Trump has even included Eric, Donald, Jr., Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushner as part of his transition team as well:
You have to wonder if Barron felt left out.
In any case, it is apparent that the transition team is composed of loyalists who helped campaign for Trump. But whether Trump should appoint Cabinet-level positions based purely on this basis is another matter. Trump owes something to the people who voted for him as well.
The selection of Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff was smart strategy. Priebus represents the establishment, but he will be a good conduit to Congress, whom Trump needs if he is to get anything done.
The appointment of Kellyane Conway and Stephen Bannon as senior strategists is a nod both to their loyalty and to the voters.
Ben Carson has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of Education, but it seems more likely given his background that he gets the Surgeon General position, a fitting reward for his loyalty.
And Trump is reportedly leaning toward Steve Mnuchin, an ex-Goldman guy and head of his campaign finance committee, as Treasury Secretary. This strikes a little bit of a discordant note given that Trump had criticized both Hillary and Ted Cruz for their Goldman ties.
Yesterday it emerged that Rudy Giuliani is the frontrunner for Secretary of State. It's hard not to greet that news with a little bit of dismay. This was supposedly leaked by someone high up in the Trump power structure, and so, as these things do, will probably turn out to be true.
Giuliani was a great US Attorney for the Second District of New York. Despite being of Italian descent, and despite (or because of?) his father having been a low-level gangster, Giuliani fearlessly went after the Mob, obtaining several high level convictions. He also went after Wall Street for insider trading, and obtained a couple of convictions there as well.
He was overrated as a Mayor. Crime levels in the New York City came down drastically under his tenure (from 1994 through 2001), and he deserves some credit for that, but he also benefitted from the nationwide waning of the crack epidemic, which peaked from 1990 to 1992. After 9/11, Giuliani gave a rousing speech, and was photographed with President Bush atop a heap of rubble at the site of the bombing, and in the nationwide surge in patriotism that followed, was hailed as "America's Mayor." (He gave a couple of speeches, that was all.)
Giuliani distinguished himself in the Presidential primaries in 2008 by being the biggest hawk in the field, no mean feat in a field that included eventual nominee John McCain.
One of the reasons that voters were enthusiastic about Trump in the primaries was that he was the first Republican who felt free to say that the Iraq War was a bad idea, and because he wants to cooperate with Russia in Syria. Hillary would have enforced a no fly zone over the country, which could have led to a confrontation with Russia. Obama's policy, up until a few days ago, was to support both anti-Assad and anti-ISIS forces, while Assad and ISIS fight each other; Trump rightly pointed out how illogical that strategy was.
Trump did say that he would try to undo Obama's nuclear pact with Iran. But he has not mentioned wanting to go to war with anyone beside ISIS.
It's hard to believe that Giuliani feels the same.
Giuliani would make a great Attorney General for the exact same reasons he'd be a horrible Secretary of State: he's a belligerent, confrontational guy who's unafraid to go after anybody. In fact, he often seems downright eager to go after people.
If he does get State, Giuliani would theoretically do Trump's bidding. But he'd also have Trump's ear, and on balance, he would push us in the direction of war. That would be a betrayal of the voters who elected Trump.
Let's hope the rumors are untrue.
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31 comments:
The rumor circulating online is that Jared Kushner (Ivanka's husband) couldn't stomach Chris Christie for his having prosecuted and convicted Jared's father, Charles Kushner, in 2005 for tax evasion and witness tampering.
Mark --
Interesting, I hadn't even been aware of that. I read the NY Post version that Trump figuredChristie knew about Bridgegate from the beginning and didn't like the fact that he had let Bridget Kelly take the fall. But Trump listens to Ivanka, who listens to Kushner, so they probably had some sway as well. Ivan was reportedly responsible for Trump having jettisoned Lewandowski halfway through the campaign.
John,
Great post. Agree about Giuliani. Enough of him. Let's really drain that swamp. Also no neoconz for SecState (not that I have any control, LOL).
But one thing: the security clearances for the kids were fake news. Didn't happen.
Be wary of leaks. Except in the case of Hillary, in which case they are all true. Ed Klein states that she & Bill had a violent blow up (over the phone) in the last days of the campaign, and someone else is saying on condition of anonymity that she became violent towards Podesta and Mook after she learned of her loss.
Puzzled
Lewandowski is back in some form or fashion. The jettison was only public, I think.
Puzzled
Lots of talk, lots of names being bruited about (in a lot of cases, by people pushing themselves forward in hopes of being noticed). Anyone who wants to know what a Trump admin will look like will have to wait a couple years. The intrigue is fun, but as usual there's lots of smoke and (often) not much fire. People getting the vapors about this or that name seem like they really enjoy being in agony over rumors.
I agree that Trump clearly values loyalty (something Clinton didn't seem to very much, especially given the banishment of Huma in the aftermath of the 10/28 Comey announcement). Competence is also greatly to be desired, and these can run at odds. We'll see.
Puzzled --
Thank you.
Ah, I'm an idiot. I fell for that security clearance thing; it WAS on the front page of the online edition of the NY Post. I'll take it out of this post, thank you.
Yes, any neocon would be a disappointment, Giuliani particularly so. John Bolton's name has also been mentioned,I guess he would be worse.
Wow, Hillary actually felt are to physically attack her campaign staffers? Yikes. I guess it's not out of character. And Hillary and Bill were supposed to have had violent arguments all the time when they were in the White House.
Pangur --
Well, I guess I'm one of those people getting the vapors about these rumors. Can't say I'm enjoying being in agony though.
VALUING loyalty and BEING loyal ar two different things. I think Trumps both. Hillary certainly wasn't loyal, but I suspect she demanded it from her subordinates.
Obama didn't even seem to value it that much, given that he appointed Hillary as his first Secretary of State, and that Obama and the Clintons absolutely despised each other. Maybe he was just thinking in a particularly Machiavellian, i.e., "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" sort of way. Or maybe they had some kind of deal whereby in return for hers and Bill's help during the general election he had promised her State. I don't know. Then again I think he always kept Hillary at arm's length, and his closest advisor was Valerie Jarrett, who was loyal to him.
Re: Obama, he seems to have had very little in the way of political talent, either macro or micro. Decent speaker, looks fine, but he leaves a Democratic party in shambles, no Senate, no House, nearly three quarters of the state legislatures are GOP held. There's no new, young political talent and no organization to develop it. Loyalty doesn't mean much in these circumstances. On the other hand , there's his track record of kicking Van Jones to the curb, just as he did with Jeremiah Wright (the latter being a bigger betrayal).
Pangur --
No question Obama had no coattails, in fact he had the opposite.
I don't even think he was a good extemporaneous speaker; he was a good reader of the Teleprompter. I remember hearing that in some of his early meetings with businessmen at the WH, he actually read from a Teleprompter. (I can't confirm that.)
On the other hand, he did get himself elected twice, though I suspect there was a fair amount of fraud the second time around.
As far as loyalty, no, he's not particularly loyal, although his staffers were for the most part. I don't think he really had much choice with Wright, if he wanted to be elected. But yeah, Van Jones, Chuck Hagel, Tony Rezko, and there was his disavowal of a friendship with Bill Ayers, about as convincing as when Obama said, "That isn't the Jeremiah Wright that I know." So, yeah, not a lot of loyalty, not that you'd expect any from someone like him.
You should check this article out. Its an interview with the guy who wrote the art of the deal for Trump.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all
It stuck in my mind when John Oliver said that it was genuinely destabilising to hear someone lie about you with so much conviction.
excerpt from the article:
'He then tried to amplify the material he got from Trump by calling others involved in the deals. But their accounts often directly conflicted with Trump’s. “Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz said. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.”
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent. '
He also ripped off small time people he hired to do work for him. This for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cHZUCADYxY
You've said pathological lying is the surest sign of sociopathy after serial killing. Could it be time to reconsider whether Trump is one?
Do you think you'd be more inclined to call him a sociopath if he had views you disagreed with and thought were harmful to the country? I notice you have called Hillary Clinton and the last two Dem presidents sociopaths, and I'm skeptical about Obama.
btw the article totally confirms what you said about him having ADD.
Steven --
I've heard what Schwartz has to say about Trump, and I think he's politically-motivated. I could be wrong about Trump; I agree he has a tendency toward hyperbole. And there's no question he's a narcissistic personality, which I've said from the beginning. (I don't think anyone runs for President, at least if he doesn't come from a political family, who isn't a narcissist.) All of the things you mention are evidence pointing in the direction of him maybe being a sociopath. But I think you have to take Schwartz with a grain of salt; and despite all of the stuff that the NY Times and others tried to dig up on him last summer, the overwhelming impression I got was that most of his former employees liked him, which was definitely not the case with Hillary.
As far as my believing someone is a sociopath because of their politics, that's just not true. I've written sociopath alerts in this blog for republicans Newt Gingrich, Carly Fiorina, and Joe Arpaio (who isn't a high level politico, but he's definitely a conservative political lightning rod). If I thought Trump was a sociopath, I'd say so. I certainly haven't been reluctant to make fun of him, as I did in those posts where I compared him to Goldfinger and put him in a (losing) contest with el Chapo. And if I think he's making a false move, I'll point that out too (as I did in this post).
Okay fair enough re bias.
Schwartz is obviously totally against Trump politically but he seems like a sincere and good person to me and I don't think he is lying about his experience with and perception of Trump. He spent a lot of time with Trump and his observations seem astute and seem to accord with what you've said about sociopathic lying. And Trump does seem to me to just say whatever suits him at the time.
Going by my observations and what I've learnt from you about sociopaths, I'm now leaning in that direction more than before. He clearly is extraordinarily vain and narcicistic and isn't a sociopath just an extreme narcicist? Perhaps his former employees like him because he is charming and has a need to for positive attention.
I know that I wouldn't treat somebody the way he treated that architect, a small contractor who did a good job and needed the money. Its really terrible behaviour that.
I hope I'm wrong and Trump does a good job for America but I'm a little more worried than I was before. Where I was most worried about Clinton was foreign policy. What I'm most concerned about with Trump is that he will not respect the democratic rules and traditions, or people's rights, when things get tough. He seems to admire authoritarians and seems vain enough to want a cult of personality.
Steven --
Schwartz is a disgruntled former employee, as is that architect. I'm guessing there was a difference of opinion on whether the architect did a good job -- but that's just a guess.
No, sociopath is not just extreme narcissism, which I'll grant you Trump has. It's more a complete lack of loyalty, impulsiveness, an inability to feel love, and a complete lack of conscience as well. I would remind you of this post about Trump, these aren't the actions of a sociopath:
http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2016/07/trumps-acts-of-generosity.html
Another thing, Clinton had far worse personality faults than Trump. With Trump, there are all sorts of stories about how he was friendly and engaging with people from whom he had little to gain. Clinton, on the other hand, treated the people who had sworn to give their lives to save hers (her Secret Service detail) like crap. And the Arkansas State Troopers had similar stories, and evidently so did her State Department security detail. And as far as not respecting democratic rules and traditions, she was completely corrupt.
John,
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trumps-original-apprentice-louise-sunshine-recalls-her-magical-years-and-the-not-so-happy-ending-090040690.html
It's interesting. Trump, good and bad from waaaay back, when he still had an office in Brooklyn.
Puzzled
Puzzled --
Interesting. Trump is definitely a power-hungry guy, and he also loves fame, and doesn't like it when people might possibly outshine him. So, yeah, a narcissist. Don't know if you're sending that in part because of Steven's comments above, but I still don't see him as a sociopath. Just a humongous egotist.
Did you watch the architect video? It definitely seems like he liked the work and was totally satisfied with it and just didn't want to pay him. or... maybe...couldn't pay him (?) but it was still a really dirty trick.
Does ghost writing for someone count as being their employee? The only thing Schwartz seems disgruntled about is what he found to be Trump's personality and the fact he went against his own values to do a puff piece for money.
You said you got he overwhelming impression his former employees liked him...now here are two disgruntled ones.
When I asked about a person I know who is a compulsive liar but is nice to everyone and well liked, you were steadfast in maintaining he is a sociopath... because basically all compulsive liars are... but thought he probably has a need for positive attention.
I'm sure you have also told me that a sociopath is an extreme narcicist, like the extreme end of the egotism/narcissism spectrum but still qualitatively different. I really feel like I remember that but I guess I'm mistaken.
I wont bother you any more with this so should you wish to reply, it will be the last word.
A lot of people have noted that Trump seems to highly value loyalty but I haven't noticed many of them saying if this is a good or a bad thing. My own opinion is that loyalty is neither good nor bad but simply a trait that is more or less adaptive depending on the environment. I have noticed, however, that my natural inclination is to be loyal to a fault and to expect the same from others. I wonder if this is one of the factors that made me a strong Trump supporter early on, i.e. I recognized this similarity between us.
The staff at the coffee shop I go to daily made some rude remarks to me the day after the election about what an asshole I was for ruining the country by voting for Trump so I've been having to find a new coffee shop. The most disappointing thing to me was that all my years going there and exchanging pleasantries and tipping generously apparently counted for nothing because they couldn't separate the personal from the political.
Steven --
Yes, those are two disgruntled employees (yes, Id count a ghostwriter as an employee, of sorts). But the majority of former employees seem to be okay with him.
Trump is guilty of hyperbole, and, at times, yes, lies. But he's not a compulsive liar, nor a constant one. The guy you described in your personal life lied all the time, about just about everything, or that was the impression I got from you.
I may have said that sociopaths represent the extreme end of the narcissist spectrum, that sounds like something I'd have said, but there's still a qualitative difference at the far end, for the reasons I gave above. But, as I said, I could be wrong about Trump; but as of now I don't se him as a sociopath. (Just so you know, for a long time I didn't see Hillary as one either, especially when she was First Lady. As I said at the beginning of the sociopath alert on her, back in September, I just figured she was someone who had gotten dirty from her proximity to Bill, and from having trod the corridors of power. I could change my mind about Trump, too.)
Jokah --
That's actually quite telling about the coffee shop employees/Clinton supporters. The longer I observe this stuff, the more I see a basic personality difference between Left and Right. Somehow I just can't imagine conservatives jeering at a Clinton voter if they (the conservatives) had lost the election. Or, at least, that's behavior I'd expect to see more often from a Leftie. They've certainly shown what sore losers they are in cities and on college campuses all across the country this week.
I think one factor in their poor behavior is, like you say, being in a city or college campus environment where almost everyone agrees with them. It's like the stereotype of how the homeschooled kids wind up being weird and spazzy because they're not around their peers who, unlike their parents, don't think their stupid antics are cute and will kick their ass if they get too out of line. Or the hot girl who doesn't have to develop restraint in her behavior because all the men she meets are willing to overlook the lack of it. When you're in a bubble where everyone around you is fine with pitching a hissy fit over an election, you don't realize that most normal adults expect better.
Jokah --
Well said. I don't think I've ever known any home-schooled kids, but the hot girl comparison definitely resonates.
John,
You're not an idiot, you are an old fart who reflexively puts credence into what the news media peddle. I'm one myself. I fell for it myself.
Two things going on here, Trump is a trickster (I mean that in a good way, will explain more below) and the old media don't mean shit anymore. They are just peddling gossip. Maybe they always did. But now, nothing they say can be believed. Didn't we just have an election which was in part about that? Ahem.
About Trump the trickster, I've seen this in abundance in my life and esp. in real estate, and it's just the way it is. People jerk you around, they leave stuff off to the last minute, they can't find things, they default and request a new hearing....etc. It's all part of the game.
Google Louise Sunshine, she's a Dem who voted for Trump and who knows him from way back.
I get the feelz that some Trump supporters are worried. They think that Trump doesn't know what he's doing, he's overawed and overmatched by the majesty of the Presidency.
Don't believe that Trump doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. I'm willing to repeat that 11 times but I think you get the point.
LOL!
Puzzled
Puzzled --
No question, Trump is a real estate operator, and that's a sleazy business. And as far as him being a huckster, well, look no further than Trump University.
It's not that I think he doesn't know what he's doing. It's that I worry that he used his salesmanship to win the Presidency, and now that he's won it, he'll be more content than he should be to appoint old hacks, which is hardly draining the swamp. I'm encouraged by the appointments of Conway and Bannon, less so by some of the other names that have been bruited about. But as Pangur said above, we should probably reserve judgment until he actually makes the appointments.
Right on all counts. I'm still scared of Giuliani, tho. I think he would be a truly horrible SecState. One of the reasons I voted Trump was to stop getting into foreign wars.
Puzzled
I was under the impression that Ivanka's name became "Yael Kushner" when she converted to Orthodox Judaism. Trump's sons, who married Jewish women, apparently didn't convert publicly, but his daughter converted when she married a Jewish man.
High Arka --
That could well be, though publicly she still goes by Ivanka Trump; and now that she's the President's daughter, I'm sure she's not about to start using her married name. I had no idea that Trump's sons had both married Jewish as well. That doesn't get a lot of publicity.
spot on John...Rudy would be a much better choice for Attorney General and a poor choice as Sec of State.
I also heard Christie was pouched out because they did not like the selections he was pushing for the new cabinet, hard to know the real reasons. he was also disliked by Jared Kushner because Christie prosecuted his father and got him sentenced to 1-3 years in prison..
Thank you Jova. Hadn't heard that about Christie, I'd heard Trump was disgusted by him letting Bridget Kelly taking the fall for Bridgegate, but who knows....Yes, Jared Kushner seems to have Trump's ear.
I'm sure Trump puts the interests of the American people ahead of those of an overseas Israeli in the finance industry. The people crazy enough to see a problem with the Trump-Israel partnership are the same kinds of conspiracy nutjobs who think Hillary had a conflict because of her ties to all those Saudi princes.
High Arka --
But it was the Jewish pundits, more than anyone else, who screamed the most hysterically about Trump. If he did care about Israeli interests so much, would they have gotten quite so worked up about him? He went through the obligatory "I'm a friend of Israel" genuflection that every Presidential candidate must go through, but he didn't give off neocon vibes in the least.
The alt-right actually saw him as their savior, and he was enthusiastically endorsed by David Duke, among others.
Maybe he's just a big Rorschach inkblot, in whom people see whatever they want.
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