Remember that huge confirmation fight over Sessions? That was four months ago! What’s the point of going through all that trouble if Trump is going to get into a fight with his attorney general and want to get rid of him by June? Yesterday, I mentioned that there are only three people nominated by Trump working in the Department of Justice. Do you think Trump will be better off with only two? And if Trump has this much friction with Sessions, one of his earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, who’s out there who he’s going to work with better?
If Trump did ditch Sessions, how long would it take for him to find a replacement?
Remember at the end of May, when communications director Mike Dubke resigned? Sean Spicer is filling that job and the press secretary job… but of course, we’ve heard a lot of rumors that Trump has contemplated firing Spicer, too.
There’s one argument of management that says you shouldn’t get rid of someone until you have a good plan to replace them or at least have someone else who can temporarily handle their duties.
Michael Dubke, the White House communications director, said he would step down, but four possible successors contacted by the White House declined to be considered, according to an associate of Mr. Trump who like others asked not to be identified discussing internal matters [my emphasis].
Is it any wonder this White House is having a hard time attracting people?
We discussed how Trump tweets out messages that directly contradict the arguments of his lawyers. He gave Spicer an hour’s warning about the decision to fire Comey. He didn’t even fire Comey face-to-face. And it’s Trump who apparently fumes that his staff is “incompetent.”
Few Republicans were quicker to embrace President Trump’s campaign last year than Jeff Sessions, and his reward was one of the most prestigious jobs in America. But more than four months into his presidency, Mr. Trump has grown sour on Mr. Sessions, now his attorney general, blaming him for various troubles that have plagued the White House.
.. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Sessions’ department of devising a “politically correct” version of the ban — as if the president had nothing to do with it.
.. He has intermittently fumed for months over Mr. Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election
.. In Mr. Trump’s view, they said, it was that recusal that led eventually to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation.
.. “I believe it is unprecedented for a president to publicly chastise his own Justice Department.”
.. Then he added: “The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court — & seek much tougher version!”
But the messages caused considerable head scratching around Washington since it was Mr. Trump who signed the revised executive order and, presumably, agreed to the legal strategy in the first place.
.. “What he’s saying is, ‘I’m the president, I’m the tough guy, I wanted a very tough travel ban and the damn lawyers are weakening it’ — and clients complain about lawyers all the time,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “I see this more as a client complaining about his lawyer
.. much of the past two months of discomfort and self-inflicted pain for Mr. Trump can be tied in some way back to that recusal
Farage, grinning broadly and never apologizing, has been attacked for wanting to deny some health care to immigrants and for putting up candidates who do things like decrying aid to “Bongo-Bongo land.” Here, surrounded by reporters and American conservatives, he is at unusually high risk for an international incident.
.. Jan Helfeld. Showing up at CPAC means risking an encounter with Helfeld, a minarchist who has been dubbed “the Socratic assassin” and (less kindly) “the libertarian Borat” for his meek-yet-torturous interviews about whether all government action is violence.
.. The American trip .. is supposed to connect UKIP with strategists who don’t know about it. “There are things like data mining where you’re much further advanced than we are,” says Farage. The conservative movement in America is stewing with ideas, compared to the U.K. “You’ve got think tanks; you’ve got policy development. Almost all of our commercial law is made in Brussels.”
.. When Britain’s leading Conservatives have made news in America, it’s been for hiring Obama campaign veterans for their own races, or for criticizing the Republicans who made foreign policy trips to London.
.. Farage said in a 2010 speech addressed to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. “If you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they’re left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.”
.. In a Jan. 14 Fox News appearance, Farage said that Europe was riddled with “no-go zones,” and that “wherever you look you see this blind eye being turned and you see the growth of ghettos where the police and all the normal agents of the law have withdrawn and that is where Sharia Law has come in.” Just five days later, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal spoke in London and warned of immigrants trying to colonize Europe.
.. “Farage gave an amazing speech at the embassy,” recalls Breitbart News’s Steve Bannon. (“The embassy” is the nickname for the house Breitbart News rents in Washington.) “I had Schlapp on one side, [Senator Jeff] Sessions on one side, and Laura Ingraham on the other, and they were blown away. The dinner ends, and Schlapp asks, ‘Is there any way you can come to CPAC?’”
.. “We’ve done it by picking up votes across the spectrum, but in particular we’ve done it by picking up votes from people who run their own businesses, who get up early in the morning, who work hard, and who find themselves, in our modern corporatist economy—I say that, instead of our modern capitalist economy—looking for champions,”
.. He acts on the belief that he doesn’t owe anything to the media. They’ve never been nice to him, and that’s still the case.”
.. “We have all, in the west, mistakenly—and I think in a very cowardly manner—we have pursued a policy of multiculturalism. We have pursued a policy of encouraging division in our lives, when we should have pursued a policy of coming together.”
“If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange and Trump associates the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage.
.. The source mentioned Farage’s links with Roger Stone, Trump’s long-time political adviser who has admitted being in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker whom US intelligence agencies believe to be a Kremlin agent.
.. The spokesman also declined to comment on whether Farage had received compensation from the Russian state-backed media group RT for his media appearances. RT, which has featured Farage about three times over the last 18 months, also declined to comment, citing confidentiality.
.. Farage has said he only met Assange once has but declined to say how long the two have known each other.