SpiffCoug wrote:nuk13 wrote:SpiffCoug wrote:Trump is incapable of making a good pick because this Chief of Staff will have the same problem as the previous one: the boss of the Chief of Staff.
Trump is a joke. He is unserious and wants personal loyalty above all else. You can't run a successful country when the chief executive demands more loyalty to him than to the nation.
Disagreed.
I'd love to hear why.
I absolutely LOVED
this sob-piece from Max Bergmann at Politico some weeks back. His premise is that Rex Tillerson is shrinking the State Department, therefore he is wrecking the State Department. So he goes on for paragraphs and paragraphs about empty offices, diplomats sent into retirement, unneeded furniture being disposed of, smaller (or axed) hiring programs, and then tells us that the State Department won't be able to function--but he can't name a single concrete meeting the State Department was unable to attend that they should have attended. As a small-government advocate, this was exactly what I was hoping for with Trump. Tillerson is cutting the fat, and the big-government liberals are in tears as it happens, but they can't identify a specific negative outcome other than government employees being downsized and going into early retirement.
Politico also has a recurring piece for the past 8 weeks they call
"5 Things Trump Did While You Weren't Looking" that highlights how Trump and his executive branch are re-shaping policy and programs where they can without Congressional involvement--rolling back Obama-era regulations, downsizing programs and staffs, etc.
While the media obsesses over GOP Congressional dysfunction (not Trump's fault) and the West Wing soap opera (Trump's fault, but really--who cares if it's Spicer/Mooch/Priebus/Kelly?), Trump is quietly going about doing what he can do fulfill his promises. The press is so caught up in the relatively inane issue of who the Chief of Staff or spox is, and there is not enough oxygen for them to cover in any depth what is going on.
How many people know that the Trump administration:
-repealed the Obama era fracking ban?
-withdrew the Obama-era Labor Department guidance that would have made millions of 1099 contractors into W2 employees and crushed small businesses?
-eliminated third-party payouts in DOJ settlements (i.e. the DOJ can no longer require an accused party to pay money to a third-party as part of a settlement--a tool Obama used to funnel money to donor associations and corporations)?
-successfully negotiated for the US to be able to sell rice to China--something W. and Obama tried and tried to do, but could never get it done?
-reformed the 340B prescription reimbursement program to eliminate upward pressure on drug prices?
-repealed the Waters of the United States rule (Obama era rule that gave the EPA Clean Water Act jurisdiction over ditches and puddles)?
So, if you follow the media narrative of what Trump is doing, he looks like a bumbling failure who can't get anything done. If you take some time to look at what is really happening and what he is doing where Congress is not standing in his way, Trump is doing everything he promised and more.