Saturday, August 26, 2017

Days of Alexander Haig.

Breitbart reporting, quoting Bloomberg. Will Kelly next head up NATO, and if so, WWPD - what would Putin do?

Whether substantive or spiel for its drama value, the concept of an isolated Trump wandering the White House is Nixonian, if accounts of last days before the Ford pardon were correctly understood, analyzed and reported.

Where, in such a scenario, are Jarad and Ivanka? Try a guess. It's a compelling question in how to believe the putsch scenario Breitbart is at this point scripting as "real" news. There was that precedent, so paying attention might not be a bad thought.

____________UPDATING____________
How things are presented can vary. Blooomberg, this mid-item quote:

This month may be the most politically damaging so far of Trump’s presidency, as the legitimacy he appeared to confer on white supremacists alienated allies in corporate America and antagonized Republican lawmakers. The ultimatum Trump issued Tuesday that he would shut down the federal government unless his fellow Republicans who control Congress pay for the border wall he promised compounds the challenges for Kelly ahead of the Sept. 30 funding deadline.

Trump kept a feud with Congressional leaders going Thursday morning with a series of tweets lashing out at Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan for the legislative “mess” over raising the legal federal debt limit by late September to avoid a default. Trump’s threat to shut down the government over wall funding complicates passage of the debt ceiling legislation, which might be packaged together with the funding measure to win enough votes. He also renewed an attack on McConnell over the Senate’s failure to pass an Obamacare repeal.

Chain of Command

The respect aides say Trump has for Kelly, a decorated general, hasn’t yet translated into deference when the president’s passions run high.

In interviews with 14 current and former administration officials, congressional Republicans and people close to Trump and Kelly, most credited Kelly with imposing new processes and restrictions that have limited freelancing, drama, leaking and backbiting among staff. Kelly has strengthened chains of command and given Trump fewer distractions, clearing the path to execute decisions on everything from Stephen Bannon’s departure to Afghanistan policy.

Kelly has implored Trump repeatedly to stay on script, emphasizing the importance of being precise and sensitive to the constituencies hearing his words. The president did stick to the text in his speech Monday night on his approach to Afghanistan. Beforehand, Kelly had emphasized the magnitude and somber nature of sending more young men and women into war.

"Gen. Kelly is an important voice in the administration and a straight shooter," McConnell, whose own tensions with Trump have been well documented, said in a statement.

In turn, Breitbart:

Aug. 16, the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker and Bob Costa reported that Kelly has instituted a new structure for communication with the president.

“As the new White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly routes all calls to and from President Trump through the White House switchboard, where he can sign off on them,” Parker and Costa wrote. “He stanches the flow of information reaching the president’s desk. And he requires that all staff members — including Trump’s relatives — go through him to reach the president.”

Over at Politico on Thursday, Eliana Johnson and Nancy Cook got even more leaked details about the new structure Kelly is implementing. Johnson and Cook wrote:

Confronted with a West Wing that treated policymaking as a free-for-all, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, is instituting a system used by previous administrations to limit internal competition — and to make himself the last word on the material that crosses the president’s desk[. ]It’s a quiet effort to make Trump conform to White House decision-making norms he’s flouted without making him feel shackled or out of the loop. In a conference call last week, Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide — White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a little-known but highly regarded Rhodes scholar who overlapped with Jared Kushner as an undergraduate at Harvard — will review all documents that cross the Resolute desk.

All of this comes amid a Democrat takeover of the West Wing, with Republicans being pushed out of the White House. National Security Adviser and three-star Army Gen. H.R. McMaster purged a number of Trump-backing Republicans from the National Security Council, while ex-Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman and now former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was replaced by retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, the old Secretary of Homeland Security. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and his wife Ivanka Trump—as well as National Economic Council director Gary Cohn—have all seen a rise in prominence in the West Wing. They—McMaster, Kelly, Ivanka Trump, Kushner, and Cohn—are all Democrats.

In addition to controlling information flow to and from the president—and who communicates with him—the West Wing Democrats have aimed to force Trump to stick to pre-scripted remarks on the TelePrompTer whenever he gives speeches. They have not succeeded on that front, as Trump went on a 45-minute off-script tirade against the media, the left, the GOP establishment, and more during a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, this week.

Several people close to the president tell Breitbart News that while he is for now mostly following along with what Kelly and the others want him to do, people should not expect this to last.

“Those in the Administration who think they can shackle the President are in for a rude awakening,” one White House aide told Breitbart News.

[links in original omitted] Readers who have viewed Kurosawa's Rashomon may feel "been there, seen that." Wikipedia links for readers unfamiliar with the film, here and here. Besides being a story from multiple angles, the cinematography was excellent as an example from the black and white film era. Which leads to a closing thought, even if isolated and subjected to sensory deprivation by evil hands, at least Citizen Trump will have Rosebud to treasure and remember.

____________FURTHER UPDATE____________
More Breitbart, here, so read it for the drift. A short excerpt, with italics emphasis added, and again, see the original for context:

She rounds out the email to media elites by pleading: “No attribution to me, please. Senior White House official only.”

Sadler’s claim that she is a “Senior White House official” is not true. She is not a “Senior White House official.” She is a low-level press staffer, and a commissioned officer as a special assistant to the president.

In addition, her claim that Gorka “did not resign” is also untrue. Gorka sent the president a detailed resignation letter, as multiple media outlets have reported.

In his resignation letter, Gorka wrote to President Trump that given “recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House.”

“As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House,” Gorka wrote. He went on:

Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again,’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months. This was made patently obvious as I read the text of your speech on Afghanistan this week. The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost. Just as worrying, when discussing our future actions in the region, the speech listed operational objectives without ever defining the strategic victory conditions we are fighting for. This omission should seriously disturb any national security professional, and any American who is unsatisfied with the last 16 years of disastrous policy decisions which have led to thousands of Americans killed and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent in ways that have not brought security or victory.

The White House refused to comment on Sadler’s decision to inflate her credentials to lie about Gorka’s resignation. Sadler herself did not respond to a request for comment.

But many in the media industry picked up on the quote Sadler was blasting out to the entire media.

See, I picked up on it too; via Breitbart; so I must be "in the media" and not a mere opinionated blogging fool. King Lear's fool? What?

____________FURTHER UPDATE____________
Not knowing Gorka, whether he has a multiple personality disorder, I can only turn to Rashomon again; here, here and here. For myself, I agree with the learned and better informed professional pundits of newsworthiness and factual discourse.

___________FURTHER UPDATE____________
Ron Paul months ago, well before the Trump speech on a winning Afghanistan policy, was quoted by Inquisitr as Facebook posting an intriguing thought; while Inquistr likewise posted a reassuring item about things after the Scaramucci resignation - that things will be put into more capable hands, as would only be proper.

FURTHER: More Gorka, here; and then, even bigger news.

FURTHER: J and I as people of influence, perhaps not. Meanwhile Congress is ramping up to cut taxes for billionaires; but coverage of that yields to bigger things and events of more import.