Tag: Cabinet of Deplorables

Trump’s Deplorables Had a Duty to Speak Up

Buck Banks

“Even if we cut some slack for Esper and all the others who served as honorably and conscientiously as they could until they were faced with either the dead end of resignation or being fired, the fact is that these men and women remained silent for far too long once they were out of government service. They held back important things that the American people and their elected representatives needed to know. They kept them as their own personal secrets, either out of some misplaced sense of bureaucratic propriety, or because they had a book deal and didn’t want to steal their own thunder from release day.”

— Tom Nichols

Trump Compared to Mussolini

Buck Banks

“You know I am glad that these people are speaking out, but I’ll be very honest here, and undiplomatic: I don’t welcome those statements in the sense that those people served this president. And to me quite bluntly they are accomplices … So when you choose to work for this kind of administration, which showed its true colors very early on, at some point you abet the policies even if afterwards you decide that they’re terrible, that the man you were serving is a terrible person. So while I am glad they are saying what they are saying, it comes too late.”

— Former U.S. Ambassador to the EU Anthony Gardner told Politico that President Trump “evokes memories of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and that former Trump officials who are now criticizing the president, like ex-Defense Secretary James Mattis, are ‘collaborators’ who should have spoken out sooner or never joined the administration in the first place.”

White House Is Short-Staffed

Buck Banks

80%

New York Times: “Some 80 percent of the senior positions in the White House below the cabinet level have turned over during President Trump’s administration, with about 500 people having departed since the inauguration. Mr. Trump is on his fourth chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser and his fifth secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. … Between Mr. Trump’s history of firing people and the choice by many career officials and political appointees to leave, he now finds himself with a government riddled with vacancies, acting department chiefs and, in some cases, leaders whose professional backgrounds do not easily match up to the task of managing a pandemic.”

The Trump Toadies’ Legacy

Buck Banks

“Whether these enablers joined his administration in earnest, or aided and abetted it from elite perches in politics, Congress, the media, or the private sector, they will be remembered for cheering on a leader whose record in government (thus far) includes splitting up immigrant families and incarcerating their children in cages; encouraging a spike in racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic vigilantes; leveraging American power to promote ethnic cleansing abroad and punish political opponents at home; actively inciting climate change and environmental wreckage; and surrendering America’s national security to an international rogue’s gallery of despots.”

— Frank Rich

Federal Health Department Contract Funneled Money to Trump Allies

Buck Banks

8

“At least eight former White House, presidential transition and campaign officials for President Donald Trump were hired as outside contractors to the federal health department at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year,” Politico reports. “They were among at least 40 consultants who worked on a one-year, $2.25 million contract directed by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma. The contractors were hired to burnish Verma’s personal brand and provide ‘strategic communications’ support.”

Betsy DeVos Could Get Jail Time

Buck Banks

“I’m not sure if this is contempt or sanctions. I’m not sending anyone to jail yet but it’s good to know I have that ability.”

— U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim. “Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos faces potential sanctions or a finding she’s in contempt of court for continuing to collect on the debt of former students at bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc., going so far as seizing their tax refunds and wages,” Bloomberg reports.