One criterion
Life in the Trump administration – if they find out you wrote something critical of Trump in the past, they physically remove you from the premises.
A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser. He was preparing a cross-country tour for Mr. Carson, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate this month.
But they hadn’t quite finished his background check yet. Oh no, oh no, what’s that – a deviation in thought.
Mr. Trump’s advisers turned up public writings by Mr. Singleton that appeared during the later stages of the campaign in which he was deeply critical of the candidate.
“My party in particular has allowed itself to be taken over by someone who claims to be a Republican but doesn’t represent any of our values, principles or traditions,” he wrote in The Hill in October 2016.
Call Security!!
The firing was reminiscent of the decision by the White House to block a senior Republican foreign policy adviser, Elliott Abrams, from becoming deputy secretary of state. The move came after Mr. Abrams’s anti-Trump writings came to the president’s attention. Mr. Abrams had been the choice of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.
This administration has one core belief: that Donnie Trump is the best human who has ever lived.
And if you think otherwise, it’s just because you believe FAKE NEWS. Sad.
He’s sounding more and more like he belongs in the leadership of North Korea (or also people like Stalin who couldn’t tolerate dissent).
But… I thought part of Trump’s platform was that he didn’t represent Republican values, principles or traditions! He claimed that was a plus for him. Drain the swamp!
Is he firing people for agreeing with him now?
Are the Republicans scared yet? What will it take?
Probably the realization that there is a way for Republicans to win elections without Trump’s core base of fervent admirers. I don’t know if they can (I doubt it), so that might be a problem.
Unless they start losing so much economically and politically from it, they are going to grin and bear it. When he turns on them (as he almost certainly will), it won’t be pretty. And his howling mobs will follow right along with pitchforks, tar, and feathers.
Our best hope is that he breaks the Republican party so badly that they can’t recover, and they either have to grow a heart or leave politics.
I am constantly struck by the parallels between what’s happening in the US and here in the UK with Brexit. There’s this “thou shalt not disagree” authoritarian, dictatorial vibe everywhere. Cry “democracy” while denying the legislature its say, cry “free speech” while telling half the population to shut up and cry “freedom” whilst threatening to lock us up.
I still fear that both countries will have to go right to the cliff edge to face any chance of pulling things around. The only question is: Italian Job or Thelma & Louise?
And, iknklast #4, it is my hope that Brexit breaks the Tories so hard that a possible future conversation in Parliament might go: “Remember Theresa May?”, “Er, no…”, “Precisely.”
Pet peeve regarding declining standards of english in journalism, #6,437,689,749: the sentence “A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson,…” suggests that Ben Carson is the ‘top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee.
Holms, you’re fighting a losing battle. My husband and I collect those things. One favorite: Looking for survivors with dogs. (Still trying to figure out what survivors do if they didn’t think to bring their dogs). Another favorite, from an obit: He went to live with Jesus at his home in Sutton, NE. So now we know where Jesus lives…and it’s a small town in Nebraska. My husband and I try to figure out which is Jesus’s house every time we go through Sutton.
Sorry for the OT. Just carry on and ignore me.
My local newspaper once began a report on a serious traffic accident with “Three people were killed, two of them fatally…..’
Well, if Trump’s behaviour continues to follow the pattern of a certain Austrian, they’ll soon have Army trucks with their engines running surrounding the White House around the clock. Drowns out the sound of the firing squads, apparently.
On the lighter side of journalism, the British scientific weekly Nature reported on the 80-year quest to squeeze hydrogen from a gas to a solid: Hydrogen yet to prove it’s metal.