Trump 30: Donald Trump and the Deathly Comb-Over

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

He's become even more scatterbrained than usual. Now he's confused his imaginary 'deep state' with 'deep space'. What else would he need a 'Space Force' for? 

And what tremendous amount of work in space is he talking about? Is he secretly building a Death Star?

 

I don't know... A couple of days ago Yahoo had a story about a Navy pilot who saw something while he was flying and he's not very sure what it was. Could Trump think that we're about to be invaded by extraterrestrials? I could see him coming up with a Space Force for that.

[47of74]

34 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

I don't know... A couple of days ago Yahoo had a story about a Navy pilot who saw something while he was flying and he's not very sure what it was. Could Trump think that we're about to be invaded by extraterrestrials? I could see him coming up with a Space Force for that.

I also saw that Dumb Shit now wants a Space Force.  

I'm guessing he wants to outfit them like this...

What Dumb Shit's space force would probably do if they did meet aliens is do something really fucked up and provoke them into declaring a genocidal holy war against humanity, like the Minbari did in Babylon 5.  

[Bethella]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

What Dumb Shit's space force would probably do if they did meet aliens is do something really fucked up and provoke them into declaring a genocidal holy war against humanity, like the Minbari did in Babylon 5.  

As long as they promise to get rid of Dumpy, I might join them. 

[AnywhereButHere]

He’s got so many options. Which Death Star would he choose?

[fraurosena]

On the list of things that make you go 'Hmmm".

(Yes, I have C+C Music Factory blasting in the background here)

Trump's lawyer in Mueller probe, John Dowd, cited for Trump campaign contribution above the legal max

Quote

President Donald Trump's personal lawyer in the Russia probe, John Dowd, contributed more money last year to the president's re-election campaign than is legally permissible, according to a recent letter from the Federal Election Commission to the Trump campaign.

Dowd is Trump's lead counsel, charged with crafting the president's response to the special counsel's investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. A veteran white-collar defense attorney and a politically active Republican, Dowd's understanding of how Washington works has made him a key member of the president's legal team.

But a March 8 letter from the FEC to Bradley Crate, the Trump campaign treasurer, put the campaign on notice that there were 108 donors who had made "excessive, prohibited and impermissible" contributions to the Trump campaign in the last quarter of 2017. Dowd's name appeared on this list, below. The X is for donations that require additional details.

Under federal law, the maximum amount an individual may contribute to a political campaign, per election, is $2,700. But Dowd has given a total of $3,000 to Trump's 2020 general election campaign, according to the tally the FEC sent the Trump campaign.

Crate told CNBC that the campaign sent Dowd a refund check for $300 on January 3, a few days too late to be reflected in their fourth quarter filing to the FEC. He said it will appear on its next quarterly report to the FEC, to be released in April. Dowd said he had received the check.

It's not uncommon for individual donors to accidentally contribute more to a candidate than the legal maximum of $2,700. But Dowd's case is unusual, both because of the donor and because of the date, said Brendan Fischer, senior counsel at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

"These kinds of errors are understandable when made in the midst of a hectic election season by a rookie campaign. But they become more difficult to understand when made by a second-term presidential candidate 32 months out from his next election," Fischer told CNBC. "And it is even more difficult to understand how the president's lawyer managed to exceed contribution limits."

"This is pretty embarrassing for the Trump campaign and for Dowd," said a prominent D.C. election attorney who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity.

As for who bears responsibility for the fact that Dowd's Oct. 1 contribution was above the legal limit, and yet was accepted by the Trump campaign, experts said both the donor and the campaign share culpability.

"The law prohibits contributors from making excessive contributions to candidates, but it also prohibits candidates from accepting the excessive contribution. So both contributors and candidates bear responsibility – for making & accepting contributions, respectively," sad Steve Spaulding, a former FEC special counsel now at the nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause.

The FEC has given the Trump campaign until April 12 to respond to the rest of the letter, which includes a 46-page list of 108 individual donors, including Dowd, who made excessive contributions in the third quarter of 2017. Campaigns have 60 days after the date of a prohibited contribution to either refund it, attribute it to another person (such as the donor's spouse), or redesignate it to another election.

"Not accepting contributions that exceed federal limits is one of the most basic responsibilities for a campaign committee, although we can expect that campaigns bringing in a high volume of contributions will make some errors," Campaign Legal Center's Fischer said.

Individual donor limits, however, are not Fischer's chief concern when it comes to the burgeoning Trump 2020 campaign operation, he said.

"The Trump campaign's reckless record keeping is less problematic to me than its close association with the dark money group America First Policies," Fischer said, referring to a nonprofit group closely aligned with the Trump White House, which CNBC reported on earlier this month.

"The FEC will catch when a donor gives more than $2,700 to the Trump campaign," he said. "But nobody can know when a shady billionaire gives millions of dollars to Trump's dark money group and asks for something in return."

Sweet Rufus, a grand total of 108 individual donors made excessive contributions. 

Shady, shady, shady.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Rumor:

McCabe, Sessions, McMaster and of course Mueller could all be in the firing line soon-ish. 

[GreyhoundFan]

[Howl]

I love Aunt Crabby so hard. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because it's always all about Dumpy: "Trump Says a Democrat Won in Pennsylvania Because He’s ‘Like Trump’"

Spoiler

If Donald Trump is worried about Democrats using an upset victory in Pennsylvania as a blueprint for winning big in the midterms, he didn’t let on.

Trump broke his silence on the election at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley Wednesday night, telling a crowd of donors that Lamb had run “a pretty smart race, actually,” according to an audio recording of the remarks obtained by The Atlantic. Democrat Conor Lamb defeated Republican Rick Saccone in a district Trump won by nearly 20 points in 2016.

“The young man last night that ran, he said, ‘Oh, I’m like Trump. Second Amendment, everything. I love the tax cuts, everything.’ He ran on that basis,” Trump said, according to audio of the event shared with The Atlantic. “He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me. I said, ‘Is he a Republican? He sounds like a Republican to me.’”

Later on, he stressed Lamb’s appeal to many blue-collar conservatives, saying, “But I guess when you’re running in a certain area, that’s probably a good tactic.”

Trump had been unusually silent about the race on Wednesday, a departure from past elections Republicans have lost during his time as president. After Republican Ed Gillespie lost his gubernatorial bid in Virginia to Ralph Northam, a Democrat, Trump was quick to claim that Gillespie “did not embrace me or what I stand for.” And when Republican Roy Moore lost to a Democrat, Doug Jones, in a controversial Alabama Senate race, he said he “originally” knew that Moore would “not be able to win the general election.”

Yet the day after Saccone lost by a razor-thin margin against Lamb, a square-jawed Marine veteran who was careful not to make anti-Trumpism the central tenet of his campaign, Trump’s Twitter feed was empty of any mentions of the race. The president did return to one familiar self-congratulatory mode: He argued at the Hawley fundraiser that his last-minute rally for Saccone on Saturday in Moon Township had been an overall success, saying that it boosted the candidate’s vote total.

“We had an interesting time because we lifted [Saccone] seven points up. That’s a lot,” Trump said. “And I was up 22 points, and we lifted seven, and seven normally would be enough, but we’ll see how it all comes out. It’s, like, virtually a tie.” (It was not exactly clear what Trump was basing his conclusion of a seven-point boost on.)

He also attempted to downplay the race’s significance. “It’s actually interesting, because it’s only a congressman for five months,” Trump said, referring to the fact that the district will likely be redrawn ahead of the midterm elections in November. “I don’t know about that one, Josh. It was a lot of work for five months.”

But Trump then seemed to crack a joke at Saccone’s expense, touting Hawley as a strong challenger to Democrat Claire McCaskill. “Because you do need the right candidate, have you heard about that?” Trump said. The crowd erupted in laughter. “You do need the right candidate.” He was alluding, perhaps, to widespread criticism in Republican circles that Saccone lacked charisma and was a lackluster fundraiser.

Trump may have attributed Lamb’s success to the seemingly conservative message in his campaign, but he also cautioned that Lamb’s party affiliation would take priority in Washington, despite his pledge not to back Pelosi for speaker. “The bottom line is when he votes, he’s going to vote with Nancy Pelosi. And he’s gonna vote with Schumer,” Trump said. “And that’s what’s gonna happen, and there’s nothing he can do about it. So it doesn’t matter what he feels, it doesn’t matter.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

3 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

The Dealmaker Wannabe. He hasn't brains enough to fill an egg. The GOP knows that the world is watching and laughing.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

The GOP knows that the world is watching and laughing.

The most egregious thing though? The GOP knows all this and they still keep propping him up.

[Howl]

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Because it's always all about Dumpy: "Trump Says a Democrat Won in Pennsylvania Because He’s ‘Like Trump’"

It is so hard to overlook the fact that they also had the option to vote for an actual Republican who is a teavangelical Trump supporter.  Or am I missing something?  No, really, what am I missing here? 

My sense is the Republicans are going to demand a recount and hope that uses up all the time until the next election, when the current gerrymandered voting district will be divided up. 

[AmazonGrace]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

It is so hard to overlook the fact that they also had the option to vote for an actual Republican who is a teavangelical Trump supporter.  Or am I missing something?  No, really, what am I missing here? 

My sense is the Republicans are going to demand a recount and hope that uses up all the time until the next election, when the current gerrymandered voting district will be divided up. 

It's pretty funny what a difference a day makes: Before the election Lamb was presented as a demonic Nancy Pelosi reincarnation and after the election he's just another virtual Republican, no biggie.

[GreyhoundFan]

I saw this one on Aunt Crabby:

[GreyhoundFan]

"On TV, Trump loved to say ‘You’re fired.’ In real life, he leaves the dirty work to others."

Spoiler

Before the wall, before “Crooked Hillary,” before “I alone can fix it,” what many Americans knew about Donald Trump was summed up in one blunt catchphrase: “You’re fired.”

Trump’s signature line from his NBC reality show, “The Apprentice,” was, in quintessential Trump style, improvised. He blurted it out during the taping of his first show, and the crew instantly knew they had a winner.

Now, Trump is again being viewed as a leader given to frequent, dramatic sackings, this time with far more than ratings at stake. From national security adviser Michael Flynn’s departure less than a month into the new administration to this week’s firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the parade of departures has become a different kind of prime-time drama, raising questions about whether Trump is draining the swamp or creating dangerous instability.

Although the number of departures is unusual, the biggest change in how Washington operates is the way in which Trump has gone about swapping out personnel.

Tillerson learned that he was being fired via a presidential tweet. FBI Director James B. Comey found out he was sacked last year by seeing a headline on cable news. Last summer, chief of staff Reince Priebus’s White House career ended when other top officials hopped out of the black Suburban SUV that was carrying them from Air Force One back to Washington, leaving Priebus the lone passenger in a vehicle that then peeled out of the president’s motorcade.

In these and many other cases over the first 14 months of Trump’s administration, there was no “You’re fired” moment, at least not from the president. Presidents often outsource the unseemly business of firing people to their chief of staff, but “what’s really unusual about this president is the public humiliations,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, who studies presidential transitions at the Brookings Institution. “I’ve never seen a president criticize his staff so publicly and individually.”

The high-velocity spin on the White House’s revolving door stems in part from “an insurgent campaign that shunned experience” and in part from the president’s tendency to “value loyalty over qualifications,” Tenpas said.

She has calculated that first-year staff turnover in the Trump White House is more than triple that of Barack Obama’s administration and double that of Ronald Reagan’s.

Trump’s approach to management may be new to the White House, but it’s not surprising to those who have worked for him for decades.

Longtime executives in Trump’s business empire say that although he successfully constructed a popular conception of himself as a tough, blunt truth-teller, the “You’re fired” image was always a caricature.

On “The Apprentice,” the decisions about which contestant to jettison came not from the mercurial chief executive at the big, gleaming desk, but from the program’s producers, according to people who worked on the show. Trump got his instructions on whom to sack via a prompter on his desk that was made to look like a phone.

And in real life, in more than four decades at the helm of his family business, Trump did sometimes made a show of taking charge by dispatching underlings in public, humiliating fashion. But those were the exceptions. At the Trump Organization, he didn’t fire many people and, when he did, he only rarely took the action himself, generally leaving the dirty work to his deputies.

Trump has frequently explained the turnover in his operations by saying that he thrives on chaos and controversy. He has been quick to criticize or humiliate members of his administration in public — he peppered Tillerson with disdainful tweets and leaks, just as he had with Comey, Priebus and Jeff Sessions, who remains in the role of attorney general.

Yet some of those who have been subjected to harsh public critiques stay on in their jobs. And many of those who have left nonetheless remain loyal to Trump both publicly and privately — a pattern that has continued throughout his career, as fired staffers come back to work for him years later.

“Some people just haven’t synced well with him, but they still support his goals and philosophies,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary, who quit after six months in the position. “I approached my job in a very traditional way, as Rex did. And the president is a very untraditional disrupter. But even after you’re gone, he’s very helpful and looks after people who’ve been part of the team.”

Tenpas’s study of turnover in the Trump White House concluded that the staff volatility is so high in part because the president disdained people with government experience and was unwilling to hire people who had opposed him during the campaign.

Trump promised a break with business as usual, a governmentwide housecleaning that would entail plenty of departures. But his time in the White House has been notable for the number of sackings from within his own roster of appointments. Many of those who have left or been pushed out departed not because of policy differences, but because Trump did not connect with them or did not trust them.

“There’ll always be some degree of turnover because that’s who he is,” Spicer said. “But it will be less over time because he’s really starting to get a handle on the type of people he needs to push his agenda.”

Like the contestants on “The Apprentice,” many of those who have suffered embarrassing endings to their short tenures over the past year had the great disadvantage of not having spent much time around their boss before this job.

They therefore lacked the skills honed by executives who worked for Trump for decades. Most of his inner circle in the Trump Organization had, contrary to popular impressions of the president, devoted most of their working careers to what was often portrayed to the public as a virtual one-man show.

Those who stayed with Trump say they learned how to let him vent when he was angry. They knew how to appeal to his delight in appearing to be unpredictable. They knew not to challenge him in public but rather to master the art of hanging out in his office long enough to subtly make their case and, most crucially, get him to believe that some alternative to his stated view was also his idea.

“At some point, you have to understand your boss,” Spicer said. “You either cut against the grain or you understand how he operates.”

Those who have enjoyed long tenures with Trump say they learned early on that if they could balance his craving for respect and loyalty against his desire to project strength, they could sometimes get their way.

“The funny thing was that if you played him right, you could often win,” said Barbara Res, who ran Trump’s construction operations in the 1980s. “He needed to be stroked all the time and told how smart he was. Every decision process was clouded by his sense that he knows more than anybody else. But you could work with that: The way we got things done was to approach him with an idea and make him think it was his. It was so easy.”

While he built his reputation as a savvy dealmaker who relished conflict, Trump has rarely tolerated open dissent. Rather, he tells his executives that he expects them to rally around and defend him against reactions stirred up by his various provocations.

From his stunning dismissal of Comey last May through the flurry of recent firings, Trump has sought to define his brand as leadership that moves swiftly and unilaterally, embracing controversy because it’s a surefire way to dominate the news.

He has called himself a “ratings machine,” and he has always rewarded those who enhanced that role and punished those who sought to share the limelight.

Since the 1970s, Trump has been quick to push out people who spoke out against him, contradicted him in public, claimed credit for something his company had achieved or behaved in ways he considered disloyal.

The hierarchical structure of the federal bureaucracy was never going to be a comfortable place for Trump. Before taking office, Trump told a group of visiting Silicon Valley executives that it would be simple to work with him: “You’ll call my people, you’ll call me,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference. We have no formal chain of command here.”

But once he got to Washington, Trump found himself without close aides who knew when to yield to him and how to push him without sending him over the edge.

And as his presidency has faced pressure from low popularity ratings, dangers around the world and a constant drumbeat of investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by his campaign, he has gotten rid of or threatened people for failing to embrace his policies, embarrassing him, or being what he considered weak or insufficiently supportive.

“I listen to people,” Trump wrote in one of his books, “Think Like a Billionaire,” “but my vision is my vision.”

Just like any other bully, Dumpy wants to appear strong to hide his serious weaknesses.

[GreyhoundFan]

One of the last adults is on the way out: "Trump decides to remove national security adviser, and others may follow"

Spoiler

President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.

Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said.

The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration by Trump that is likely to include senior officials at the White House, where staffers are gripped by fear and un­certainty as they await the next move from an impulsive president who enjoys stoking conflict.

For all of the evident disorder, Trump feels emboldened, advisers said — buoyed by what he views as triumphant decisions last week to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum and to agree to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president is enjoying the process of assessing his team and making changes, tightening his inner circle to those he considers survivors and who respect his unconventional style, one senior White House official said.

Just days ago, Trump used Twitter to fire Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state whom he disliked, and moved to install his close ally, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, in the job. On Wednesday, he named conservative TV analyst Larry Kudlow to replace his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who quit over trade disagreements.

And on Thursday, Trump signaled that more personnel moves were likely. “There will always be change,” the president told reporters. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”

This portrait of the Trump administration in turmoil is based on interviews with 19 presidential advisers and administration officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid perspectives.

The mood inside the White House in recent days has verged on mania, as Trump increasingly keeps his own counsel and senior aides struggle to determine the gradations between rumor and truth. At times, they say, they are anxious and nervous, wondering what each new headline may mean for them personally.

But in other moments, they appear almost as characters in an absurdist farce — openly joking about whose career might end with the next presidential tweet. Some White House officials have begun betting about which staffer will be ousted next, though few, if any, have much reliable information about what is actually going on.

Many aides were particularly unsettled by the firing of the president’s longtime personal aide, John McEntee, who was marched out of the White House on Tuesday after his security clearance was abruptly revoked.

“Everybody fears the perp walk,” one senior White House official said. “If it could happen to Johnny, the president’s body guy, it could happen to anybody.” 

Trump recently told White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he wants McMaster out and asked for help weighing replacement options, according to two people familiar with their conversations. The president has complained that McMaster is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant.

Several candidates have emerged as possible McMaster replacements, including John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Keith Kellogg, the chief of staff of the National Security Council.

Kellogg travels with Trump on many domestic trips, in part because the president likes his company and thinks he is fun. Bolton has met with Trump several times and often agrees with the president’s instincts. Trump also thinks Bolton, who regularly praises the president on Fox News Channel, is good on television.

Some in the White House have been reluctant to oust McMaster from his national security perch until he has a promotion to four-star rank or other comfortable landing spot. They are eager to show that someone can serve in the Trump administration without suffering severe damage to their reputation.

McMaster is not the only senior official on thin ice with the president. Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has attracted Trump’s ire for his spending decisions as well as for general disorder in the senior leadership of his agency.

Others considered at risk for being fired or reprimanded include Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has generated bad headlines for ordering a $31,000 dining room set for his office; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has been under fire for his first-class travel at taxpayer expense; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose agency spent $139,000 to renovate his office doors.

Meanwhile, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos drew attention this week when she stumbled through a pair of high-profile television interviews. Kelly watched DeVos’s sit-down with Lesley Stahl of CBS’s “60 Minutes” with frustration and complained about the secretary’s apparent lack of preparation, officials said. Other Trump advisers mocked DeVos’s shaky appearance with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” show.

Kelly’s own ouster has been widely speculated for weeks. But two top officials said Trump on Thursday morning expressed disbelief to Vice President Pence, senior advisers and Kelly himself that Kelly’s name was surfacing on media watch lists because his job is secure. Trump and Kelly then laughed about it, the officials said.

The widespread uncertainty has created power vacuums that could play to the advantage of some administration aides.

Pompeo, who carefully cultivated a personal relationship with the president, had positioned himself as the heir apparent to Tillerson, whom Trump had long disliked.

Similarly, Pruitt has made no secret inside the West Wing of his ambition to become attorney general should Trump decide to fire Jeff Sessions, whom he frequently derides for his decision to recuse himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

White House officials have grown agitated that Pruitt and his allies are privately pushing for the EPA chief to replace Sessions, a job Pruitt has told people he wants. On Wednesday night, Kelly called Pruitt and told him that the president was happy with his performance at EPA and that he did not need to worry about the Justice Department, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

With Hope Hicks resigning her post as communications director, the internal jockeying to replace her has been especially intense between Mercedes Schlapp, who oversees the White House’s long-term communications planning, and Tony Sayegh, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s top communications adviser.

Trump enjoys watching his subordinates compete for his approval. Many of the rumors are fueled by Trump himself because he complains to aides and friends about other staffers, or muses about who might make good replacements.

“I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view,” Trump said last week, rapping his fists toward one another to simulate a clash. “I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it’s the best way to go.” 

Shulkin, meanwhile, is facing mounting trouble after The Washington Post first reported that he and his wife took a sightseeing-filled trip to Europe on taxpayer funds, including watching tennis at Wimbledon. Shulkin is now facing an insurrection at his own agency, with tensions so high that an armed guard stands outside his office.

Another episode haunting Shulkin was a trip to the Invictus Games in Canada last September with first lady Melania Trump’s entourage. Shulkin fought with East Wing aides over his request that his wife accompany him on the trip because he was eager for her to meet Prince Harry of Wales, who founded the games, according to multiple officials familiar with the dispute.

The first lady’s office explained there was not room on the plane for Shulkin’s wife, and officials said the secretary was unpleasant during the trip.

Shulkin said in an email sent by a spokeswoman: “These allegations are simply untrue. I was honored to attend the Invictus Games with the First Lady and understood fully when I was told that there wasn’t any more room for guests to attend.”

A leading contender to replace Shulkin is Pete Hegseth, an Iraq War veteran and Fox News personality who is a conservative voice on veterans policy, officials said.

White House officials said there are several reasons Trump has not axed Cabinet members with whom he has grown disenchanted: the absence of consensus picks to replace them; concern that their nominated successors may not get confirmed in the divided Senate; and reluctance to pick allied senators or House members for fear of losing Republican seats in special elections, as happened last year in Alabama.

Also, Trump has sometimes expressed confusion about what agencies and secretaries are in charge of what duties, a senior administration official said. For example, this official said, he has complained to Pruitt about regulatory processes for construction projects, although the EPA is not in charge of the regulations.

Amid the disarray, White House staff are training Cabinet secretaries and their staffs on ethics rules and discussing new processes to prevent mistakes. William J. McGinley, who runs the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs, and Stefan C. Passantino, a deputy White House counsel, have met individually and in groups with Carson, Pruitt, Shulkin, Zinke and other Cabinet secretaries to impress upon them the importance of changing behavior.

Simply following the letter of the law is not enough, administration officials said. Trump and Kelly demand that their Cabinet secretaries be mindful of political optics and the bad headlines that come with misbehavior.

“Even if the legal guys sign off on it,” one official said, “you still step back and say, ‘Does this make sense optically?’ ”

 

[47of74]

6 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

One of the last adults is on the way out: "Trump decides to remove national security adviser, and others may follow"

  Hide contents

President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.

Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said.

The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration by Trump that is likely to include senior officials at the White House, where staffers are gripped by fear and un­certainty as they await the next move from an impulsive president who enjoys stoking conflict.

For all of the evident disorder, Trump feels emboldened, advisers said — buoyed by what he views as triumphant decisions last week to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum and to agree to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president is enjoying the process of assessing his team and making changes, tightening his inner circle to those he considers survivors and who respect his unconventional style, one senior White House official said.

Just days ago, Trump used Twitter to fire Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state whom he disliked, and moved to install his close ally, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, in the job. On Wednesday, he named conservative TV analyst Larry Kudlow to replace his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who quit over trade disagreements.

And on Thursday, Trump signaled that more personnel moves were likely. “There will always be change,” the president told reporters. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”

This portrait of the Trump administration in turmoil is based on interviews with 19 presidential advisers and administration officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid perspectives.

The mood inside the White House in recent days has verged on mania, as Trump increasingly keeps his own counsel and senior aides struggle to determine the gradations between rumor and truth. At times, they say, they are anxious and nervous, wondering what each new headline may mean for them personally.

But in other moments, they appear almost as characters in an absurdist farce — openly joking about whose career might end with the next presidential tweet. Some White House officials have begun betting about which staffer will be ousted next, though few, if any, have much reliable information about what is actually going on.

Many aides were particularly unsettled by the firing of the president’s longtime personal aide, John McEntee, who was marched out of the White House on Tuesday after his security clearance was abruptly revoked.

“Everybody fears the perp walk,” one senior White House official said. “If it could happen to Johnny, the president’s body guy, it could happen to anybody.” 

Trump recently told White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he wants McMaster out and asked for help weighing replacement options, according to two people familiar with their conversations. The president has complained that McMaster is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant.

Several candidates have emerged as possible McMaster replacements, including John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Keith Kellogg, the chief of staff of the National Security Council.

Kellogg travels with Trump on many domestic trips, in part because the president likes his company and thinks he is fun. Bolton has met with Trump several times and often agrees with the president’s instincts. Trump also thinks Bolton, who regularly praises the president on Fox News Channel, is good on television.

Some in the White House have been reluctant to oust McMaster from his national security perch until he has a promotion to four-star rank or other comfortable landing spot. They are eager to show that someone can serve in the Trump administration without suffering severe damage to their reputation.

McMaster is not the only senior official on thin ice with the president. Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has attracted Trump’s ire for his spending decisions as well as for general disorder in the senior leadership of his agency.

Others considered at risk for being fired or reprimanded include Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has generated bad headlines for ordering a $31,000 dining room set for his office; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has been under fire for his first-class travel at taxpayer expense; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose agency spent $139,000 to renovate his office doors.

Meanwhile, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos drew attention this week when she stumbled through a pair of high-profile television interviews. Kelly watched DeVos’s sit-down with Lesley Stahl of CBS’s “60 Minutes” with frustration and complained about the secretary’s apparent lack of preparation, officials said. Other Trump advisers mocked DeVos’s shaky appearance with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “Today” show.

Kelly’s own ouster has been widely speculated for weeks. But two top officials said Trump on Thursday morning expressed disbelief to Vice President Pence, senior advisers and Kelly himself that Kelly’s name was surfacing on media watch lists because his job is secure. Trump and Kelly then laughed about it, the officials said.

The widespread uncertainty has created power vacuums that could play to the advantage of some administration aides.

Pompeo, who carefully cultivated a personal relationship with the president, had positioned himself as the heir apparent to Tillerson, whom Trump had long disliked.

Similarly, Pruitt has made no secret inside the West Wing of his ambition to become attorney general should Trump decide to fire Jeff Sessions, whom he frequently derides for his decision to recuse himself from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

White House officials have grown agitated that Pruitt and his allies are privately pushing for the EPA chief to replace Sessions, a job Pruitt has told people he wants. On Wednesday night, Kelly called Pruitt and told him that the president was happy with his performance at EPA and that he did not need to worry about the Justice Department, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

With Hope Hicks resigning her post as communications director, the internal jockeying to replace her has been especially intense between Mercedes Schlapp, who oversees the White House’s long-term communications planning, and Tony Sayegh, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s top communications adviser.

Trump enjoys watching his subordinates compete for his approval. Many of the rumors are fueled by Trump himself because he complains to aides and friends about other staffers, or muses about who might make good replacements.

“I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view,” Trump said last week, rapping his fists toward one another to simulate a clash. “I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it’s the best way to go.” 

Shulkin, meanwhile, is facing mounting trouble after The Washington Post first reported that he and his wife took a sightseeing-filled trip to Europe on taxpayer funds, including watching tennis at Wimbledon. Shulkin is now facing an insurrection at his own agency, with tensions so high that an armed guard stands outside his office.

Another episode haunting Shulkin was a trip to the Invictus Games in Canada last September with first lady Melania Trump’s entourage. Shulkin fought with East Wing aides over his request that his wife accompany him on the trip because he was eager for her to meet Prince Harry of Wales, who founded the games, according to multiple officials familiar with the dispute.

The first lady’s office explained there was not room on the plane for Shulkin’s wife, and officials said the secretary was unpleasant during the trip.

Shulkin said in an email sent by a spokeswoman: “These allegations are simply untrue. I was honored to attend the Invictus Games with the First Lady and understood fully when I was told that there wasn’t any more room for guests to attend.”

A leading contender to replace Shulkin is Pete Hegseth, an Iraq War veteran and Fox News personality who is a conservative voice on veterans policy, officials said.

White House officials said there are several reasons Trump has not axed Cabinet members with whom he has grown disenchanted: the absence of consensus picks to replace them; concern that their nominated successors may not get confirmed in the divided Senate; and reluctance to pick allied senators or House members for fear of losing Republican seats in special elections, as happened last year in Alabama.

Also, Trump has sometimes expressed confusion about what agencies and secretaries are in charge of what duties, a senior administration official said. For example, this official said, he has complained to Pruitt about regulatory processes for construction projects, although the EPA is not in charge of the regulations.

Amid the disarray, White House staff are training Cabinet secretaries and their staffs on ethics rules and discussing new processes to prevent mistakes. William J. McGinley, who runs the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs, and Stefan C. Passantino, a deputy White House counsel, have met individually and in groups with Carson, Pruitt, Shulkin, Zinke and other Cabinet secretaries to impress upon them the importance of changing behavior.

Simply following the letter of the law is not enough, administration officials said. Trump and Kelly demand that their Cabinet secretaries be mindful of political optics and the bad headlines that come with misbehavior.

“Even if the legal guys sign off on it,” one official said, “you still step back and say, ‘Does this make sense optically?’ ”

 

This is part of the reason why I've been saying there isn't enough money on god's green earth to make me want to work for fuck face or any of his groupies.  I would not even consider a position within an executive branch agency right now.

 

On 3/14/2018 at 7:03 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

I've met John a couple times when he was up in Madison.  Really nice guy.  

[fraurosena]

That revolving door will soon twist off it's anchors with all these people it's spitting out on a daily basis.

White House shake-up: Chief of staff John Kelly may also be on the way out, sources say

Quote

A shake-up that some at the White House are preemptively calling a purge is coming. It could take down a chief of staff, a national security adviser, and up to three Cabinet secretaries, reports CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett. It all depends on President Trump's volatile mood and available, willing replacements.

"We're coming back and doing it more so than we've ever done before. We're setting records," Mr. Trump said Wednesday in St. Louis, touting what he called record-setting economic progress.

But the turnover of top aides at his White House has also made history. So far, in the 14 months of his presidency, more than 20 senior administration staffers have either been fired, resigned or reassigned. 

The next to go could be National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, expected to be replaced by former Bush administration official and frequent Fox News analyst John Bolton. Bolton is a hawk on Iran and North Korea, like new secretary of state nominee and current CIA chief Mike Pompeo.

The man brought in last summer to impose order in the White House, chief of staff John Kelly, may also be on the way out, according to congressional and administration sources. 

And Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin could be forced out, with Energy Secretary Rick Perry in line to replace him.

In February, the VA inspector general determined Shulkin used taxpayer dollars on a lavish trip to Europe for his wife. Mr. Trump joked about firing Shulkin last summer.

"It will be properly implemented, right David? It better be David, or [mouths "you're fired"]. We'll never have to use those words on our David," Mr. Trump said.

Sources said secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson is also in jeopardy, after purchasing a $31,000 dining room set for his office. The order was eventually canceled.

The president's new chief economist, CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow, gave an interview in which he disagreed with Mr. Trump on tariffs and NAFTA. "We mustn't shoot ourselves in the foot," Kudlow said.

Kudlow, who will replace Gary Cohn, last served in government in 1985. He asked Cohn -- himself a novice -- for a quick refresher course.

"I said, 'Gary, this is a really dumb question, but look, what do you do? What's your day like? What do you do?"' Kudlow said.

There are conflicting interpretations of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' job security. Long a target of the president's scorn, Sessions may be replaced by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, though other sources say Sessions may survive because a confirmation battle over his replacement would be too drawn out.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Daily 202: Trump may hire multiple cable news personalities as part of shake-up". The article is far too long to quote, but is worth a read. Here are some highlights:

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump’s reality television presidency may be getting more star power for season two.

Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing Fox News contributor John Bolton as a potential successor.

A leading contender to replace Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is Pete Hegseth, the co-host of “Fox and Friends Weekend.”

The president named CNBC analyst and former host Larry Kudlow to replace former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn as his chief economic adviser on Wednesday.

Heather Nauert, a former co-host of “Fox and Friends,” got promoted on Monday from being a spokeswoman for the State Department to acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. She replaced Steve Goldstein, who was fired because he publicly contradicted the White House’s claim that Rex Tillerson knew he was being fired before Trump announced it on Twitter. (Is it any coincidence that Mike Pompeo got elevated from Langley to Foggy Bottom the morning after he aggressively went to bat for Trump on the Sunday shows?)

-- Trump’s plot to poach from green rooms is an additional proof point that validates two important themes I’ve written about: Trump has debased the value of expertise and supercharged the celebrification of American politics.

...

-- Bolton, an outspoken hawk who had a tumultuous and short-lived tenure as George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, is also seen as too extreme by many Republicans on Capitol Hill, but he wouldn’t need to get confirmed to become national security adviser. “Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up,” Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey, Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig reported last night. “Bolton has met with Trump several times and often agrees with the president’s instincts. Trump also thinks Bolton … is good on television.”

Another finalist for the job is Keith Kellogg, the chief of staff of the National Security Council. “Kellogg travels with Trump on many domestic trips, in part because the president likes his company and thinks he is fun,” my colleagues report.

...

-- The president reportedly has fewer events on his schedule than he did during the opening year of his presidency so that he can have extra “executive time” in the residence, which appears to be a euphemism for watching television. That’s only intensified the cable news feedback loop. Trump’s tweets routinely echo messages, sometimes word for word, that he heard on Fox minutes earlier. Remember Trump’s tweet about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s “button”?

...

-- Trump plainly enjoys the company of people he sees on TV. Trump invited Sebastian Gorka, a lightning rod who got fired from the White House last year but now spends a lot of time defending the president on Fox, over for dinner last week. Jesse Watters, a co-host of Fox’s “The Five,” joined them. “According to a White House official and two other sources familiar with the meeting, Trump invited Gorka and Watters because ‘he couldn’t get enough of them on TV,’ as one source put it, and wanted to confab with them about what he’d seen on Fox News, politics, gossip, and his administration,” The Daily Beast reported.

...

-- The embattled president also appears to be putting a greater premium on loyalty as he makes personnel decisions. He clearly feels burned by some of his early hiring decisions. For example, Trump interviewed Jeanine Pirro, the host of Fox’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” to be deputy attorney general. Instead, he went along with Rod Rosenstein, a respected DOJ insider who he had no prior relationship with. That’s a decision he’s repeatedly said that he regrets.

-- Trump’s embrace of talking heads has become a punch line in popular culture. “To help find [Gary Cohn’s] replacement, the president turned to his most trusted confidante: the TV in his bedroom,” Comedy Central host Trevor Noah said on “The Daily Show” last night. “Basically, if Trump sees you on TV, there’s a really good chance that he’ll hire you. By the time his term is done, his attorney general is going to be ‘Judge Judy’ and his housing secretary will be ‘Bob the Builder.’”

 

[fraurosena]

Well, it's official: McMaster is out.

 

[Howl]

From miscellaneous tweets

• Trump's dalliance with Stormy might nullify his prenup with Melania. 
• Stormy's lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is aggressive, professional, and really really smart; kind of a lawyer's lawyer. He's the kind of lawyer that Trump thinks he has, but clearly doesn't 

The New York Daily Intelligencer reports

Quote

 

A lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she was paid $130,000 to stay quiet about an affair with Donald Trump, said on Morning Joe Friday that his client has been “physically threatened” as a part of the effort to cover up her relationship with Trump. It was the second major revelation Friday morning by Michael Avenatti, who previously told CNN that six other women have approached him with stories about Trump similar to his client’s.

During the Morning Joe interview, which Avenatti used to tease Daniels’s March 25 interview on 60 Minutes, he said, “There’s the act and there’s the coverup and the American people are going to learn about both in the interview and beyond.”

 

re: McMaster 

Well, it IS Friday, so there's that.  Hope McCabe isn't fired and gets his pension.  Is McMaster the first domino to fall in firing Mueller? 

Rumor is that Trump will appoint some Fux talking heads to fill spots in the administration roster.  But why would someone take that offer?  They make mega $$$$$ at Fux and wouldn't in the WH and, however much they shill for Trump, they know working in the WH is a meat grinder and who wants to end up as ground round with an expired best by date? 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump won’t be able to buy his way out of trouble this time"

Spoiler

Over the years, Donald Trump honed what seemed like a foolproof method for bad behavior with few consequences: Bully and buy your way out of trouble. A favorite Trump tactic, whether you were a Trump Organization employee, Trump campaign aide or Trump wife, involved the nondisclosure agreement, with the accompanying threat of litigation for daring to spill his secrets.

But this approach doesn’t work for presidents. Alas for Trump, presidents can’t impose such agreements on their aides or, increasingly in the case of this administration, former aides. And the gusher of departures increasingly and exponentially raises the risk for Trump. Some of them are going to start to talk — yes, even more than they did, anonymously, when they still worked for him.

So you might have thought that Trump, who has been wary throughout his career about the damage that exes (ex-employees, ex-wives) could do, would be more careful about how he has gone about axing senior officials — most recently and ignominiously Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, dumped in a manner calculated to impose maximum humiliation.

Note to the president: If you fire the guy by tweet before you deign to pick up the phone to tell him yourself, don’t be surprised if he turns around and spills the beans on you and your administration.

And here’s the thing: Tillerson is no Stormy Daniels. Nor are former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer, former staff secretary Rob Porter, former who-knows-what-she-did-there Omarosa Manigault-Newman — or any others on the growing list of formers canned with a minimum of presidential grace and a potential goody bag overflowing with problematic stories. Some of them deserved the kick to the curb of Pennsylvania Avenue, but that’s not the point. The point is that they can’t be stopped from talking.

In the end, I predict, Trump isn’t going to be able to stop the porn actress from telling her story, either. Indeed, Trump’s heavy-handed effort to keep Daniels from talking about an affair in which he denies engaging only serves to heighten attention to her account and underscore his desperation to muzzle her.

But whatever Trump’s litigation prospects with Daniels, he has little to no leverage to silence the administration officials he has treated so badly — and he knows it. “When people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I don’t like that,” Trump told The Post’s Robert Costa and Bob Woodward back in April 2016, when they asked about his penchant for nondisclosure agreements.

How useful have they been for Trump? Well, when he was flirting with a presidential bid in 1999 and ex-wife No. 2, Marla Maples, threatened “to tell the people what he is really like,” Trump countered by withholding a $1.5 million alimony payment, although he eventually backed down.

Cabinet officials don’t sign prenups.

The blabbing — not that this administration has exactly been buttoned down so far — might not happen right away. Some ex-officials want to maintain the patina of loyalty, at least until they’ve got the big book deal in hand. Some may stay quiet because it serves their financial interests to maintain good relations with — and easy access to — the White House as they build law or lobbying practices. But make no mistake: The storytelling about what is really going on inside the Trump White House — “Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50,” Priebus told Vanity Fair — has scarcely commenced.

And Trump’s preferred tactic for compelling silence is proving of limited utility. Before Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” was published in January, Trump deployed his lawyer to fire off a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon. Lawyer Charles Harder asserted that Bannon, blabbing to Wolff, had violated the terms of a campaign-era nondisclosure agreement in which he agreed “not to demean or disparage publicly” the Trump Organization, Trump himself or “any family member.” Legal action, Harder huffed and puffed, “is imminent.”

[Sound of fingers tapping.]

Every president dreads the kiss-and-tell memoir and its assorted relatives, the killer “60 Minutes” interview, the spill-the-beans magazine piece. The traditional ways to avoid these are twofold. Don’t do anything you’d be embarrassed to read about, and treat the people who work for you in a way that inspires loyalty, not backstabbing.

If I were Trump, I’d be worried about a lot more than what Stormy Daniels has to say.

Money doesn't buy everything...

[fraurosena]

Transcript of an actual conversation in the Oval Office with the Stable Genius Presidunce: