In my column a few weeks ago, I
wrote about Trump’s love of chaos.
Nothing exemplifies “chaos” better than staff turn-over. For those of you who have ever worked in an
office, you know the chaos, disruption, and morale problems caused by just one
firing. Imagine 39 in one year! In any work
environment, staff chaos rests squarely on the shoulders of the leader and
speaks volumes about his leadership ability.
I’M SPEAKING about
the incompetency of Donald Trump to run the Oval Office and his
administration. Last week, the number of
those fired, forced out, or just couldn’t take it anymore, rose to a whopping
39! And those are just the super
grades. There’s no telling how many
peons lost their positions. You will remember Trump’s words to us during the
campaign, “I know the best people. I
will hire the best people.” Based on my
knowledge of the quality people hired by past presidents, those words were
comforting to me, until I realized that Trump’s definition of “best people” and
my definition of “best people” were worlds apart.
A LEADER is only as
good as the people he surrounds himself with. Few of his Cabinet appointees held
the qualifications to serve in the position to which they were appointed. In one year, we have seen two of his best
people indicted with more indictments surely to come. We have seen Russian sympathizers fired. We have seen a Cabinet official forced out
for taking expensive charter flights on the tax payer’s dime. Three agency directors were fired after their
public racist comments were revealed. A
goof ball fired before he even reported to work. These people all had the same thing in
common—the President’s support until the hue and cry from the American people
became too loud to ignore and he had no choice but take action. Obviously, Trump only likes saying “you’re
fired” when it is his idea.
JUST FOR the record,
I celebrated when many of those people were fired. They were NOT the best people. I am saying that if Trump was a good leader,
he would have recognized the “best” people from the git go and avoided this
chaos.
THIS PAST
week, we learned that the Staff Secretary, Rob Porter, had beat both of his
ex-wives. That in itself was not that
surprising with this Administration. What was shocking, was the fact that this
information was discovered by the FBI in his background investigation for his
Top-Secret security clearance last year.
Rob Porter was privy to the same sensitive information as the President
and had direct control over disseminating that information to the President. Rob Porter personally told White House Counsel
Don McGahn in January, 2017, that there was a problem with his security
clearance.
SOMEBODY NEEDS to
go to jail for mishandling classified information. It is not clear what Trump knew and when he
knew it. However, his boss John Kelly,
and White House Counsel Don McGahn, knew that Rob Porter would never be granted
a Top-Secret security clearance. They
opted to let him continue to handle Top-Secret information even though he could
not meet the criteria for a security clearance and hoped he wouldn’t get
caught. That is a criminal offense! It is clearly stated in U.S. Code, Title 18,
that “anyone who knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or
otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person classified information,”
shall be prosecuted. Simply, that means
anyone who allowed Porter access to State secrets should be prosecuted! And, the same should apply to Jared Kushner. We know that he does not have a security
clearance, yet is privy to that level of intelligence every day. Another wife beater resigned in the wake of
the Rob Porter scandal—Speech Writer David Sorenson. Little has been said of his circumstances
thus far but it will come out eventually.
AS A FORMER
employee of the National Security Agency, I know first-hand that you never play
loosie-goosy with security clearances.
All personnel must wear their badges at all times. These badges are color-coded for your type of
security clearance. As an employee, you
would never hand a document to a person unless they were cleared to receive the
classification of the document. An Interim clearance does not qualify you to
handle Top Secret documents. I
know. I had one for many months waiting
on my special background investigation (SBI). Your badge is checked at the
gate. If you forgot your badge, you are
sent home. If you are caught at work
with your badge off, you will be reprimanded.
If you are caught wearing your badge outside of the work environment,
you could face termination. There should
be a Twitter tag for the oval office staff, “#letmeseeyourbadge.”
MEANWHILE,
Trump is crying a river over the loss of this “good man.” Trump calls every man he fires, a “good man.” Trump said for the record, “He says he’s
innocent. You have to remember that. Is there still due process?” You, Mr. Trump, are the last person who
should say the words “due process,” but you’ll find out soon enough if it still
exists.
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