January 31, 2017--Trump's Band of Amateurs

Much of Donald Trump's appeal has been his swaggering claim that because of his experience as a successful businessman he is not some over-experienced, incompetent government type.

The latter, by definition, are incompetent. Look at the mess professional politicians have made. It's time to turn government, whatever small part of it we will leave intact, over to people who know how to get things done. Like build a casino. We'll take our business acumen and apply it to the simple matter of running the government.

Thus, all the generals and CEO types Trump has selected to join him in running USA, Inc.

But so far, just 10 days into his presidency, Trump has already demonstrated that his boys don't in fact know how to get the job done.

Case in point this past weekend is the roll out of the new ban on Muslims from seven Middle Eastern countries. Including Iraq where people who risked their lives to help us fight ISIS are being turned back as they try to come to America.

The Trump immigration roll out was as bungled as the mocked Obama launch of Obamacare.

In Trump's case the immigration-ban mess is a result of intentional choices--rather than recruit and hire a few key staffers who know how things work at the senior executive level he selected the under-experienced Steven Bannon (now frighteningly a member of the National Security Council) and Stephen Miller to be in charge of White House policy.

Together they hatched this plan, opted not to consult with anyone in the Pentagon or Department of Homeland Security, so that Trump could sign the executive order with a ceremonial flourish, believing that all that was required to successfully implement this xenophobic and likely illegal policy was a stroke of the presidential pen.

Trump ran against elites of all kinds but primarily those in the media and government. There is a lot to find fault with in both places, but a certain amount of experience and, more important, competency counts when you want to get big things done in a complex and contested political environment. The Oval Office is not the set for The Apprentice or the Trump Organization.

Even incoming presidents such as Ronald Reagan who famously proclaimed government not the solution to problems but rather the cause of them, stocked his cabinet and the White House with solid citizens who knew how things work when dealing with Congress and the press.

This time around we have Bannon and Miller, neither one of whom has a clue about how things are accomplished in Washington. They clearly do not know that Reagan needed Tip O'Neill as a partner. Or that Bill Clinton had Newt Gingrich.

And, so it appears, neither does Trump who is now bumbling his way through the mess he and his amateur staff devised, including late last night firing his acting attorney general, evocative of Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre

In fact, Trump's response has been so inept that he managed to make things worse. Now at least half the world hates us. All the product of a week's work.

As a result, he is quickly losing control of the agenda and has fewer and fewer Washington friends who he will need if he is to have a successful legislative agenda.

Which, in the end, may be a good things. The less of his agenda the better.

Stephen Miller (left) and Steven Bannon

December 12, 2016--BREAKING (FAKE) NEWS!

Dateline: New York, December 12, 5:24 a.m.

NBC announced late last week that president-elect Donald J. Trump will continue to be the Executive Producer of The Apprentice when it returns to the air on January 2nd. It was not disclosed if Mr. Trump while president will continue to be paid his producer fee or will receive a dollar-a-year. As co-creator he owns a 50 percent share of the program's earnings.

Brian Stelter, host of CNN's Reliable Sources was quoted as saying that no previous president of the United States has had a financial association of any kind with a commercial TV program. When political figures or candidates appear on late-night programs such as the Tonight Show, including sitting presidents, they do not receive the Screen Actors Guild minimum that other guests receive.

Others interviewed who prefer to speak off the record said that this is not only unusual, but that there are other forces as work that explain why Trump is continuing to stay directly involved in the show. All point to the host who replaced Mr. Trump--Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California and the secret previously-unreported relationship between him and the president-elect.

Schwarzenegger was born in Thal, Austria when Austria was still behind the Soviet Iron Curtain and sources point out that the recent presidential election was interfered with by Vladimir Putin's K.G.B. which hacked into the voting machines in key states that were subsequently carried by Mr. Trump and thereby clinched for him the Electoral College victory.

They point out further that Trump, as part of his debt to Putin and Russia, even before Election Day, heaped praise on President Putin which was reciprocated.

The same sources noted the close ties between Putin and some of Trump's key appointees.

For example, Breitbart's Steve Bannon, Trump's behind-the-scenes chief strategist, is a long-time advocate of the U.S. forging strong relations with Vladimir Putin as a way of driving a wedge between the two great communist superpowers--China and Russia. He is responsible for convincing Trump to tip global relations from the Asia focus called for by President Obama to a European focus and thereby, through an improved relationship with Putin, link American interests to the growing pro-Russian nationalist movement sweeping Western Europe.

In addition, retired three-star general Michael Flynn, Trump's National Security Advisor designee, has for many years been one of Putin's favorite U.S. generals. In 2015, for example, he was the paid guest of honor at a gala honoring RT, a government-owned media outlet. It was hosted by President Putin, who sat at Flynn's table during the festivities.

And just the other day it was revealed that Trump will nominate Rex Tillerson, Exxon-Mobil CEO, to be Secretary of State. In his CEO role, he visited Russia numerous times and is currently actively seeking to put the finishing touches on a multi-billion dollar gas and oil deal with Rosneft, a major state-owned petroleum company. The Wall Street Journal reported that "few citizens are closer to Vladimir Putin than Rex Tillerson," indicating he has spent more time with Putin than any American other than Henry Kissinger.

Tillerson and Putin

It is clear that there are deep connections between Donald Trump, his emerging team, and Russia, largely in various connections to Vladimir Putin.

How does Arnold Schwarzenegger fit into this picture?

During his tenure as governor of California, Schwarzenegger initiated legislation that doubled the areas off the coast of California that could be leased for drilling by major oil companies, including Exxon-Mobil.  Through the Exxon connection, the governor was able to meet and make deals with the Russians who then became major importers of California agricultural products.

When Schwarzenegger was term-limited and ineligible to run for a third term, with his private life in tatters, he turned to Donald Trump to help him resurrect his career. Movie roles followed and more recently, when Trump was let go by NBC as host of The Apprentice, behind the scenes as executive producer, Trump influenced the choice of Schwarzenegger as his successor.

Bannon and Flynn, taking note of this, because of their own on-going relationships to Putin and through him to Russia, used their back-channel connections to NBC to influence the hiring of Schwarzenegger.

Further, knowing the details of the former governor's birth and upbringing and his extensive and dependent relationship to Putin and Russia, to maintain these lucrative partnerships, Schwarzenegger's benefactors see him to be a potential presidential candidate in 2020 if Trump decides not to run for a second term, or in 2024 when it is expected that Hillary Clinton will for the fourth time seek the presidency.

Critics note that to make Schwarzenegger eligible for the presidency, since he was not born in the United States, it will be necessary to amend the Constitution. In secret, Trump and his team, led by Steve Bannon and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are already at work on that process, including exploring if Trump can amend the Constitution by executive order, bypassing Congress and the states.

And although Schwarzenegger was married to Maria Shriver, John Kennedy's niece, there is no direct evidence that the former governor was involved in the 35th president's assassination.

A final note--it is reported that when in New York this group of Trump advisors' favorite restaurant, just a few streets from Trump Tower, is the Russian Tea Room; and in Washington, DC, Russian-connection colleagues Flynn, Bannon, Tillerson, and Trump himself are frequently found at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. Trump is the one eating his slices with a knife and fork.

Putin and Flynn at the RT Banquet

December 5, 2016--Breakfast With FDR

After a half-hour attempting to talk about the results of the recent election, our friend slammed her fists on the table and, starting to get up, said, "We can't talk about this anymore. Ever."

I said, as calmly as I could, "If it's come to that, for the sake of our friendship, we need to try to keep talking, because, if we don't, it's possible that we'll never again speak with each other."

She had been saying, hotter and hotter, that I was being naive insisting it is too soon to be drawing conclusions about what kind of president Donald Trump will be. "All he's been doing thus far," she quoted me as saying, is appoint people. He hasn't at yet actually done anything."

"But," she had been insisting, "all his appointments are either rightwing racist ideologues like Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general, a bunch of hawkish has-been generals or," much worse to her, "Goldman Sachs billionaires with no governmental experience. Talk about draining the swamp. And what about that white-supremacist Bannon?"

"Who do you expect him to appoint? While campaigning he said these are the kind of people he'd select. Successful people and people not tainted by government experience. His criticism included claiming that the messes we find ourselves in are largely because we've been governed by professional politicians and government workers who are incompetent."

"That's quite an overstatement, don't you think?" she pressed, "I know some government officials and they're hardworking and pretty good considering the problems we face."

"So you expected Trump to appoint Bernie Sanders secretary of the treasury? As Obama said, elections have consequences. But, again, I am not drawing any conclusions. Not for a few months after he's inaugurated. To see what he and his people do. Could be a disaster, who knows, but they could shake things up in a few good ways."

She banged the table again but sat back down. So I pushed on, "I know your favorite president is Franklin Roosevelt, FDR." Sullenly, she nodded. "One of mine too, but I found while reading Listen, Liberal, that many of his major appointments were quite unconventional. Not right out of the elite leaders most presidents then and now draw upon."

"There you go again with that book," she muttered.

"It just so happens that I have the book with me. Let me read a bit to you, here on page 39, about some of FDR's appointments--

Look back to the days when government actually worked and you will notice an astonishing thing. Unlike the Obama administration's roster of well-graduated mugwumps, the talented people surrounding Franklin Roosevelt stood very definitely outside the era's main academic currents. Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's closest confident, was a social worker from Iowa. Robert Jackson, the U.S. Attorney General whom Roosevelt appointed to the Supreme Court, was a lawyer who had no law degree. Jessie Jones, who ran Roosevelt's bailout program, was a businessman from Texas with no qualms about putting the nation's most prominent financial institutions into receivership. Marriner Eccles, the visionary whom Roosevelt appointed to run the Federal Reserve, was a small-town banker from Utah with no advanced degree. Henry Wallace, who was probably the nation's greatest agriculture secretary, studied at Iowa State and came to government after running a magazine for farmers. Harry Truman, FDR's last Vice President, had been a successful U.S. senator but had no college degree at all. 

I looked up to see her reaction.

"He also had the famous Brain Trust with plenty of people from Harvard and Columbia."

"Your point?"

"That he also turned to well educated and experienced people to help guide his thinking and legislative agenda."

"True, including appointing the richest man in America, Wall Street insider, Joseph Kennedy, to serve as first head of the SEC, saying he was the best choice because he knew how the system was rigged and where the skeletons were hidden. To drain the swamp you need people who know the swamp. Which brings me to my final point."

"Thankfully," my friend said under her breath.

"Then there was small-town lawyer Cordell Hull, his Secretary of State, who did not always get FDR to do the right thing. For example, he pressed Roosevelt to authorize during the Second World War the internment of Japanese Americans. More than 120,000 of them."

She looked away. "A lot of people, you included, are worried that Trump will do a version of the same thing to Muslims in this country. That banning them selectively from entering this country is not that far a stretch from internment. Whatever Trump might be thinking about that--and I doubt it will come to that--unlike FDR he hasn't made any moves to do so whereas the progressive Democrat Roosevelt did what he did. And further, because of his anti-Semitism, or minimally indifference to the plight of European Jews, with pressure from key members of the State Department, including Hull, how many Jews did he relegate to horrific deaths in Germany's concentration camps? How many could Roosevelt have saved?"

"I have no idea," she said, still not looking at me.

"My point--how presidents act is not always predictable. And before condemning them I continue to contend we have to wait until they act. Becoming president history shows can change candidates and president-elects. Until they get those extra-top-secret briefings and have time to contemplate the world situation and the immensity of their power, all bets are off."

She said nothing and began to slip into her coat.

"My real point is that things are usually more nuanced and complicated than they seem. Thus, the comparison to Franklin Roosevelt. We both think very highly of him, but . . ."

With that, my friend left.

That was two weeks ago. I haven't heard from her since. This is very unusual when we're in town.