The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making

[dasmoocher]

@dasmoocher

Also, it appears Gorka is something of an academic and professional fraud

Rolling Stone has a nice expose on Gorka:

Sebastian Gorka, the West Wing’s Phony Foreign-Policy Guru

Gorka’s a former Breitbart editor with Islamophobic views and ties to neo-Nazi extremists – and he has the ear of the president

Gorka views himself as a “utility infielder, especially in the field of counterterrorism,” and claims to provide behind-the-scenes advice to Trump on how to fight terrorism, while serving under the wing of Steve Bannon, his former boss at Breitbart. “It’s surreal and quite horrifying that someone who’s such an amateur has reached such heights,” says David Ucko, associate professor in the Department of War and Conflict Studies at National Defense University. Adds Michael S. Smith II, a veteran terrorism analyst who’s had unpleasant run-ins with Gorka, “This is not somebody who should be working anywhere near the White House.” Even more bluntly, a colleague of Smith’s, Cindy Storer, an ex-CIA terrorism analyst, said, “He’s nuts.”

…

“The White House tried to find him a job at another agency,” says the source. But no luck: “Nobody wanted him.”

…

Insisting everywhere that he be referred to as “doctor,” Gorka began his rise with a 2008 Ph.D. awarded by little-known Corvinus University of Budapest, an institution that several scholars who spoke to Rolling Stone described as having a questionable reputation. “Corvinus is pretty low-tier, maybe third- or fourth-tier,” says Daniel Nexon, a scholar at Georgetown University who has reviewed Gorka’s dissertation. “He might as well have mail-ordered his Ph.D.” Nexon ran its text through plagiarism software and found that portions of it were “repurposed.”

“Gorka’s thesis is about as legitimate as if he had been awarded it by Trump University,” says Andrew Reynolds, a professor at the University of North Carolina who looked into Gorka’s background. He says that of the three people who served as endorsers of Gorka’s Ph.D., two didn’t have any academic credentials whatsoever, and a third was György Schöpflin, a right-wing Hungarian politician who, Reynolds adds, was a Gorka family friend and once suggested studding a Hungarian border fence with pig heads to send a message to Muslim refugees.

…

In his published biographies, Gorka provides a long list of places where he peddled his views, including the FBI, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the National Counterterrorism Center, West Point and more. Gorka’s most-touted position was a two-year stint at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. James Joyner, a retired Army officer and associate professor of strategic studies at MCU, who saw Gorka in action, wasn’t impressed, saying that Gorka was hardly an academic: “He’s kind of the guy you see on TV. He’s bombastic.” Gorka’s views, adds Joyner, were well out of the mainstream.

…

Mia Bloom, a widely published expert on terrorism and a professor at Georgia State University, recalls an encounter with Gorka on a terrorism panel at the Defense Intelligence Agency. “Gorka knows virtually nothing,” she says. “His views are a mixture of Islamophobia and racism. We’d been given questions in advance, we were paid for our appearance, and he just bullshitted his way through it – and he brought books to sell!” All of which is why Paul Pillar, a former national intelligence officer for the Middle East, says Gorka is too dangerous to be allowed to remain in the White House: “Gorka represents an intolerance that offends American values and is likely to gain the United States more enemies than friends.”

[Rick_Kitchen]

I know it might come as a surprise, but Steve Bannon is a liar.

STEVE BANNON SAID HE LEARNED TO FEAR MUSLIMS WHEN HE VISITED PAKISTAN. EXCEPT HE WAS PROBABLY IN HONG KONG.

[SteveG1]

@PatriotX

How are his ABCs coming?

He got to A and lost interest because it wasn’t about him.

[ThelmaLou]

@Rick_Kitchen

I know it might come as a surprise, but Steve Bannon is a liar.

STEVE BANNON SAID HE LEARNED TO FEAR MUSLIMS WHEN HE VISITED PAKISTAN. EXCEPT HE WAS PROBABLY IN HONG KONG.

All them furriners look alike.

[k9bfriender]

@SteveG1

He got to A and lost interest because it wasn’t about him.

A is for Asshole

[Skywatcher]

Narcissistic Cheeto on the golf course:

"“If somebody else uttered same words I did, they’d say what a wonderful statement.”

“Tens of millions in this country so happy with what I’m saying — finally we have president sticking up for our nation and for our friends and allies — and this man will not get away with what he’s doing, believe me.”

[running_coach]

@Skywatcher

Narcissistic Cheeto on the golf course:

So now it’s OK for the President to golf during an international crisis.

[bobot]

Yeah, you know the drill: Republican.

[dasmoocher]

Article about Bannon’s guy that McMaster forced out of the NSC.

This NSC ex-staffer’s memo is crazy. Trump’s reaction is more disturbing.

The memo contends that the president is the target of a vast conspiracy spearheaded by so-called cultural Marxists, who have allied with Islamists and captured (among other groups) the media, the deep state, academia, “global corporatists” and leaders of both parties. That Higgins worked for the NSC is disturbing enough. But more disturbing is that Trump, who saw the memo when it was passed to him by his son Donald Trump Jr., was “furious” at Higgins’s removal — a sign of the scary conspiratorial depths the president is already descending to.

…

Trump’s attraction to an alternate reality where he is the target of the political elite, the banking elite, Marxists, the Islamic State, the deep state and professors from coast to coast fits in nicely with one of his rules: Nothing is ever his fault. He blamed a botched raid in Yemen on “the generals.” He blamed the failure of his Trump Shuttle airline on the economy. He blamed his failures in Atlantic City on two executives who died working for him. Facing declining poll numbers and an utter failure to “drain the swamp” or repeal major Obama-era legislation, the president once again has resorted to playing the victim. He remains, as one White House ally put it to The Post in May, “in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion.”

…

Less than 50 years later, the Oval Office is at the center of a terrifying combination of delusions, a foreign policy crisis and nuclear launch codes. As with Nixon’s presidency, the end of this one cannot come soon enough.

:eek:

[QuickSilver]

Trump, Bannon, Gorka: The trifecta of paranoid ignorant liars.

[SteveG1]

@dasmoocher

Article about Bannon’s guy that McMaster forced out of the NSC.

This NSC ex-staffer’s memo is crazy. Trump’s reaction is more disturbing.

:eek:

I hope McMasters finds and roots out as many as he can find. Didja notice all the “dog whistles” in that nut case’s “line of bullshit”?

[dasmoocher]

@SteveG1

I hope McMasters finds and roots out as many as he can find. Didja notice all the “dog whistles” in that nut case’s “line of bullshit”?

Yeah. And why does Trump, jr. have a NSC meno to show his father? He’s supposed to be running the Trump Org.

[running_coach]

Trump threatens Venezuela with ‘military option’.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday threatened military intervention in Venezuela, a surprise escalation in Washington’s response to Venezuela’s political crisis.

Venezuela has appeared to slide toward a more volatile stage of unrest in recent days, with anti-government forces looting weapons from the military after the installation of an all-powerful new legislative body.

“The people are suffering and they are dying. We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary,” Trump told reporters.

Can’t he finish one crisis before ginning up the next?

[EinsteinsHund]

@running_coach

Trump threatens Venezuela with ‘military option’.

Can’t he finish one crisis before ginning up the next?

Trump: “Everybody hates me. Make war to them all!”

ETA: a hypothetical quote, for the nitpickers…

[Robot_Arm]

@running_coach

Trump threatens Venezuela with ‘military option’.

Can’t he finish one crisis before ginning up the next?

Ah, this must be the whole America-first, no-nation-building, non-intervention, act-only-in-self-defense posture that Trump is so gung-ho about.

Venezuela has threatened us how, exactly?

[ThelmaLou]

@Robot_Arm

Ah, this must be the whole America-first, no-nation-building, non-intervention, act-only-in-self-defense posture that Trump is so gung-ho about.

Venezuela has threatened us how, exactly?

Geez, right now, I’d welcome good old-fashioned isolationism.

[running_coach]

@Robot_Arm

Ah, this must be the whole America-first, no-nation-building, non-intervention, act-only-in-self-defense posture that Trump is so gung-ho about.

Venezuela has threatened us how, exactly?

Maybe Trump thinks he’s declaring war on Vuvuzelas.

[Procrustus]

@Robot_Arm

Venezuela has threatened us how, exactly?

I think they have oil.

[JohnT]

Republican foreign policy since Nixon has been reduced to the answer to the question: “How do you want us to kill you: Sanctions or weapons?” At least that hasn’t changed. Normalcy!

:rolleyes:

[amarinth]

@running_coach

Trump threatens Venezuela with ‘military option’.

Can’t he finish one crisis before ginning up the next?

Can’t someone find the man a big truck to pretend to drive. He likes doing that. Plus, he can’t tweet while he’s honking the horns. (or really, pretending to. still.)