Tag Archives: Cabinet

military news

VA nominee on the ropes?

So help me I didn’t see this one coming.

Navy Admiral Dr. Ronny Jackson’s nomination to become the next veterans affairs secretary did raise an eyebrow our two. Mine weren’t among them initially.

Now we hear that the White House physician allegedly promoted an inappropriate workplace environment and might have drunk on the job. What’s more, the president of the United States has given Jackson some cover, enabling him to withdraw his nomination if he believes it is in his best interest.

It well might be, given the crescendo of criticism that is building.

The U.S. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee has postponed Dr. Jackson’s confirmation hearing indefinitely. Hmm. I think that spells big trouble. Jackson said he is “disappointed” but adds that he is ready to answer all the questions that will come his way.

What I believe we have here is a developing “distraction” that is going to yank attention away from the work that Dr. Jackson is supposed to do on behalf of the nation’s 20 million military veterans; I am one of them and I believe he needs to be focused exclusively on that important work.

Hostile work environment? Over-prescribing of meds? Drinking on the job?

Good grief! This is on top of the criticism that Dr. Jackson hasn’t run an agency anywhere near the size of the monstrous bureaucracy that is the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Donald Trump is right: Whether he stays in the game is Dr. Jackson’s call. I won’t be a bit surprised if he pulls away from this big job.

And that brings up another question: Why can’t the president find competent and squeaky-clean folks to do these jobs?

national news

Trump reverses growth quotient

Paul Begala is an acknowledged Democratic partisan. He once worked for President Bill Clinton. He is no fan of Donald Trump.

Now that we’ve established that, I have to concur with something he has said about the president.

Whereas presidents — particularly those who come to the White House with a primarily outside-the-Beltway experience — usually grow in the office, Donald Trump is shrinking the office to fit his own shortcomings.

Begala mentioned how Presidents Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama all learned about the office, how they filled the White House with their presence. Trump has reversed that momentum.

I will add that of the examples Begala cited, all of them had prior government experience. Reagan served two terms as governor of California, Bush served a term and a half as governor of Texas, Clinton served multiple terms as Arkansas governor and Obama served in the Illinois state senate before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006.

Trump’s experience is totally unique. He never sought a public before running for president. He ran a large business. Trump answered to no one. He has demonstrated zero curiosity, zero humility, not a lick of introspection. He has said he’s never sought forgiveness. He won’t admit to making a mistake.

As some observers have noted, Trump’s political skill — which he exhibited while campaigning successfully for the presidency — hasn’t transferred to governing. He doesn’t know how to govern.

Donald Trump isn’t growing into the office he won. He is shrinking it to fit his own diminished profile.

Trump is shaking up the Cabinet. His closest advisers are bailing, or are being pushed out. His Health and Human Services secretary had to quit; his first national security adviser was canned; Trump has just fired the secretary of state; the veterans secretary is about to go; the current national security adviser may be canned; Trump has burned through four communications directors.

This all happened in the first 15 months of his presidency.

And the president would have us believe he is doing the best job in the history of the exalted office of the presidency?

Nope. Paul Begala is right. Donald Trump is shrinking the office.

political news

It helps to know what you don’t know

One of the gazillion things that have been said of Donald John Trump is that the president of the United States “doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”

He seems to be the Bubble Boy of American politics, insulated from the effects of the barbs and boulders tossed at him. Or so he thinks.

Now comes former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich to offer a bit of specificity, which is that Trump doesn’t realize just how “isolated” he has become.

Critics of this blog will recall that I’ve dismissed Newt in the past as a know-nothing has-been, a philanderer who in the late 1990s made a big case against former President Clinton over his, um, philandering.Ā 

On this one, though, Newt might be on to something. He said on Fox News:Ā “On the Hill, he has far more people willing to sit to one side and not help him right now, and I think that he needs to recognize he’s taken a good first step with bringing in Gen. (John) Kelly (as chief of staff), but he needs to think about what has not worked.”

Trump’s term as president is in trouble. He has declared open warfare on fellow Republicans. Democrats detest him already, so they need zero push to resist every single thing he proposes. He cannot fill key deputy Cabinet posts, or senior White House staff jobs. The roster of federal judgeships remains largely vacant.

The president’s legislative agenda has high-centered. It has no traction. Tax reform is likely to get stalled. He won’t get the money he wants to build that wall along our southern border. Congressional leaders are going to increase the budgetary debt ceiling despite what the president says.

Trump once boasted that “I, alone” can fix what’s wrong.

No, Mr. President. You cannot. It is impossible.

He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know … which is dangerous not just for him, but for the country.

business news, national news, political news

Puzder pulls out, thanks to ex-wife’s interview

Andrew Puzder shouldn’t have been nominated as labor secretary in the first place.

He favors automation; he opposes the minimum wage; he is no friend of the working man and woman.

None of that doomed his nomination. Oh, no! The death knell was rung when a decades-old videotape surfaced that shows Puzder’s former wife telling Oprah Winfrey that Puzder abused her. He threatened her, bullied her.

Puzder — a fast-food restaurant mogul — then pulled out.

Vetting, anyone?

I have blogged already about Donald Trump’s lack of vetting as he has looked for Cabinet officers. I thought the worry was overblown.

But here we are. A labor secretary who apparently hadn’t been vetted properly being done in by an old videotaped interview.

It appears that a lot more careful vetting of Puzder’s history could have prevented the president from suffering this embarrassing end to one of his Cabinet selections.

That presumes, of course, that Donald Trump would be embarrassed.

national news, political news

Trump team staggers toward starting line

It’s not going well for Team Trump as it prepares to take command of the most powerful, greatest nation on Earth.

Seemingly across the board, Donald Trump’s Cabinet selections are having difficulty squaring their records with what will be expected of them when — or if — they take some highly visible public offices.

Betsy DeVos,Ā  the president-elect’s choice to become education secretary, seemed flummoxed about questions pertaining to basic education policy.

Health and Human Services pick U.S. Rep. Tom Price is facing scrutiny over legislation he pitched that favored a company in which he had just purchased stock.

Ben Carson, the noted brain surgeon who has been nominated to lead the housing department, is having to explain why his spokesman said the good doctor is unqualified for the job.

Andrew Puzder, the labor secretary-designate (pictured with Trump), reportedly is having second thoughts about even taking the job. Oh, and he’s got a messy divorce settlement hanging over him, too.

Scott Pruitt, picked to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, told a Senate committee that his views on whether human beings are responsible for climate change aren’t relevant.

And on and on we go.

It’s not all bad. The Senate Armed Services Committee has recommended confirmation for Defense Secretary-designate James Mattis — after he seemed to contradict Trump’s views about the threat posed by Russia.

I get that sometimes these high-level Cabinet picks go awry. Do you remember when two of President-elect Bill Clinton’s picks for attorney general had to bow out because they had employed illegal immigrants?

But that’s OK.Ā Donald Trump assured us he would pick the “smartest people, the best people” to run the government while he concentrates on making America “great again.”

Oye!

medical news, national news, political news

Dr. Carson’s HUD nomination: most puzzling of all Trump’s picks

Of all the people nominated by Donald J. Trump to join the new president’s administration, the one that continues to puzzle me the most is his pick for secretary of housing and urban development.

Ben Carson ran against Trump and 15 others for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2016. He ended up in the campaign-trail ditch right along with the rest of them.

Here are two elements that trouble me greatly.

Trump said some amazingly harsh things about Dr. Carson, a noted pediatric neurosurgeon who retired from his medical practice to become a politician. Carson returned the fire to the eventual GOP nominee. They went at each other with rhetorical brass knuckles.

Second — and this came from Carson’s own mouth — was that he declared himself unqualified to lead a Cabinet agency. His spokesmen said managing a massive federal bureaucracy didn’t fit into his skill set. After the election, Carson in effect took himself out of the Trump administration mix for the most straightforward reason possible: He admitted to being unable to do the job.

But then … ?

Trump picks him to run HUD! The nomination raised eyebrows all across the nation. Didn’t this fellow just say he couldn’t do the job? Didn’t the good doctor admit to being — essentially — unfit to become a Cabinet secretary?

Now he’s going to lead an agency that, among other things, tends to the needs of poor Americans who need government-subsidized public housing.

The brilliant doctor has no knowledge of how to oversee such a massive operation.

Dr. Carson is a brilliant man. I do not intend to disparage his intelligence. But holy cow, man! His learning curve is going to be steep, as in monstrously steep.

IsĀ the doctor up to the task of learning how this agency works? I have to wonder.

International news, national news, political news

More eyes, not all of them, turn to Mitt

rudy

Rudy Giuliani won’t be Donald J. Trump’s secretary of state.

The former New York City mayor and current Republican rabble rouser has pulled himself out of the running. It might have been the questions over his foreign-government contacts that persuaded him he might not have been confirmed by the Senate, even with all those fellow Republicans running the place.

So …

Who will get the nod at State?

Mitt Romney might be the frontrunner. Then again, it might be someone else.

I’m kinda pulling for Mitt, although I cannot yet define my reasons why I am.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/giuliani-pulls-name-from-contention-for-secretary-of-state-232439

He once led the Never Trump movement. He made that extraordinary 17-minute blistering of Trump, calling him a “fraud, phony and con man.” He was so tough that Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has lobbied publicly against her boss even considering him for the State job. Imagine that!

Why should Mitt get the job? He’s got street cred among foreign leaders. He’s a reasonable GOP conservative.

It appears he has been served his share of humble pie at that dinner date he had with Trump. The men must have talked about the State job and Mitt must have told Trump that he didn’t really and truly mean all those things he said. “I mean,” he could have said, “emotions were running high and it was, after all, a political speech. Politicians often say things they don’t really and truly mean, you know.”

I’m glad Rudy is out of the State Department picture, or so he says.

This is where I perhaps ought to caution everyone that Dr. Ben Carson — the renowned pediatric brain surgeon and former GOP presidential campaign rival of Trump’s — once declared he wasn’t qualified to run a federal agency.

So what did the president-elect do? He named him as the next housing and urban development secretary.

Let’s all stay tuned, shall we?

national news, political news

Trump, Obama now have become BFFs?

obama-and-trump

Donald J. Trump is making my head spin.

The man who demonized President Barack Obama as someone who wasn’t elected legitimately because he was born somewhere other than the United States now is seeking his immediate predecessor’s advice on Cabinet picks?

Is that what I’m hearing?

Trump told “Today Show” host Matt Lauer this morning that he and the president are getting along famously these days. He’s consulting with him. He considers the president to be a “terrific guy.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-obama-consultation-cabinet-232304

Wow, man! I get that politics often is a contact sport. I also get that political foes can put past hostilities aside. The president-elect, though, is having to do so on many fronts.

House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump’s statements about Muslims “racist.” Now he and Trump are speaking daily, Ryan said. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Trump is a “fraud,” a “phony,” a “con man.” Now he is considered a frontrunner to become secretary of state in the Trump administration.

The president-elect’s relationship with the president?

Trump was one of the leaders of the “birther” movement. He sought to turn Obama into some kind of pretend president. Then he said in a single sentence that the president was “born in the United States. Period.”

That makes it all better?

I am having trouble believing it. Just as I am having trouble believing Mitt now no longerĀ considers Trump to be a fraud, phony and a con man.

Suppose it’s all true, however. I guess it only demonstrates what we think of politicians, which is that they rarely tell us what’s truly in their heart, that it’s all just so much baloney.

International news, national news, political news

Why this fierce battle over a Cabinet pick?

donald-and-mitt

I’ll admit that I haven’t always watched closely the process a president-elect goes through to fill Cabinet picks.

Still, the growing tempest over Donald J. Trump’s vetting of secretary of state candidates has me wondering: Is this normal? Have previous presidents-elect faced this kind of outward and public tumult?

The Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, is in the running to lead the State Department. A lot of Trumpkins don’t want him anywhere near the new president. Why? Mitt said some harsh things about their guy during the campaign. They want Mitt to apologize before Trump picks him. They also don’t believe Mitt will be loyal to the president.

I happen to believe Mitt was right when he called Trump a “fraud” and a “phony.” At one level,Ā Mitt seems like the absolutely wrong choice to be the vicar of Trump’s foreign policy — whatever it is. Then again, selecting Mitt would verify what many of us have believed all along, which is that Trump has no policy and he’s looking for someone to help him build one from scratch; Mitt could do that for Trump.

Who’s other “favorite” for State? Rudy Giuliani, that’s who. The one-time “America’s mayor” would be a terrible choice. He has no foreign policy experience, other than the money he earned representing foreign governments — which presents a serious conflict of interest.

I keep hearing that former U.N. ambassador John Bolton is in the hunt, too, for the State Department post. He has called for the bombing of Iran, which surely works against any effort to develop “diplomatic initiatives” from the Trump administration. Don’t go there, either, Mr. President-elect.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/battle-over-secretary-of-state-opening-goes-public/ar-AAkP9nE?li=BBnb7Kz

Former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said she isn’t even sure Mitt voted for Trump in the election. My response? That’s no one’s business how someone votes; that’s why the ballots are cast in secret.

This melodrama is going to play out eventually, I reckon.

If only the president-elect had a deeper pool of applicants to consider for this post. He’s going to need plenty of help developing a foreign policy doctrine. Mitt could deliver it … if only he can get the Trumpkins on his side.

Hold on for a rough ride.

International news, political news

Who said this about Bibi?

A White House official called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickens**t”?

That’s all we know at the moment.

Here’s an idea: How about for once we find out who did the name-calling? Bring this individual out from the shadows and have him or her explain the reference.

US, Israel relations hit new low

This is the kind of thing that’s said behind closed doors all the time in Washington, D.C., and more than likely in Jerusalem as well.

I only can imagine what some of Netanyahu’s more strident inner circle members think of President Barack Obama or perhaps the Congress and what he or she might be saying about all of them in private.

This little term of non-endearment, however, has been let loose and has poisoned — perhaps — the sometimes-testy relationship between the two leaders.

And just when it had been reported that Netanyahu actually had expressed some warm feelings toward Barack Obama, well, this happens.

OK, if we’re not going to learn the name of the individual, perhaps someone on the inside — perhaps the press secretary, Josh Earnest — can tell us at what level this individual operates. Cabinet level? Sub-Cabinet? A member of “diplomatic” corps, for crying out loud? Hey, was it a national security team member? Someone from the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

We need to know who said it and why?

What’s more, the president ought to get on the phone and call his pal Bibi and tell him that the potty-mouth individual was speaking for himself or herself.

Then again, maybe the president should assure the prime minister that he — the leader of the Free World — himself didn’t say it.