# The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2016, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070 "2016-12-07T00:25:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1256
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25105 "2018-09-07T03:15:23Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Omarosa thinks it’s a Pence aide, [“It’s someone on Pence’s staff”: Omarosa, to WSB Radio, about NYT op-ed on President Trump – 95.5 WSB](https://www.wsbradio.com/news/national-govt--politics/someone-pence-staff-omarosa-wsb-radio-about-nyt-president-trump/GiVQSkTLyOSnJIvsxyOOLN/) An aide: wow, this is going to have an impact. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Biotop](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biotop/32/321_2.png) [@Biotop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biotop)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25106 "2018-09-07T03:21:50Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > An aide: wow, this is going to have an impact. :rolleyes: Whomever it turns out to be we will most certainly be talking about some new outrage next week anyway. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25107 "2018-09-07T03:39:43Z")
If Trump is half as triggered as Asahi, my God! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25108 "2018-09-07T03:49:52Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Omarosa thinks it’s a Pence aide, [“It’s someone on Pence’s staff”: Omarosa, to WSB Radio, about NYT op-ed on President Trump – 95.5 WSB](https://www.wsbradio.com/news/national-govt--politics/someone-pence-staff-omarosa-wsb-radio-about-nyt-president-trump/GiVQSkTLyOSnJIvsxyOOLN/) My completely unsupported hunch is also that it’s a close aide to a Cabinet member, someone who can fairly be described as a “senior official” but whose name would provoke a decisive “Wait, who?” from 98% of us. Maybe not a Pence aide, but possibly an aide to Pompeo, Mattis, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25109 "2018-09-07T04:17:51Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > That’s the entire point: you have no idea who it is. > > **We’re left to trust the editorial judgment of a handful of people to make the determination for us**. We’re not talking about anonymous insiders debating whether tax cuts for the top 1% are actually helping working class Americans; the op-ed purports to impugn the fitness of the president to carry out the will of half of American voters. This is pretty effing big stuff, so there is no margin for error, misjudgment, or miscalculation. If this “senior adviser” is someone who turns out to be an underwhelming source, it lends credence to the theory that the free press isn’t capable of living up to the responsibility of serving its mission. (Bolding mine) Yeah… We’re left to trust the editorial judgment of _the editorial board of the most prestigious newspaper in the world_. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25110 "2018-09-07T04:20:53Z")
It is entirely ethical for the New York Times to publish that op-ed piece. My guess is it’s Pence due to the use of “lodestone.” Or it’s someone trying to shift blame onto Pence by using “lodestone” -using "lodestone- that would be a hoot. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25111 "2018-09-07T04:44:57Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > That’s the entire point: you have no idea who it is. > > We’re left to trust the editorial judgment of a handful of people to make the determination for us. We’re not talking about anonymous insiders debating whether tax cuts for the top 1% are actually helping working class Americans; the op-ed purports to impugn the fitness of the president to carry out the will of half of American voters. This is pretty effing big stuff, so there is no margin for error, misjudgment, or miscalculation. If this “senior adviser” is someone who turns out to be an underwhelming source, it lends credence to the theory that the free press isn’t capable of living up to the responsibility of serving its mission. As opposed to the outright propaganda from Fox News? NY Times has a pretty good track record vis a vis Trump and/or Fox News. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25112 "2018-09-07T05:42:12Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > That’s the entire point: you have no idea who it is. > > **We’re left to trust the editorial judgment of a handful of people to make the determination for us.** We’re not talking about anonymous insiders debating whether tax cuts for the top 1% are actually helping working class Americans; the op-ed purports to impugn the fitness of the president to carry out the will of half of American voters. This is pretty effing big stuff, so there is no margin for error, misjudgment, or miscalculation. If this “senior adviser” is someone who turns out to be an underwhelming source, it lends credence to the theory that the free press isn’t capable of living up to the responsibility of serving its mission. I can’t help noticing (without asserting any relevance of a causational nature) that this state of affairs also held back when Lyndon LaRouche and others within his general range of bugfuckery were being denied any plausible path to the Oval Office. ---
**Author:** ![arles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/71c47a/32.png) [@arles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/arles)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25113 "2018-09-07T05:56:25Z")
For your enjoyment - For those in the camp of Pence as the author, the BBC has performed a linguistic study of the writing style in the article with other government statements. Their results are based upon the following observations: -\> The average length of sentences (19.3 words per sentence) is very low compared with other government statements which average 30 words per sentence. The only Trump official whose statements and speeches are always shorter than everyone else is Pence. Even if his current speeches are being written by someone else, his previous writing style shows the same preference for short sentence length. -\> Government statements rarely use the passive voice. Pence uses the passive voice in many of his statements. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45435813](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45435813) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25114 "2018-09-07T06:50:16Z")
The thing I’m curious about is whether the letter achieved what it set out to do, or if the writer is flummoxed that the response has been negative from just about everyone. I wasn’t aware that “lodestone” is a word that Pence uses commonly, but it does seem like a word that is unlikely to enter such a letter unless a) the writer likes to use that word, or b) the writer is aware that Pence uses that word regularly and is actively trying to screw him over. Assuming that it’s not Pence, then, there’s a good likelihood that the author is not writing for the purpose that he said - i.e., to assure the people that there are adults caretaking the government - but rather in order to cause a clusterfuck, by implicating Pence, reinforcing the idea of a Deep State, etc. That expands the authorship beyond the likely subjects and instead out to even people like Trump himself having written it - for example, as an excuse to bring out the knives and start dumping people in his own administration. It’s a very strange letter because at no point does it feel like a proud and independent person sacrificing for their country. It feels cravenly and half-assed. I was putting that down to the caliber of Trump’s employees, but I do have to wonder if that’s less an attribute of the writer’s personality and, instead, a matter that the letter was artificially constructed for purposes outside of what it says, and so its language ends up blah. Though, granted, a blah voice would also tie back into it being written in the passive voice, as Pence is (supposedly) fond of doing. Writing in the passive voice to emulate Pence seems like a step beyond artificial construction. I’d be more prone to argue that Pence writes in the passive voice because he writes artificial statements - being an artificial person - and so we would expect to see that similarity either way. It will be interesting to find out who the author was. Regrettably, it might be the sort of thing we have to wait 30 years to find out. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25115 "2018-09-07T07:24:11Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I wasn’t aware that “lodestone” is a word that Pence uses commonly, but it does seem like a word that is unlikely to enter such a letter unless a) the writer likes to use that word, or b) the writer is aware that Pence uses that word regularly and is actively trying to screw him over. I think the word was [lode_star_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestar_(disambiguation)), not lodestone. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25116 "2018-09-07T08:45:08Z")
Maybe the author of the NYT piece is a fan of [vintage aircraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Model_18_Lodestar). OK, probably not. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25117 "2018-09-07T10:25:58Z")
…the propaganda machine at work. Watch the crowd in the background in these two clips. > > For those that don’t want to click through: at the Trump rally it appears that the people directly behind the President weren’t sufficently “peppy” enough. So they were replaced. I strongly suspect (but of course cannot prove) that everyone in that group were paid actors: which is why they moved on without much fuss. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25118 "2018-09-07T11:25:35Z")
And here we all are, again, talking about some weird behavior at the White House, instead of paying attention to something very important, the Kavanaugh hearings, as well as all the federal judges being confirmed at lower courts. I now think the GOP leadership took a page from Trumps playbook and persuaded someone in the WH to write the piece, ostensibly to steady the people, but actually to do exactly what happened, distract people, especially Democrats, from the hearings. I don’t know if undercutting Trump and ‘firing up’ the non-Trump supporting Republicans was an additional goal, but it seems to have had that effect as well. I still don’t understand why the NYT published it, especially at this time. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25119 "2018-09-07T11:46:33Z")
> [@j666](#): > > And here we all are, again, talking about some weird behavior at the White House, instead of paying attention to something very important, the Kavanaugh hearings, as well as all the federal judges being confirmed at lower courts. Possibly you’re right with the lower judges, but Kavanaugh comes down to simple numbers. The Democrats don’t have them. Unless there’s something in Kavanaugh’s papers that could scare some Republicans off of him, all the hollering and questioning in the world isn’t going to change anything. A few of the people who want to run for President are aware of that and so are using the hearings as free publicity, because there’s no real difference no matter what they do and they can score some points with the Progressives and Socialists. But I would say that that harms the hearings. It’s not just free media with no real impact. Susan Collins is really the make-or-break figure in it all. If you actually care about blocking Kavanaugh, because you really believe (not faux-believe, on the basis of partisan politics) that he’ll kill Roe v Wade or rule in Trump’s favor should Mueller end up in the Supreme Court over something, then you need to tailor your questions to Susan Collins and her base, and win them over. That doesn’t happen by grandstanding, it happens by making a real case and giving good reason to believe it. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25120 "2018-09-07T12:50:24Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > It also helps if you don’t hire advisors solely on the basis of their being friends or relatives so you and they can make big bucks. That is not the only reason he hires people. He also hires you if you say nice things about him. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25121 "2018-09-07T12:59:17Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …the propaganda machine at work. > > Watch the crowd in the background in these two clips. > > [https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/1037915598418784257](https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/1037915598418784257) > > [https://twitter.com/IndivisibleNet/status/1037900103044849664](https://twitter.com/IndivisibleNet/status/1037900103044849664) > > For those that don’t want to click through: at the Trump rally it appears that the people directly behind the President weren’t sufficently “peppy” enough. So they were replaced. I strongly suspect (but of course cannot prove) that everyone in that group were paid actors: which is why they moved on without much fuss. …well I’m gonna guess this is why they got rid of him: > Since I’m posting twitter links for the day here’s just one more: > Jared Kushner, the unelected member of the administration responsible for Middle East peace, Government reform/Opiod crisis management, Criminal justice reform, Liaison to Mexico, Liaison to China and the Liaison to the Muslim community, stand outside on the street for two minutes waiting for a door to open so he can renegotiate trade deals with Canada and Mexico. Refusing to answer questions from the press that surround him. Accountable to nobody. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25122 "2018-09-07T13:02:20Z")
> [@Typo\_Negative](#): > > Only works if the mayor was one of the Nazi invaders. Thus demonstrating that there were some very fine people on both sides. > [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Lies. He takes the clubs out of his bag himself. Anybody who has to ask his cabbie is a loser. As is anyone who uses a taxi to get around the course instead of a golf cart. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25123 "2018-09-07T13:03:39Z")
Is it one of those doors that say “Pull”? He needs help with those. So, that’s kinda unfair. Being rich is “assisted living” from birth. ---
**Author:** ![Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/channing_idaho_banks/32/250_2.png) [@Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Channing_Idaho_Banks)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2018, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/25124 "2018-09-07T13:29:27Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > A few of the people who want to run for President are aware of that and so are using the hearings as free publicity, because there’s no real difference no matter what they do and they can score some points with the Progressives and Socialists. I’m guessing this works for both sides. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070.md?page=1255) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070.md?page=1257)