Trump’s Personal Assistant Is Fired

Selective memories with the likes of you and yours causes no more despondency in us because that is already maxed out.

https://www.today.com/popculture/michelle-malkin-obama-s-team-corrupt-wbna32174484

Obama’s team — the “best of the Washington insiders,” as David Brooks called it — is a dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of business-as-usual cronies. They play basketball with the president now instead of poker, but they are every bit as disreputable and demanding as their 1940s counterparts. The administration is teeming with long-lasting favor-seekers in government, business, and the lucrative bridge in between. The corruption stretches from wealthy power brokers Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, to pay-to-play-tainted Michelle Obama and Joe Biden, to ethically challenged, bailout-bungling money men Larry Summers and Tim Geithner at Treasury, crime-coddling corporate lawyer Eric Holder at DOJ, to the crooked Service Employees International Union, the shakedown artists at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and the ever-expanding swamp of Washington lobbyists.

This book pulls together the familiar and not-so-familiar pieces of the transition in crisis to force Obama hagiographers to confront an alternate narrative. A reality-based narrative. A narrative of incompetence, nepotism, influence-peddling, and self-dealing that defies the stubborn myth that Barack Obama is the One True Agent of Hope and Change.

While pundits cooed over Obama’s “Achievatrons” and their unbridled “star power,” nomination after nomination imploded. The White House and its allies dismissed each failure as a “hiccup,” a “bump in the road,” or a “goof.” Meanwhile, the pace of withdrawals and botched appointments was “record-setting” and “unprecedented.” Some of the names you’ll recognize. Some you’ve never heard of because Obama’s cheerleaders were too busy glorifying the Greatest Transition in World History. Among the fallen:

• Bill Richardson (corruption scandal)
• Tom Daschle (taxes, ethics)
• Nancy Killefer (taxes)
• Annette Nazareth (allegations of incompetence)
• Caroline Atkinson (taxes)
• H. Rodgin Cohen (conflicts of interest)
• Frank Brosens (“personal” reasons)
• Scott Polakoff (allegations of fraud)
• Jon Cannon (ties to embezzlement scam)
• Charles Freeman (foreign government cronyism)

And those were just some of the bodies thrown under the bus before the 100-day mark. Heckuva job, Obama vetters!
But getting through the confirmation process was no guarantee of ethical cleanliness or competence. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, of course, tops the list of Senate-confirmed Obama bombs. Mentored by Wall Street power brokers Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, he played key roles in bungling Indonesia’s economy and engineering the Bear Stearns and AIG bailout fiascos. And that was before his prolonged failure to pay back taxes on illegal immigrant household help (along with his acceptance of reimbursement money for taxes he didn’t pay) was discovered and before his sheepish admission that he had approved the AIG bonuses his boss decried as “shameful” and “outrageous.”

After Bill Richardson and GOP Senator Judd Gregg bowed out of the Commerce Secretary position, President Obama settled on former Democrat Governor of Washington, Gary Locke. The national papers called him “strait-laced” and hailed his “clean reputation.” Both liberals and conservatives in his home state called that a crock. As governor, he gave billions in tax breaks to Boeing while failing to disclose that he had retained a paid Boeing private consultant and auditor to advise him on the matter. In the governor’s mansion, Locke had his own Billy Carter — a brother-in-law who mooched off the family name to secure tax breaks and job opportunities. And on top of all that, the corporate lawyer Locke (who specialized in trade issues with China) was involved in not one, not two, but three campaign finance scandals involving tainted Asian cash. Perhaps suffering from Commerce Secretary withdrawal fatigue, the Senate confirmed Locke by unanimous consent.

Hostility to transparency is a running thread through Obama’s cabinet:

• The No. 2 official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, former King County, Washington, Executive Ron Sims, has the distinction of being the most fined government official in his state’s history for suppressing public records from taxpayers.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for years fought disclosure of massive donations from foreign governments and corporations who filled her husband’s library and foundation coffers.
• Top Obama advisor David Axelrod ran fear-mongering campaigns in Illinois in support of a huge utility rate hike — and failed to disclose that his ads were funded by Commonwealth Edison in Chicago.
• Labor Secretary Hilda Solis failed to disclose that she was director and treasurer of a union-promoting lobbying group pushing legislation that she was co-sponsoring as a congresswoman.
• Attorney General Eric Holder overruled his own lawyers in the Justice Department over the issue of D.C. voting rights (which he and President Obama support) and refused to make public the staffers’ opinion that a House bill on the matter was unconstitutional.

 

He only hires the best people. Of course deflecting to Obama is all the right wing has these days.

 

Nice try. Trump has lost more losers in 14 months than Obama lost at the 6-year mark of your article.

 

Like what, paying sex-workers $130,000 to have sex with him? LIKE A BOSS, right?

 

Most people don’t like keeping more of their own money?

 

So you're saying President Trump is better at identifying losers and dealing with them, than Obama?

Ok.

 

I choose to focus on his results which are on target.

 

Or maybe Pres Obama wasn't just hiring his buddies.

 

Like the target of getting Mexico to pay for the wall? Something he said he would take specific action on, on Day One of his presidency?

 

I think the point is that President Small Hands has proven himself much more adept at hiring losers in the first place.

 

That doesn't appear to be the case. It would appear losers go with the territory, and President Trump is able to identify them faster than the leader of the previous administration.

 

Absolutely not.

Trump only wants around him people who admire him.

Skills does not matter.

 

99% of the people qualified for any potential Cabinet Post (or any other position within an Administration) know that associating themselves with Trump (on any level) is career suicide.

Thus, going in, Trump is ALREADY scraping the bottom of the barrel to get people to work for him.

Hiring LOSERS (in the first place) was, essentially, the only option that he had.

 

If you say so ...

A sign of a good chief executive is hiring good people. When you hire good people, you don't need to fire them.

Somehow, you are suggesting that Obama NOT firing a bunch of the people that he hired means he was incompetent?

Sorry but that is just ridiculous. Literally. As in I am ridiculing you for saying such a thing.

Hiring people and keeping them on suggests that they were right for the job in the first place. Trump is demonstrating the opposite trend, which suggests he is pretty incompetent at picking the right people. In fact it is probably safe to say that he is
the MOST incompetent! He is setting RECORDS with the number of people he is firing and driving away, and with how short they stay.
- Chief of Staff - only 189 days. Shortest EVER! Trump RECORD!
- Communications director - 3 in just over 140 days. Scaramucci only 8 DAYS! RECORD!
- National Security Advisor - 24 days. YUUGE RECORD!
Trump is shaping up to be the BEST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY, maybe THE BEST LEADER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, at hiring incompetence people.

 

Extreme bias is a poor condition from which to argue a point.

As a semi-retired Chief Executive, I can report that not every selection plays out as expected, regardless of how much due diligence is applied.

 

I agree with you first point, but you don't recognise that it is you that is biased, not me.

As a current business owner I also agree with your second point. However, with sufficient due diligence the frequency of poor hiring is reduced. The turnover rate in the current WH is not normal. it strongly suggests that there is incompetence in the hiring process.

 

The person with the extreme bias here though, is you.

Instead of criticizing Trump for his hiring of "losers," you applaud him for their firing and/or resignation. Instead of applauding Obama for not hiring individuals that required removal because they did not mesh with the President, because they lied to top ranking administrative officials, because they could not pass a background check, or because they publicly contradicted the white house timeline, you criticize Obama because he should have fired them sooner for some other reason.

A ~45% turnover margin is a significant sign of a problem with the person doing the hiring.

 

I don't like all of his actions, just most of them. I don't support the wall.

 

Yeah, you're perfect and objective and I'm not. Too funny.

You don't have a clue about the situation in the WH, other than what is fed you, and you're making absolute statements as if they are fact.

You should avoid the lofty perch declarations about bias...

 

You are declaring me biased?

With all due respect, I don't consider you to be an objective source of opinion.

My opinion is based on the facts as I view them.

 

Which is pretty much the basic definition of a bias.

 

Well yes, but bias, as you know, is in the eye of the beholder, as both of us know.

 

Only the Trumpster would hire so many losers to begin with. Keep defending your loser hero, pal.

 

Will do!