Trump administration in disarray - Not news

Trump got a double-whammy last week. A new book by Bob Woodward was leaked. It detailed many cases when Trump's advisers got fed up with his egotism and lack of focus on important national and international issues. Also, an adviser went to the New York Times with similar stories. The NYT allowed the person to write an anonymous editorial.

None of this is new. There have been leaks about Trump not understanding issues from the beginning of his presidency, when Pence (possibly) had to tell Trump that Mike Flynn was compromised and had to be fired. Trump seemed to think he could shut down the investigation into his campaign's connections to Russia, but found out he doesn't have the power to stop investigations.

So, really, it's not news that Trump is frequently at odds with his advisers. We don't need a recitation of the scores of episodes. Vox has a fascinating discussion about who leaked to Bob Woodward, based on clues from the book itself. His main sources are all former advisers with the exception of Linsday Graham, the senator.

It seemed likely that  Trump would blow a gasket over the twin strikes on his credibility. However, Trump actually handled it pretty well (except for his reaction in the first 24 hours). He took the stand that the NYT is steeped in fake news, and he's actually doing very well as president if you look at economics and policy initiatives like trade. He said that with seeming confidence, as though he was prepared with a strong defense that he found believable.

The motivation behind the anonymous NYT editorial is muddy. If you have to sneak around to stop Trump for doing stupid actions, why would you tell him and the entire country? Trump isn't strongly going after the leaker in his midst. No high profile lie detector tests. No one claiming to be the leaker, no one blowing the whistle on a fellow adviser. I think this leaker may not be identified. If so, he'll just be one of many leakers. Can't name them all, and definitely can't fire them all. Got to live with them.

Image: washingtontimes.com

Extras. Trump's advisers didn't know what White House counsel Don McGahn (a public employee, not a private lawyer) told Mueller in extensive interviews. Oh, more disarray. Surprised?

More links - even more interesting

Unmasking unmasking. Republicans are trying to shift the attention on Russian election interference to the unmasking of names in intelligence documents. It turns out that the House Intelligence Committee asked for some unmasking itself. Perhaps unmasking names isn't as bad as they're pretending it is.

Clinton Emails. I had an argument with another Bloomberg commenter on whether we should assume Hillary's server was hacked, even in the absence of leaks of her emails. The commenter provided a link to a video clip of a former intelligence officials saying that he'd have no respect for foreign intelligence agencies if they hadn't hacked her emails. (Sorry, I can't find the link. It was a respectable news channel.) I don't think this is compelling enough evidence to say the realistic people must assume her emails were hacked. Fox News (not a respectable organization) claimed that it received info about known hacks. But I guess they backed down on that. This New York Times article discusses some reasons to strongly suspect it happened.

But a final bit of speculation: it was a very close election. If foreign intelligence agencies has hacked her server and had emails, and didn't want to see Clinton as president, isn't it likely that they would have leaked the emails before the election? Consider whether some not-so-Clinton-friendly countries like Russia, Israel, or Saudi Arabia had those emails. Would they not have tried to tip the election? If indeed she'd been hacked, I'm rather surprised that information hasn't clearly surfaced.

Trump is trying to hire... but will people serve? That's a good question tackled by this must-read article. There's a telling anecdote of an interview for a high position.

Unwarranted suspicion. The investigation of contacts between Trump advisers and Russians was started because of malice on the part of John Brennan, the former CIA director. The investigation was totally fake. Don't you believe me????? (I often don't believe the Washington Times.)

Trump war room. With Trump's return from his first foreign visits, he may be setting up a war room to fight back against the mounting Russia news blizzard. How they might fight back: Deny Russian contacts happened. Then claim what did happen is perfectly fine. Or get the supposedly recused chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to jump back in and run interference again. Or coordinate/non-coordinate with a group to run commercials attacking former FBI directory Comey.

Unfortunately, I doubt that they'll decide to be transparent on all Russia contacts. Cover-up and obfuscation seem to be the go-to strategies of politicians -- see Hillary and her email server. Also, a very readable speculation on Trump's mood and how it permeates everything.

Impeachment. A conservative gets that impeachment would be a fiasco. For the record, I don't see impeachment happening, due to the prez being a Republican and Republican control of the House. Duh! How the hell would it happen?

Don't cry for Robert E. Lee. The Atlantic has an illuminating article on the myth of Lee versus the reality. He wasn't exactly the reluctant defender of slavery. A good read as statues are being removed.

Paris climate accords. Trump, true to his rhetoric, pulled the US out of the non-binding accords. The effect is to make the US look greedy and rather irresponsible, and everyone else look more like grown-ups. Go, team, go!

Signs of more instability in the Mideast? Several major Mideast countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. What's going on? Even more infighting in that region, it appears. There are Muslims fighting the West, Sunnis and Shia fighting, Kurds being suppressed, and maybe now Sunnis fighting other Sunnis. What a mess. Here's a reflection: perhaps Obama was partly successfully in controlling the chaos. But he's gone now, and Trump's policies will give rein to more chaos. Update 6/12/17. An article explaining the Qatar situation. Another good article. More updates 7/16/17. Report that the United Arab Emirates probably hacked Qatar and placed false information to start this action. Trump doesn't understand this and isn't listening to the smarter cabinet secretaries. Secret alliance documents. Interesting, but the news story is somewhat muddy. Analysis that the Saudis are overplaying their hand.

Former libertarian turns supporter of welfare state. I guess he stopped fighting the wave and started communing and learning how the wave thinks. The wave wants the welfare state that is embodied by Social Security and Medicare. However, most GOP lawmakers haven't read between the lines, or won't be saying out loud that entitlements have won, even in the GOP. Because of this, legislative paralysis wins.

How to get caught leaking. Interesting background on the first leaker arrested in the very leaky start of the Trump administration. Possibly memorable trivia, but maybe throw-away trivia.

Rhetoric games. A National Review columnist notices one of the most common rhetorical tricks: 'Hey, what about this [outrage/blunder/hypocrisy]?'

The Swamp

Image: tulane,edu

Short: FBI against Clinton

I have to make this short because 1) I have to get rid of some of my browser tabs, and 2) I want to surf other stuff that's a lot more fun.

So, there have been seriously bad leaks from the FBI, and also a lot of dissension over FBI Director Comey's decision not to indict Clinton. It seems that some FBI agents are fairly partisan and are extremely upset that Clinton hasn't been locked up. Can't give them credit for professionalism on this one.

Some agents were so unprofessional and partisan that they said a Clinton indictment was imminent, and leaked it to media franchises that just loved to hear it. The result was that Bret Baier had to retract a story to that effect. Strange how the retraction was bigger news on Politico than on Baier's own network, the estimable Fox News.

Image: patriotpost.us

Leak: For them, Norquist is a RINO

OK, folks, I have no idea how politics is done, so this was eye-popping. You see, to be infulential (I mean influential) in politics, you have to host a weekly members-only strategy session where you talk about who's not pulling their weight, who stabbed you in the back, what words to use to attack someone, and what everyone has to accomplish before next week.

This is like Journolist, but for conservatives. The problem is that there's more than one of these members-only conservative networks. Norquist has had one for twenty years, but now there's an upstart that hates Norquist as a compromising-squish-establishment-fake-conservative. Wow. The right keeps moving so fast that we normal people can't keep up with what's extreme nowadays.

The people behind this ultra-conservative scout troop include Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, defunct representative Allen West, Ted Cruz, and a bunch of, ahem, journalists from Breitbart.

How do we know this? Someone got hold of documents from their private Google site and leaked the whole thing to Mother Jones. Just as I keep saying, whatever you want to hide, it ain't gonna stay hidden.

A good introduction is here, but be sure to read the long version to find out how the powers-that-be craft the news memes you can't stand. One. More. Second.

Oh, and they hate Karl Rove too.

Image: motherjones.com

Extra. Why are we bombarded with so many talking points? Per the Leesburg grid:

"Where this really gets interesting is when you're covering points faster than the opponent can create them. This puts them 'behind the eight ball,' and they never seem to create their own ideas; they only respond to yours."

Please, God, no, it's actually designed that way.

Update 7/30/13. Jonathan Bernstein of PlainBlog (still fascinating during these doldrums--great job!) says:

"Really? You're telling me that the same right-wing kooks who were publicly hyping Benghazi! and publicly urging Boehner and Issa to 'make this supposed scandal a top-priority' were...also doing the same thing when the TV cameras weren't on!"

He makes a valid point--none of this is particularly surprising or a scandal. I still found the information fresh, especially to know who's in the group and who's not.

Obama cleans out his closet

A few weeks ago, I took note of an interesting fact--Lois Lerner, an official at the IRS, solicited the question that started the whole IRS story. She called a journalist and arranged for her to ask the question. That's interesting, but it doesn't mean Lois Lerner is a whistleblower. The Inspector General's report on this IRS faux pas was due to be released, so she was perhaps trying to get ahead of it. Maybe she was launching the news of a Friday afternoon in hopes that it gets lost amid the weekend vacation luggage.

But another curious thought wandered through my gray matter. Perhaps Obama is doing some significant cleaning. He's trying to take care of some messes well before the 2016 election and even before the 2014 midterms. And it seems like there are plenty of messes that need sorting. Closing Guantanamo was one he could announce without shame, but it seems that there are plenty of others. So the story about the AP subpoena is out, the same about a Fox reporter (for records and a leak back in 2009), and now another leak about electronic communication tracking. 

I wonder what other misbehavior will surface in the next 5 months. If there are more IRS peccadilloes, and Obama's staff knows about them, they should be coming out. There are probably more surveillance surprises (or non-surprises). Libertarians are going to have a lot of grist to grind. Maybe this is also a safer way to start a national conversation about how much to roll back surveillance without election year grandstanding. Obama gets cover if he reduces surveillance, but if the reaction is heavily pro-surveillance, he's covered for the status quo. 

For people who think that the Obama administration is getting blasted right and left, consider my interpretation--that the Obama administration is quietly revealing its dirty secrets so it can be renewed and clean for its Redemption Tour in 2014. It's also setting the stage for the next Democratic president. 

The history of the administration is one without a large number of embarrassing leaks (except for the paranormal phenomenon of Wikileaks). The most well known leaks, about the drone program, have burnished Obama's stature as a tough Commander-in-Chief. My impression is that the Obama administration has been tighter and more honest that other administrations. Leaks have been surprisingly tightly controlled. Where they weren't beneficial (perhaps encouraged), the leakers were prosecuted harshly.

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That's what I wrote last week before the leaker (about the data mining capabilities of the NSA's formerly secret program called PRISM) declared his identity. I wasn't surprised about this exposure. It doesn't seem that anyone was surprised.

In one way this fits the pattern I had noticed. On the other hand, this leak seems to have been initiated by a 29-year-old computer whiz working on his own timetable, so not a "scheduled" leak to help clear out the closet. However, the subject is one of the skeletons in the closet that Obama would like to bring into the open, but is most likely incidental to the leaker himself. Nonetheless, I'm not ready to let go of my hypothesis--that Obama will be cleaning the skeletons out of the presidential closet. (This may be bias on my part toward thinking my theories are brilliant.)

I expect that the cleaning will continue, with a peak sometime during the summer and tailing off well before Thanksgiving. If this is planned cleaning up of secrets/scandals, the new disclosures shouldn't last beyond Thanksgiving since Obama would want the whole of 2014 to be as clean as possible for the midterm elections. He needs to avoid being pulverized (or shellacked) as he was in 2010.

I will know that my hypothesis is wrong if the leaks continue past Thanksgiving, if the scandals reported are more serious in the fall than those leaked in the summer, or if top advisers and cabinets members start leaving in droves. Those are signs of uncontrolled releases of information, not the controlled releases I postulate.

Image: placeofmine.com

Also interesting: Less mining than you think, says Google among others.