December 7, 2019: Gen. Kelly Out at White House, Rex Tillerson Declared "Dumb as a Rock" by the President

 

12/7/18: Trump’s terrible, no good weekend/week/month/presidency continues to spiral downward. 

First, the president announces that White House chief of staff General John Kelly is leaving; but everything at 1600 Pennsylvania is ducky. Then we learn Nick Ayers will be taking the job. 

Then we learn Ayers won’t be taking the job. 

 

Why not pick a Russian? 

I would like to offer this helpful suggestion: Why not pick a Russian for the job and cut out the middlemen? 

On the international front we have new reports that North Korea is expanding missile-launching bases located along the Chinese border, where it would be beyond dangerous for the U.S. to strike. The North Koreans also appear to be ramping up production of nuclear weapons and missiles. 

Total number of nuclear weapons Kim Jong-un has relinquished since June, when Trump declared North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat: 

0.

While we’re on the subject of rogue leaders, CNN acquires a transcript of the tape of the last minutes journalist Jamal Khashoggi spent on earth. According to the translation, Khashoggi can be heard gasping three times, “I can’t breathe,” as a Saudi hit team finishes him off. 

Soon a bone saw is heard. A doctor wielding it tells other members of the team to use ear plugs or listen to music, as he is, if the sound of dismemberment troubles them. The head of the hit squad can be heard talking on the phone. Turkish authorities, who have passed the transcript on to reporters, claim intercepts prove the calls are going to a number at the Saudi royal palace. The other end of the conversation can’t be heard. The assassin tells his listener the “job is done.” 

None of this bothers our president, or Jared, his son-in-law. Trump continues to insist there’s no direct link between the murder and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Jared does a fluff interview with Sean Hannity. Hannity chooses not to ask about the Crown Prince and Jared never brings him up. According to Jared, U.S. intelligence agencies are still trying to figure out who murdered the journalist. It doesn’t much matter in the end. He and “Dad” are focused on other matters.

 

“We’re focused now on the broader region, which is figuring out how to hopefully bring a deal together between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Jared says. Apparently, neither Jared, nor the president realize: Hey, we’re the United States! We could work on more than one foreign policy issue at a time. 

Regardless, the foreign policy hits keep coming. Trump needs a new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and pickings are slim. He looks at his nearly empty bench and sends in Heather Nauert to guard the goal. Because nothing says, “We intend to bolster America’s preeminent role on the world stage,” like elevating a former Fox News host to this crucial post.  

In an interview with CBS, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reveals the secrets of Trump’s foreign policy “success.” On numerous occasions, he tells an interviewer, he had to tell Trump that what he wanted done on the international stage was: 

A)    Illegal. 

B)     A violation of some existing treaty. 

C)    Both.

 

Tillerson proves less than complimentary in describing the president’s deal-making processes. It was difficult, he says, 

to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things. But rather just kind of says, “Look, this is what I believe and you can try to convince me otherwise,” but most of the time you’re not going to do that.

 

Trump responds with his usual maturity in a tweet rant: “Rex Tillerson didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell.” 

February 23, 2019: Cow Farts and a Climate-Denier, Wife of a Coal Barron, Chosen for U.N. Ambassador

 

2/23/19: Another ordinary weekend in Trumpistan, which means extraordinary lunacy on display. 

____________________ 

Almost every scientist in the world knows it’s a serious subject.

____________________ 

 

Cow farts are in the news. “Cow farts” is the new “death panels for granny” phrase which the right will trot out to stupefy the uninformed and banish complex thought from right-wing craniums. After all, you can’t expect Trump fans to read a lengthy NASA report or count all the countries that believe climate change is a threat. You’re not going to hear Sean Hannity talk about the gaping hole in the Thwaites Glacier. You’re going to hear Fox News pundits boil down the Green New Deal to the God-given right of Americans to own flatulent bovines, instead. 

At that point it’s not a serious discussion, whereas almost every scientist in the world knows it’s a serious subject.

Cow farts...really, that's the level of discussion?

 

What we must do is unclear. So, you could discuss detailed scientific reports related to climate change, from NOAA or the Department of Defense. Or you could do what President Trump just did. 

Having nominated Heather Nauert, a former Fox News babe, to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, he was forced to try again after she withdrew from consideration. 

Oh, please, please, tell me there’s an illegal immigrant in her story! Not exactly, but close! Nauert had long employed a nanny who was in the United States legally, but lacked papers required to work. That meant if Nauert filed tax documents the truth would out. So Nauert decided not to file the documents or mention the nanny while serving as spokeswoman for the State Department for two years. 

Once the promotion to ambassador was offered the back taxes were paid, but the damage was done. And there it was again: A Trump official undercutting American wages by hiring immigrant help. 

Just like Trump. 

 

Trump nominates climate change denier as U.N. ambassador. 

So Nauert was out and, ta da! Kelly Knight Craft was in! The new nominee is qualified for the U.N. post based on two criteria. First, she and her husband Joseph Craft III are big donors to the GOP. Second, she’s a climate change denier and Mr. Craft owns a big coal company in Kentucky. Asked in 2017, if she thought climate change was an issue, Ms. Craft did not reply, “Well, yes, because 2017, 2016 and 2015 have been the three hottest years ever recorded.” 

She did not say, “Nearly 200 countries agree climate change is a threat and under this president we are the only nation in the world to withdraw from talks on the issue.” 

Instead, she gave the: my-husband-sells-coal-and-so-I-will-give-you-a-cow-farts-type-of-response. “I believe there are scientists on both sides [emphasis added] that are accurate,” Ms. Craft said. “I think that both sides have their own results, from their studies, and I appreciate and I respect both sides of the science.” 

That is exactly the kind of answer you’d expect from the ill-informed, unqualified-for-her-post-wife of a coal baron. 

Mr. Craft isn’t just a coal baron. He’s a really powerful coal baron. If he cares about the future of the planet, he cares about being rich far more. Last year, he earned $1,361,390 for his work at Alliance Holding GP. He is “a former Chairman and current Board member of the National Coal Council, a Board Member of the National Mining Association, and a Director and current Chairman of American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.” Craft was, until 2012, a billionaire. A divorce from his first wife knocked him off the billionaire pedestal and left him a pauper with a paltry $625 million. You figure he needed the fat tax cuts he got under the Trump Tax Plan. 

You might imagine that this story about Ms. Craft would be the only time you heard about climate deniers all week. With the Trump administration you would be wrong. The New York Times acquired a memo indicating that a Presidential Committee on Climate Security will soon be impaneled, consisting of 12 individuals, including William Happer, who is to head the team. 

As Newsweek explains, Happer is, shall we say, “out there” when it comes to the topic of climate change: 

[The] Princeton physicist is a known climate change denier, who once compared the “demonization of carbon dioxide” to the “demonization of poor Jews under Hitler.”

 

In 2015, Happer made news after undercover members of the environmental campaign group Greenpeace posed as oil company representatives and persuaded him to write a scientific paper, The New York Times reported. He assured them it would be an unpaid “labor of love.”

 

Happer told the Greenpeace members, whom he believed were from an unnamed oil company: “More CO₂ will benefit the world. The only way to limit CO₂ would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.”