But Their Emails!

I guess it's bad enough that Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, seems to have done government business on private email.  (OMG! He's new at this people--are we supposed to believe he knew this was even a thing he shouldn't do...like as if there was a whole Presidential campaign where the biggest slight against one of the candidates was, um, private email use, or something?) And wouldn't you know it? It turns out a handful of other Trump Administration folks, some gone, like Steven Bannon and Reince Priebus, and some still there, like Stephen Miller and Gary Cohn, definitely seem to have used private email for government business too.

That's outstanding. (I'm leaving Ivanka Trump off the hook for her private email use for what might be considered WH business because she wasn't in the job yet, and I don't know that she recognized this as being a part of her job, even--but she probably did have a transition-team email at this point.)

What makes this email use a little more suspect to me, anyway, is that this was done with a very particular knowledge that use of private email would be considered suspect (again, that whole 2016 election thing) and that, because of little things like some Trump campaign and White House staff having had Russian connections that were revealed after they did things like not mention them in confirmation hearings or on security clearance applications...eh, that might look like they were going off state-comms for reasons.

The "for reasons" part being the same exact thing that exculpated Hillary Clinton from her long email debacle (except for the bit where it got opened up again in October of 2016). We just can't be as sure that Kushner and all them aren't using private emails for specific "reasons" (cough--Russia--cough).  As it is, the Trump Administration is playing a game of "follow the leader" in being too fond of their personal devices, and not nearly as careful of digital security as they ought to be. Combine that with the tendency of the Trump Admin to fail to fill key roles in security positions, and you have a recipe for a potential Trump Administration hacking crisis.

It looks bad, as I have been saying, because it is bad. They need to create some kind of on-the-job information technology security and ethics training for executive department use, if they haven't one already, or something. Because after all the news about emails--they really ought to, at the very least, know better.  Or at least, make like they do.

No Chaos in this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag!

Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2017

Before I get down to the news of a busy news day, I just want to ruminate on the above Tweet--do you ever, in the midst of saying glowing things about your various blessings, really feel the need to say something like, "and by the way, my job is totally secure" or "and my marriage is stronger than ever" if there wasn't an inkling something was wrong? That's how I'm reading the above Tweet--"Things are going so great: Ignore the mess!" It's almost as if Trump is either certain enough of his own hoodwinking prowess to believe he can Jedi Mind-Trick the appearance of chaos away by merely saying so, or has finally begun to accept "Hey, maybe this does look kind of bad" into his outlook.

But as I said some time ago: It looks bad because it is bad. Trump's problems are revealed through bad news, not "fake news". That news might be coming out because of leaks, but those leaks attest to something about the nature of his administration, that his staff feels the need to try and shape the narrative by letting bad news out, even if it might be damaging to the president or other members of his circle. That is pretty extraordinary, but not a problem of "spin". It's a problem of actual deficiencies in leadership and competency in staffing. It's the girders, not the paint.

Take the departure of Anthony Scaramucci, bombastic almost-Communications Director, as a case in point. He was named to the position 10 or 11 days ago depending upon your take, but -15 days from when he was officially to take office. In that time, he prompted the resignation of Press Secretary Sean Spicer, forced (one could believe) the firing of COS Reince Priebus, and launched a tirade of unique and memorable scatological importance. (One of the things that fascinates me about the infamous call to Ryan Lizza is that, despite having said many things on the record that anyone else abiding by the idea that a communications professional might have prefaces with "off the record", actually did ask for something he said to be off the record during the exchange, from what I understand. How the hell bad was that part, given all the other parts!?) But my question is--how did he get there and why?

The answer might be Javanka and specifically to target Priebus. That's some manipulative stuff. This is the kind of thing one could hope will be managed by appointing a more discipline-oriented character in the form of John Kelly to Chief of Staff.  This is especially true if he actually is given freedom to manage. But I still suspect at least some members of Team Trump are going to rankle at stern step-dad Kelly coming in and trying to be the boss of them. (Just a theory. In other news, Priebus seems to have been undermined by micro-management at the top. Just sayin'.)

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Could Be Titanic

Was it really just last Friday that former WH Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced he'd be walking away from the job to spend more time with various shrubbery? It sort of feels like it's been longer than that, but if it was true that he was walking because the Administration was bringing Anthony Scaramucci on as communications director, this is, in retrospect, looking like a great call. Because Anthony Scaramucci, this week, made a not-so-great call which is ammaaaazzzzing.

First, he dinged Reince Priebus as being a possible leaker:

“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)

And then he gave us this unfortunately brutal mental image:

Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.)

Priebus and Bannon are to be commended for not responding, whilst probably having things they could think of saying, for sure. After all, they've already had this kind of story floated about being at odds with one another, so it's really great that someone got brought on who was at odds with both, and had to chat with the press on record about it, right? But at any rate, Scaramucci did make an accurate call about Priebus' job-status, and I'm pretty sure my mind's eye will recover from trying to literally interpret the Bannon comment which he assuredly meant in a metaphorical way. But I think he should be prepared to expect that his own personal motivations are liable to get dragged in public for what he was willing to give up to get close to Trump. Not venturing to auto-fellate, indeed.

In This Moment Anthony Scaramucci Became White House Chief of Staff

So, I think what he's saying here is that Reince Priebus is the guy who leaked things like how Tony the Mooch earned, which is a very precarious thing for a guy who is made of cheese curds and not from NY to do. That and how Mooch planned to fire anyone he could (because he reports to Trump, directly, because he would) until the leaks stop, suggest the rumors about a shake-up re: WH staff could be--to send a message--for real. Maybe he's moving in on Priebus' gig.


I'm just saying, if you didn't get how this mishegas was going down, maybe this is educational.

UPDATE: He deleted the Tweet, so it has been replaced in my post by this lovely screen cap.

Trump's Bunkum

There is a lot to criticize about President Trump's social media habits, but Trump's Twitter pretty much is the best handle for understanding his present focus. Right now, probably because it has become known that White House officials (like maybe Chief of Staff Reince Priebus) contacted the FBI to tell them ixnay on the ussia-ray obe-pray,  Trump fired off on how the real leakers needed to be caught on Twitter. Then he went to CPAC to call all such reporting unsourced fake news. Amongst other falsehoods.

I pretty much think it's as specious as all hell for the guy who fooled around about sources undermining the reality of Obama's birth certificate and boldly claimed Ted Cruz' dad was a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald to try and call out anyone as fake news. Especially while he's reiterating the debunked Swedish terrorism and plumping for fake Parisian no-go zones. But he's actually doing it to deflect from his own staff's leaking. Because if there are real leakers, as his Tweets allege, then the news is not actually fake.  You can't have it both ways: only favorable news is true and criticisms are all fake. You have to consider the source.

And Trump lies all the time. His attitude towards the news outlets isn't to punish them for lying, but for coming close to the truth: take the selectivity of the press availability of Press Sec. Sean Spicer, that excluded very specific news orgs. I note that the orgs excluded from the gaggle all broke stories  that weren't favorable to the Trump Admin. Many along the Russian connections line.

But there's a limit to what attempted leverage can do--maybe the excluded news orgs will care less for access journalism, and concentrate on investigations as a path of not just lesser resistance but also greater rewards. After all, Trump's influence doesn't always even extend to the agencies that report to him--for one thing DHS isn't the one to justify his dumb immigration EO. And his new NSA isn't the one to support the magic words that are alleged to dispel terrorism.

Somehow the things Trump says are not assumed to be things that are so. As if he was dishonest. As if he was not trustworthy.