30
votes
US President-Elect Donald Trump ignores transition rules
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- Title
- Trump ignores transition rules. It's a 'hostile takeover,' ally says.
- Published
- Nov 19 2024
- Word count
- 2659 words
Yeah he's going to do what he's been doing since 2016, no shit. That's why reasonable people wanted him no where near any position of power.
Here was an entertaining article today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/washington-shocked-trump-nominations/680703/
Summary is that the typical suspects are acting surprised by all the chaos and nonsense caused by Trump. As if they hadn't seen this same thing almost daily since 2016.
It's kind of a joke now, but there are things that can be done instead of feigning outrage. Republican Senators, if you are shocked and outraged, Impeach and convict his criminal ass. You can do it in January of February if you want, you don't have to wait months and act surprised as he continues to ignore convention and break laws.
Most entertaining thing from the Atlantic article is that the health care industry is going to get fucked by Trump too. Donors and supporters getting mauled by the face eating leopards will be my only source of political happiness for the next few years.
Many industries do not understand their underlying mechanics and instead have tons of people just parroting/repeating what they were taught or what worked before.
Trump 1 already kicked a lot of people in the teeth and round 2 is probably going to kick even more.
He’s got very little to lose and is even older. It’s going to be full steam ahead on team sycophant, and sadly the smart play is for lobbyists to start realizing that they aren’t going to get the picks they want, but that none of the ones he does pick have any morals or guides and can be easily influenced
Whoever that quote is sourced from had better be lying, because the alternative is just too stupid to be true.
From the article:
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Presumably that’s not his call to make, at least for another two months. If American democracy goes down and the last gasp of the current administration was sticking to conventions and norms when the other side doesn’t even stick to the law, I’m going to be even more pissed off than I already am.
[Edit] Come to think of it, allowing the candidates to go unvetted wouldn’t even be the Democrats sticking to convention. It would be them upholding Trump’s right to break convention because… it would be impolite to contradict him? I literally can’t see even a hypothetical reason not to just instruct the FBI to do their job as they have for every previous administration whether Trump likes it or not.
It's probably something like, they're not even nominees yet since he's not President, so while the pre-vetting is a courtesy and a convenience, it's not actually "required" to do so before they're presented to the Senate.
Because right now these people are just some folks a private citizen has suggested for jobs.
I can see that being the case, and of course I understand this isn’t you making that argument personally, but even at the most extreme interpretation that’d just mean the vetting isn’t triggered automatically.
All that’d be required as a workaround would be for Biden to say “in the absence of the normal paperwork from Mr Trump’s team, please proceed with the normal vetting procedures based on his publicly announced candidate selections, and make Congress aware of any issues pertinent to national security”. It’s such a minor procedural point that I’d see it as a genuine non-issue for Biden to do.
There are so many more aggressive measures I’d like to see the outgoing administration taking to protect institutions from authoritarianism that this feels like a slam dunk by comparison: it can be achieved just by saying “please do the usual thing even if you don’t get the normal rubber stamp”. And sure, the republicans would wail and cry about it, but they’ve proven time and again that they’ll do that anyway - it’s really not worth accounting for anymore in my opinion.
Sure, FWIW that may in fact be happening, but quietly so Trump doesn't respond with something stupid before he takes office. I am seeing increasing commentary from "sources" about picks that has more serious concerns than "wtf, why them"
But I may also be too optimistic sometimes.
Yeah, that makes sense and I hope it’s the case; I can see that avoiding things coming up on the mid-afternoon TV news is probably strategically important in keeping them out of Trump’s personal line of sight in this absurd timeline we’re living in.
This is largely either me worrying unduly without sufficient information, or steeling myself for yet another lukewarm response after one too many disappointments, depending how you look at it!
Look we're all ready to be disappointed again, I think.
Whelp. Hope somebody has an ace up their sleeve. Cause this makes the whole "Dr.Oz" thing look pretty damn mild by comparison.
It’s easy to see how it will do a lot of damage to the US government. (To start with, by disclosing US secrets. This administration is going to leak like a sieve.) But it’s not all that clear that Trump will be effective at getting done what he wants to do. If he can’t work with most of the government and brings in a bunch of amateurs, how does anything get done?
Still to be seen: does the Senate let him appoint who he wants? What does the military actually do when given illegal orders?
One possibility: a circus in the White House combined with government shutdown.
Just as an aside, I do wish people would stop using the word 'circus' to describe Trump and his associated shitshow. I used to work in a circus and firstly, circuses are extremely organised and full of hard-working, highly skilled and dedicated people. They have to be, people get hurt - or worse - if they aren't. You try putting up several tonnes of big top or doing a knife throwing routine with people who don't know what they're doing!
Secondly, I haven't met a circus person who isn't what Americans would call "liberal" or "progressive". They're a diverse bunch of people from many backgrounds who live an unconventional lifestyle and believe in their own and other people's rights to do that. There's no place for hate under that stripey canvas roof.
I would - quite genuinely - trust Cosmo the Clown to run any government department you care to name. I would feel far better having him in No.10/White House/etc than any of the people who have been there in my lifetime.
It's not a big deal, really. But there are better words. Omnishambles. Cockwit-a-thon. Parade of Fuckery.
For my morning wakeup post, I'll list as many options as I can think of:
Fuckstick parade
Dingbat convention
Hot Mess
Jizz stain on democracy
Skidmark sidekicks
Fascist bootlickers
First of all, I love your comment. I like seeing that little peek into a world totally unknown to me, in a way that shows me how the people involved are both impressive and relatable. I haven't personally used "circus" to describe Trump & co. and I won't do so in the future.
I wonder if it's not actually a testament to the skill of the circus performers and showrunners, though. Most people know a circus from the seat of the audience, and to us, a circus is a nail-biting show of near-chaos where anything could go wrong at a moment's notice -- since it's been carefully cultivated to appear that way. Not to mention that the clowns in the show are deliberately playing the buffoon! We experience that dichotomy of appreciating the incredible skill of the performers while also buying into the drama that the show presents -- that maybe, this time, disaster could strike.
Man, I gotta find out where I can go watch a circus. It's been a really long time.
Fair enough. No insult intended to actual circuses.
This is laboring under the assumption that what Trump says he wants, and what he actually wants, are the same.
Trump's ONLY goal was to get in and use the US government for his personal whims. It's why he's shoving these loyalists in positions.
Either the department will work around them, or it won't, and he doesn't care because what he wants is to make 100% sure if he has some grudge or asinine decision that they'll do it and not give him lip (or try and get blamed when if fails).
That's really it. He wants to be a dictator, so he doesn't care if anything does or doesn't work unless it somehow affects him or those he wants to help/protect. He learned in his first term that the last thing he wants is someone like Pence who comes with strings attached and some level of morals.
Edit-
To ramble about this a bit more, I think his goals this election and last have shifted slightly. He never really cared, but he still wanted to "win" so accomplishing what he wanted so long as it didn't cut into his golf time might have mattered the first time.
Now though he's facing all sorts of charges, can't legally run again, and is showing his age. I suspect his entire admin will be focused solely on "how do I stay in power after 4 years"
Yes, I realize that nothing he says can be taken at face value. However, he claims to want to use the military to do large-scale deportations, and he does tend to stick with a few signature policies (like the wall) and so that’s certainly alarming.
How much of that will actually happen seems like a complicated question. Certainly legally. Posse comitatus is not just a legal principle, it’s an actual law that the military takes seriously. There are apparently various exclusions that you can read about on Wikipedia.
We will see what it actually amounts to from a legal realist perspective. When a president gives illegal orders, what happens? Whatever loyalists Trump manages to install might run into problems the next level down. And having more conservative judges matters, but despite what people say, I don’t think it means that anything goes.
(And what did the wall really amount to in the end? It exists, but what does it accomplish?)