Beyond belief. Donald Trump is running the most powerful country in the world in the same fashion as he conducted his real estate business and The Apprentice television reality show.
Trump's modus operandi raises the following questions: How long can the system of checks and balance operate before a major political crisis erupts?
Can the US institutions change Donald Trump or, conversely, is Trump changing the existing American power structure?
1
Sad, so sad when trust in the "POTUSA is falling.
His suing a person to keep her from talking is a sign of possible wrong doings.
Who can help save our Republic?
This is what it has come to: the need for daily reassurance of WH staff that „there will be no beheadings today! Come back tomorrow. Until then please focus on your job!“
All this while Putin is destabilizing the western world by agitating, cyber attacking infrastructure, killing opponents in the UK as he pleases, influencing elections etc.
America, you should be out in the streets of Washington D.C. by the hundreds of thousands.
1
Our POTUS to talent is blind,
making all his picks of like mind.
His team, well it stinks,
so sack them he thinks?
the smart ones already resigned.
1
Another episode of realty tv from DT. Will they go or will they stay? I am beginning to think 'who cares'?
Trump doesn't have the insight to realize these cabinet heads are clueless as to scope, mission and ethics because he lacks the knowledge, the history, the understanding of three branch dynamic, because he lacks the understanding of abiding by the rule of law as he has skirted rules all his life. That is why he has had thousands of law suits, and lives in the shadow of his lawyers. He does not love chaos as he keeps saying and media pundits on the left and right keep repeating how he loves the disorder just do not get that he is incapable of operating any other way. They cannot be expected to think and make decisions for themselves. That is why so many jobs are left unfilled. He has no other way of relating to reality because he does not understand how to work with people. Only against them.
3
Trump playbook:
1- Wait til there's an event that has a negative impact on me. (Shocking election loss of a Republican candidate/Stormy Daniels bombshell, etc., )
2- View my org chart
3- Which member of the staff will make enough news to offset the negative event
4- Tweet away
4
He has the opposite of the Midas touch. Every person he touches is contaminated and degraded. A vector, carrier of disease or pestilence and degradation of the soul. Who would have guessed ?????
2
Sarah Sanders tells more than just "white lies" every day and every time she meets the press corps. Clearly she has mastered that art and relishes it very much because she utters these lies with great joy and gusto. She is the only one who can be sure of her job.
2
what do you mean by shake up. it's done nothing but shaking, and because it's so empty, rattling, too.
1
Can't decide who is the most deserving. McMaster is actually probably competent. But Carson, DeVos, Mnuchin, Pruitt? All wasting our tax dollars, wasting our intellectual capital, shaming our country. Kelly has shown cruelty and bigotry. I am sure I am missing some. He is not very good at hiring the good people. Now he just wants a Fox propagandists.
1
I Jennifer Lopez was just selected as a judge for next week’s elimination round. Simon Cowell said no.
Yeah, I guess that's right: "Nothing changed today' is definitely news in TrumpWorld.
1
Remember: Trump views this (his 'role' as POTUS) as a reality TV show and acts accordingly to keep the 'viewers' tuned in to Trump TV. And it works.
It's what is behind all the drama that we should be paying attention to -- sure, Ben Carson, and Zinke, and Shulkin and others have abused the public trust in the extreme, and it should be reported, but the damage and what we really need to pay attention to is what they're doing (and not doing) in their roles as department heads. It's crazy, and it going to hurt this country and us!
And beyond that, there are competent appointees (Pruitt for example) that are seriously wreaking havoc on the very entities they're supposed to be the oversight for.
The 'show' is a distraction; we need to really pay attention and make sure voters are understanding what is really happening and how this will affect them, because it will and does.
2
He’d probably fire a lot more people, but I’m thinking people aren’t falling all over themselves wanting to be the replacements.
1
No amount of staff turnover will have any impact on the trajectory of this administration. It is 100% owned and operated by the President with all those surrounding him just as shocked and surprised as the rest of us on a daily basis. Please remember how smart he is. Just ask him.
2
"....at this time..." are three loaded and ominous words in this administration. That could mean at that very second, but not necessarily what comes between second 2 and second 59. With Trump, if he wakes up with indigestion tomorrow morning from too many French fries, the first thing that will flash on our iPhone or iPad screens can very well be that McMasters, Carson, and company are back to mowing their lawns.
In spite of what "they" say, Trump's Cabinet is not very much intact. It is made up of - with the exception of Mattis - inexperienced fools who are only there for self-promotion in one form or another. Laughable, isn't it?
And if the morale is low among the Cabinet elite and their underlings, I say they are getting what they deserve. They knew more than we how flawed Mr. Trump was went they accepted their positions. Yet, they had to have a piece of the pie. I have absolutely no sympathy or respect for any one walking through our home, The People's Home. They should all, starting with Trump, be evicted.
2
With apologies to John Donne:
No White House staffers are islands unto themselves; each is a piece of the mis-administration; a part of the chaos; if a miscreant be frog-marched off the premises, our government is in further turmoil, as well as if a cabinet department were, as well as any band of co-conspirators or fellow thieves; anyone’s departure further diminishes the Blessed One’s security, because each is involved in Criminal Enterprise. And therefore never send to know for whom the axe falls; It falls on thee.
"The absence of any formal announcements — or firings by presidential tweet — suggested that the White House was seeking to tamp down the anxiety inside the West Wing and the impression that the Trump administration is gripped by dysfunction."
just as likely that the reporting is inaccurate coming from inside people wanting to stir things up.
the media frenzy over this is comic severely damaging credibility; certain cable news networks spend hours of mindless conjecture hoping this is another way to ultimately destroy the trump presidencey.
let's say trump could only choose one person to fire. jeff sessions is right up there at the top as his actions led to the mueller probe and now the stormy headache unlikely to have developed absent a wider investigation.
trump must be seething with anger at the ag whose recusal opened the floodgates.
It amazes me that someone like Naved Jafry was able to do work for HUD. But, then again, it doesn't; it seems to be par for the course:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/15/ben-carson-adviser-naved...
Why in the world would anyone work there? The true believers are at greatest risk for a perp walk. They will be lucky if they are allowed to quit with their dignity intact.
If the table and chairs can't be returned, let's pay for them and put them in public housing.
Re: "despite speculation that they would be replaced because of the president’s unhappiness with their use of public funds." Please, what rational adult should believe that? Mr Trump is upset with them because they got bad press. The reason for the bad press is immaterial. If he was upset with his Cabinet mis--using public funds, then all the first class airplane travel people would be gone, wouldn't they? Stop using clichés to report on Mr Trump, stick to the facts.
Before you know it, he'll be announcing next week is infrastructure week as a distraction from his staffing crisis.
Why are there still gaping holes at the state department?
Replacing David Shulkin at the VA with Rick Perry sounds like a Saturday Night Live Skit.
Many more unqualified partisans are out there---and surely Trump'll find them. He has a knack for that.
I don’t understand why anyone with more than one brain cell would want to stay with this administration. It is a good thing that most, if not all, are independently wealthy because the stench of being a part of this circus will stay with them forever. ‘Trump’ is not a word anyone should or would want on their resume or CV.
1
Those who work in this White House should know by now that they are not going to survive there because of they have any special qualification or experience. Trump is looking for "yes men". If they feel any allegence to ethics, they might as well resign with honor now instead of being fired by tweeter later.
Dr. Carson needs to step up his game or he may hear "Your fired!" He'll need to clean out his new expensive desk. He is still brilliant though. Great pick for HUD Secretary.
If you don't look and sound like Donald Trump, your days are numbered. He only wants loud older white males who speak in sound bites. No Carson, no Sessions, no McMasters. And heaven forfend if you actually want to tell him about the significance of the policies under discussions -- those are not sound bites, they do not compute in his wee little mind.
We need to do everything we can to survive the remainder of his term.
How nice for the cabinet that they have lived to see another day. What about the rest of us? The chaos of this administration is damaging our collective mental and physical health.
1
I'm a member of the Trump administration? In which agency? Does it have anything to do with brain surgery?-
Ben Casey Carson
1
Does the President realize that many of these changes will require Senate confirmation? How does he envision those hearings going?
In any event, it will be weeks of energy spent putting together a cabinet, instead of working toward a legislative agenda. Once that is done, Senators will be off to their home states to face the public, many campaigning for their jobs, ensuring that precious little will happen after June, until the start of the next legislative session in January.
Trump may enjoy chaos, but it will cost him dearly.
4
Any nominee that The Donald proposes with the possible exception of Vladimir Putin will have no trouble getting voted in by a still-Republican Senate (give or take a tie-breaker from Mike Pence).
@stu freeman: The issue isn't whether they will get confirmed, although I do wonder how receptive the Senate would be if President Trump followed through on his desire to terminate Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but how those confirmation hearing will go for the nominees. Democrats will still have their say, and even Republicans may be less accommodating, given the uncertainty of confirming so many new nominees so close to a mid-term election. I cannot recall any similar circumstance, in which Senators had to confirm so many Cabinet-level nominees so close to an election.
Carson and McMaster and Shulkin should leave of other own accord. Carson and Shulkin exercised extremely poor judgment on using public funds for furniture and travel expenses but to put up with this day by day media blow out would test harder men and women. Leave because it was your decision to, don't wait to be canned.
4
Hard to argue with Mahalo. Dr Carson is just a liar. As for Dr Shulkin, well, his departure would enable the Kochs and other plunderers to privatize veterans' health care, but he got himself into this mess.
A bit too early for Twitter firings. Wait a couple of hours, after the deadlines.
8
Trump is tricky, not smart. Obviously he's not going to do something that the New York Times predicted he'd do. Not yet, not until no one expects it.
5
A two-employee Mom-and-Pop Coffee Shop cannot be run this way, and here we are, trying to run the administration of 330+ million citizens of the most powerful and the richest nation in human history based on the whims of just one person who literally thinks and lives minute-to-minute, as if the entire nation is some captive audience to be constantly tickled with flashier and flashier fireworks - with everything and everyone dispensed with at this alter.
How did we manage to get to this juncture?
34
It’s hilarious- and telling- that the news is that some government officials keep their jobs. Slow news day or catastrophic collapse of an unstable administration?
9
So Trump is unhappy with two of those guys because of his "unhappiness with their use of public funds"?
How does that square with all his own trips to FL for a weekend of golf on the taxpayer's dime?
The hypocrisy, indeed...
64
On the other hand, it IS Friday!
4
It is a shame that people do not have the honor or integrity any more to serve under a man like Trump, insult to the human race.
5
Missing Obama yet?
40
I groaned to my husband about how much I miss the Obamas while at the breakfast table this morning. Without looking up from his bowl of cereal, our 11-year-old son said, “Trump fills a role. We’ve had white presidents, a black president, and now an orange president. He’s opened the path for orange people everywhere.” We all had a great laugh to start the day.
1
and we all believe this because he said so?
5
My, how the world has changed.
It's now front page news when someone doesn't lose their job.
8
Anyone with an ounce of dignity or long term goals would resign from this cabinet.
32
Ben Carson?? -- Is he even still alive? Haven't heard a peep from him since he almost got that $31,000 dining room set for his office, which doesn't mean too much considering how quickly Donald Trump changes his mind about everything.
No doubt more heads will roll the closer Robert Mueller gets to the truth in his investigation.
9
This reader is neither pro- nor anti-Trump, but when high-ranking public officials squader the taxpayers' hard-earned money, they deserve to go. Former HHS Tom Price paid the price (no pun intended) of spending more than $1 million on private jets. Messrs. Shulkin and Carson have seemingly done the same, but this reader believes there are also probably other folks in D.C. economically abusing their positions.
17
So what do you think about Steve Mnuchin spending over $1 million on seven flights in military aircraft, when there were commercial flights available for each of those trips? He claimed he needed those planes because the White House might want to talk to him -- note, every one of his predecessors at Treasury, even in the midst of the Great Recession, thought it was just fine to fly commercial, for a whole lot less.
He will save the announcements for the night of the airing of the Stormy Daniels/Anderson Cooper interview. Trump will need all the distractions he can get to take eyes off the porn star that night and on Fox/Trump News Network. He doesn’t want to lose his Evangelical followers, they are a big core of the 30% of the loyal Trumpers left. Having a porn star tell Anderson Cooper about her affair with Trump while Melania was pregnant with Baron may be too much for some of them. They justified the “locker room talk” as bragging but this woman is real.
21
The Evangelicals will give Trump a pass for Stormy Daniels too. He will not lose a single one of them. They are all in. All the pretend morality has been discarded.
As people leave the White House it's hard for me to imagine ANYONE would want to work there. Constant chaos, working for an Enfant terrible who changes his mind as frequently as his bathrobe would be terribly disconcerting.
Plus, there is the fact that whatever your salary, half of it will go to attorneys when you have to testify about anything you saw or heard. Which is probably why only the independently wealthy are seeking jobs there.
14
Hey, the day is still early. And, prime tweeting time is the very early
A.M.. We have all weekend.
20
Sarah Sanders is fully aware that she is speaking to an audience of one every day.
And she knows she must lie at an expert level every day to the American people to keep her job.
50
I think Trump is going to can Carson the very day his $31,000 mahogany table and chairs set is delivered.
7
But don't speak too soon: It's 4:15 on a Friday afternoon (EDT), so there's still plenty of time for plenty of chaotic firings before the weekend begins....
7
Calm before the storm for cabinet secretaries?
2
"firings by presidential tweet"
Something died in me when I read that ridiculous phrase. Not because a professional journalist wrote it on a legitimate news organization, but because it was the most professional way to describe something so stupid and yet so real.
30
Oh gee thanks, NYT. Once Trump sees this article, he'll send out a tweet firing Shulkin for sure. He's relatively "low hanging fruit" compared to McMaster and Sessions; and I seriously doubt anything like a $31,000 dining table set for the clueless brain surgeon Carson picked out by his wife is going to be that upsetting to Trump to fire him.
3
These days I appreciate levity more than ever, thank you for that chuckle-of-a-headline. With the innumerable ousters thus far, who knew the power of two could "intact" a cabinet make.
1
Anyone who still has faith in the united failed states will get what they deserve soon enough.
#calexit - because decent people deserve better.
2
Trump spent a lifetime crafting scams and schemes, ways to get over on people and skate away without taking responsibility.
He dealt with an endless series of 'shady characters' as he built his fortune; as he said last year without any hint of shame, "My whole life I've been greedy, greedy, greedy, I grabbed all the money I could get, I'm so greedy."
Soon in the White House the sycophantic rats would be jumping ships and leaving him alone at the wheel....I should say rolling in the wheel like a hamster in its cage.
I rest my case.
7
Fear not, citizens of America. The president promised to drain the swamp and he's been doing that lately. Tillerson, Porter, and Cohn, with Carson and Shulkin to follow. At least this is one campaign promise he's keeping, so far.
4
To be kept abreast of the details of how this administration is on the take is of great service. Please keep the running list going.
Ben and Candy, there are nice metal folding chairs one can find at big box stores, already upholstered.
10
Mr. Trump continues to assail the press for fake news the press secretary is part and parcel of distributing fake news.
Perhaps in time she may realize the con artistry she practices is counter to the well being of this country.
16
The question isn’t who’s next. It’s who’s left.
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Word has it that Trump is hiring the whole cast of Fox News to his cabinet positions with Hannity his Chief of Staff.
10
How about if we give Trump another Show "Apprentice President" and he can do all this entertaining stuff. Then we can have a real President govern. Republican or Democrat , I don't care at this point. Even Rand Paul , whatever.
17