All The Presidents Men. Who picks them?

Davy The First

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I left it men only, to reference the 1970's movie...

What I'm wondering is this.

If El Trumpo had not won. If it were, well any of the other main GOP candidates, would ANY of the Cabinet appointments be different?

I don't think Trump picked them. He has no idea who anyone is, that isn't in his immediate circle. I'm pretty sure the GOP did the selection, pretending to offer choices, but not really. Or however does the 'thinking' in the White house.

But would it be the same with someone else? WHO is/ was actually calling the shots re the cabinet picks?

And those picks, are most certainly dismantling the structures built up over the last 30 years or so. From foreign policy to the EPA. Was it all Bannon? Anyone seen or know any info re those cabinet picks? For example were any mentioned before Trump's Republican nomination?

In short, who are the real culprits?
 

Brightdreamer

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I think it's pretty clear 45* isn't the mastermind at all, but the (possibly sacrificial) figurehead, the distraction and the divider. He seems particularly susceptible to having his strings pulled, even by opposing groups or voices. But he was selected for his current role. Either the selectors are shoulder-deep in the Republican party, or they are the Republican party (at least, the power players who are, for all intents and purposes, The Party); depends on what turns up in probes of external influence. IMHO, the rot runs very, very deep - and likely across national borders. The situation we're in is the result of many, many years of planning.

As for Bannon, repulsive as he is, I don't think he alone is to blame for any of this; there seems to be a shadowy Group of which Bannon is a particularly vocal member, a Group with lots of dark money and dark influence that so far seems above and beyond any laws.
 

Victor Douglas

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I suspect that the power players behind the scenes in the Republican Party (I'm talking about the donor community, not Mitch McConnel or Paul Ryan) don't really care who the specific individuals in Trump's adminstration are, they only care about what type of people they are (i.e., whether their background would make them reliable shills for uber-conservative interersts). Trump and his Chief of Staff likely pick the actual people, but their choices are surely being made from a pool of candidates made available to them by Republican Party leadership, in consultation with the donors. In short--they might have been different individuals, but they would have been the same sort of people.
 

blacbird

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I'm pretty sure the GOP did the selection, pretending to offer choices, but not really.

No. That's not the way it works, ever. The winning candidate always has advisors, and they will bring forward possible candidates for various positions. The party really never gets involved in such things. In the case of Donald Trump, what he values above anything else is his version of "loyalty", which pretty much means anybody who will provide him adulation. At the Cabinet level, they need to be approved by the U.S. Senate after they are nominated, and a couple of Trump's choices just barely scraped over that bar (notably Attorney General Jeff Sessions). His cabinet appointees are a cabal of people profoundly unqualified by experience for the positions they now hold (Tillerson and Carson being the most blatantly obvious). But it's those private advisors who are probably most influential in TrumpWorld. The GOP party apparatchiks seem to have very little influence with him.

caw
 

Davy The First

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No. That's not the way it works, ever. The winning candidate always has advisors, and they will bring forward possible candidates for various positions. The party really never gets involved in such things. In the case of Donald Trump, what he values above anything else is his version of "loyalty", which pretty much means anybody who will provide him adulation. At the Cabinet level, they need to be approved by the U.S. Senate after they are nominated, and a couple of Trump's choices just barely scraped over that bar (notably Attorney General Jeff Sessions). His cabinet appointees are a cabal of people profoundly unqualified by experience for the positions they now hold (Tillerson and Carson being the most blatantly obvious). But it's those private advisors who are probably most influential in TrumpWorld. The GOP party apparatchiks seem to have very little influence with him.

caw

If that's the case, then certainly Bannon was among the influences. Also Miller, and Kushner. Anyone know who else? Was Manafort involved? Or Cory L? And more importantly, who are they answering to? The Mercer family?

This would be an interesting topic for an investigative journalist. To determine just who 'helped' pick the President's cabinet.

This link from Market Watch outlines through author Rebecca Natow suggest just how powerful the Cabinet ministers are.

"
MarketWatch: Some of the proponents of the rules created during the Obama administration have expressed concern that a Trump administration will roll them back. Once a rule is on the books, does the following administration have discretion in whether they enforce it?
Natow: There is some wiggle room. The Department of Education can enforce them more strongly or can enforce them a lot less vigorously. It’s not uncommon for the Department to just initiate a new rule-making and just roll back those regulations so that they won’t even be there on the books anymore."
 

Prozyan

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This would be an interesting topic for an investigative journalist. To determine just who 'helped' pick the President's cabinet.

Why? Trump's inner circle isn't some great secret nor is their agenda.

MarketWatch: Some of the proponents of the rules created during the Obama administration have expressed concern that a Trump administration will roll them back. Once a rule is on the books, does the following administration have discretion in whether they enforce it?
Natow: There is some wiggle room. The Department of Education can enforce them more strongly or can enforce them a lot less vigorously. It’s not uncommon for the Department to just initiate a new rule-making and just roll back those regulations so that they won’t even be there on the books anymore.


A practice employed by every administration since time immemorial. Trump's cabinet and appointees have no more or less power than those of the Obama administration....who had no more or less power than those of the Bush administration....who had no more or less power than the Clinton administration....who had no more, etc, etc.

Every administration appoints people that are going to push their particular agenda. Who calls the shots? Yeah, it is fun to play at some form of shadow government, or dare I say some "vast right wing conspiracy" but the truth is actually pretty boring. It is the President. I don't know why Trump's agenda is shocking....he has pretty much done or tried to do what he said he would during the campaign.

I don't think you are getting a ton of feedback on many of your questions because you seem to be waiting for people to point out the man behind the curtain or delve into some conspiracy theories about some sort of shadow puppeteers pulling all the strings. Frankly discussions like that are pointless, boring, impossible to cite, and lead nowhere.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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I think it's pretty clear 45* isn't the mastermind at all, but the (possibly sacrificial) figurehead, the distraction and the divider. He seems particularly susceptible to having his strings pulled, even by opposing groups or voices. But he was selected for his current role. Either the selectors are shoulder-deep in the Republican party, or they are the Republican party (at least, the power players who are, for all intents and purposes, The Party); depends on what turns up in probes of external influence. IMHO, the rot runs very, very deep - and likely across national borders. The situation we're in is the result of many, many years of planning.

As for Bannon, repulsive as he is, I don't think he alone is to blame for any of this; there seems to be a shadowy Group of which Bannon is a particularly vocal member, a Group with lots of dark money and dark influence that so far seems above and beyond any laws.

It is ironic that Right Wing politicians keep raving about some mythic “Deep State” of hidden powerful Democratic conspirators who are sacrificing babies, dancing naked in the woods, poisoning wells, and secretly thwarting all their shiny plans (despite being essentially locked out of government and power).

(Does anyone else see it as classic old witch hunt paranoia that the commentators of the Right simultaneously mock Democrats as losers and incompetents who can’t even steal an election and that Democrats are secretly a super wealthy shadowy powerful cabal in control of all bad things?)

It reminds me a lot of the way the Right roared all kinds of false calumnies at President Obama - one of the most brilliant, ethical, and honest humans ever to hold the job - and then proceeded to gloatingly load up their plates with every last indulgence, from petty to mortal, that they accused him of the second they got their hands on power.

Thieves imagine that all people steal. Cheats see a world in which everyone cheats.

The most vocal Republicans in government and the Right Wing media see a corrupt world full of conspiracies of wicked, self-indulgent, selfish creeps who care for nothing but their own games of money and power.
 
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Davy The First

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Why? Trump's inner circle isn't some great secret nor is their agenda.

[/B]A practice employed by every administration since time immemorial. Trump's cabinet and appointees have no more or less power than those of the Obama administration....who had no more or less power than those of the Bush administration....who had no more or less power than the Clinton administration....who had no more, etc, etc.

Every administration appoints people that are going to push their particular agenda. Who calls the shots? Yeah, it is fun to play at some form of shadow government, or dare I say some "vast right wing conspiracy" but the truth is actually pretty boring. It is the President. I don't know why Trump's agenda is shocking....he has pretty much done or tried to do what he said he would during the campaign.

I don't think you are getting a ton of feedback on many of your questions because you seem to be waiting for people to point out the man behind the curtain or delve into some conspiracy theories about some sort of shadow puppeteers pulling all the strings. Frankly discussions like that are pointless, boring, impossible to cite, and lead nowhere.
Ouch. :)

Pointless? I dunno. It possible to see a clear line to the appointments of prev admins. At the very least the appointees tend to have a CV relevant to the portfolio. This is not the case for most of Trump's cabinet.
So, I think it's a reasonable wonder, why these particular people? Friends of Trump - well nope, not most of them.

So, why were they appointed? What service did they provide to warrant such high office?

The answer may seem obvious, eg DeVos was a major campaign contributor - as she seems to believe in her agenda. Kinda straight forward enough. Yes, her brother ran Blackwater (now Academic or some such name), and he's supposed to had touted a 'private spy agency' to the pres, and he's in front of congress to ans questions re other issues and so forth, but well, such is the way of powerful families.

So, these appointments. Friends of Trump? I don't see that evidence (save for Sessions). So, again, why were they appointed? And again, it may simply be that they forked out the donations to his campaign.

Is that standard practice, so much so that the rich paying for positions of power in cabinet, is so basic, and so common, so everyday, that is does not need examination?

Sometimes the wood is hidden by very visible trees. Sometimes, not.

As for the Deep State and Conspiracy comments, well, ;) not really my bag.
 
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blacbird

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why these particular people? Friends of Trump - well nope, not most of them.

So, why were they appointed? What service did they provide to warrant such high office?

In the case of Trump, these people were appointed because they could assure him of their "loyalty" and adulation for him, and damn little else. Previous Presidents have nearly always tried to appoint people who could at least claim some degree of experience in the field to which they were being named. Trump doesn't give a rats about any of that. So we get Rex Tillerson, a man with zero diplomatic experience being named Secretary of State; Ben Carson, a man with zero governmental experience of any kind, being appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Ryan Zinke, a rabid anti-environmentalist being appointed Secretary of the Interior; Steve Mnuchin, a former highest-level executive with the odious Goldman-Sachs investment bank outfit, which was widely criticized by Trump himself, gets to be Secretary of the Treasury; Betsy DeVos, an evangelical gadfly and open opponent of public education in general, with no experience in education administration anywhere, gets to be Secretary of Education, a cabinet department she has previously advocated to be abolished. The Secretary of Commerce owns a big shipping company, which is about the most egregious and blatant conflict of interest imaginable. Etc. etc. etc.

What failed, that allowed all these people (and others like them) to get the jobs is the vetting process which should be exercised by the U.S. Senate's approval process. But because the Republican Party right now is being throttled by the distant right end of the political spectrum, their slim majority in the U.S. Senate simply rubber-stamped all of Trump's nominees, one of whom lasted only about six months before being forced to resign following misuse of governmental air travel. Tillerson seems certain to go away soon, having gutted the U.S. State Department along the way.

What you have to understand is that all that matters to Donald Trump is his own personal aggrandizement, or at least the appearance of that. Governance is beyond his capabilities, and so falls into the hands of the cabal he has managed to get appointed around him.

In the U.S. there is no requirement in law that anybody have any qualifications relevant to the job to which they are appointed. It's just been a historical convention that new Presidents have made some degree of effort to adhere to that standard. Until this one.

caw
 

Alessandra Kelley

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US Presidents always choose their own cabinets, which are a reflection of them.

I recommend Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals for a really good look at how a really brilliant President (in this case Abraham Lincoln) can assemble a really good cabinet.
 

nighttimer

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US Presidents always choose their own cabinets, which are a reflection of them.

Then this is the reflection of the Trump Misadministration's grossly bumbling, thoroughly unprepared and unqualified, complete and total EPIC FAIL.
Nomination hearings for U.S. district court judges tend to be dry affairs that offer little mass entertainment — in other words, not typically the stuff of viral videos.


But a clip of one of President Trump’s federal judicial nominees struggling to answer rudimentary questions about the law garnered well more than 1 million views in a matter of hours on Thursday night and stoked speculation that another of the president’s nominations might get derailed.


Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) shared footage of Matthew Petersen, a nominee for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, getting quizzed by Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) on basic aspects of trial procedure during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.


For five painfully awkward minutes, Petersen, a member of the Federal Election Commission and a lawyer with no trial experience, struggled with Kennedy’s questions, visibly uncomfortable as the lawmaker pressed him about how things work in a federal courtroom.


“Hoo-boy,” Whitehouse wrote in a widely circulated tweet of the exchange, seizing on the moment for maximum political effect.


In Wednesday’s hearing, Kennedy started by asking Petersen and the four other nominees who appeared with him: “Have any of you not tried a case to verdict in a courtroom?”


Petersen alone raised his hand.


Kennedy, a first-term Republican who has challenged some of Trump’s previous judicial nominations, bore down.


Had Petersen ever handled jury trial?


“I have not,” the nominee responded.


Civil? No. Criminal? No. Bench trial? No. State or federal court? No.


How many depositions had he taken — fewer than five?


“Probably somewhere in that range,” Petersen said.


Had he ever argued a motion in state court? Federal court? No on both counts.


Kennedy then asked the last time Petersen had read the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — the standards that govern civil cases in U.S. District Court, where Petersen is hoping to get a lifetime appointment.


“In my current position,” Petersen stuttered, “I obviously don’t need to stay as invested in those on a day-to-day basis, but I do try to keep up to speed.” He added that he oversees a number of attorneys in the FEC’s litigation division and advises them on legal strategy.


How about the last time he read the Federal Rules of Evidence, which regulate the use of evidence in civil and criminal trials, Kennedy asked. The rules are amended and republished every year.


“All the way through? Well, comprehensively, would have been in law school,” Petersen said.


Kennedy kept digging.


“As a trial judge, you’re obviously going to have witnesses. Can you tell me what the ‘Daubert standard’ is,” the senator asked, referring to a critical and well-known rule on using expert testimony in federal court.


“I don’t have that readily at my disposal,” Petersen said. “But I would be happy to take a closer look at that. That is not something that I had to —”


Kennedy cut him off. “Do you know what a motion in limine is,” he asked. A motion in limine is a widely used request for certain evidence to be excluded at trial.


Petersen said yes, then tried to sidestep the question. He reminded the senator that his background wasn’t in litigation and said he hadn’t had time to “do a deep dive.”


“I understand the challenge that would be ahead of me if I were fortunate enough to become a district court judge,” Petersen said. “I understand that the path that many successful district court judges have taken has been a different one than I have taken.”


Kennedy said he was familiar with Petersen’s resume, then asked again what a motion in limine was.


“I would probably not be able to give you a good definition right here at the table,” Petersen said.


When video of the interrogation made its way online, several high profile law professors tweeted their surprise.


“Don’t want to beat up on the guy but the questions he was being asked could be answered by a second year law student,” wrote Aderson Francois, a professor at Georgetown Law. “Even if you know zero about evidence the one doctrine every law student knows is Daubert because it’s a very famous case about standard to admit expert testimony.”


Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, said it was unreasonable to expect Petersen to have recently studied the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a lengthy and complex document. “But,” Kreis added, “if you have little or no trial experience, I’d hope you could speak a little bit about the law with some degree of sophistication. Daubert is pretty basic.”

Pretty basic is good enough for Trump and by and large, he's getting his nominees pushed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and onto lifetime appointments on the federal bench.

Elections have consequences.
 

frimble3

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There are probably guys in prison, studying law on their own, who could do a better job. Maybe some interviewer should ask them the same questions, and record their responses. Obviously not the practical 'how many cases have you argued' stuff, but the 'knowledge of the law' stuff.
 

Davy The First

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Still wonder who is suggesting these folk to Trump. The GOP aren't usually THIS clueless.

Maybe it's just the biggest envelope which arrives gets the nod.
 

Brightdreamer

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Still wonder who is suggesting these folk to Trump. The GOP aren't usually THIS clueless.

There's a reason I tend to refer to the party as the "TeaOP" these days - it is not what the Republicans used to be, and has been closing in an increasingly tight spiral of insanity around a black hole of utterly depraved unreason since at least Reagan's day (see also: trickle-down economics and striking the fairness doctrine, among other tricks.) Clueless? Maybe, but there's a very clear agenda at work, and they're choosing their tools of democratic dismantlement very, very carefully.