Categories
Government

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person”

Among all of the discussion about the Russian involvement in getting Trump elected, one item hasn’t yet received much play in the press.

In an interview with Fox on Sunday, and excerpted in a New York Times story:

He also indicated that, as president, he would not take the daily intelligence briefing that President Obama and his predecessors have received. Mr. Trump, who has received the briefing sparingly as president-elect, said that it was often repetitive and that he would take it “when I need it.” He said his vice president, Mike Pence, would receive the daily briefing.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years,” he said. He added that he had instructed the officials who give the briefing: “‘If something should change from this point, immediately call me. I’m available on a one-minute’s notice.’”

A man who didn’t even know that Russia had already invaded the Ukraine is a man who needs more information, not less. The President’s Daily Brief has, in one form or another, been given to the President and other relevant Executive Branch personnel since 1961. That’s over half of a century.

The purpose of the briefing is to give the Commander-in-Chief a synopsis of important intelligence events, including updates on previous intelligence releases. We can actually look at PDBs from several administrations at the CIA. I’ve looked at several. They’re not large, they don’t take much time, and they all contain something new, relevant, and important.

Trump’s disinterest in keeping up-to-date on important security information is the most profound abrogation of responsibility ever exhibited by a person about to take command of our nuclear codes and the combined might of our military.

Pence being given the PDB is not a sufficient replacement. No President has ever turned over their Commander-in-Chief responsibilities to their Vice President—not without being dead or completely incapacitated.

Photo by Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0

Categories
Government

What kind of damage can a Trump Cabinet do?

If we were to search for the absolute best leaders for the different cabinet positions in the White House, we’d find Trump’s picks directly opposite them. A cabinet leader should support the mission of his or her cabinet, and seek to ensure it operates to the best of its ability. Trump’s picks have been, almost universally and vehemently, opposed to both the work and the premise of the organizations they’ve been picked to lead.

I shudder at who Trump will pick for Department of Interior and the EPA, and suspect that they’ll be very similar to Ronald Reagan’s picks of James G. Watt and Anne Gorsuch, respectively. Both individuals loathed the federal government. Watt spent his short tenure as Department of Interior trying to give away public land resource rights to every polluting industry in the United States, and Anne Gorsuch packed the EPA with industry cronies, starved it of money, and did everything in her power to stop it from enforcing laws it was tasked with enforcing.

The only saving grace is they were so controversial, so inept, and so fanatical that both were forced to resign within their first terms. Even then, their efforts damaged and demoralized the departments they led.

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Legal, Laws, and Regs

Can Trump Create the Terminator Rule?

Rather than a press conference or interview, Trump put out a video seemingly to assure Americans that we don’t have to spend our days and nights in absolute terror because he’s in charge. Flip to the end: he didn’t succeed.

All Trump did was create confusion. Reading the transcript doesn’t provide more clarity.

There is much in the short Trump video to cause one sleepless nights, but the Trump promise that really grabbed me is his promise of a rule to kill rules:

On regulation, I will formulate a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated, it’s so important.

In effect, he’s proposing a Terminator Rule.

Leaving aside the soundness of just tossing rules and regulations aside, can Trump as President create a Terminator Rule?

Categories
Government

Two men and one woman does not make a diverse cabinet

Donald Trump has selected two women for his cabinet: Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, and Nikki Haley, as Ambassador to the United Nations. Rumors have it that he’s selected Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development or as Health and Human Services Secretary. The media has hailed Trump’s recent appointees as a move towards diversity.

It is still early in Trump’s cabinet and senior level picks. We can appreciate him appointing two women and two people of color, but if these selections are the sum and total of his diverse appointments than no, he can’t be congratulated. And diversity is more than numbers: we’ll need to look at who he has selected for what position in order to truly judge Trump’s outreach.

Categories
Government Legal, Laws, and Regs

Can Trump break the rules (and regulations)?

Last week, we established that Trump can’t abolish the EPA, or any other department or regulatory agency without Congressional support. Even if Congress and Trump do abolish an agency or department, the laws the organization enforces still must be enforced.

What about those laws? Can Trump abolish a law, or refuse to enforce it?