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‘Kakistocracy’: Defining the New Trump Era

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‘Government by the Least Qualified or Most Unprincipled Citizens’

Ryan Lizza, the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker magazine, has given new definition to the phenomenon sweeping the American government as the Trump transition team and incoming administration struggle to get organised. Lizza has labeled it, “Kakistocracy,” which, is defined as, “government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.” The American Heritage Dictionary gives the origin of kakistocracy as from the Greek word, kakistos, worst, superlative of kakos, bad.

Screen_Shot_2016-11-21_at_1.11.39_PM.pngLizza’s description is extremely apt given absolute chaos surrounding the president-elect and his advisors. Any semblance of an orderly transition now seems on the verge of collapse as each day brings a new revelation that questions Trump’s ability to maintain control or even properly direct his apparently unwieldy staff. 

From the outset it was readily apparent that Trump and his team were unprepared to take control of the American government. As one White House staffer told NCRM confidentially, the first warning that the transition was in serious trouble was the president-elect’s first visit with President Obama. None of the aides who accompanied Mr. Trump seemed cognizant of the fact that outside of White House service personnel, such as ushers, kitchen staff, et cetera, for example, the military aides, and of course the U.S. Secret Service personnel, that they would need to replace folks in the West Wing and the two Executive Office buildings, responsible for smooth operations of the Executive Branch. They seemed, as the staffer put it, “shell-shocked.”

Then, as reports filtered out from Transition Headquarters in Trump Tower, which were first described as a palace coup after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was replaced by Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, White House sources noted that requisite paperwork to allow the current administration staff to communicate directly with incoming Trump staff was not executed which ultimately causes delays and lack of communications necessary for a smooth handover of power.

The Christie ouster came as no shock to people close to the campaign who have said privately that the Trump campaign team, which had been led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was merely “repaying a debt” as the New Jersey Governor, when he was a U.S. attorney, was involved in the prosecution of Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner. The elder Kushner was sentenced to prison in 2005 on 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.

There still has been no real public comment offered by the folks surrounding the President-elect and the transition team other than Trump spokesman Jason Miller, who deflected the issue regarding the alleged purge telling journalists that reports of Jared Kushner’s involvement, “couldn’t be further from the truth,” but that the younger Kushner is someone whom “obviously the president-elect seeks and respects his counsel very much.”

Yet this past Wednesday came word that Kevin O’Connor, himself a former United States Attorney and who had headed up the Justice Department transition team, is now out. Christie and O’Connor, friends, had been U.S. attorneys at the same time, O’Connor in Connecticut from 2002 until 2008 during the period that Christie was serving in New Jersey. 

Outside of The White House and its environs is the rest of the Federal Government, of particular concern being the Defense Department and the American Intelligence community. Last week NCRM reported, “In what is being seen as a warning to the Trump transition team to move faster in building a national security team, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, tendered his resignation Wednesday night.” 

Sources inside the Pentagon are also expressing deep concerns to NCRM regarding the lack of information or flow of communications from the Trump Transition Team. Trump himself had drawn criticism prior to the election by a cabal of military officials who spoke on background to the various media outlets that there were limitations on “abuse of powers” possible from a President Trump that the military would be tolerant of.

Screen_Shot_2016-11-21_at_1.16.24_PM.pngIn a poll released Friday by the Military Times/Institute for Military and Veterans Families (IMVF) Survey, nearly one quarter of America’s active-duty troops expressed worry about what orders that President Trump will issue. Twenty-seven percent of service members polled said Trump would negatively affect their jobs or missions, and then one in five troops – including a majority of those who voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton – said Trump as commander in chief would make them less likely to re-enlist.

U.S. troops are also skeptical that Trump can end the 15-year conflict in Afghanistan during his presidency, according to the poll, with 28 percent saying he can achieve that but 34 percent saying he can’t.

Perceptions are also building that the relationship between the president-elect and Kushner and Trump’s adult children will create potential for conflicts of interest between him and his family’s business ventures. Reports have emerged as recently as last week that foreign governments were booking reservations at Trump owned hotels and properties for their diplomatic as well as government officials. According to one official at the U.S. State Department, who asked to not be identified:

“The fact that foreign governments are patronising Trump’s hotels, coupled with the fact that Trump has not moved his business interests into a blind trust, instead leaving daily operations of his business empire to his children, with whom he has close relationship, can leave the impression that these foreign governments at the least are currying favour while at the same time putting money in Trump’s pockets.” 

Sue Fulton, a 1980 West Point graduate and former U. S. Army Captain, who helped found several LGBTQI military service organizations, including SPARTA, Knights Out and OutServe, noted: 

“If you were uncomfortable that a donation to the Clinton Foundation – which no Clinton was paid by, and which went to lifesaving drugs in developing countries – might (never proven) have led to a meeting with the Secretary of State, I want to hear your outrage about this.

“Trump will be dealing with foreign governments who he is in business with, with his hotels and other holdings. Every decision he in dealing with a foreign government, every tax or budget proposal to Congress, every appointment to the IRS or law enforcement agency, can be contingent on how it helps the Trump business. 

“Welcome to kleptocracy. If you think enriching the Trump fortune won’t be a condition of Presidential action, you haven’t paid attention to what Donald Trump has done his entire life.” 

The idea of potential conflict of interest if not outright flaunting of long established protocols and procedures and was further reinforced when a photograph was distributed Thursday evening, that showed Kushner and his wife Ivanka, were both present for at least part of a meeting between the President-elect and the prime minister of Japan.

The press corps were barred from covering the meeting, Trump’s first with a foreign head of state, and no summary was provided afterwards detailing what was discussed. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters after the meeting that he had a “very candid discussion” with Mr. Trump, although he also did not elaborate on the topics discussed nor commented on who else attended the meeting.

With public outrage already building in progressive and liberal spheres over Trump’s selection of former Breitbart Editor Steven Bannon, to his White House inner circle, given Bannon’s track record of anti-Semitism and racist statements along with his misogynistic behavior, Trump’s pick to be U.S. Attorney General, Alabama Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, has Democrats in the Senate further inflamed vowing to oppose Sessions.

Democrats and progressive and liberal human rights group list Sessions’ anti-immigrant, anti LGBTQI Equality Rights senatorial track record as more than adequate reasons to reject him as U.S. Attorney General. Sessions voted against both the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation, gender and disability. He voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” His statements regarding immigrants, particularly those from Central America have been categorised as xenophobic and racist by some political observers and journalists. 

Screen_Shot_2016-11-21_at_1.19.49_PM.pngIn an email statement Friday, Illinois Democratic Congressman Luis Gutiérrez said: 

“If you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible and women stayed in the kitchen, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is your man.”

The first time Sessions faced a Senate confirmation, he was nominated to a federal district judgeship in Alabama in 1986 by then President Ronald Reagan, Sessions was soundly rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee after multiple witnesses came forward to report his history of racist comments and hostility to civil rights groups.  There are Washington insiders who have told NCRM that there are questions as to whether or not in this go around, in another GOP held Senate, would offer a similar result. 

Lending a further impression that Trump is building a Kakistocracy in the federal government are his choices for National Security Adviser, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a man who has publicly stated said he doesn’t believe that all cultures are “morally equivalent” and once described Islam as “a cancer.” Also, Kansas GOP Representative Mike Pompeo, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and Harvard Law School. Pompeo was pointedly asked during an appearance on the NBC News Sunday Morning Talk Show “Meet the Press” in late 2015 why his committee’s inquiry into the 2012 attacks on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, had dragged on longer than the Watergate investigation. His immediate response to NBC’s moderator Chuck Todd was, “This is worse, in some ways.”

Pompeo, an unyielding critic of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a supporter of the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk data collection program and sought to restore the agency’s access to the data it had already collected under the Patriot Act from its inception through late last year.

The New York Times wrote in a profile piece published Saturday, that, “If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Pompeo would become one of the most overtly partisan figures to take over the C.I.A. — a spy agency that, at least publicly, is supposed to operate above politics and avoid a direct role in policy making.”

As the transition team struggles with selection of cabinet and agency heads, filling routine positions in the White House Staff has apparently been left to application via the transition’s webpage and or according to one source, email blasts and text messages. Critical liaisons between the incoming administration and other Federal Departments and agencies has also been limited or nonexistent  leaving some federal personnel worried that critical programmes will grind to a halt until the new administration catches up. 

On Saturday, as if to illustrate a misplaced sense of priorities by the President-elect, an angry tweet to the cast of a popular Broadway musical over Vice-President-Elect Michael Pence being booed upon entering the theater, and then a public plea post performance directed at him, seemed to further define the clueless tone of the Trump team.

“The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” — Donald J. Trump

If anything though, the short speech delivered at Pence by Brandon Victor Dixon, the actor portraying Aaron Burr in the acclaimed musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton, seems to capture the fears of many Americans about this new administration.

“Vice President-elect Pence, welcome,” Dixon said, on behalf of the production. “Thank you for joining us at ‘Hamilton: An American Musical.’We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of all of us. Thank you.”

 

Brody Levesque is the Chief Political Correspondent for The New Civil Rights Movement.
You may contact Brody at Brody.Levesque@thenewcivilrightsmovement.com 

Image by Giovanni Variottinelli via Flickr and a CC license 

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OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

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Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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