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FAKE NEWS: Iraqi Woman “Killed by Trump” Died Days Before Travel Ban

February 2, 2017

FAKE NEWS: Iraqi Woman “Killed by Trump” Died Days Before Travel Ban, Front Page Magazine (The Point), Daniel Greenfield, February 1, 2017

dan-rather-document-investigation

Don’t worry, Snopes and FactCheck will rate it mostly true. Dan Rather will explain that it’s the idea of the story that matters not the minor question of when the woman actually died. Brian Williams will claim that he personally tried to ferry her out of Iraq on a helicopter.

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How can you tell the media is lying? When its cameras are rolling, its keys are clicking and its presses are printing.

You may have seen this latest horrifying Trumptrocity earlier today when it was being broadcast for all it was worth.

Green-Card Holder Dies a Day After Being Prevented From Returning Home by Trump’s Order, Report Says- TIME

Detroit Son: My Mom Died Waiting In Iraq Because Of Trump – Huffington Post

An Elderly Iraqi Woman Died After Trump’s Travel Ban Barred Her From the U.S.- New York Magazine

Detroit Mother Dies in Iraq After Trump Ban Blocked Her from Returning for Medical Treatment – Democracy Now!

Report: Woman dies day after being kicked off flight due to Trump Ban – MLive.com

Detroit Green Card-Holder Dies After She’s Stopped In Trump Travel Ban – Patch.com

Detroit-area woman dies after being turned away by Trump travel ban – Detroit Metro Times

This Immigrant’s Family Was Destroyed After Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban – Bustle

This is just shocking, horrifying, unbelievable.

A former American serviceman who served in Iraq, where he was born, says his sick mother died a day after being turned away from the U.S. as a result of President Donald Trump’s executive order abruptly banning entry to travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

“I was just shocked. I had to put my mom back on the wheelchair and take her back and call the ambulance and she was very, very upset,” Hager told Fox 2 Detroit, recalling the moment they were pried apart at the terminal. “She knew right there if we send her back to the hospital she’s going to pass away — she’s not going to make it.”

Hager and his family reportedly fled Iraq during the Gulf War. After spending four years in a refugee camp, they were resettled in the U.S., Fox 2 reports. A few years later, he decided to return to his home country as an American serviceman, working with the U.S. Special Forces as an interpreter and adviser.

Did I mention unbelievable?

The leader of a mosque in Dearborn has confirmed to FOX 2 that a man who claimed his mother died in Iraq after being barred from returning to the United States under a ban instituted by President Trump this weekend, lied to FOX 2 about when her death occurred.

Imam Husham Al-Hussainy, leader of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in Dearborn, says Mike Hager’s mom did not pass away this weekend after being barred from traveling to the United States. The Imam confirms that Hager’s mother died before the ban was put in place.

After the story aired on FOX 2 and was posted on FOX2Detroit.com, we received many questions about the validity of Hager’s claims that his mother died waiting to be approved to come home. FOX 2 has confirmed that his mother died five days earlier.

According to Al-Hussainy, Hager’s mother had kidney disease and was receiving treatment in Michigan – where she lived – before traveling to Iraq to visit family. The Imam said she passed away on January 22, 2017, five days before President Trump instituted the travel ban.

Don’t worry, Snopes and FactCheck will rate it mostly true. Dan Rather will explain that it’s the idea of the story that matters not the minor question of when the woman actually died. Brian Williams will claim that he personally tried to ferry her out of Iraq on a helicopter.

But if Facebook really wants to fight fake news, maybe it can start with the media. The media is the main engine of Fake News.

Categories: "Muslim ban", Executive order, Faked news, Media and "Fake News", Trump agenda, Trump and refugees, Trump presidency
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You’re Fired!

January 31, 2017

You’re Fired! Front Page Magazine, Matthew Vadum, January 31, 2017

(Please see also Trump Fires Acting Attorney General. There Prof. Turley explains why President Trump was right to fire the acting Attorney General. 

Trump clearly has the right to fire Yates.  Indeed, Yates’ action (and rationale) contradicts long-standing Justice Department policies on such issues.

— DM)

sfg

President Trump last night fired the insubordinate acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she ordered federal prosecutors to ignore Trump’s lawful emergency executive order restricting travel and immigration from Islamic terrorist-infested nations.

The Yates termination may foreshadow a major house-cleaning at the U.S. Department of Justice. That agency is overrun by left-wing careerists who have no respect for the rule of law and who operate under the legally and morally grotesque assumption that aliens, including suspected terrorists, ought to enjoy all the same rights as U.S. citizens.

Yates “has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States,” Trump said in a press release. “This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.”

He called Yates “an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.”

“It is time to get serious about protecting our country,” Trump continued. “Calling for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.”

Last night President Trump also relieved acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Daniel Ragsdale of his duties. No reason for the decision had been reported at press time. The new acting ICE director is Thomas D. Homan who has been executive associate director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) since 2013.

When the U.S. Senate was considering Yates’s nomination for deputy attorney general in 2015, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), whose nomination as attorney general is pending in the Senate, made his opposition known. According to Politico, Sessions “urged his colleagues to defeat Yates” objecting “to what he said was her involvement in defending the federal government against a lawsuit 26 states have filed challenging unilateral actions Obama took in November to grant millions of illegal immigrants quasi-legal status and work permits.” Sessions described the Obama actions as “presidential overreach.”

Hours before Trump ended Yates’s employment, Yates  took the extraordinary step of directing Justice Department attorneys to refuse to defend Trump’s executive order in court.

“I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right,” she wrote in a letter to lawyers at the Department of Justice. “At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful.”

“Consequently, for as long as I am the acting attorney general, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the executive order, unless and until I become convinced that it is appropriate to do so,” she wrote.

Yates’s tenure as acting attorney general ended around dinnertime last night. Around 9 p.m. the president replaced her with Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Boente will serve in the post “until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons,” Trump said.

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz described Yates as “a terrific public servant” who “made a serious mistake here.”

“This is holdover heroism,” he said. “It’s so easy to be a heroine when you’re not appointed by this president and when you’re on the other side.”

Reaction on Twitter was predictably ridiculous.

Unsurprisingly, the nearly-impeached former Attorney General Eric Holder expressed support for Yates.

Holder tweeted last night, “Sally Yates: person of integrity/attorney with great legal skill. Has served this nation with distinction. Her judgment should be trusted.”

Leftist column writer and Obama idolator E.J. Dionne tweeted, “Monday Night Massacre: Trump fires Sally Yates, Acting AG who refused to defend his indefensible #MuslimBan. History will remember her well.”

Football player Rob Carpenter tweeted, “AG upholds the law. Dictator wanna be says you don’t agree with me. You’re fired.”

Actor Jason Alexander tweeted, “King Trump fired the Attorney General. So law and constitution, which he sworn on a bible to protect now clearly mean nothing. Like truth.”

Yates may have a lucrative career ahead of her on the public speaking circuit. Maybe MSNBC will give her a talk show. The Left takes care of its own.

All of this drama flows from the executive order President Trump signed Friday that suspends travel from Muslim terrorism-plagued countries.

The executive order blocks visas for 90 days for “immigrants and non-immigrants” from the terrorism-producing Muslim-majority countries of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen.

The order also prevents refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days, indefinitely halts the entry of Syrian refugees, and adjusts downward the cap on refugee admission into the U.S. to 50,000 during the current federal fiscal year which ends Sept. 30, 2017.

The presidential directive also requires the government to keep Americans informed about terrorism-related activities and crimes committed by foreign nationals in the U.S. and to report on the individuals’ immigration status.

Critics have mischaracterized the executive order as a Muslim immigration and travel ban. It is an odd critique given that the three countries with the largest Muslim populations –Indonesia, Pakistan, and India– aren’t included in the order.

Groups funded by radical financier George Soros are behind a lawsuit challenging the order.

On Saturday evening Obama-appointed Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York blocked part of the executive order and prevented the Trump administration from deporting arrivals detained in airports across the nation. The restraining order preserves the status quo for those who arrived in the country shortly after the executive order was signed if they have visas or lawful permanent resident status.

Before Donnelly’s narrowly drawn restraining order was issued Saturday evening, near-riots broke out as leftist freak shows descended on airports across America. Demonstrators were horrified that some individuals were actually being detained at ports-of-entry as required by the president’s 100 percent legal and constitutional executive order. The left-wing hissy-fit consisted of radicals trespassing and endangering airport security by staging disruptive in-your-face protests at airports around the country.

The HAMAS-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is playing a major role in the protests against the executive order, Lee Stranahan reports at Breitbart. The group has been organizing demonstrations and promoting opposition to the order on social media. The United Arab Emirates has declared CAIR a terrorist organization.

To no one’s surprise, former President Barack Obama praised the airport protesters, saying through a spokesman he was “heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country.”

“Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by the elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake,” the spokesman said Monday.

Obama intends to conduct his own shadow presidency and attack the Trump administration for years to come. The former president has rented a fancy house on Embassy Row in the nation’s capital that is expected to serve as his anti-Trump administration war room.

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) tweeted Saturday night, “I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution. This is not who we are.”

Meanwhile, although left-wing law professor Jonathan Turley said he disagrees on policy grounds with Trump’s executive order he argues it is nonetheless legally bulletproof.

“The law does favor President Trump in this regard,” Turley said Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” show. “I don’t like this order. I think it’s a terrible mistake — but that doesn’t go into the legal analysis. The Court has been extremely deferential to presidents on the border.”

The courts won’t buy the left-wing talking point that the order constitutes a ban on Muslim travel and immigration, Turley explained.

“I do not believe a federal court will view this as a Muslim ban,” he said.

I don’t think the court can. Regardless of what the court may think of President Trump’s motivations, the fact that other Muslim countries are not included is going to move that off the table and what’s going to be left is whether the president has this type of authority. Historically, courts have said that he does.

Americans who want their country back after eight years of Obama-created lawlessness don’t need to get upset at the chaos left-wingers are trying to generate to undermine President Trump.

In this case the law is on their side.

Categories: Acting Attorney General, Department of Justice, Executive order, Obama administration, Obama and Islam, Obama and law enforcement, Trump agenda, Trump and Islamists, Trump and refugees, Trump presidency, Trump's first weeks as President
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Is The Trump Executive Order on Refugees Unlawful?

January 31, 2017

Is The Trump Executive Order on Refugees Unlawful?, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, January 31, 2017

djt

If the 1965 law means what the ACLU has suggested, actions by presidents from Carter to Obama would be facially unconstitutional.  Presidents have routinely identified countries as raising threats requiring special procedures.  President Obama was among them.  There is no requirement that this can only be done in response to an attack or specific threat if the president finds a national security danger.  Courts are loathe to substitute their judgment on such questions for a president.

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I previously discussed how President Donald Trump has the advantage in a constitutional challenge of this executive order suspending entry for refugees and imposing special limitations on seven stated countries.  As I have noted, this does not mean that there are not legitimate questions raised, particularly over the express preference to be given “religious minorities” under the order. However, the case laws heavily supports a president’s plenary power over such border controls.  There remains however a question over whether the law could be constitutional under a president’s inherent authority but still unlawful under statutory authority.  Most of that argument centers on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which bars discrimination based on nationality or place of origin.  There are clearly compelling arguments on both sides of this question, but once again I believe that critics may be overstating the 1965 law as making the executive order facially invalid.  As I have repeatedly stated since this executive order was signed, I believe it was a terrible mistake, poorly executed, and inimical to our values as a nation.  However, legal analysis by a court should not be influenced by such personal viewpoints.  The question is solely whether the president is barred statutorily from taking this action.

The federal law relevant to this question stands in oppose tension between provisions that grant sweeping authority to a president while at the same time limiting that authority with regard to certain types of discrimination.  As we previously discussed, the 1952 immigration laws states in Section 1182(f): “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate”   That is obviously quite sweeping and supporting of the actions taken under this executive order.

However, in 1965 the Congress enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. That laws was designed to end the quota system given numerical preference to certain European countries.  The  operative provision states “no person could be “discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.”  Congress exempted Cuban refugees but otherwise stated that no discrimination based on national or place of residence would be tolerated.

It is important to recognize what the 1965 law does not do. First, it does not apply to refugees and thus would not impact much of this order.  This deals with immigrants securing visas.  Second, the law does not ban discrimination based on religion.  Third, the law governs visas not later requirements of reporting or other conditions once immigrants are granted entry. Thus, President Carter signed out Iranian for special procedures and deported thousands of them.  Finally, and most importantly, the law was itself amended in 1996.  Congress expressly stated that “procedures” and “locations” for processing immigration applications cannot count as discrimination.  Thus, the Administration could argue that “vetting procedures” are exempted even for non-refugees.

With the exemption of green card holders, the foot print for analysis under the 1965 language has been reduced further by the Administration.  Notably, the Office of Legal Counsel reviewed these laws and signed off on the legality of the executive order.  I expect it was due to these exemptions and the amendment.

That does not mean that there is not a compelling argument to make but it is not as facially clear as has been suggested.  Like the OLC, I would still give the advantage to the Administration.  However, this is clearly the best foundation for challenge.

Of course, that leaves a potential conflict between the statute and inherent president authority in a rehash of past cases like U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright.  In that opinion, the Court held:

It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations–a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress, but which, of course, like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution.

Presented with such a conflict, the provision could be narrowly construed.  Courts have long adopted interpretations that would avoid such conflicts.  If there is a narrow interpretation of the 1965 law that would avoid the conflict, it traditionally has been favored by federal courts.

The challenge to the order is also burdened by history.  If the 1965 law means what the ACLU has suggested, actions by presidents from Carter to Obama would be facially unconstitutional.  Presidents have routinely identified countries as raising threats requiring special procedures.  President Obama was among them.  There is no requirement that this can only be done in response to an attack or specific threat if the president finds a national security danger.  Courts are loathe to substitute their judgment on such questions for a president.

So where does all of that leave us?  It leaves us with a good-faith challenge to an executive order, but a challenge that will have to clear away a host of existing cases to prevail.  Could it happen?  Sure, but it is important not to overstate the authority in the area or allow passions to overcome analysis.  At most the 1965 law would be relevant to part of the order and even for that portion (on the seven identified countries) the Administration has strong arguments on the basis of inherent plenary authority and statutory exemptions.

 

Categories: Christian refugees, Executive order, Refugees, Trump agenda, Trump and refugees, Trump presidency
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Russia freezes Syrian, Iranian military movements

January 31, 2017

Russia freezes Syrian, Iranian military movements, DEBKAfile, January 31, 2017

putinstopsyriaeng480

The ban came from Moscow to prevent military reprisals against the Putin-Trump deal for Syria.

Iran can no longer doubt that the two powers, America and Russia, have ganged up to push the Islamic Republic out of their way. Trepidation in Tehran was articulated on Monday, Jan. 30, at a convention staged in the Iranian capital to celebrate 515 years of Iranian-Russian relations, an anniversary that would not normally be marked by a special event.

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An order to remain stationary was issued Thursday night, Jan. 26, by the Russian Commander in Syria Lt. Gen. Alexander Zhuravlev to the high commands of the Syrian army and of the Iranian and Shiite forces positioned in Aleppo, as well as Hizballah units in all parts of Syria. Gen. Zhuravlev, acting on instructions from Moscow, prohibited any movement by those forces out of their current positions as of noon local time.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that the order banned the opening of new battlefronts anywhere in Syria and the movement of Syrian air force units between bases.

This order has been obeyed to date.

The ban came from Moscow to prevent military reprisals against the Putin-Trump deal for Syria. There was no mention of penalties for disobedience, but the tone was peremptory. The three army commanders did not need reminding that the Russians are capable of using their electronic warfare systems to disrupt unauthorized military movements, jam their communications, and withhold fuel, ammo and spare parts to create havoc in their armies.

lieutenant_general_alexander_zhuravlev_120Russian Lt. Gen. General Alexander Zhuravlev

Moscow has never resorted to extreme action of this kind in previous Russian military interventions in Middle East lands.

The decision was taken shortly after the Kremlin was notified that US President Donald Trump had agreed to join forces with President Vladimir Putin in Syria.

Since then, the Trump administration has kept all dealings with Moscow over Syria under a cloak of secrecy, including the outcome of President Trump’s first phone conversation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. All other concerned parties, such as Israel, have been left groping in the dark about what happens next.

The Russian standstill order in Syria came shortly before the US presidential decree that barred Iranians from entering the United States (along with the nationals of six other terror-prone Muslim countries)

Iran can no longer doubt that the two powers, America and Russia, have ganged up to push the Islamic Republic out of their way. Trepidation in Tehran was articulated on Monday, Jan. 30, at a convention staged in the Iranian capital to celebrate 515 years of Iranian-Russian relations, an anniversary that would not normally be marked by a special event.

In his opening remarks, Foreign Minster Mohammed Zarif Javad said: that Iran and Russia “need to have far more extensive relations,” and “few countries in the world have relations as deep and historical as Iran and Russia.” This sounded like an appeal to Moscow for protection against the new US president. It most likely fell on deaf ears. Putin is fully engaged in promoting his new relations with Donald Trump.

Categories: Iran - Syria war, Iranian military, Iranian proxies, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Russia and Iran, Trump and Iran, Trump and Russia, Trump and Syria, Trump presidency
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Trump Fires Hillary’s Benghazi Fixer

January 26, 2017

Trump Fires Hillary’s Benghazi Fixer, Front Page Magazine (The Point), Daniel Greenfield, January 26, 2017

(Please see also, Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned. — DM)

benghazi-master1050

The mainstream media’s fake news operation is predictably spinning this as principled resignations by public officials who couldn’t stand the idea of working under Trump. Except that Patrick Kennedy, the biggest fish being forced out, had reportedly been begging to keep his job. These were resignations in name only. They were actually firings.

Thomas Shannon remains the United States’ acting secretary of state, but Foggy Bottom has lost its entire senior management team. President Donald Trump reportedly ordered these moves in an effort to “clean house.”

CNN reports the administration told four senior State Department officials that their services were no longer needed. The Washington Post characterized the departures as “sudden.”

Among those who are out include State’s long-serving undersecretary of management, Patrick Kennedy. He is reported to have been lobbying to keep his job. Other top officials who are no longer working at State include: Joyce Anne Barr, Gentry O. Smith and Michelle Bond. All three are career foreign service officers who have served under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Lydia Muniz, director of the bureau of overseas building operations, was asked to depart as well, CNN reports.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as Secretary John Kerry’s chief of staff.

Good and good riddance. Here’s a refresher on Patrick Kennedy from Paul Mirengoff at Powerline.

Patrick Kennedy, the State Department official who tried to get the FBI to change email classifications in exchange for helping the FBI meet its staffing needs in Bagdhad, is what they used to call a “fixer.” ..

Kennedy was at fault for the poor security at Benghazi. Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s charge d’affaires in Libya, testified before Congress that “given the decision-making that Under Secretary Pat Kennedy was making with respect to Embassy Tripoli and Consulate Benghazi operations, he has to bear some responsibility” for the Benghazi terror attack.

As Clinton’s fixer, it was only natural that Kennedy assist the Clinton Foundation. The Washington Examiner reports that Kennedy was involved in pushing plans for a new $177.9 million embassy in Norway in 2011 over the apparent objections of diplomatic officials in Oslo. Norway’s government has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, donor records show.

Kennedy also helped fix it so that Brian Pagliano, the man in charge of Hillary’s home-brew email server, got a job at the State Department

And then there was this outrageous moment.

According to FBI interview summaries set to be released in the coming days. Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, discussed providing additional overseas slots for the FBI in exchange for revisions to classifications of the sensitive emails.

One email in particular concerned Kennedy and, according to the FBI summary, providing a B9 exemption “would allow him to archive the document in the basement of the department of state never to be seen again.” The FBI official told Kennedy that he would look into the email if Kennedy would authorize a pending request for additional FBI personnel in Iraq.

A summary of an interview with the section chief of the FBI records management division provides further evidence of Kennedy’s attempts to have the classification of some sensitive emails changed. The FBI records official, whose job includes making determinations on classification, told investigators that he was approached by his colleague in international operations after the initial discussion with Kennedy. The FBI records official says that his colleague “pressured” him to declassify an email “in exchange for a quid pro quo,” according to the interview summary. “In exchange for making the email unclassified State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden.” The request was denied.

In the days that followed, the FBI records official attended an “all-agency” meeting at the State Department to discuss the ongoing “classification review of pending Clinton FOIA materials.” One of the participants at the meeting asked Kennedy whether any of the emails were classified. Kennedy purposely looked at the FBI records chief and then replied: “Well, we’ll see.”

Kennedy shouldn’t just be fired. He should be on trial. But hopefully the investigation of Hillary’s actions will continue.

Categories: Department of State, Trump presidency
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Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned

January 26, 2017

Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned, Washington Post, Josh Rogin, January 26, 2017

(According to WaPo, Secretary Tillerson’s job “Just got considerably more difficult.” Another way to look at it is that his job of draining the swamp just got considerably easier. — DM)

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s job running the State Department just got considerably more difficult. The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.

Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Kennedy will retire from the foreign service at the end of the month, officials said. The other officials could be given assignments elsewhere in the foreign service.

In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the State Department, its overseas posts and its people.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry. “Department expertise in security, management, administrative and consular positions in particular are very difficult to replicate and particularly difficult to find in the private sector.”

Several senior foreign service officers in the State Department’s regional bureaus have also left their posts or resigned since the election. But the emptying of leadership in the management bureaus is more disruptive because those offices need to be led by people who know the department and have experience running its complicated bureaucracies. There’s no easy way to replace that via the private sector, said Wade.

“Diplomatic security, consular affairs, there’s just not a corollary that exists outside the department, and you can least afford a learning curve in these areas where issues can quickly become matters of life and death,” he said. “The muscle memory is critical. These retirements are a big loss. They leave a void. These are very difficult people to replace.”

Whether Kennedy left on his own volition or was pushed out by the incoming Trump team is a matter of dispute inside the department. Just days before he resigned, Kennedy was taking on more responsibility inside the department and working closely with the transition. His departure was a surprise to other State Department officials who were working with him.

One senior State Department official who responded to my requests for comment said that all the officials had previously submitted their letters of resignation, as was required for all positions that are appointed by the president and that require confirmation by the Senate, known as PAS positions.

“No officer accepts a PAS position with the expectation that it is unlimited. And all officers understand that the President may choose to replace them at any time,” this official said. “These officers have served admirably and well. Their departure offers a moment to consider their accomplishments and thank them for their service. These are the patterns and rhythms of the career service.”

Ambassador Richard Boucher, who served as State Department spokesman for Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, said that while there’s always a lot of turnover around the time a new administration takes office, traditionally senior officials work with the new team to see who should stay on in their roles and what other jobs might be available. But that’s not what happened this time.

The officials who manage the building and thousands of overseas diplomatic posts are charged with taking care of Americans overseas and protecting U.S. diplomats risking their lives abroad. The career foreign service officers are crucial to those functions as well as to implementing the new president’s agenda, whatever it may be, Boucher said.

“You don’t run foreign policy by making statements, you run it with thousands of people working to implement programs every day,” Boucher said. “To undercut that is to undercut the institution.”

By itself, the sudden departure of the State Department’s entire senior management team is disruptive enough. But in the context of a president who railed against the U.S. foreign policy establishment during his campaign and secretary of state with no government experience, the vacancies are much more concerning.

Tillerson’s job No. 1 must be to find qualified and experienced career officials to manage the State Department’s vital offices. His second job should be to reach out to and reassure a State Department workforce that is panicked about what the Trump administration means for them.

Categories: Department of State, Trump presidency
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The World Turned Upside Down

January 26, 2017

The World Turned Upside Down, Town Hall, Victor Davis Hanson, January 26, 2017

bighands

“If summer were spring and the other way ’round,

Then all the world would be upside down.”

— Old English ballad

Legend has it that the British played “The World Turned Upside Down” after their unforeseen and disastrous defeat at the Battle of Yorktown.

Such topsy-turvy upheaval characterizes the start of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Everything is in flux in a way not seen since the election of 1932, in which Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover. Mainstream Democrats are infuriated. Even Republicans are vexed over the outsider Trump.

Polls, political pundits and “wise” people, guilty of past partisan-driven false prognostications, remain discredited. Their new creased-brow prophesies of doom for President Trump are about as credible as their past insistence that a “blue wall” would keep him out of the White House.

The media collusion with the Clinton campaign was endemic in the WikiLeaks email trove. The complicity blew up any lingering notion that establishment journalists are disinterested and principled, as they now turn from eight years of obsequiousness to frenzied hostility toward the White House.

In the media’s now radically amended progressive dictionary, Senate filibusters are no longer subversive, but quite vital.

Executive orders are no longer inspired, but dangerous. Bypassing Congress on treaties and overseas interventions, or refusal to enforce existing laws, is no longer presidential leadership. If Trump follows Obama’s example of presidential fiats, he will be recalibrated as seditious.

Protests against a sitting president are no longer near treasonous, but patriotic. Media collusion with the president is no longer natural, but unprofessional and dishonest. Cruel invective against the president and his family is no longer racist, but inspired.

The successful Obama electoral matrix of ginning up political support through identity politics may have been an atypical event, not a wave of the future. His two victories were certainly non-transferrable to most other liberal but non-minority candidates.

Obama’s legacy is the near-destruction of the Democrats as a national party, leaving them in a virtual civil war while most of his own initiatives will be rendered null and void — and perhaps soon forgotten.

Where do Democrats go now? Do they double down by going further leftward with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren? Or do they reluctantly pivot to win back the clingers, deplorables and irredeemables whose defections cost them the big Rust Belt states?

On Nov. 7, “experts” were forecasting a Republican civil war: a disgraced presidential candidate, a lost Senate and a liberal Supreme Court for the next 30 years.

Two days and an election later, the world flipped. Republicans — with majorities in both houses of Congress, overwhelming majorities in the state legislatures and with governorships, and a likely slew of Supreme Court vacancies — haven’t been in a better position since the 1920s.

Just as importantly, former Sen. Harry Reid and President Emeritus Barack Obama weaponized Trump by respectively eroding the Senate filibuster and green-lighting presidential fiats by “pen-and-phone” executive orders.

For his Cabinet picks, Trump ignored Washington-establishment grandees, think-tank Ph.D.s, and academics in general. He owes no allegiance to the Republican pundits who despised him or to the big-name donors who chose not to invest in what they saw as a losing candidacy.

His style is not Washingtonian, but is born out of the dog-eat-dog world of Manhattan real estate. Trump’s blustering way of doing business is as brutal as it is nontraditional: Do not initiate attacks, but hit back twice as hard — and low — once targeted. Go off topic and embrace obstreperousness to unsettle an opponent. And initially demand triple of what is eventually acceptable to settle a deal.

Trump’s inaugural address was short, tough and nationalistic, reflecting his don’t-tread-on-me pledges to his supporters to fight both Washington and the world abroad to restore the primacy of the middle classes.

Trump aims through economic growth — hoping for 4 percent GDP growth rates through deregulation, tax reform, energy production and old-fashioned Main Street economic boosterism — to win a sizable chunk of the minority vote and thus chip away at the Democrats’ base. He counts on a good-paying jobs and higher family income mattering more to the inner-city than the Rev. Al Sharpton’s rhetoric or the demonstrations of Black Lives Matter.

The world has been flipped upside down abroad as well.

Weeks ago, analysts were offering Dr. Strangelove doomsday warnings of a no-fly zone in Syria imposed by a likely President Hilary Clinton on another nuclear power’s air force. But now, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is talking about joining American planes to destroy ISIS.

Who is friend, foe or neutral?

Could Trump coax Putin away from his Iranian and Syrian support, or will Trump appease his newfound friend’s aggressions? No one quite knows.

An American president now talks to Taiwan, doubles down on support for Israel, questions the reason to remain loyal to both the United Nations and European Union, and forces changes in NATO.

Not just policy, but the way policy is made, remains uncertain.

Up is down; down up. The future is blank.

Categories: 2016 elections, Media, Trump presidency
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Nigel Farage speech at Donald Trump party

January 21, 2017

Nigel Farage speech at Donald Trump party, RobinHoodUKIP via YouTube, January 20, 2017

(I hope the powers-that-be in Mainland China were watching. Trump’s honored guests were mentioned; those from Taiwan were mentioned twice. — DM)

 

Categories: Nigel Farage, Taiwan, Trump and Brexit, Trump inauguration, Trump presidency
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Is the War Against Trump a Sideshow, or a Menace?

January 19, 2017

Is the War Against Trump a Sideshow, or a Menace? PJ Media, Roger Kimball, January 19, 2017

(This is a follow up to Mr. Kimball’s article What Happens Next? — DM)

moreprotests3011865 01/18/2017 Protests against President-elect Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. Vladimir Astapkovich/Sputnik via AP

I suspect that, notwithstanding a lot of silly grandstanding, the leftover Left and the legacy media that supports it are going to be inhabiting an existential, if not a literal, menagerie. They will more and more be regarded as what they in fact are: toxic curiosities, pathetic, inadvertently funny at times, but mostly irrelevant and, because irrelevant, unheeded.

********************

I am not always able to peruse the comments here, but a couple of responses to my post yesterday caught my eye.

I was reflecting on what I think is likely to happen in a little less than 24 hours, when Donald Trump takes office. One correspondent was exercised that, though I now support Trump, I did not mention that I was once very critical of him. I have explained that in many posts (here for example, or here or here). Perhaps I should conclude every post with a codicil in small type explaining that past performance is no guarantee of future returns, that you may lose principle, and that I am liable to alter my views to take account of alterations in the world outside. Or perhaps not.

The other comment was more interesting: this correspondent took issue, not without some regret, with my suggestion that, after an access of wailing and gnashing of teeth, the hysterical Left would “subside into pathetic irrelevance.”

I did say it was an “open question” whether this would happen, but went on to argue that I thought the more histrionic examples of protest would fade away if Trump got the team he wanted and moved quickly and decisively to enact his agenda.

But my correspondent is wise to sound an admonitory tocsin.

It’s not just that the country is divided as it hasn’t been since, oh, 1860, but also that the Left, for a whole host of reasons, is weaponized in a way it hasn’t been since … well, I was going to say since the late 1960s. But the truth is that Trump is facing is a union of Left-wing animus and bureaucratized establishment spinelessness and accommodation that is probably unique.

“The Left,” writes my correspondent, “is not going to ‘subside into pathetic irrelevance’”:

They are growing even stronger and the right does not even resist, much less fight back. I think Kimball is right to say Trump fights back, but we as conservatives certainly don’t. We are a meek, submissive, cowardly group of citizens, easily intimidated, even bullied. I wish the election of Trump was a signal that we have stood up, but it is not.

There is, alas, a lot to this. “Heck,” continues this fellow:

… look what’s happening already. Republicans have the House, the Senate and now the executive branch — and they have spent most of their time so far in office setting up committees and hearings to hang themselves over how the Russians stole the elections from the Democrats.

Er, yes. That’s correct.

And further:

Trump has not spent one day in office and he has been largely delegitimized by the Left. He and the Republicans in Congress have been hemmed in and hogtied before the new Republican President has even sat down in the Oval Office. The inauguration is certainly going to be disrupted — and the Left has successfully bullied many from participating in the event.

Kimball sees the Left subsiding into irrelevance, I see the Left as a wave rising and rising, not even nearing its crest yet — but when it does, they will swamp us all. Which is what bothers me so much about the right. There is no urgency. They think it’s the ’80s, just meandering along without a care or wildly overconfident about their future. They have no war footing to be on.

Conservatives need to start organizing, and they need to start taking direct action.

He goes on to mention Project Veritas, James O’Keefe’s great undercover video project as a model, or at least a “start” in this desideratum. Let me say in passing that I am a great admirer of O’Keefe, and I think his work exposing the hypocrisy and criminality of such leftish institutions as ACORN has been invaluable.

These observations are all on point. But I wonder if my correspondent isn’t a bit too pessimistic.  We’ll know quite soon, but it’s my sense that a lot of people on Team Trump understand the point of this story, reprised today by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:

There’s an old joke about a boy who complains to his mother that his little sister keeps pulling his hair.

“Oh,” responds the mother, “she doesn’t know that it hurts.”

A few minutes later, the mother hears the girl scream and runs into the other room. “She knows now,” the boy explains.

There’s a lesson for Republicans in that old joke, if they’re smart enough to absorb it.

I frankly have my doubts about “Republicans” as a whole. But about the Trumpians, I am more sanguine.

Donald Trump may invite Al Gore to Trump Tower for a chat. But he then nominates Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. (I loved the headline Pravda — er, the New York Times ran: “Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.” “Denialist,” eh?)

Trump makes peace with Mitt Romney. But he then nominate Rex Tillerson to be secretary of State.

CNN salivates over a wholly unsubstantiated, paid-for “dossier” against Trump. Guess what? Trump, brutally, calls out the network. And on and on.

Item: just yesterday, Trump proposed cutting the federal workforce by 20% and the federal budget by 10%. Good ideas!

I think there will be a lot of hysterical sideshows as the shock of Trump takes hold. It will doubtless be, as the cartoonist and blogger Scott Adams put, a “lesson in Cognitive Dissonance”:

As Trump continues to demonstrate that he was never the incompetent monster his critics believed him to be, the critics will face an identity crisis.

They either have to accept that they understand almost nothing about how the world works — because they got everything wrong about Trump — or they need to double-down on their current hallucination. Most of his critics will double-down.

And that brings us to our current situation. As Trump continues to defy all predictions from his critics, the critics need to maintain their self-images as the smart ones who saw this new Hitler coming. And that means you will see hallucinations like you have never seen. It will be epic.

Things could go south. Trump might do some stupid things. He might be unlucky with the economy or with the mess that Obama has left him on the international scene.

Clearly, the media is looking high and low for something, anything, to pin on him. And the Left might be even more insane and suicidal than I think it is.

But as I said yesterday, I suspect that, notwithstanding a lot of silly grandstanding, the leftover Left and the legacy media that supports it are going to be inhabiting an existential, if not a literal, menagerie. They will more and more be regarded as what they in fact are: toxic curiosities, pathetic, inadvertently funny at times, but mostly irrelevant and, because irrelevant, unheeded.

Categories: Trump Hater's Club, Trump presidency
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What Trump is up Against

January 19, 2017

What Trump is up Against, Power Line, Steven Hayward, January 19, 2017

(Forget the large federal building. Military surplus Quonset huts would cost much less and better serve the purpose. — DM)

I think Trump should build a large federal building in Nome, Alaska, and send as many DC bureaucrats there as possible.

*********************

A lot of people are thinking—and hoping—that Trump will be the third term of Ronald Reagan. Certainly his cabinet is to the right of Reagan’s first cabinet in many ways, and we have the experience of the Reagan years to appreciate better the massive opposition of what people are starting to call the “deep state,” a more accurate term perhaps for the menacing character of the administrative state.

I stumbled across a speech Reagan gave in 1977 that states the modern problem very well:

But how much are we to blame for what has happened? Beginning with the traumatic experience of the Great Depression, we the people have turned more and more to government for answers that government has neither the right nor the capacity to provide. But government, as an institution, always tends to increase in size and power, not just this government—any government. It’s built-in. And so government attempted to provide the answers.

The result is a fourth branch added to the traditional three of executive, legislative, and judicial: a vast federal bureaucracy that’s now being imitated in too many states and too many cities, a bureaucracy of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can’t be removed from office by our votes.

The last sentence here raises the central issue of Trump and Trumpism. The administrative state has dug in even more deeply since the Reagan years (a process that really started under Nixon, but that’s a long story for another time), and will be even harder to root out now.

Tevi Troy offers an important survey and tour of the scene in the current issue of Commentary, “Will There Be An Internal Revolt Against Trump?” Tevi very nicely gives a shout out a key line in my forthcoming book: “That bureaucratic government is the partisan instrument of the Democratic Party is the most obvious, yet least remarked upon, trait of our time.” Tevi goes through all the tricks bureaucrats use to frustrate a president or cabinet member it disagrees with. A useful primer that every Trump appointee ought to read.

My favorite example is one I have been saying for years:

An obstinate employee can’t be fired, as we have seen, but can be offered a job at the same level in North Dakota or another distant state. This does not have to be done too often before the word spreads that the politicals know how to use the tools at their disposal and that they are willing to employ them.

Forget North Dakota. I think Trump should build a large federal building in Nome, Alaska, and send as many DC bureaucrats there as possible.

Categories: Federal Bureauracy, Trump presidency
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