, except for the testimony the Russians didn't directly fuck with voting, but did fuck with other things, have nothing to do with this.

[Flagg]

Cmon dude. Catch a dude lying under oath and you can trash his involvement in what's going down. Right now you're just saying "I don't like him so fuck him". The elections themselves, except for the testimony the Russians didn't directly fuck with voting, but did fuck with other things, have nothing to do with this.

It's called "integrity". Someone fully willing to abuse their powerful position to kneecap a presidential candidate lacks integrity and is therefore untrustworthy. You seem to think that committing perjury is worse than abusing power to interfer in a presidential election when the only difference is that one is a crime and the other effects the lives of every American and others around the world.

So feel free to believe a total shitlord's testimony if you want to. I don't, and I'm not required to, nor am I required to prove he perjured himself when all I'm saying is "I don't believe him". Feel free to. Feel free to treat politics as a sport and count your "wins" like they mean something.

[Gaidin]

One is a literal crime. One is saying what he is perceived to believe he has to after the AG leaves him hanging(not under oath until that one day Congress calls him, mind you). You really can't tell the difference? You're really that political?

You want a major something against Comey here. Find it. Help Trump that much.

[Flagg]

One is a literal crime. One is saying what he is perceived to believe he has to after the AG leaves him hanging(not under oath until that one day Congress calls him, mind you). You really can't tell the difference? You're really that political?

You want a major something against Comey here. Find it. Help Trump that much.

Christ, it's like talking to a 2 year old. Let me make it clear enough for you:

Comey abused his power as head of the FBI to interfere in a presidential election to hurt the candidate who lost. That is a massively shitheadedly dishonest thing to do. That shows a very large lack of integrity. Why should I believe that a person who broke their oath to uphold the Constitution wouldn't break their oath to tell the truth?

I don't care who it helps or hurts, I don't find anything he says worth listening to. I don't view politics as a sporting event where "different sides" score "wins" and "losses". That type of thinking is 24 hour cable news bullshit that has helped to make politics in this country the cesspit it is.

If my opinion, which I've stressed is a belief based on me not just believing what dishonest people who break oaths say (in your case you seem to want to believe it because it hurts President Pussygrabber) because they could go to jail for breaking another oath distresses you, then I'm sorry I gave you a sad.

You can drop it now.

[Thanas]

This is all you need to know about Comey:

FBI director James Comey had a very busy July.

He closed a protracted investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. He filed no charges but blasted her conduct as “extremely careless” nonetheless, a lasting wound to her campaign. The public lashing contravened the normal procedure of staying silent on cases that are not prosecuted. Comey’s grandstanding press conference at the time seemed political.

Meanwhile, he confirmed at a congressional hearing yesterday, that in that same month the FBI had opened an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, collusion intended to hurt the Clinton campaign and help Donald Trump. Confirming the existence of an investigation before it has concluded was also unusual and possibly political.

During the campaign, Comey kept silent about this investigation into far graver matters than the endless pursuit of what Bernie Sanders called Clinton’s “damn emails”. Given the contacts between Trump campaign officials and the Russians, public acknowledgment of this investigation certainly could have damaged his candidacy. What is known about the Russian meddling has contributed to the historically low approval ratings for a new president.

Here’s the uncomfortable question that hung in the air at yesterday’s hearing: could the FBI director’s disproportionate treatment of the two cases have influenced the outcome of the election every bit as much as any Russian efforts? We will never know.

[FireNexus]

There were literal russia-backed BernieBots fucking with Clinton on pro-Bernie Facebook pages. Heh.

[The Romulan Republic]

That surprises me not in the least, but I think we need to make a distinction between genuine Sanders supporters, and Russian operatives who were simply posing as Bernie supporters to try to divide the Democrats.