Well, the Beltway is once again abuzz with fevered criticism and conjecture about an Administrative move by President Donald J. Trump.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that
President Donald Trump replaced Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Friday with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general.
The shift at the top of the White House hierarchy is aimed at bringing order to an administration that has been beset by infighting, as Mr. Trump seeks to notch the sort of sweeping legislative victories that he promised during the campaign but that have eluded him to this point, advisers to the president said.
“John Kelly will do a fantastic job. Gen. Kelly has been a star, done an incredible job thus far, respected by everybody,” Mr. Trump told reporters Friday.
The president told Mr. Priebus two weeks ago he was planning to bring in a new staff chief, a senior administration official said. Mr. Kelly was offered the job earlier this week and immediately accepted, the senior official said.
Mr. Trump discussed bringing in Mr. Kelly with a small group of people, the senior official said. Part of the draw, the official said, was that he believes Mr. Kelly can provide effective leadership and has the respect of the West Wing, which is staffed with aides whose ideology falls across the political spectrum.
After Mr. Trump’s announcement, which came as Air Force One landed in Washington after a flight from New York, the president posted a tweet thanking Mr. Priebus “for his service and dedication to his country. We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!”
Mr. Trump stayed on the plane while Mr. Priebus and other top aides disembarked. Mr. Priebus’s car left the motorcade before Mr. Trump got off the plane.
Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), who was on the plane, said he spoke to Mr. Priebus during the flight from Long Island and was unaware the chief of staff had been replaced. “Good poker face. Showed nothing,” Mr. King said. “We didn’t even know it.”
Mr. King said that as he was preparing to disembark, the president told him and other lawmakers on the flight he would announce Mr. Kelly as chief of staff.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that Messrs. Trump and Priebus began discussing the chief of staff’s departure about two weeks ago. Asked when the president offered Mr. Kelly the job, she said, “They’ve been talking about it for a while.”
Mr. Priebus told The Wall Street Journal he submitted his letter of resignation on Thursday. In an interview later with CNN, he said Mr. Trump “obviously wanted to make a change, and I offered my resignation, and he agreed. And we moved on.”
He said he and the president discussed naming Mr. Kelly as his successor and said Mr. Trump “knows intuitively when things need to change.”
Mr. Priebus’s status seemed shakier after Mr. Trump installed Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.
Messrs. Scaramucci and Priebus openly feuded, creating a level of tension in the West Wing that advisers said wasn’t sustainable. Mr. Scaramucci this week gave a profanity-laced interview to the New Yorker magazine in which he disparaged Mr. Priebus and other top staffers. One adviser who has spoken with the president said Mr. Trump was dismissive of Mr. Priebus for not returning fire.
Asked on CNN about Mr. Scaramucci’s criticism, Mr. Priebus said: “I’m not going to get into the mud on those sorts of things.”
As homeland security secretary, Mr. Kelly was charged with overseeing implementation of Mr. Trump’s travel ban, which has faced a series of holdups in the courts. The most recent version seeks to impose a 90-day ban on U.S. entry for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and to suspend temporarily the U.S. program for admitting refugees. Mr. Trump said the order would help prevent terrorism.
Before joining the cabinet, Mr. Kelly served as chief of the U.S. Southern Command, the division that oversees U.S. military activities south of Mexico, including Central America, South America and the Caribbean. In that role he focused on homeland-security issues because the post involved monitoring drug trafficking and other smuggling activity south of the U.S.
Mr. Kelly, 67 years old, also served as legislative assistant to the Marine Corps commandant, gaining experience in dealing with Congress.
He has a personal history that reflects the tragedies of war. His son, Marine 2nd Lt. Robert Kelly, was killed by a land mine in Afghanistan in 2010. On learning of the death, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. , now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put on his dress blues and waited outside Mr. Kelly’s home at the Washington Navy Yard in the wee hours to inform his friend.
Among other duties, Mr. Kelly oversaw operations at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and commanded U.S. troops in Iraq. He joined the Marines in 1970 and retired last year. On Friday, he said, “I am honored to be asked to serve as the chief of staff to the president of the United States.”
The appointment capped one of the most turbulent weeks in Mr. Trump’s young presidency, exposing the difficulty he has had in adapting his executive style to the policy-making arena, veterans of past administrations said. In the space of a week, he saw his press secretary, Sean Spicer, resign, his health-care bill implode, and the exit of his chief of staff.
Though Mr. Trump sees himself as a disruptive force in Washington, some presidential advisers say they believe the internal friction and a fraying of the Republican governing coalition threaten his agenda.
In a check on Mr. Trump’s power, the Senate this week approved a bill that forces his hand in stiffening sanctions on Russia. If he allows the legislation to become law, it could curtail executive power, but a veto would invite suggestions he is being soft on Russia.
Peter Wehner, who worked in the past three Republican administrations, said of the White House: “There’s no strategic thinking. There’s no competent execution. It’s just a free-for-all.”
A pattern that emerges in White House staff shuffles over the last six months is that Mr. Trump is parting ways with people who represent the Republican establishment. He is bringing in people who aren’t as closely tied to the Republican mainstream, a reality that could complicate his relationship with donors and state party officials.
For success in the push to lower tax rates and simplify the tax code, both the White House and congressional Republicans seem to agree Mr. Trump needs a different approach than the hands-off posture he had on health care.
White House aides are hoping to get the president on the road for public rallies and smaller stops aimed at showcasing the tax plan. One idea is to have him sit down at a kitchen table with a family in the Midwest or visit farms and small businesses.
Also under consideration is a kickoff event at the Ronald Reagan Library in California, an official said. It would aim to draw a symbolic connection to another celebrity-turned-Republican president, Mr. Reagan, who ushered in the last major tax overhaul three decades ago.
“You can’t just talk about winning, you have to take steps toward winning,” said Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign strategist who continues to advise the president, in an interview before Mr. Kelly’s new job was announced. “The White House has to remember the fact that the business community and the middle class are looking for positive steps on tax reform.”
Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, said in an interview: “We have cultivated a lot of organizations—business coalitions, conservative advocacy groups—in shaping our plan for tax reform that will provide a stronger echo chamber and outside support than we had on the health-care battle.”
Let’s analyze this as we would sitting in a booth at a Waffle House somewhere in America’s Heartland, shall we, boys and girls?
It has been rumored for a long time now that Priebus was a source of some of the leaks from the Trump White House by the Main Stream Media.
Reince Priebus is, all stated loyalty to the President aside, still an Establishment (Vichy) Republican.
The thing is…Establishment Republicans did NOT elect Donald J. Trump as our 45th President.
A Populist Movement did.
Dictionary.com defines “populism” as
1. the political philosophy of the People’s party.
2. (lowercase) any of various, often antiestablishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.
3. (lowercase) grass-roots democracy; working-class activism; egalitarianism.
4. (lowercase) representation or extolling of the common person, the working class, the underdog, etc.: populism in the arts.
That word first reappeared in the American Lexicon, when Sarah Palin almost dragged John McCain’s RINO Rear across the Finish Line, in the Presidential Election of 2008.
The Grassroots Movement, which began way back then led us to a seminal moment in American Politics.
The American People spoke loud and clear on November 8, 2016.
We rejected the Professional Politicians and elected Citizen Statesman Donald J. Trump President of the United States of America.
The Establishment, or Vichy Republicans, for all their declarations of loyalty, still resent being cast aside for a Billionaire Businessman and Entrepreneur.
Hey, “Beltway Boys”…
The problem you face, as the Republican Establishment, is that the majority of Americans are still Conservatives who want decisive leadership from those whom they send to Congress.
You guys have spines of Jell-O.
The public wants new ideas. We are tired of dancing to the Washington Two-Step.
That is the reason for the election of Donald J. Trump. He said the things that Americans had been wanting to hear for decades.
Contrast the energy and the “Populist Movement” behind Trump to the candidate whom the Democrats offered: a decrepit old white woman from the Northeast Corridor, who is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg and whose “rallies” could not even fill up a high school gymnasium.
You “Vichy Republicans”, as I have referred to you as being for the last several years, are looking a Gift Horse in the mouth.
You are positioned, if you immediately start acting as if you have Americans’ interests at heart and not your own, to sweep the Midterm Elections.
All you have to do to be successful is something that you seem to have forgotten how to do, since you were swept into Congressional Power in the 2010 and 2012 Mid-Term Elections.
You need to pay attention and actually listen to the voters who gave you your cushy jobs, instead of trying to tell us what we should believe and attempting to backstab the President whom your party nominated as its Presidential Candidate.
You need to divorce yourself from the Washington Status Quo and start acting as if you a grateful to the American People for your phony baloney jobs.
Here’s some advice from ol’ KJ, if I may be so bold: you members of the Republican Establishment need to climb down off of your bar stools at the Congressional Country Club, and travel outside the Echo Chamber of the Beltway, where actual, average Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, trying to provide for their families, while attempting to make a better life for their children and grandchildren.
Perhaps then, you will get a clue.
Yes, Trump’s handling of his duties and his Administrative Staff is “unconventional”.
But, you need to remember,
THAT IS WHY AMERICANS ELECTED HIM.
HE WAS NOT ONE OF YOU.
As Ronald Reagan, himself, said, at CPAC in 1975,
It is time to raise a banner of BOLD COLORS! Not PALE PASTELS!
And, it is time to get down to the business of MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Until He Comes,
KJ
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