Trump: “Another great day at the White House!”


Developments on Day 193 of the Trump Administration:

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Scaramucci Fired After Demand by New Chief of Staff Kelly

In what may be the first step by retired generals to get some order in the White House, Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci is dismissed after only 10 days in the job.

Donald Trump’s new Chief of Staff, retired four-star General John Kelly, insisted on Scaramucci’s departure as a condition for taking the post.

The announcement of Scaramucci’s appointment on July 21 immediately brought the resignation of Press Secretary Sean Spicer. The prospective Communications Director — he was not to be officially installed until August 15 — then moved aggressively for the dismissal of Chief Secretary Reince Priebus, who had blocked Scaramucci’s appointment to a White House post in January. The effort include a vulgar rant, in a phone call with Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, in which Scaramucci called Priebus a “paranoid schizophrenic” and spoke of chief strategist Steve Bannon fellating himself.

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Scaramucci appeared to have triumphed as Preibus left last Friday, only for Monday’s sudden turn in events.

Donald Trump had expressed no objection to Scaramucci’s behavior, but suddenly yesterday the White House — perhaps on Kelly’s direction — was emphasizing the depth of his upset. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “The President certainly felt that Anthony’s comments were inappropriate for a person in that position. He didn’t want to burden General Kelly, also, with that line of succession.”

Kelly is the first retired general as Chief of Staff since Alexander Haig was in the post during President Richard Nixon’s final days amid the Watergate scandal. He is one of three ex-military commanders in the Executive, with James Mattis as Defense Secretary and H.R. McMaster leading the National Security Council.

In a press conference trying to settle the uproar — and to divert from it — McMaster joined Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to announce new sanctions against President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela’s political crisis.

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To bolster the image of Kelly restoring order, allies leaked the claim that he had considered resigning over Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in early May in a failed attempt to quash the Trump-Russia investigation. Sources portray Monday morning staff meetings in which Kelly made it clear that Trump had agreed to let him impose more discipline. They said he made it clear that all White House Personnel — including chief strategist Bannon, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — will have to go through him with proposals, personnel recommendations, and advice from outsiders.

“General Kelly has the full authority to operate within the White House, and all staff will report to him,” Ms. Sanders told reporters, although she added that Trump will decide how this will be implemented.

Hours before Scaramucci’s dismissal, Trump had tweeted:

After the day’s turmoil, he proclaimed:


Kushner: We Were Too Disorganized to Collude With Russia

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has said the Trump campaign could not have colluded with Russia because it was too disorganized.

“They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local offices,” Kushner told Congressional interns during a private talk at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington on Monday afternoon.

Kushner downplayed his failure to report more than 100 contacts with officials of more than 70 countries on his security clearance forms, including his initial exclusion of any meetings with Russian officials: “There are 127 pages on the SF-86, but there are only two you guys have to worry about. Make sure you guys keep track of where you travel.”

Kushner said he didn’t track contacts because he didn’t expect to get into politics, despite his work on the Trump campaign.

He met Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak on multiple occasions in 2016 and also conferred with the head of a Kremlin-connected State bank in December.

Kushner on His Middle East Mission: “Let’s Not Focus” on “History Lesson” to Pursue It

In an audio of the presentation of almost an hour — recorded despite an injunction to the interns not to do so — Kushner discussed his task of bringing a Israeli-Palestinian a settlement. He dismissed the need to study the issues and their causes before embarking on the mission:

Everyone finds an issue, that ‘you have to understand what they did then’ and ‘you have to understand that they did this.’ But how does that help us get peace? Let’s not focus on that. We don’t want a history lesson. We’ve read enough books. Let’s focus on: How do you come up with a conclusion to the situation?

Kushner’s conclusion to the situation:

What do we offer that’s unique? I don’t know….I’m sure everyone that’s tried this has been unique in some ways, but again we’re trying to follow very logically. We’re thinking about what the right end state is. And we’re trying to work with the parties very quietly to see if there’s a solution. And there may be no solution, but it’s one of the problem sets that the President asked us to focus on. So we’re going to focus on it and try to come to the right conclusion in the near future.


Still No Trump Comment on Putin’s Order to Cut US Diplomatic Staff

Neither Donald Trump nor the White House has offered any comment on Sunday’s confirmation by Russian President Vladimir Putin of his order that the US cut its diplomatic staff in the country from 1,210 to 455 personnel.

A report is also circulating that Trump has had the unsigned bill authorizing new sanctions against Russia on his desk since July 28.

The White House said over the weekend that Trump will sign the Congressional measures, also imposed against Iran and North Korea, despite a lobbying effort to prevent the restrictions on Moscow. However, Trump has made no reference to the issue despite a torrent of Twitter comments on other matters.


State Department Considers Dropping “Just” and “Democratic” World From Its Mission

The State Department’s draft mission statement deletes the objective of a “just” and “democratic” world.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ordered the department to issue a new statement of purpose, considered by its Executive Steering Committee, to revise the 2016 version:

The Department’s mission is to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere. This mission is shared with the USAID, ensuring we have a common path forward in partnership as we invest in the shared security and prosperity that will ultimately better prepare us for the challenges of tomorrow.

The draft under consideration replaces this with “Lead America’s foreign policy through global advocacy, action and assistance to shape a safer, more prosperous world” and “The American people thrive in a peaceful and interconnected world that is free, resilient and prosperous.”

In his first speech to his State Department employees, Tillerson said promotion of American values “creates obstacles” to pursuing America’s national security interests. In March, he broke recent practice by declining to appear personally to unveil the State Department’s annual human rights report.


Republican Senator Flake on GOP and Trump: “Our Faustian Bargain Was Not Worth It”

Writing in Politico, GOP Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona considers Republican complicity in the rise of Donald Trump to disfunctional rule:

If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goals — even as we put at risk our institutions and our values — then it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldn’t be Pyrrhic ones. If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?

The Trump Administration has already targeted Flake — who criticized Donald Trump last October over the candidate’s bragging about his sexual advances on women — for removal in the 2018 Republican Senate primary, interviewing potential challengers.

The Senator challenges Trump over his denial of Russian influence in the 2016 election, “Even as our own government was documenting a con­certed attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax.”

He concludes, “We have taken our ‘institutions conducive to freedom’, as [Barry] Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.”


“Godly Individuals”: The White House Bible Study Class

The teacher of the White House weekly bible study has spoken of attendees such as Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo

“These are godly individuals that God has risen to a position of prominence in our culture,” said Capitol Ministries president Ralph Drollinger.

He said that the group is the “best” he’s “ever taught” because the officials “are so teachable; they’re so noble; they’re so learned”. He had special praise for Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “He’ll go out the same day I teach him something and I’ll see him do it on camera and I just think, ‘Wow, these guys are faithful, available and teachable and they’re at Bible study every week they’re in town.’”

Drollinger did not say if the President has attended, making the mysterious comment, “I don’t think Donald Trump has figured out that he chained himself to the Apostle Paul.”

But the pastor was straightforward in his comments about the Vice President, who does come to the class when he is in Washington:

Mike Pence has respect for the office. He dresses right – like it says Joseph cleaned himself up before he went to stand before the Pharaoh. Mike Pence has uncompromising biblical tenacity and he has a loving tone about him that’s not just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And then fourthly, he brings real value to the head of the nation.

I just praise God for them. And I praise God for Mike Pence, who I think with Donald Trump chose great people to lead our nation.