A Hostile Takeover?
The President-Elect is testing the guardrails early.
WaPo (“Trump ignores transition rules. It’s a ‘hostile takeover,’ ally says.”):
A thousand miles from the austere buildings where Washington runs, Donald Trump’s transition team in his Mar-a-Lago resort has begun what a close ally calls a hostile takeover of the federal government.
Since his victory, Trump has ignored many of the rules and practices intended to guide a seamless transfer of power and handover of the oversight of 2.2 million federal employees. Instead, the president-elect, who has pledged to fire thousands of civil servants and slash billions of dollars in spending, has so far almost fully cut out the government agencies his predecessors have relied on to take charge of the federal government.
Trump has yet to collaborate with the General Services Administration, which is tasked with the complex work of handing over control of hundreds of agencies, because he has not turned in required pledges to follow ethics rules. His transition teams have yet to set foot inside a single federal office.
In calls with foreign heads of state, Trump has cut out the State Department, its secure lines and its official interpreters.
As his team considers hundreds of potential appointees for key jobs, he’s so far declined to let the Federal Bureau of Investigation check for potential red flags and security threats to guard against espionage — instead relying on private campaign lawyers for some appointees and doing no vetting at all for others. Trump’s transition team is considering moving on his first day in office to give those appointees blanket security clearances, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations.
All of this is irregular, if not unprecedented. It all violates longstanding norms. Much of it violates Federal law, notably the Logan Act and the Presidential Transitions Act. But, even in normal times, those laws have no teeth; given the fealty of Trump’s Congressional co-partisans, there’s is unlikely to even be mild pushback for any of this.
In his first go-around, Trump routinely violated the norms of the office and steadfastly refused to follow the law, or even the Constitution, when it came to personal ethics. This time, he holds a personal grudge against agencies who get in his way—and his backers will cheer him on.
At the root of this unprecedented approach, say those close to Trump’s transition, is an abiding distrust and resentment of federal agencies that the president-elect blames for blocking his agenda in his first term, leaking his plans to the press, and later sharing his documents with investigators and bringing criminal charges against him.
For Trump, who campaigned on radically reshaping the federal government by moving entire departments out of Washington, closing others andreplacing scores of civil servants with political loyalists, fulfillment of that vision begins with a privately run transition from Palm Beach and nearby offices.
“The American people rendered their verdict by putting him back in the White House,” said Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, a nonprofit group that has defended Trump against the criminal charges brought against him. “He should not trust the politicized and weaponized intelligence and law enforcement agencies that hobbled his presidency the first time. It’s a hostile takeover on behalf of the American people.”
In my post “It’s the Institutions, Stupid,” the Sunday before the election, I favorably passed on Doug Ollivant’s observation, “Democrats have become the party of the institutions. Meanwhile, the Republicans now exist in a realm somewhere between suspicion of, and outright hostility to, the institutions.” Everything that has happened since makes more sense in light of that explanation.
Of course, both Dan Drezner’s Toddler-in-Chief argument and the more sinister charge that Trump is a would-be authoritarian, if not a fascist, work here as well.
In choosing his Cabinet, Trump has emphasized a willingness to take on federal agencies he believes have wronged him or stymied him in the past, advisers said. That has motivated many of his controversial picks, such as Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, former congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida for attorney general and South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security.
[…]
Many of the president-elect’s moves to skirt official transition policies are within the law, experts said — or at least are subject to laws that are not regularly enforced.
But his transition alarms some officials who say the president-elect is weakening transparency, eroding checks and balances, and risking national security.
“The Trump team is attempting to convert the government into an instrument of his private agenda,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. Instead, Stier said, “We’re seeing a push to revert to the spoils system,” a reference to the 19th-century practice of rewarding supporters with government jobs without vetting and often not based on merit.
Eric Rubin, a former ambassador to Bulgaria who led the American Foreign Service Association before his retirement last year, called the approach a “massive crossing of the unwritten lines that have prevailed [in presidential transitions] for 140 years.” He acknowledged that Trump is able to take advantage of the reality that “so much in our system is not written.”
A toddler will throw a temper tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. A fascist will thumb his nose at norms and rules simply to prove that he can.
But I’ve heard multiple intelligent, decent people defend the absurd appointments along anti-institutionalist lines. If the Defense Department is broken, it’s not going to be fixed by someone who has spent decades working inside the Pentagon, acquiring specialized expertise and becoming acculturated to its ways. Similarly, if it’s clear that the FBI, CIA, and even the GSA are staffed by a Deep State fundamentally opposed to Trump’s agenda, there’s nothing to be done but blow them up.
While Trump has harnessed this sentiment and even helped feed it, it long predates him. There’s a deep sense in large pockets of the country—by no means confined to Trump cultists—who simply don’t trust our institutions. There have been conspiracy theories about the CIA and FBI as long as I can remember—mostly from the left. Gallup has been polling on confidence in institutions—from organized religion to the military to the Supreme Court to banks to public schools to newspapers to police to Congress and the presidency—for a quarter century. Most of these are at their lowest point during that period. Only the military enjoys strong support. Only the military and, oddly, the police* enjoy majority support. The rest enjoy “a great deal or quite a lot” of support from less than a third of the country. Newspapers and television news are in the low teens. Congress is in the single digits.
This helps explain not only Trump’s re-election but also the seeming indifference to many of his transgressions. But, again, the toddler and authoritarian explanations explain his actions just as well.
Presidential transitions are formally led by the GSA, which typically provides furnished office space and computer support to both nominees for pre-election planning.
But Trump harbors deep distrust for the agency, several allies said,which shared thousands ofemails from his 2016 transition team with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III during his probe into allegations of Russian election interference. Trump claimed the correspondence was collected unlawfully and belonged to the transition team.
This time, he has so far declined to work with the GSAand spurned offers from the Biden White House to clear a path for a formal transition.
To date, he has not signed memorandums of understanding thatinclude a robust ethics pledge from the transition staff and — in a new provision added by Congress after ethical issues dogged the first Trump administration — from the president-elect himself, who must delineate how he would avoid his own conflicts of interest.
Leaders of the Trump transition said days before the election that they planned to sign the agreements with the GSA and the White House and were negotiating details with the Biden administration. But the White House had not received them as of this week, according to an official with the Office of Management and Budget. The holdup, according to people close to the process, is the conflict of interest provision for Trump.
Trump’s team says its staffers have signed their own ethics code and conflict-of-interest pledge, although those documents do not cover Trump or meet the requirements of the Presidential Transition Act. Transition officials said they continue to “constructively engage” with the Biden administration, but have not provided details of the negotiations.
In his first term, Trump himself refused to follow ethics rules, up to and including the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution. But, with a handful of notable exceptions for family members, his appointees followed the basic parameters of the law. I distinctly remember several early appointees to sub-cabinet roles withdrawing in frustration over the onerous filing and divestment requirements. It looks like we’re going to have an administration filled with Jared Kushners this time.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris signed the official agreements and made them public before taking office. Trump is not required by law to do the same, but the repercussions are emerging.
Trump’s transition teams cannot participate in national security briefings, enter federal agencies or speak with employees, and can’t receive formal briefings about ongoing operations and projects. (Trump has begun receiving intelligence briefings.) The transition team cannot use secure federal email servers to communicate (a particular concern, security experts said, after the Trump campaign was hacked by Iran). Unless Trump signs the pledges, his transition team will forgo about $7 million in federal funding set aside for the inauguration, leaving the event funded by private donors who do not need to be disclosed and do not have to abide by a $5,000 cap on individual donations.
It is also unclear if Trump plans to require his nominees to submit to separate ethics reviews required by the Office of Government Ethics. If not, once his appointees are on the job, the office will be unable to ensure they divest from companies or other entities to avoid potential conflicts.
“Their conflicts of interest will leave them vulnerable to outside influences, potentially including foreign powers,” said Walter Shaub, who led the office from 2013 to 2017.
Even if we assumed these were all honorable people—and we have substantial evidence to the contrary in many cases—this would be highly problematic. But, as we learned in the first time, the presidency is mostly governed by longstanding norms and voluntary compliance with laws that are enforced by people who answer to the president. At the end of the day, even Richard Nixon was constrained by them.** Trump has demonstrated time and again that he is not. And it seems clear he thought he was too much of a Mr. Nice Guy then.
The day after Trump won the election, congratulatory calls began pouring in from world leaders from French President Emmanuel Macron to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a traditional post-Election Day ritual.
However, Trump did not include State Department officials or U.S. government interpreters on the line, according to government and transition officials.
Trump’s mistrust of the State Department dates to early in his first presidency, when transcripts of his calls with then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and another with then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull were leaked in full to the press. Several career diplomats were subpoenaed by Congress to testify at Trump’s first impeachment hearings about their alarm atthe Trump administration’s unorthodox policy toward Ukraine.
Trump is not required by law to engage theState Department on calls with foreign leaders;Biden took calls without State officials after his 2020 victory because Trump refused to concede his loss for weeks. A president-elect is prohibited by the 1799 Logan Act from negotiating foreign policy until he is sworn in, but the statute has rarely if ever been enforced.
Government officials also traditionally rely on State to help create an official record of such conversations, in case disputes arise over what was said.
Trump’s calls have raised alarms from some foreign policy experts — particularly his call with Vladimir Putin. He advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, as The Washington Post reported. The absence of an official transcript of the exchange already has created a challenge for Trump, said Daniel Fried, a retired diplomat now at the Atlantic Council think tank, because the Kremlin quickly denied that the call had taken place.
“It would be a lot easier for the Trump team if he were able to say that the Russia team was lying,” said Fried, who played key roles in designing American policy in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. “So there’s a cost to doing it this way. People are scratching their heads and saying, ‘Somebody’s lying.’”
That Biden did the same thing will be cited by Trump defenders as evidence that this is No Big Deal. But, of course, Biden had no choice in the matter since Trump refused to concede the election and denied him the ability to use government assets during the transition.
Even after four years as President, Trump fundamentally does not understand that the State Department and, indeed, the entire Executive Branch (aside from the White House staff and a handful of appointees) do not exist to serve him, personally, but rather to carry out missions outlined in federal law. Readouts of presidential calls with foreign heads of state are a longstanding custom designed to create a public record for all manner of purposes. They’re only problematic if the president is acting nefariously.
Biden White House officials have encouraged Trump to sign an agreement with the Justice Department that would allow for FBI background checks, temporary security clearances and other standard steps to begin the handoff of power at all levels of government.
A Justice spokesperson said the department was committed to an orderly transfer of powerand that discussions about signing a memorandum of understanding, as past presidents-elect have done, remains “ongoing.”
“We are prepared to deliver briefings to the transition team on our operations and responsibilities, and we stand ready to process requests for security clearances for those who will need access to national security information,” the spokesperson said.
Trump advisers have begun discussing an executive order that would award clearances to Trump appointees on Day 1, without the customary checks, people familiar with the matter said. Trump resented in his first term how long it took for some people — particularly his family members — to get clearances, and what a “mess it became publicly,” a person who talked to him about it said.
Again, the toddler, authoritarian, and institutionalist explanations all work here. In his mind, the White House and the entire federal government are his toys to play with. Why are people who work for him telling him what to do?
In 2004, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which allows major party candidates to submit priority lists of names for security clearances before Election Day. Trump’s team did not provide names, and still hasn’t, according to people familiar with the transition.
Those vetting shortcuts already are dogging some of Trump’s Cabinet choices. Trump and his advisers were not aware of an allegation that Hegseth, his nominee to run the Pentagon, sexually assaulted a woman in 2017 until it emerged last week. Hegseth has denied wrongdoing and a police investigation into the allegation did not result in charges. One person familiar with the transition team’s discussions told The Post that Hegseth had “not been properly vetted.”
Some critics said the transition has skipped the FBI to get nominees clearances who would not normally pass a background check.
Members of Congress in both parties questioned whether Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman Trump plans to nominate as director of national intelligence, and Gaetz, who was recently the subject of a federal sex-trafficking investigation and is Trump’s choice for attorney general, could survive FBI background checks. Gabbard has been widely criticized for meeting in 2017 with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and for allegedly promoting Russian propaganda, leading to allegations that she is a national security risk. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing in the sex-trafficking probe, which prosecutors dropped last year; Gabbard has denied ties to Russia.
The President is the ultimate classifying authority and has the ability to allow anyone he deems has a need to know to have access. But Senate confirmation, FBI background checks, and all manner of other safeguards exist for a reason.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) called the plan to outsource background checks “a dangerous and reckless thing to do” that could compromise the process by which the FBI ensures that “people who have concerning backgrounds do not come into government and compromise the country’s secrets.”
“There is a theme here,” Van Hollen said of Trump’s unfolding transition. “He is getting rid of all checks on executive power that are in the system.”
Trump could break another norm around the transition to avoid that problem, however: He has demanded that Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) the majority leader elected last week, support Trump’s demand to makerecess appointments — a rarely used process thatsidesteps confirmation hearings and Senate votes.
Recess appointees do not serve full presidential terms, and other presidents in both parties have made them on occasion. But Trump’s early line in the sand signaled that he could make these appointments regular practice, a threat that did not seem theoretical last week when some planned nominees with extreme views came under scrutiny by Senate Republicans.
Van Hollen called Trump’s rush for regular recess appointments “an indication he wants to do a complete end run around our review of his nominees.”
“It’s an end run around constitutional design,” the senator said. “We have tools in the confirmation process to make sure nominees get vetted. What he’s asking Republicans to do is make him king.”
There have been signals that Thune and others will resist the recess appointment demand and will vote down the most extremely unqualified of Trump’s nominees. It’s their duty to do so. My confidence that they will is not high.
*Granting that this is a single poll, it’s noteworthy that the police have rebounded to 51 percent after the relative lows in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. That the two institutions on the list entrusted with carrying out violence in the name of the state are far and away the most trusted is either reassuring or deeply disturbing. The medical system and public schools, by contrast, are at 36 and 29 percent, respectively.
**For all of his many faults, Nixon was an institutionalist. When a 9-0 Supreme Court ordered him to hand over the tapes, he dutifully complied and resigned his post. Trump would have followed Andrew Jackson’s example.
A national security issue. The “Five Eyes” are going to be de facto the Four Eyes.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/tulsi-gabbard-record-director-national-intelligence
She seems to share the Mearsheimer ideas about Russia’s “legitimate interests.” And approves the behavior of Snowden and Assange, per the above account.
I have heard this “fresh set of eyes” justification for several of Trump’s entirely unqualified appointments and hope to use it the next time I apply for some role I am entirely unqualified for. “You guys do a lot of brain surgery around here and it doesn’t all go well. You need a fresh set of eyes to improve your outcomes.”
@charontwo: I agree that our intelligence partners are going to want to shun Gabbard or an administration that would seriously put her forward, but I suspect they want our intelligence at least as much as they would wish to hide their own. Shunning might not be a simple as it seems.
Trump’s ideology just attracts idiots and frauds. I think Gaetz paying sex workers with Venmo is pretty disqualifying. It’s like the director of the FBI trying to hire a hitman online via a Google search. This is grade-A imbecility regardless of the ethics.
The advantage for Trump is that it self-perpetuates the belief that The System is out to get his people.
He wants to run it like his businesses. He is in charge. ALL decisions go through him. Do what he says or be terminated from the role. Remember, all of his business ventures have failed under this model. Only things with underlying real estate/property value continue to operate, many at a loss. The only people that want to work for someone like this are under qualified unimpressive yes men and women. Hence why all his businesses failed and his government model will fall apart as well. If he had to form a government it would fail and would go bankrupt, but this is an acquisition, so it may survive the incompetence injection. But whoever inherits it next is going to have alot of fixing to do, and based on everything James outlined above, I mean ALOT.
@Joe:
So, I agree, but then I’m an institutionalist. If my view was that the entire brain surgery enterprise was a giant scam, I might well think hiring someone who I trusted from some completely different enterprise would be just what was needed to right the ship.
This is what happens when a rule breaker and equally devious, ambitious, amoral people join forces. Trump is too ignorant to have planned this stuff; he has instead blessed the efforts of guys like Steven Miller, Steve Bannon, and the Project 2025 crew who are telling him how he can wreck the government and make himself all powerful. This is the Cheney/Scalia/Alito “unitary executive” theory at its worst. Note that while professing to simply desire a president who can get things done, UE theorists seem to prefer having a president who is malleable to the desires of the behind the scene henchmen. Grover Norquist put it best when he said that all he and his ilk needed in a president was a guy who could sign his name.
Having had three toddlers, they would govern as authoritarians if allowed to govern. And while think Drezner’s book was both accurate and amusing, I am at the point that while I still have a hard time not seeing Trump as a clown, he doesn’t have to be a mastermind with a masterplan to be an authoritarian or even a fascist.
@Joe:
The technical, political science term for this justification is “bullshit.”
@James Joyner:
Sure, but that would also make you a dangerous fool!
@James Joyner:
But that’s not how anything works except for scams. There are plenty of real journalists who distrust the de facto institutions of journalism, but that doesn’t mean they are out there making up sources or working for Bari Weiss.
Let the amnesia begin. We know what Trump and Bannon want to do: burn it down and do a major remodel on ‘the administrative state.’
It doesn’t take ‘a fresh set of eyes’ to know what to do in order to appease Russia by selling out the Ukraine. nor to attempt to fire the federal workforce in key departments and agencies. All it takes is the will to break laws, regulations, rules and norms, and know that there is very little chance that anything can prevent you from doing it.
It seems that the non-conservative media is shocked at the recent preview of things to come – proposed nominees and appointments, the deportation plans, cost cutting, and on and on. Really? We didn’t see this coming?
Actually, Weiss is the perfect example of what the problem is. It was the institutions who promoted her and gave her some power, and it was the people who she worked with who mocked her for having no talent or ethics. Because of that, she quit, and then got a bunch of tech money to create something that is supposedly anti-institution.
I suspect that the majority of people are in Trump’s orbit are like her. Creatures of the institutions who got exposed as frauds and turned that resentment into profit.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Hahaha, you’ve become a fine comedian in retirement lol
Well, the Biden administration is still in charge until January 20th. They can play hardball if they wish. They should. No ethics pledges, no cooperation. Since there are no norms any more, this is the time to be assholes. Lay some minefields.
I just finished calling my Senator, John Cornyn. Let him know my unhappiness. After the details of what I was unhappy about, I asked him if he was going to do his job or just be a “potted plant”. I just don’t know if he cares anymore.
@James Joyner: Except Trump doesn’t think institutions are a scam. he thinks they’re an obstacle to his selfish goals.
It’s his idiot followers who he’s managed to convince about institutions being dishonest.
@James Joyner:
And also have the humility to recognize what you don’t know. Many now believe access to YouTube and podcasts means there’s no use for research expertise. It’s problemmatic.
I upset a friend this week by cutting off his rant in defense of RFK Jr’s antivaxxing, explaining that he and Jr. do not have credentials in virology or epidemiology and show contempt for those who do. So they are not people I care to listen to regarding disease.
He didn’t like that, but too bad. Why should anyone take health advice from Philistines who demonize learned specialists but lionize a lawyer who sounds like a dying frog thanks to years of drug abuse?
@Scott: And do things like this:
Raimondo’s new mission: Leave no cash for Trump
BTW, Raimondo, like Pete Buttigieg, strikes me as a thoroughly competent executive that gets little publicity. Wish more like her would get these types of positions.
@James Joyner: “If my view was that the entire brain surgery enterprise was a giant scam, I might well think hiring someone who I trusted from some completely different enterprise would be just what was needed to right the ship.”
Well, you might well think that right up until the moment the car-dealer-turned-brain-surgeon accidentally severed half of your frontal lobe. In fact, I’m sure your last thought would be “So glad I did my own research!”
To paraphrase James Carville (and not directed at anyone in particular): It’s the trickle down, stupid!
I’m seeing a lot of parallels between the US (and to a lesser extent Europe*) and the post-Kruschev era in the USSR**. I mentioned the trend towards monopoly in all things as well as rolling shortages yesterday.
The soviets claimed to have the world’s best economic and political system, and demonized all others to some extent. They reserved their worst vitriol for the US and Western Europe. They engaged in a lot fo internal propaganda about it. The common people knew this wasn’t so, as they faced long waits for big ticket items, long lines for everyday items, and shortages of something all the time. The few who traveled abroad, and information that filtered from outside, told a different story. The anti-soviet jokes the UUSR’s citizens told each other were extremely cynical.
This was so in other communist countries, to a greater or lesser extent, with the caveat there was some variation (see communist Hungary), and keeping in mind the Solidarity Union in Poland in the 80s before Gorbachev took over the USSR.
Americans hear pretty much the same thing. They have the best economic and political system ever. there’s much demonization, as either communism or socialism, of much or all government welfare that’s common in such deep red more communist than North Korea countries like the UK, France, Germany, or Sweden. There is much propaganda about it, albeit not centrally directed, and much of it presented in the form of popular culture.
The common people see wage stagnation, lowering living standards, more working hours, more difficulty making ends meet, less ability to own a home, higher rents, unaffordable healthcare, etc. In short, this bestest political and economic system ever is making the lives of the great majority of the population worse and ever more economically precarious.
Who trusts government institutions in such a climate?
The impetus is to burn it all down. This eventually happened in the USSR. the results were not good, and got worse under the incompetent ministrations of Yeltsin, and the authoritarian manipulations of Mad Vlad.
How much worse it will be under incompetent authoritarianism in America, I’d rather not find out. I’m afraid I will.
*Much of Europe has not gone as anti-tax, anti-union, and in particular anti-welfare state as the US.
**There are other ideological similarities between the US and USSR. But for the basic economic system, they often seem like mirror images. Contrast the Soviet belief in Marxist historical inevitability with America’s manifest destiny. America just had weaker opponents.
@DK:
And also have the humility to recognize what you don’t know. Many now believe access to YouTube and podcasts means there’s no use for research expertise, and it’s a problem.
It’s the Salem Hypothesis writ large. Take a certain type of person who is good at one thing and give them exposure to a different thing and see what happens.
It’s like physicist who became an ‘expert’ on epidemiology during Covid and declared masking to be useless. We saw that with climate change as well. Experts in one field suddenly ‘disproving’ the hockey stick after a long Sunday’s worth of reading.
It is astonishing the level of brainwashing that has happened on the right, evidence above.
I have work to do today and so cannot invest the time in going point-by-point refuting this post, but this nonsense about Biden’s decline is going to seem laughable once Trump is once again in the full spotlight.
Some people just can’t appreciate how important it is to stay on their medications and stick to a firm schedule for renewals. It’s kind of sad, really.
@JKGirl: Lies, lies, lies.
You support Trump, an Epstein-bestie pedo who launched his toxic political career with racist birher lies against the first black president. Nobody cares about what you have to say about decency; you and rapist Trump have none.
Yes, Russia interfered in the 2016 election, with Trump’s approval.
Yes, Biden continues to perform his job duties more effectively than any of the younger presidents in recent memory, including obese and elderly fascist Trump, who left office with mass death and record job loss due to his incompetence.
No, Republicans do not care about illegal immigration except to manipulate idiots with racist fearmongering, hence why they passed no immigration bill under Trump and killed the bipartisan, Border Patrol supported border bill under Biden.
No, it does not violate norms to prosecute an orange thug who attempted a violent coup and illegally retained govt secrets. Phony hypocrites that screamed “Lock Her Up” at Hillary know this.
Yes, private social media companies had every right to ban Trump for using their platform to incite the Jan. 6 terror attack, violating their TOS.
True, defeated traitor Trump urging Netanyahu and Putin to undermine Biden was abnormal (and illegal).
No, it’s not abnormal for the FBI to monitor Russian assets.
No, a private social media company taking 24 hours to vet an irrelevant New York Post link about a private citizen was not abnormal. It’s also not censorship.
Yes, parties have every right to choose their nominee however they please.
No, the Secret Service’s behavior of late has not been normal, including the hundreds of Jan 6 text messages they magically deleted and disappeared.
Yes, it’s normal for a US president to defend allies, not letting Putin’s nuclear blackmail control US foreign policy.
The political environment will improve once voters, currently addled on amnesia, are reminded why they booted Republicans in 2018 and Trump in 2020: the amorality, incompetence, treason, and chaos already on display.
Y’all know that clock is ticking, hence why MAGA is still so angry and bitter despite Trump’s pyrrhic 1.5% victory. Delicious!
FYI: JKGirl was RyGuy, who is banned.
Joyner:
Nor is it likely to get fixed by people holding a cloistered worldview, who think razing institutions to the ground to build anew in this complex world, while adhering to naive assumptions that fall onto the Dunning-Kruger spectrum.
Personally, I’d opt for incremental changes within a feedback loop.
The incompetence of the first Trump administration was breathtaking. It garnered Trump nomination for the “worse President in history.”
His run was only interrupted by circumstance. Now he’s back with a vengeance that coalesces with whatever else his addled brain can cook up.
His second administration and its mission of Project-2025-not-Project-2025 is shaping up to exceed the destructive awfulness of his first four years, and with even less guardrails.
Some people’s response of “let’s wait and see because it might not turn out so bad” is a particularly unhelpful take. The frickin’ stove is hot, don’t touch it !!!
I hope there’s enough traction left in our institutions (legal and otherwise) to offer substantive resistance Trump’s trifecta win.
I am reminded of Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega’s response when deposed by Violeta Chamoro: “We shall rule from below.”
MAGA has ruled from below for the past four years using every opening, taking their battle to our streets and our culture. Circumstances now demand the favor be returned.
@Modulo Myself:
Thank you for this, I’d never heard of this concept.
I can learn from smart people ruminating on any topic, as long as their opinions on subjects out of their main lane are nested within the life’s work of authorities and specialists.
So if someone is intelligent, studied, well read, and has a grounded disagreement with some expert consensus, fine. Let’s hear it. When someone shows outright contempt and disregard for experts but adores quacks they saw on YouTube, I’m cutting them off mid-sentence. Get real bro. I’m not taking advice from some crank that wears anti-elitist ignorance as a badge of honor lol
@JKGirl: Are you saying that Putin seems unusually close to Trump isn’t true?
No question that Biden is physically 80 years old, but the job of POTUS doesn’t require running a mile or lifting a big weight. When Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan were actually impaired in their second terms, this was not constant fodder for the chattering classes, and yes, it is a norm to cover up for the President a bit. FDR’s polio and JFK’s satyriasis were not headlines.
Is it a norm to prosecute a former President? Is it a norm for a former President to do prosecutable things?
Etc, etc, etc.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I thought as much.
#MeToo Anyone accused of sexual assault should automatically be disqualified from having a Government job.
@JKGirl:
All Dismissed as Whataboutism
Illegal FISA warrants to spy of Trump based on the “verified” Oppo research paid for by the Clinton campaign as legal expenses protected by Attorney Client privilege Steele dossier.
@Rob1:
It’s reminiscent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s old warning against the arrogance of a dry individual holding an umbrella for so long he assumes he doesn’t need it. He tosses it away, only to find himself drenched.
The CIA, FBI, State, and other pillars of the American foreign policy establishment have made mistakes and done bad things. But they have usually done well at providing a shelter — however leaky — of homeland stability under which we strut and fret daily. So much so, our security umbrella is often invisible and easy to take for granted. Same goes for other government institutions.
Staffing it from top to bottom with the inexperienced and incompetent in the name of disruption may be what voters think we want. But like the guy in RBG’s analogy, we may quickly be forced remember what we forgot, with regret: much if not most of the world’s populace faces conditions less safe, less stable, and poorer than ours.
The stupid thing is we’ve already done this. It has been memory-holed that Trump gutted the CDC’s China team before the COVID outbreak. We have no way of knowing for sure whether or not a robust, fully staffed and funded CDC China team could have helped isolate COVID before it spread. But it is entirely possible that coronavirus was not just something Trump mishandled, after reaching our shores and interrupting his presidency. It could be the whole global disaster was downstream of his chaos conservativism.
We may pay a price for our amnesia. But i get it: nostalgic disatisfaction has caused me run back to toxic exes before. Sometimes one has to learn the lesson two or three times before it sinks in.
@Steven L. Taylor: Oh, I definitely don’t see the three alternatives as mutually exclusive. I think they’re overlapping explanations both of his own behavior and of why he gets so little pushback.
@DK: As I’ve told my students more than once, I get dumber every day. I know more today than I did yesterday and a whole lot more now than I did when I got my PhD in 1995. But there was a thousand things published yesterday that I should have read and I got to maybe fifty or sixty of them. Compounded over 30 years, I’d never catch up even if they stopped printing new stuff.
And that’s just in stuff where there’s some reasonable expectation that I have expertise! In fields even tangentially related, we’re up to 997/1000 things I didn’t read. Two tangents away, it’s closer to 0/1000. The nuclear physicists may we complete morons but I’ve got no choice but to defer to them.
@James Joyner: Like I have said for years: The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.
Here is a piece on Pete Hegseth at Digby’s place that contains a lot of links to other Pete Hegseth pieces:
https://digbysblog.net/2024/11/19/onward-christian-soldier-2/
Trump has selected Matthew Whitaker as his ambassador to NATO.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It didn’t require plagiarism detection software or ChatGPT to guess that. PaulL would be equally unanonymous (“onymous”?) posting under some other name.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Maybe so. But also the more you know where and how to learn about what you don’t know.
@DK:
The late 90s internet was filled with people arguing for Intelligent Design: which was bullshit clothed in grounded disagreement.
I’m sure there are IDers out there, but it’s not pushed any more.
I think there’s a book to be written about the ID -> climate change denialism -> MAGA/RFK Jr/Covid denialism nuttiness progression.
There is an unsubtle distinction between an administration that wants to take a totally different approach to administering and implementing the statutory missions of the various executive agencies, and an administration that wants to thwart those missions and prevent the law from being enforced. The combination of a lawless Executive, an enabling Legislature, and a willing Judiciary goes far beyond violation of norms — it is no longer recognizably American democracy.
@CSK:
And Linda McMahon, as his Secretary of Education.
“McMahon, a major Republican donor and a former pro-wrestling executive, served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term”
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/19/politics/linda-mcmahon-education-secretary-trump/index.html
@CSK:
Interesting choice:
It is also remarkable (I suspect) that Trump announced this particular pick so early. It looks like he’s sending a message.
“You want some protection? Pay us.”
First of all, it’s not just Trump. It is the non-elected people around him that are also influential.
Second, please don’t treat Trump cabal’s strategy as something new. It’s history being replayed after the success of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
What’s heartbreaking is that the American people elected him. However, even this is a repeat of history from my reading of European history.
For example, in Stalin’s sphere, the communists in post WWII countries tried for a few years to be democratically elected, with little success. When they did have success they took control of the military and law enforcement, purged intellectuals, and tool control of the means of production. This was often accomplished by framing parts of the opposition as extremists, creating political coalitions with the more amenable parts of the political framework, being elected under a moderate posture, and taking control.
We won’t know until Trump’s cabal takes power how far he is willing to go. As Trump has no empathy, in my view, my working assumption is that whatever happens will be for his personal gain and glory.
I hope I’m wrong. I pray I’m wrong.
@drj: “You want some protection? Pay us.”
Why would European leader believe that Trump would uphold any deal that he signed off on? Even if they did pay up, Trump would just change the deal, his word means nothing. Europe has to move away from the US just for their own protection. Maybe they will form a version of NATO without the US.
@Modulo Myself:
You opened the door to this topic. By the power of Gish!
Why is Evolution separated from Abiogenesis when Abiogenesis is just the beginning of Evolution?
Please list the scientific advancements based wholly on the giants and pure essence of science: paradigms/facts of evolution, the big bang and string physics?
@Paul L.: “You opened the door to this topic”
Oooh, someone’s been watching Law & Order again. If only this were a court of law and you were a judge and MM an attorney arguing a case in front of you, a comment like this might actually make some sense!
Instead of, you know, being just a particularly lame attempt to hijack a conversation.
The fear during the election season was that a second Trump administration would be staffed by people who were more competent, and who would disable the guardrails. Instead, we are going to get really, really dumb people attempting to disable all the guardrails. I think this limits the damage that this second Trump administration can actively do.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still going to suck. And the passive damage will be immense. But if America is going to fuck around with fascism (we’ve gone past flirting with fascism), at least it will be a self destructive fascism that not only doesn’t get the trains on time, but accidentally runs over itself with that train (and lots of other people).
Let’s just hope bird flu doesn’t have as high a fatality rate in humans as it does in seals.
@Modulo Myself:
This is why I am done engaging with Trumpists, even to argue.
Everything they say is a Gish Gallop of lies and bullshittery concealing resentment and hatred.
@Lucysfootball:
Trump and the people surrounding him don’t think that far ahead. Which is kind of the point.
I’ve seen reports that Putin c.s. see Trump as America’s Gorbachev, i.e., the person that will end the the current status of the US as the world’s hegemon.
Let’s assume for a second that the US takes a step back and leaves its economically advanced allies (Europe, Japan, SK, Australia, etc.) to their own devices. That would almost certainly significantly hurt the status of the dollar as the world’s premier reserve currency. (I’m no economist, but I find it hard to imagine that neo-isolationism wouldn’t hurt the US’ status as the world’s financial center.)
And if the dollar becomes less of a reserve currency, the global demand for dollars will go down and the US’ structural trade deficit becomes a real problem real quick. How are all these imports going to be paid for if all these other countries don’t want dollars for other reasons than just to buy stuff from the US?
If foreign demand for the dollar collapses, there will be less money to go around – and, naturally, less money to spend on defense. Goal achieved.
Right now, Putin and Xi are winning the Cold War 2.0. Not even because they become stronger, but because the US will soon be deliberately shooting itself in the foot.
All made possible by (among other people) an Australian and a South-African billionaire.
@drj:
I’m not sure when or if we’ll ever know the extent of it, but Putin and Xi are winning the Cold War 2.0 because it’s happening online (so far). The shooting of ourselves in the foot was in part by their design.
@Gustopher:
I’ve been compiling a list of what I see are the weak flanks and chokepoints of Trumpism:
1. Astonishing ineptitude. They really do imagine that all they need do is wave a hand imperiously and the massive bureaucracy of hundreds of thousands of people will leap to their feet robotically. They lack the patience to work in small slow incremental ways to steer the massive ship in a new direction.
2. Unquenchable thirst for grift and self dealing. There is no higher purpose in Trumpism than personal enrichment.
2.a Insistence on loyalty above competence.
These two cause them to pursue easy low hanging performative victories which mask the corruption.
3. Focus on culture war over delivery of basic services. As in the early 2000s, even though the low engagement voter may passively accept abortion bans, suddenly losing one’s job or having ones child killed in a pointless war tends to focus the mind.
4. Their reach exceeds their grasp. They really aren’t popular and hold only the most razor thin margin, and have no power at all in some of the largest and most powerful states. We have plenty of tools to block, obstruct frustrate and even monkeywrench their plans and stand a good chance of recapture the House in 2 years.
It’s once again just another case of right-wing media narratives bearing fruit. Hannity et al have been agitating against the “deep state” as an excuse for all the GOP’s problems of governance, and now we’re all going to pay the price again.
@drj:
Gorbachev had third world infrastructure with a first world nuclear arsenal, and an economy largely dependent on resource extraction*. The US is in a slightly better position in that respect.
That’s not the worst part. Who will finance the US fiscal deficit, to be made larger once those poor billionaires get the tax cuts they so deserve, when Americas sovereign debt instruments lose value, or outright become toxic? Can you imagine the Fed chair and the treasury secretary going hat in hand to the IMF or the major European powers for a short term multi-trillion loan?
I imagine printing money and shooting interest rates higher than a Xtarship can fly. When it’s all over, the Dollar will be trade about 10 for a Euro, and private equity firms will own almost all residential real estate.
*Coincidentally, like the USSR in the 80s, the US is today’s largest oil producer.
@Gustopher:
Hegseth, McMahon, Oz, RFK Jr …. this is the Milli Vanilli administration. The real “talent” for wrecking our government is calling the plays from behind the scenes…. Miller, Bannon, others, perhaps some the techbros, etc.
@Gustopher:
My fear was that the second Trump administration would be staffed by a handful of remaining people who saw what worked and what didn’t the first time around, and therefore know how to disable the guardrails, despite not being the sharpest knives in the drawer. Stephen Miller & Co. know what they are doing, even if others do not.
@Gustopher:
People like Bannon and Miller will be running things, and increasingly as Trump deteriorates.
They are competent enough to do plenty of damage and will add aides also competent enough.
@Jen: I anticipate Stephen Miller screaming into a phone “What do you mean there are no fences? I can’t have a concentration camp without any fences!” while Kristy Noem is similarly upset by a lack of gravel for the gravel pits.
The Trump campaign left people stranded at events multiple times. I expect the same level of competence with the government. A+ for evil intent, D- for execution. A D- will still hurt a lot of people.
Someone at the Federalist Society is lamenting that they didn’t prepare lists of Secretaries of Defense.
@charontwo: How many government employees does Trump want to fire and either replace with lackeys or just not replace?
That much turnover and chaos makes organizations flounder even with the best leadership.
Trump’s a useful idiot. Dangerous but extremely useful for some. Why else would Howard Lutnick want to associate?
@Kathy:
My investment portfolio is fairly bond heavy. I’m not sure this will trouble me much.
As someone who works at a nonprofit, I’ll just note that HR 4945, which the House will vote on tomorrow, allows the Executive Branch, with no checks or balances, to eliminate the tax exemption of any nonprofit accused of supporting “terrorism.” The definition of which of course is up to the Executive.
Since a huge number of organizations that may resist Trump on *policy* grounds are organized as nonprofits, the bill is pretty much an express train to demolishing one important guardrail.
It probably won’t get by the Senate yet, but next year may be another story.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Right?!? And one of the more defining traits of the MAGA cohort, leaders and supporters, is the complete opposite characteristic.
Somehow, it seems the mere technological access to all the world’s information at one’s fingertips, has had a detrimental effect on some people. Similar to a person fifty years ago buying an entire set of Encyclopedia Americana, and leaving them in the bookcase, never having cracked a page. We (in the general sense) haven’t learned how to manage the massive amounts of information that now confront us.
I graduated from college humbled by a new found awareness of how much I didn’t know. But, I did get some functional tools that have served me well.
@Rob1:
I do plenty of fact checking on myself on some of my posts here. Sometimes I recall things wrong, sometimes I forget, and sometimes I realize I don’t know some datum I thought I did. I’ve changed, and even deleted, entire comments because of that.
I use Wikipedia, which is fairly reliable for factual info*. Lately also AI for search, making sure to check the cited sources. If none are cited, I go for a more conventional search.
That aside, one of the best things I ever did was subscribe to Audible in 2012. You can get a lot of good quality non fiction for a rather reasonable price, including several Great Courses lecture packs. I’ve literally have read hundreds of books this way, most of them while driving or cooking.
@Rob1: This is my fear.
I think he wants the tops of all the orgs to be compliant so that people like Miller and Homan (and his personal attorneys he put at DoJ) won’t be stopped from doing whatever they want.
@Gustopher: There are a lot of people in ICE and the Border Patrol who are sympathetic to Trump’s goals. I am not at all confident that the incompetence saves us.