You’ve Been Had!

A bill of goods. That is what this nation has been sold by the person of the current President of the US. We’ve been deceived, swindled, and taken advantage of by the administration as pledge after pledge has been negated by the actions taken by this President and his henchmen. And yet, his loyal followers hold out their bowls, and plead, “Please, sir, may I have some more?”

How have we been deceived? Let’s examine a few areas where the actions of the President after inauguration are in complete contradiction to the pledges made during the campaign. First, let’s tackle the series of statements he made about the obscene influence of Goldman Sachs upon his opponents in the primary and general election. In January 2016, Donald Trump declared Ted Cruz to be under the control of Goldman Sachs, due to a million dollar loan Cruz had obtained from the bank, but hadn’t disclosed on a financial disclosure form. That was followed by Donald Trump declaring that Heidi Cruz, Ted’s wife, was also complicit and a creature of Wall Street since she was also employed by Goldman Sachs. This was followed by the general election, where we were treated to the image of Donald Trump berating Hillary Clinton for being paid for speeches to Goldman Sachs prior to her run for the presidency.

So, good then. One would imagine that the administration of Donald Trump would be devoid of the evil influence of Goldman Sachs, since it was integral to the efforts to destroy this country’s economic might through its globalization efforts. Let’s check the record:

Steve Bannon – Chief strategist. Former Goldman Sachs banker, left the organization in 1990 as a vice president.

Steve Mnuchin – Secretary of the Treasury. Goldman Sachs banker for 17 years, left as Chief Information Officer in 2002 before forming various hedge funds and purchasing IndyMac bank in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

Gary Cohn – Director of the National Economic Council. Served as Chief Operating Officer for Goldman Sachs from 2006 until his appointment in 2017.

We could go on with links with the underlings in the administration who came directly from Goldman Sachs, but this should suffice to show that instead of purging the evil Wall Street influence from the administration, this President has infused fresh banking blood into the halls of government agencies where the levers of power are rigged to favor the wealthy instead of the typical Trump voter. You’ve been had!

Ok, then, maybe Donald Trump wasn’t able to accomplish his campaign goals of ridding the swamp of its evil banker’s mantle. Let’s look at another promise of this President, to hire only the best people for positions in his administration.

“I’m going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people,” he told Robert Costa in a phone interview at the time. “We want top of the line professionals.” This quote was from a  Sept. 2016 story in the Washington Post referencing an August 2016 interview. In campaign speech after speech, Trump boasted about knowing the best people and hiring only the best.

So how is this pledge working out? Well, splendidly, if your criteria is shortness of time within a position because one or more of these best people just didn’t work out. Let’s look at a few of the truly inept people that Donald Trump hired, only to busify them (busify – the act of throwing someone under the bus) within a few weeks or months of hiring.

Michael Flynn – the poster child for a Trump pick. Even while working on the campaign and after the election, this extreme version of incompetence was working with foreign players to enrich himself. When caught lying to the Vice President, his last lifeline was spent and he had to forfeit his National Security Advisor post

Tom Price – Supposedly his prescient knowledge of stock movements in a certain medical device stock had nothing to do with his position in the House as he introduced an act after the stock purchase that would have greatly enriched the company whose stock he had purchased. No, that type of dealing would have been welcome in the company of billionaires and wanna-be billionaires. Tom’s fatal flaw was having a predilection for chartered private jets that even the Trump administration could not stomach, after bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars emerged in the press. He was forced to leave his position as head of Health and Human Services.

Anthony Scaramucci – Mooch, we barely knew ye. Your tenure as the White House Director of Communications ended before it officially began. Over two weeks before he would have been sworn in, he was forced to not officially become the Director after giving an interview to a New Yorker reporter where he castigated several members of the administration in, shall we say, rather colorful language. One could make the case that he was actually communicating the occupant of the oval office’s feelings extremely well, since the targets of his language (Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon) were forced to leave White House employ shortly after the interview. Still, getting fired before you actually began the job represents a new peak in the (in)competence of Trump officials.

Sam Clovis – when you have a government agency that is responsible for billions of dollars in scientific research, involving the safety and integrity of the food supply, whom would you choose to lead this technically demanding position? Why, a former radio talk show host and a Doctor of Public Administration who happened to be the co-chairman of Trump’s campaign, of course. The fallacy of having a non-scientist appointed to a key scientific post never came to fruition, though. Unfortunately for Sam, he became associated with the self-admitted felon, George Papadopoulos. Sam becomes just another example of the best people that Donald Trump was able to attract.

Brett Talley – a name you may not yet be familiar with, but certainly a nominee for this august group of unqualified individuals appointed to government positions by Donald Trump. This individual has been nominated as a judge in the middle district of Alabama, and he has the unique qualifications of never having taken part in a trial, either as a judge, attorney, plaintiff, or defendant. Thus he is a complete tabula rasa, able to perform judicial duties without any preconceived notions. That must be why the American Bar Association gave Brett a rating of Not Qualified to be a judge. But did that matter to Donald Trump? No, especially since Brett’s wife is the chief of staff to the White House Counsel. Who needs stinkin’ qualifications when you’ve got the insiders track to the Donald’s ear? Just think, he may end up ruling over litigation affecting Roy Moore in the future.

Well, that’s just a partial listing of those folks who are excellent examples of “the best and most serious people” that Donald Trump pledged to attract to his service. We could give many more examples but space and time limitations prevent this.

To those who are Trump supporters, this is only the very first listing of the ways in which you’ve been had. There are many more examples of where Trump’s campaign pledges about helping the forgotten citizens have been turned on their head, and the policies being followed are harming the forgotten citizens, while enriching Trump’s true social class, the 0.01% club. This, the first missive in a series of posts about this administration, examines some of the personnel decisions that reflect the abysmal performance of our current President. You’ve Been Had!