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In Bureaucracy, Business, Entertainment, History, Military, Social commentary, Uncategorized on June 7, 2024 at 12:18 am
Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci desperately sought a high-stakes position with the Donald Trump White House.
He would have done better to have studied the truths offered in the 1940 movie, The Man I Married.
Carol Cabbott (Joan Bennett) is the editor of The Smart World, married to Eric Hoffman (Francis Lederer) a German. They have a seven-year-old son, Ricky (Johnny Russell).
Sometime in the 1930s they decide to vacation in Nazi Germany. Eric is quickly enamored of the Third Reich. His ardor is shared by Frieda (Anna Sten) a former schoolmate who reunites with him.
Frieda and Eric attend Nazi gatherings, and he decides to stay in Germany. Carol, however, is appalled at the cruelty and barbarism of the Reich and can’t wait to return to the United States.
As time passes, Eric becomes more strident in his worship of Adolf Hitler. Carol and he grow increasingly estranged.
Eventually, Eric tells Carol he is in love with Frieda and wants a divorce. Even worse, he wants to keep his son in Germany, to become a loyal follower of the Nazis.
For Carol, the situation is desperate: Under German law, Eric’s rights will trump hers.
But then fate takes a hand. While visiting his elderly father, Eric learns something truly shocking: His mother was a Jewess—the absolute worst calamity that could befall an ardent Nazi.
“If you won’t let your son return to America with his mother,” says his father, “I will go to the authorities and show them the marriage certificate.”
Eric is stunned. So is Frieda, who is standing by when the news breaks. Disgusted that she was about to “racially defile” herself, she angrily stalks out.
Suddenly, Eric now says he doesn’t know what came over him, and he wants to return to the United States. Even more startling, he expects to go on with his marriage to Carol, as if nothing has happened.
But, for Carol, the damage is too great and the marriage is over.
She and Ricky return to the United States without Eric—who has lost everything: His wife, his son and his future with the Third Reich.
Now, fast forward to the 21st century of Donald Trump’s America—and the fate of Anthony Scaramucci.
Anthony Scaramucci
Jdarsie11 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
In 2005, Scaramucci founded SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm.
But, in 2017, hoping to attain a position with the Trump administration, he resigned from his co-management role and ended his affiliation with SkyBridge.
On January 12, 2017, he was named Assistant to President Trump and director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Then disaster struck. On January 31, Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, called Scaramucci “to tell him he should pull out of consideration.”
Priebus opposed Scaramucci’s appointment because of Scaramucci’s stake in Skybridge Capital. The reason: Skybridge held a majority stake sale to RON Transatlantic EG and HNA Capital (U.S.) Holding, a Chinese conglomerate with close ties to China’s Communist Party.
But then Scaramucci’s future with the Trump administration suddenly appeared a reality.
On July 21, 2017, he was named as White House Communications Director, to take office on July 25. Even more importantly, he would report directly to the President—and not to Priebus, as had White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Spicer, who had opposed Scarmucci’s hiring, resigned on the day of the appointment. Priebus had also strongly argued against the hiring, to no avail.
Then Scaramucci’s own hubris intervened.
On July 26, in a call to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, Scaramucci said he would rid the White House of “leakers.” He threatened to fire the entire White House Communications staff if Lizza didn’t reveal the source who had leaked the story of a dinner he had had with Trump.
He blasted Priebus as a “leaker” and “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac” and predicted that Priebus “would resign soon.”
Scaramucci also had harsh words for Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon: “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
Steve Bannon
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On July 27, Priebus resigned as chief of staff.
The next day, Trump announced that he had named retired general John F. Kelley as Priebus’ replacement.
Then, on July 31, Scaramucci joined Spicer and Priebus as an ex-White House employee—dismissed by Trump at Kelly’s request, according to The New York Times.
And, like Eric Hoffman in The Man I Married, Scaramucci found himself without a marriage.
His wife, Deidre Ball—like Carol Hoffman—despised the man he yearned to work for: Donald Trump.
Married to Scaramucci in 2014, Ball filed for divorce in early July 2017 when she was eight months pregnant with their second child.
On July 24, Deidre gave birth to the couple’s son, James—while Anthony was in West Virginia attending the Boy Scouts Jamboree with Trump. He reportedly sent her a note: “Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child.”
Like Icarus, the mythical character who flew too close to the sun, he rose to the heights—and plunged to his doom.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 24, 2024 at 12:10 am
Ask the average person, “What do you think of Niccolo Machiavelli?” and he’s likely to say: “The devil.”
In fact, “The Old Nick” became an English term used to describe Satan and slander Machiavelli at the same time.
Niccolo Machiavelli
The truth, however, is more complex. Machiavelli was a passionate Republican, who spent most of his adult life in the service of his beloved city-state, Florence.
The years he spent as a diplomat were tumultuous ones for Italy—with men like Pope Julius II and Caesare Borgia vying for power and plunging Italy into one bloodbath after another.
Florence, for all its wealth, lacked a strong army, and thus lay at the mercy of powerful enemies, such as Borgia. Machiavelli often had to use his wits to keep them at bay.
Machiavelli is best-known for his writing of The Prince, a pamphlet on the arts of gaining and holding power. Its admirers have included Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin.
But his longer and more thoughtful work is The Discourses, in which he offers advice on how to maintain liberty within a republic. Among its admirers were many of the men who framed the Constitution of the United States.
Most people believe that Machiavelli advocated evil for its own sake.
Not so. Rather, he recognized that sometimes there is no perfect—or perfectly good—solution to a problem.
Sometimes it’s necessary to take stern—even brutal—action to stop an evil (such as a riot) before it becomes widespread:
“A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must inevitably come to grief among so many who are not good. And therefore it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.”
His counsel remains as relevant today as it did during his lifetime (1469 – 1527). This is especially true for politicians—and students of political science.
But plenty of ordinary citizens can also benefit from the advice he has to offer—such as those in business who are asked to give advice to more powerful superiors.
Machiavelli warns there is danger in urging rulers to take a particular course of action: “For men only judge of matters by the result, all the blame of failure is charged upon him who first advised it, while in case of success he receives commendations. But the reward never equals the punishment.”
This puts would-be counselors in a difficult position: “If they do not advise what seems to them for the good of the republic or the prince, regardless of the consequences to themselves, then they fail to do their duty.
“And if they do advise it, then it is at the risk of their position and their lives, for all men are blind in thus, that they judge of good or evil counsels only by the results.”
Thus, Machiavelli warns that an adviser should “take things moderately, and not to undertake to advocate any enterprise with too much zeal, but to give one’s advice calmly and modestly.”
The person who asked for the advice may follow it, or not, as of his own choice, and not because he was led or forced into it by the adviser.
Above all, the adviser must avoid the danger of urging a course of action that runs “contrary to the wishes of the many.
“For the danger arises when your advice has caused the many to be contravened. In that case, when the result is unfortunate, they all concur in your destruction.”
Or, as President John F. Kennedy famously said after the disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April, 1961: “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.”
John F. Kennedy
By “not advocating any enterprise with too much zeal,” the adviser gains two advantages:
“The first is, you avoid all danger.
“And the second consists in the great credit which you will have if, after having modestly advised a certain course, your counsel is rejected, and the adoption of a different course results unfortunately.”
Finally, the time to give advice is before a catastrophe occurs, not after. Machiavelli gives a vivid example of what can happen if this rule is ignored.
King Perseus of Macedon had gone to war with Paulus Aemilius—and suffered a humiliating defeat. Fleeing the battlefield with a handful of his men, he later bewailed the disaster that had overtaken him.
Suddenly, one of his lieutenants began to lecture Perseus on the many errors he had committed, which had led to his ruin.
“Traitor,” raged the king, turning upon him, “you have waited until now to tell me all this, when there is no longer any time to remedy it—” And Perseus slew him with his own hands.
Niccolo Machiavelli sums up the lesson as this:
“Thus was this man punished for having been silent when he should have spoken, and for having spoken when he should have been silent.”
Be careful that you don’t make the same mistake.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2024 at 12:05 am
And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
—Plutarch, “Life of Alexander”
Hope Hicks served in President Donald Trump’s administration as White House Director of Strategic Communication from January to September, 2017.
Today she’s a prominent witness at his trial for concealing hush money payments in 2016 to porn “actress” Stormy Daniels.
On January 6, 2021, Hicks had a problem: She feared she might never work again.
From 2017 to 2018 she served as White House Communications Director. After leaving the White House, she returned to serve as Counselor to the President from 2020 to 2021.
Hope Hicks
And then came the Trump-inspired attack on Congress on January 6.
Among the infamies and crimes Trump committed—and Hicks witnessed—during his four years as President:
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press as “the enemy of the American people” for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters.
- Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- Giving highly classified CIA Intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
- Using his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his useless “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay for 35 days.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, killing 400,000 Americans by the time he left office.
- Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves against the deadly COVID-19 virus.
- Repeatedly lying—while still in office and afterward—that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him by massive voter fraud.
- Illegally trying to pressure state legislatures and governors to stop the certification of the vote that had made Joe Biden the president-elect.
- Inciting his followers to attack the Capitol Building where Senators and Representatives were meeting to count the Electoral Votes won by himself and Joe Biden. His objective: Stop the count, which he knew would prove him the loser.
So Hope had plenty to feel tormented about.
Yet it wasn’t any of these offenses that upset her.
It was something far more personal: She feared that the public’s association of her with Trump’s attack on Congress would doom her, at age 32, to permanent unemployment.
On January 6, 2021, she exchanged a series of texts with Julie Radford, First Daughter Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff.
HICKS: “In one day he [Trump] ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys [sic] chapter
“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed
“I’m so mad and upset
“We all look like domestic terrorists now”
RADFORD: “Oh yes I’ve been crying for an hour”
HICKS: “This made us all unemployable
“Like untouchable
“God I’m so fucking mad”
RADFORD: “I know there isn’t a chance of finding a job
“Visa also sent me a blow off email today
“Already”
HICKS: “Nope. Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked.
[Referring to Trump]: “Attacking the VP [Vice President Mike Pence]?
“Wtf is wrong with him”
Albert Speer, former architect and Minister of Armaments for his late Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, would have fully empathized.
Albert Speer
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146II-277 / Binder / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
With the collapse of the Third Reich, he found himself hurled from power and facing trial as a war criminal at Nuremberg.
His prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, said: “Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation.”
Yet Speer falsely claimed he had simply been an apolitical architect who had been drafted into serving as Minister of Armaments—and hadn’t known about the Holocaust.
The prosecution couldn’t prove he had. So he escaped a death sentence—and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.
Emerging from prison in 1966, Speer lamented that no architectural firm in postwar Germany would hire “Hitler’s architect.”
So he spent the rest of his life writing—at great profit—about his 12 years as a high-ranking official in the Third Reich. As “The Good Nazi,” he portrayed himself as a political innocent deceived into hell by a Mephistopheles-like Hitler.
Like Speer, Hope Hicks has repudiated her own former Fuhrer—after serving him during his worst infamies.
And, like Speer, she isn’t facing the dangers of poverty. Her net worth is estimated at $1 million, owing to her past work as a model and public relations agent.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 8, 2024 at 12:10 am
Millions of Americans have forgotten the crimes and infamies committed by President Donald J. Trump during his four years in office.
Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
On March 26, 2020, during an interview on Fox News, Trump blamed the failures of his administration’s response to Coronavirus on Democratic state governors like Andrew Cuomo (NY), Jay Inslee (WA), and Gretchen Whitmer (MI).
On March 27, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer told a local radio station: “What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts—they’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan. It’s really concerning. I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.”
On March 29, the Washington Monthly highlighted Whitmer’s inability to secure desperately-needed ventilators from her longtime vendors: “What If Trump Decides to Save Republicans But Not Democrats?”
A sub-headline read: “He’s providing vital resources to red states and ignoring blue states.”
Florida submitted a request to the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves—and received a shipment with everything three days later.
On Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, bluntly told governors: “Take the blame when you have to. When you play with your boss, sometimes it’s better when you don’t win the golf game. He’s the boss, he’s got all the resources.”
The mentality of the Black Hand had come to the Oval Office.
The Black Hand
Trump wasn’t simply refusing to provide states with vitally-needed medical supplies—he was illegally seizing those supplies that states had ordered.
According to an April 20 Forbes story: “Maryland Gov. Hogan Takes Extraordinary Steps to Keep Feds From Confiscating COVID Tests”:
Governor Larry Hogan had heard reports that the federal government had confiscated crucial medical supplies from other states—like Massachusetts. After obtaining 500,000 test kits from South Korea, Hogan ordered them flown into Baltimore–Washington International Airport rather than the larger Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
From there they were escorted under guard to a secret location and constantly protected by the National Guard. As they were sent out for distribution across the state, the tests remained under protection by the National Guard and state police.
The precautions were absolutely necessary. Hospitals in Florida and California reported that FEMA had seized their supplies without explanation.
Massachusetts ordered three million masks that were confiscated by the Federal Government at the Port of New York. This forced the state to ask New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft to use his team plane to fly in one million N95 masks from China.
N95 mask
The Federal Government seized vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states. FEMA did not publicly report the thefts, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Nor did the administration explain how it decided which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.
The Federal Government did not inform states whose supplies it had seized if they would receive the materials they had ordered and paid for. That fueled concerns about whether the Trump administration was fairly distributing scarce medical supplies.
“We can’t get any answers,” said a California hospital official who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the White House.
Trump said it was the states’ responsibility to obtain critically-needed medical supplies. But when they weren’t outbid by the Federal Government, hospital systems and states found their shipments of medical supplies seized with no explanation.
Where did they go?
To China?
To Trump’s private warehouses?
To Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, for sale on the black market?
No one still knows.
A March 2, 2020 Washington Monthly story concluded ominously: “What if the White House simply gives all the masks and ventilators to red states and counties, leaving blue ones to struggle? What mechanisms of accountability are left?
“U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.”
By the time Trump left office, on January 20, 2021, more than 400,000 Americans had died of COVID-19.
* * * * * * * * * *
Seventy-four years earlier, Chief United States Counsel Robert H. Jackson had been assigned to prosecute the major Nazi defendants for war crimes at Nuremberg.
On July 26, 1946, Jackson delivered his closing remarks to the court. He might as well have been speaking about Donald Trump and Republicans’ treasonous refusal to protect American citizens from a raging and deadly pandemic:
Robert H. Jackson
Citing William Shakespeare’s play about the murderous Richard III, Jackson concluded:
“If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.”
If Americans find Donald Trump blameless for refusing to take decisive action against the Coronavirus threat, it will be as true to say there has been no plague, there are no thousands of dead Americans, there has been no criminal dereliction of Presidential responsibility.
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In Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 6, 2024 at 12:12 am
Bill O’Reilly, the former host of the Fox News Channel program The O’Reilly Factor, has offered his own solution to fighting terrorism: A multinational mercenary army, based on a NATO coalition and trained by the United States.
“We would select them, special forces would train them—a 25,000-man force to be deployed to fight on the ground against worldwide terrorism. Not just ISIS,” O’Reilly said on “CBS This Morning” on September 24, 2014.
Bill O’Reilly
Actually, O’Reilly’s idea is the subject of The Profession, a 2011 novel by bestselling author Steven Pressfield.
Pressfield made his literary reputation with four classic novels about classical Greece.
In Gates of Fire (1998) he explored the rigors and heroism of Spartan society—and the famous last stand of its 300 picked warriors at Thermopylae.
In Tides of War (2000) Pressfield depicted the rise and fall of Alcibiades, Athens’ greatest general, as he shifted his loyalties from that city to its arch-enemy, Sparta, and then to Persia, the enemy of both.
In The Virtues of War (2004) he took on the identity of Alexander the Great, explaining to his readers what it was like to command armies that swept across the known world, destroying all who dared oppose them.
Finally, in The Afghan Campaign (2006) Pressfield—this time from the viewpoint of a lowly Greek soldier—refought Alexander’s brutal, three-year anti-guerrilla campaign in Afghanistan.
Steven Pressfield
But in The Profession, Pressfield created a seemingly plausible world set into the future of 2032. The book’s own dust jacket offers the best summary of its plot-line:
“The year is 2032. The third Iran-Iraq war is over. The 11/11 dirty bomb attack on the port of Long Beach, California is receding into memory. Saudi Arabia has recently quelled a coup. Russians and Turks are clashing in the Caspian Basin.
“Iranian armored units, supported by the satellite and drone power of their Chinese allies, have emerged from their enclaves in Tehran and are sweeping south attempting to recapture the resource rich territory that had been stolen from them, in their view, by Lukoil, BP, and ExxonMobil and their privately-funded armies.
“Everywhere military force is for hire. Oil companies, multi-national corporations and banks employ powerful, cutting-edge mercenary armies to control global chaos and protect their riches.
“Even nation states enlist mercenary forces to suppress internal insurrections, hunt terrorists, and do the black bag jobs necessary to maintain the new New World Order.
“Force Insertion is the world’s merc monopoly. Its leader is the disgraced former United States Marine General James Salter, stripped of his command by the president for nuclear saber-rattling with the Chinese and banished to the Far East.”
Salter appears as a hybrid of World War II General Douglas MacArthur and Iraqi War General Stanley McCrystal. Like MacArthur, Salter has butted heads with his President—and paid dearly for it. Now his ambition is no less than to become President himself—by popular acclaim.
And like McCrystal, he is a pure warrior who leads from the front and is revered by his men. Salter seizes Saudi oil fields, then offers them as a gift to America. By doing so, he makes himself the most popular man in the country—and a guaranteed occupant of the White House.
And in 2032 the United States is a far different nation from the one its Founding Fathers created in 1776.
“Any time that you have the rise of mercenaries…society has entered a twilight era, a time past the zenith of its arc,” says Salter.”The United States is an empire…but the American people lack the imperial temperament. We’re not legionaries, we’re mechanics. In the end the American Dream boils down to what? ‘I’m getting mine and the hell with you.'”
Americans, asserts Salter, have come to like mercenaries: “They’ve had enough of sacrificing their sons and daughters in the name of some illusory world order. They want someone else’s sons and daughters to bear the burden….
“They want their problems to go away. They want me to to make them go away.”
And so Salter will “accept whatever crown, of paper or gold, that my country wants to press upon me.”
More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli warned of the dangers of relying on mercenaries:
“Mercenaries…are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure; for they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal; they are brave among friends; among enemies they are cowards.
Niccolo Machiavelli
“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”
Centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli issued a warning against relying on men whose first love is their own enrichment.
Steven Pressfield, in a work of fiction, has given us a nightmarish vision of a not-so-distant America where “Name your price” has become the byword for an age.
Both warnings are well worth heeding.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 22, 2024 at 12:17 am
It took 15 voting tries—and a series of humiliating concessions—for Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to become Speaker of the House of Representatives.
All of the concessions he made were to the most Right-wing members of the House. And all of those members are fanatically dedicated to destroying whatever legacy President Joseph R. Biden hopes to leave.
At the top of their list: Impeaching Biden.
Republicans refused to impeach and convict Donald Trump after he incited a deadly riot against the United States Capitol Building. But they’re eager to remove Biden for what they consider the most impeachable offense of all.
He defeated a Republican candidate for President.
President Joseph Biden
And not just any Republican candidate: The candidate who had made no secret of his desire to be “President-for-Life.”
During the 2022 mid-term elections, Republicans had expected to sweep both the House and Senate. This would have given them virtual control of the government.
The House is the body that initiates revenue bills and impeaches federal officials. And the Senate holds the power to confirm Presidential appointments that require consent, and to provide advice and consent to ratify treaties.
But Democrats went on a rare offensive and rightly attacked Republicans as trying to gain absolute control over the lives of their fellow Americans. And voters rejected the candidates favored by Trump for local and federal offices.
Thus, Republicans had to settle for controlling the House.
Even so, they intended to abuse their new-found powers to the utmost. Among their topmost goals:
- Bringing false impeachment charges against President Biden;
- Investigating FBI officials who rightly investigated evidence of Donald Trump’s collaboration with Russia;
- Investigating the President’s son, Hunter, for unspecified offenses, to damage his father’s credibility; and
- Holding America’s economy hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden makes cuts in taxes and aid programs for the poor and middle class.
Hunter Biden
Center for Strategic & International Studies, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
If Democrats follow their usual mantra of “When they go low, we go high,” they will cower before Republican aggression and sacrifice their legislative agenda.
Yet they can snatch victory from the jaws of impending defeat—providing they are willing to follow the advice Robert F. Kennedy offered for combating the Mafia: “If we do not attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.”
Counterattack Strategy #1: Attack Republicans as traitors selling out the country to Vladimir Putin
Numerous Republicans have taken “campaign contributions”—i.e., bribes—from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin.
One Russian oligarch—Len Blavatnik—has given millions of dollars to top Republican leaders—such as Senators Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Marco Rubio (Florida) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).
In just 2017, Blavatnik contributed the following to GOP Political Action Committees (PACs):
- $1.5 million to PACs associated with Rubio.
- $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.
- $1 million to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund.
- $3.5 million to a PAC associated with McConnell.
- $1.1 million to Unintimidated PAC, associated with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
- $250,000 to New Day for America PAC, associated with Ohio Governor John Kasich.
- $800,000 to the Security is Strength PAC, associated with Senator Lindsey Graham.
The Biden administration need not ask the CIA or FBI to unearth these contributions. They can be easily found within the files of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Putin’s monies have been well-spent: About 90 House Republicans—out of a total of 213—attended Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress on December 21, 2022, according to CQ Roll Call. Some who did spent much of the speech on their phones.
Many Republicans—such as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who in 2021 received about $255,000 from Blavatnik—have openly threatened to end all funding for Ukraine’s heroic struggle against Russian aggression.
Kevin McCarthy
Attacking Republicans as Communist traitors would prove an effective technique. From the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Republicans successfully attacked Democrats as at least potential sellouts, if not actual traitors.
The advantage of attacking Russian-bribed Republicans today is that even some “Reagan Republicans”—such as James Kirchick, a conservative reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist—have openly denounced this treason.
Thus, the White House could ignite an internal conflict within the Right by pitting Republicans against each other.
Counterattack Strategy #2: Concede NOTHING to Republicans
Donald Trump shut down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to finance his useless border wall against Mexico.
So Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shut down his State of the Union appearance.
As CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza noted: “What Pelosi seems to understand better than past Trump political opponents is that giving ANY ground is a mistake. You have to not only stand firm, but be willing to go beyond all political norms—like canceling the SOTU—to win.”
His ego strung, Trump reopened the government.
And with Republicans threatening to not raise the debt ceiling unless their extortionate demands are met, the White House can effectively counter this danger:
Deduct from the budget every dollar directed toward Republican states. This would vastly reduce the size of the Federal budget, since subsidizing these failed economies accounts for a substantial portion of the budget.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 13, 2024 at 12:10 am
There is a phrase that’s well-known south of the border: “Pan, o palo.” Or, in English: “Bread or stick.”
And this, in turn, comes down to: Do as I say and you’ll get this nice reward. Disobey me and you’ll get your head bashed in.
According to the FBI’s website, “some 33,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs are criminally active in the U.S. today.
“Many are sophisticated and well organized; all use violence to control neighborhoods and boost their illegal money-making activities, which include robbery, drug and gun trafficking, prostitution and human trafficking, and fraud. Many gang members continue to commit crimes even after being sent to jail.”
Gangs are responsible for an average of 48% of violent crime in most jurisdictions and up to 90% in others.
FBI seal
These gangs aren’t going to disappear, no matter how many of their members die or wind up in prison.
For decades, the rhetoric of the Cold War has carried over into the debate over policing. “Hawks” on the Right have demanded a “hard” approach to law enforcement, emphasizing punishment. “Doves” on the Left have pursued a “soft” line, stressing social programs and rehabilitation.
But it isn’t enough to be “hard” or “soft” in pursuing the goal of a safe, law-abiding society. It’s necessary to be “smart” above all.
If you can’t eradicate evil, then you should try to direct at least some of its elements into a safer path.
So it’s clearly time for an innovative approach to gangbusting.
Instead of merely using “the stick,” state and federal governments should use a combination of rewards and punishments to reduce gang membership and protect innocent citizens who are often the victims of gangland violence.
Each state should invite its resident gang members to take part in a series of competition for the title of “State Gang Champion.” These would be modeled on competitions now existing within the National Football League—a series of playoffs to determine which two gangs will duke it out in the “Super Rumble.”
These competitions would be completely voluntary, thus eliminating any charges of State coercion. They would be modeled on the country’s current mania for “Ultimate Warrior” contests for kickboxers and bare-knuckled fighters.
Contestants—from at least 10 opposing gangs—would meet in a football-sized arena.
No firearms would be allowed, thus ensuring safety for spectators. Contestants could otherwise arm themselves with whatever weapons they desired—such as baseball bats, swords, axes, spears or chains.
Everyone who agreed to participate would automatically be guaranteed full immunity for whatever carnage they inflicted.
The object of these contests would be to officially determine which State gang was the “baddest” for the year. Tickets could be purchased by fans looking for an afternoon’s festival of gore.
Television networks could—-and no doubt would—vie for rights to film the events, just as they now do for streaming wrestling or boxing matches.
So why would hardcore gangs even consider participating in such a series of contests?
L.A. gang
For a multitude of reasons.
First, they would be able to eliminate members of rival gangs without risk of prosecution and imprisonment.
Second, they would be able to gauge—through the heat of combat—the toughness of their enemies and their own members.
Third, they would gain at least temporary stardom—just as successful gladiators did under the Roman Empire and winning football quarterbacks do today.
Fourth, the winning gang would gain official status as “The Baddest” gang in the State for that year.
On this last point: Napoleon Bonaparte created the Order of the Legion of Honor, distributed 15,000 crosses to his soldiers and called his troops the “Grand Army.” When someone criticized him for giving “toys” to his war-hardened veterans, Napoleon replied: “Men are ruled by toys.”
And for the State there would be gains as well.
First, these contests would literally eliminate a great many gang members who could not be removed any other way.
Second, police and prosecutors could concentrate their limited resources on gangs that refused to participate and/or were deemed to pose the greatest threat.
Third, millions of dollars in State revenues would be generated through ticket sales and the buying of streaming rights.
Fourth, for Republican politicians, there would be an added bonus: Their constituents would find this an especially attractive way to fight crime because it would adhere to the two concepts most precious to Right-wingers: Killing people and making money.
Admittedly, many law-abiding citizens would be repulsed by the carnage that would result from implementing this proposal. But these are generally the people who disdain boxing or wrestling contests anyway.
Given our increasingly jaded and violence-prone society, however, even most of these people would eventually tolerate these contests as an effective way to simultaneously raise badly-needed tax revenues and reduce the size of criminal gangs.
In short: With sufficient creativity and ruthlessness, it should be possible to reclaim control of our streets from the evils of gang violence.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 8, 2024 at 12:12 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
A May 1, 2018 article in Forbes—which bills itself as “The Capitalist Tool”—vividly documents this truth.
“In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, [2017] CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch news release today.”
Since 1978, the CEO pay among America’s 300 biggest companies has gone up 1,460%, while the typical worker’s pay grew by just 18%
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
He gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—-mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich.
“Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century.
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73-71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.
“The tyrant dies; the police and the army go over to the revolutionaries; and the new government dispossesses the rich by decree. A single authoritative sentence suffices to expunge all private wealth and restore it to the service of the nation.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 7, 2024 at 12:11 am
Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.
But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying.
A pointed example:
On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate and front-runner Joe Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York. Money is, after all, the lifeblood of all political campaigns, and Biden wanted to guarantee he got more of it than any of his 23 Democratic rivals.
So the former vice president had a message he felt sure would appeal to his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.
Joe Biden
Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said.
And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.
“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke. It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….
“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”
Biden talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he took a moderate stance when it came to taxation.
Vermont United States Senator Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.
Bernie Sanders
Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March.
Instead, he proposed expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors.
Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, had a different—and darker—view of the rich.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.
Among the epochs it covered were the civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.
In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.
“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.
”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them. Nor do they try to.
“They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.”
But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”
Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level.
The result could only be catastrophe. The only way to halt this this increasing concentration of wealth by fewer people would be through law or violent revolution.
Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.
On December 8, 2017, the Seattle Times noted that the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 40% of the country’s wealth. They owned more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
From 2013, the share of wealth owned by the one percent increased by nearly three percentage points. Wealth owned by the bottom 90%, meanwhile, fell over the same period.
But this situation need not remain permanent.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on February 22, 2024 at 12:09 am
Fox News began peddling “The Big Lie”—that President Donald J. Trump was cheated of electoral victory in 2020—on Election Night.
But then the truth came to light.
On March 26, 2021, Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News in Delaware Superior Court.
Dominion charged that Fox’s program hosts and guests had deliberately lied that Dominion’s voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 United States presidential election from then-president Donald Trump.
Fox News claimed that it was reporting news of what individuals were saying and was thus protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
But during pre-trial discovery, Dominion accessed a treasury of Fox News memos and emails proving that its prominent hosts and top executives knew they were lying about Dominion but continued doing so anyway.
With several prominent Fox senior executives and personalities slated to testify, the trial opened on April 18, 2023. Then Fox caved—and settled the case the same day for $787.5 million.
One month earlier, on the March 3, 2023 edition of The PBS Newshour, political commentators David Brooks (The New York Times) and Jonathan Capehart (The Washington Post) had explained the significance of the upcoming lawsuit.
David Brooks: Rupert Murdoch started a paper called The Australian a long time ago. He was a journalist, an actual journalist. And now he’s gotten to the point where you can lie on camera—as long as your ratings are OK.
David Brooks
Those people who lied didn’t lie over little things. They lied about the election results of a presidential election, kind of a major deal. And we now know—as we all suspected—they all knew what was happening.
And Murdoch is sitting there atop this organization sort of blithely pretending it’s not really his problem. And so he can say it, and he has power over the corporation today. He owns it. He could fire Tucker [Carlson]. He could fire all the people—all the people who were in on this and whose journalistic integrity has been exposed as zero.
And yet he’s still trying to blithely rise above it. And so it’s amazing that we have a major news organization that is inaccurate about a presidential election.
Jonathan Capehart
Jonathan Capehart: And what that says to me is, Rupert Murdoch and his anchors, those people who are peddling in lies, they are insulated from the effect of the lies that they tell. When you see someone saying, “Oh, our ratings are going down, and that’s going to affect the stock price.” So there’s no concern….
Rupert Murdoch
Hudson Institute, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
So that means you’re more concerned about your bottom line than the corrosive impact on our democracy and political discourse in this country. That, to me, was what’s really disturbing.
And what’s even more disturbing is that Fox News isn’t even really covering this lawsuit, which means that their audience, who should know about what’s being said about them and about the programming for them, they will never—they might not ever know….that what they’re being told is just a big bunch of lies.
Well, that’s the point I was trying to make. We don’t even know if they will even know about this case, as a result. And even if they do find out, either they might not trust it, or maybe they just don’t care. I don’t know.
* * * * *
If Fox’s viewers didn’t learn about the lawsuit, it was because they watched Fox exclusively.
On the night of the Fox settlement, the Fox affiliate in San Francisco—KTVU—didn’t carry any mention of it. Those wanting to discover the latest twist in the case had to get their news from channels that believed in reporting facts, not Right-wing propaganda.
In the Soviet Union, the all-powerful Kremlin dictatorship made it extremely hard—and dangerous—to learn the truth about domestic and international events.
No correspondent for the official Soviet newspapers “Pravda” (“Truth”) and “Izvestia” (“News”) dared report what he actually knew about the failings and crimes of the regime.
Citizens who wanted to learn the truth risked imprisonment or worse if the authorities learned of their investigative efforts. As a result, the vast majority of Russians—and those enslaved by them—lived in a world of lies and half-truths.
There is no excuse for that among American citizens who have access to a wide array of news sources.
An X user recently asked: “Are critical thinkers being vastly outnumbered in the USA because secondary education is just so damn expensive? It’s no wonder Republican states are among the most poorly educated.”
The answer is: No.
You don’t have to accept Right-wing propaganda.
You can question the official version of any story.
You can seek out multiple sources.
You don’t have to seek out only those sources that confirm your long-held prejudices.
And you don’t need a college education to do so.
If Right-wingers—who make up the audience for Fox News—are ignorant, it’s because they want to be ignorant.
And they will stay ignorant—because living in a world of Right-wing lies and hatred is more important to them than accepting reality for what it is.
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THE PRICE OF FANATICISM–IN FILM AND REAL LIFE
In Bureaucracy, Business, Entertainment, History, Military, Social commentary, Uncategorized on June 7, 2024 at 12:18 amAnthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci desperately sought a high-stakes position with the Donald Trump White House.
He would have done better to have studied the truths offered in the 1940 movie, The Man I Married.
Carol Cabbott (Joan Bennett) is the editor of The Smart World, married to Eric Hoffman (Francis Lederer) a German. They have a seven-year-old son, Ricky (Johnny Russell).
Sometime in the 1930s they decide to vacation in Nazi Germany. Eric is quickly enamored of the Third Reich. His ardor is shared by Frieda (Anna Sten) a former schoolmate who reunites with him.
Frieda and Eric attend Nazi gatherings, and he decides to stay in Germany. Carol, however, is appalled at the cruelty and barbarism of the Reich and can’t wait to return to the United States.
As time passes, Eric becomes more strident in his worship of Adolf Hitler. Carol and he grow increasingly estranged.
Eventually, Eric tells Carol he is in love with Frieda and wants a divorce. Even worse, he wants to keep his son in Germany, to become a loyal follower of the Nazis.
For Carol, the situation is desperate: Under German law, Eric’s rights will trump hers.
But then fate takes a hand. While visiting his elderly father, Eric learns something truly shocking: His mother was a Jewess—the absolute worst calamity that could befall an ardent Nazi.
“If you won’t let your son return to America with his mother,” says his father, “I will go to the authorities and show them the marriage certificate.”
Eric is stunned. So is Frieda, who is standing by when the news breaks. Disgusted that she was about to “racially defile” herself, she angrily stalks out.
Suddenly, Eric now says he doesn’t know what came over him, and he wants to return to the United States. Even more startling, he expects to go on with his marriage to Carol, as if nothing has happened.
But, for Carol, the damage is too great and the marriage is over.
She and Ricky return to the United States without Eric—who has lost everything: His wife, his son and his future with the Third Reich.
Now, fast forward to the 21st century of Donald Trump’s America—and the fate of Anthony Scaramucci.
Anthony Scaramucci
Jdarsie11 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
In 2005, Scaramucci founded SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm.
But, in 2017, hoping to attain a position with the Trump administration, he resigned from his co-management role and ended his affiliation with SkyBridge.
On January 12, 2017, he was named Assistant to President Trump and director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Then disaster struck. On January 31, Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, called Scaramucci “to tell him he should pull out of consideration.”
Priebus opposed Scaramucci’s appointment because of Scaramucci’s stake in Skybridge Capital. The reason: Skybridge held a majority stake sale to RON Transatlantic EG and HNA Capital (U.S.) Holding, a Chinese conglomerate with close ties to China’s Communist Party.
But then Scaramucci’s future with the Trump administration suddenly appeared a reality.
On July 21, 2017, he was named as White House Communications Director, to take office on July 25. Even more importantly, he would report directly to the President—and not to Priebus, as had White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Spicer, who had opposed Scarmucci’s hiring, resigned on the day of the appointment. Priebus had also strongly argued against the hiring, to no avail.
Then Scaramucci’s own hubris intervened.
On July 26, in a call to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, Scaramucci said he would rid the White House of “leakers.” He threatened to fire the entire White House Communications staff if Lizza didn’t reveal the source who had leaked the story of a dinner he had had with Trump.
He blasted Priebus as a “leaker” and “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac” and predicted that Priebus “would resign soon.”
Scaramucci also had harsh words for Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon: “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
Steve Bannon
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On July 27, Priebus resigned as chief of staff.
The next day, Trump announced that he had named retired general John F. Kelley as Priebus’ replacement.
Then, on July 31, Scaramucci joined Spicer and Priebus as an ex-White House employee—dismissed by Trump at Kelly’s request, according to The New York Times.
And, like Eric Hoffman in The Man I Married, Scaramucci found himself without a marriage.
His wife, Deidre Ball—like Carol Hoffman—despised the man he yearned to work for: Donald Trump.
Married to Scaramucci in 2014, Ball filed for divorce in early July 2017 when she was eight months pregnant with their second child.
On July 24, Deidre gave birth to the couple’s son, James—while Anthony was in West Virginia attending the Boy Scouts Jamboree with Trump. He reportedly sent her a note: “Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child.”
Like Icarus, the mythical character who flew too close to the sun, he rose to the heights—and plunged to his doom.
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