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Executive Departments Part 2


Coconut Flan

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If it was so dangerous that you need "security" to go, why would you vacation in Turkey and Greece? Oh, because you want to feel important AND you want to waste US taxpayer money: "Zinke brought security team to vacation in Turkey and Greece, records show"

Spoiler

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his wife took a security detail on their vacation to Greece and Turkey last year, official documents show, in what one watchdog group said could be a "questionable" use of taxpayer resources.

Zinke has faced questions for months over his travel expenses and use of official resources, as have other members of President Donald Trump's administration such as EPA leader Scott Pruitt, who was revealed Tuesday to have spent $30,000 on security for an official trip to Italy last year.

Unlike Pruitt, Zinke was not conducting government business during his two-week vacation, which included stops in Istanbul and the Greek Isles. The documents do not reveal exactly how many security personnel accompanied the couple, who paid for them, how much they cost or whether they traveled with Zinke and his wife, Lola, for the entire trip.

Interior provided U.S. Park Police officers for Zinke’s security because of worries of violence in the region, department spokeswoman Heather Swift said.

“The United States secretary of the Interior is in the presidential line of succession and has access to sensitive and classified information, which makes his protection a matter of national security,” Swift said. “In 2016 there were at least 5 terrorist attacks in Istanbul where the secretary traveled. During the period of travel there were several security incidents and threats in the region. Both of these considerations further merited a prudent security presence.”

Only two agencies — the State Department and the Secret Service — have specific authority allowing them to provide security to executive branch officials, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Despite that, Cabinet members in the 1990s came under scrutiny for traveling with security teams, a matter the GAO reported on in 1994.

“It's not necessarily an abuse of authority or a waste of taxpayer dollars if there's a credible threat, but it can be questionable if an agency chief just wants a big entourage and the trappings of power,” said Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the government watchdog group Project On Government Oversight. “Security personnel are not errand boys or girls and agency leaders are not royalty."

He added: "When it's a private vacation, there must be even more scrutiny given to these security arrangements than usual."

Obama administration Interior Secretary Sally Jewell abstained from traveling with security teams, said Kate Kelly, who served as senior adviser to Jewell and is now director of the public lands program at the Center for American Progress.

“I think, in her mind, it would have defeated the point of ‘getting away' and would have amounted to a totally unnecessary expense to taxpayers,” Kelly said.

Jewell, who was born in London, was not eligible to be in the line of succession.

Traveling with security staff even on official business is “incredibly expensive,” although the actual cost would depend on the nature of the trip and which department supplied the detail, said Chris Lu, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center who was a White House Cabinet administrator during the Obama administration.

Cabinet secretaries who required security for official travel would generally take two security personnel, one a “body man” who would stay close to the secretary and one “advance” who would arrange things at the destination, Lu said. The advance person would help a Cabinet secretary bypass the regular airport security lines and customs, pick the secretary up at the airport and drive him or her to the hotel and other destinations, said one source familiar with the process.

If safety was an issue in a foreign country, the department in question would have been expected to rely on the U.S. embassy in that country to provide security, Lu said.

"Unless there's a compelling national security justification, a Cabinet member should not bring a security detail on a personal vacation," Lu said. “We would not have allowed this practice during the Obama administration. The U.S. Treasury should not be your personal piggy bank."

The emails from Interior Special Assistant to the Secretary Caroline Boulton show that multiple members of a security team, one of whom was sent to the region in advance, were given temporary cell phones through which Zinke could contact them while there. One security team member was flagged in the email to be in Turkey in advance.

“For contacting your detail when they’re with you in Europe, these will be their temporary numbers,” Boulton wrote to Zinke on Aug. 3, the day before he was scheduled to leave. (The numbers themselves were redacted before Interior made the emails public as part of a batch of records it recently released under the Freedom of Information Act.)

According to an itinerary, Zinke arrived in Istanbul on Aug. 5 following an overnight flight from Washington and met his wife, Lola, who had been visiting Italy for the previous three weeks. The trip included "courtesy" visits with U.S. diplomats stationed in Istanbul and Athens, but the couple spent most of their time vacationing before returning to Washington on Aug. 19.

Lola Zinke shared photos of their vacation on her Twitter page and wrote that the couple was celebrating 25 years of marriage.

At the time of the trip, Interior would say only that Zinke was out of the country and provided no indication of when he left or would return. The vacation coincided with the tail end of the period Zinke had set aside to review national monument borders for a report he submitted to Trump on whether some of the protected areas should be shrunk. He supplied a draft to the White House later in the month, missing the deadline for a final report.

Zinke has already come under fire for mixing personal and official Interior business. Interior’s inspector general is scheduled to release its findings on his attendance at political events while on official travel around the middle of next month.

 

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I just heard this on the news.  I pounded my fists on my desk, shouted all my best words, really only the bigliest bestest yuuuuuuuge words:  f*ck, sh*t, damn, then  f*ck again and  then goddammit sh*t damn fu*k. 

I know, I know.  Y'all are wondering, But how does she REALLY feel?  I HATE John Bolton.  This is an appointment; no confirmation is required.   My impressions is that Bolton is deep in the weeds with Russia AND the NRA and maybe channeling big bucks from Russia through the NRA.  Oh, yeah, Russia.  What WAS I thinking?  Russians n' guns n' money.  Perfect fit for Trump, of course. 

I'm getting some bad George W Bush flashbacks, where various horrible people and chicken hawks were recycled from his father's administration.  Bolton.  Sheesh. 

I hope McMaster has a lot to say once he retires from the military this summer.  There are some retired generals who are starting to be quite vocal; I think they are starting to understand that Trump may be very well be treasonous in the most specific sense of the word. 

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

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2 hours ago, Howl said:

I know, I know.  Y'all are wondering, But how does she REALLY feel?  I HATE John Bolton.  This is an appointment; no confirmation is required.   My impressions is that Bolton is deep in the weeds with Russia AND the NRA and maybe channeling big bucks from Russia through the NRA.  Oh, yeah, Russia.  What WAS I thinking?  Russians n' guns n' money.  Perfect fit for Trump, of course. 

I'm getting some bad George W Bush flashbacks, where various horrible people and chicken hawks were recycled from his father's administration.  Bolton.  Sheesh. 

Right there with ya. I can't stand Bolton. I think Dumpy + Bolton = A far less safe world.

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"McMaster firing upends plan to oust other top Trump officials"

Spoiler

President Donald Trump’s decision to abruptly fire national security adviser H.R. McMaster surprised senior White House aides who had been preparing a single statement announcing the departure of multiple top Trump officials, according to two senior administration officials.

White House chief of staff John Kelly and other top aides were waiting for inspector general reports that they believed would deliver devastating verdicts on Veteran Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who have both been accused of racking up extravagant expenses. They were also debating whether several senior White House aides, including McMaster, should go with them.

It’s unclear which other West Wing officials were possibly set to depart with McMaster, but the two senior administration officials said they believed it would be easier to manage the optics if multiple firings were made public in a single statement instead of drawn out. The announcement, though, was not expected for at least another week.

Trump, however, upended those plans late Thursday, firing McMaster and offering his job to former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton in a move that surprised not only his top advisers — but also Bolton himself.

Though the hawkish conservative has spoken with the president several times in recent weeks, those close to him say he had no indication the president would offer him the job when he went to the White House for a meeting on Thursday. Bolton also was passed over for a top State Department job last year, reportedly because Trump was turned off by his bristly, full mustache.

And while McMaster has been the subject of multiple news reports in recent weeks predicting his imminent departure, Trump was said to be slow-walking the final decision, waiting for a strong replacement and appropriate landing spot for McMaster. White House aides, however, said the onslaught of news reports about McMaster’s inevitable demise had made it difficult for him to continue in the job.

A senior White House official said Thursday evening that Trump made clear earlier in the day that he had made the call to fire McMaster but did not indicate when. “Trump upends whatever he wants to upend,” a second White House official said.

The exact trigger for the timing of the ouster is unclear, but it comes on the heels of another damaging leak involving national security matters. The Washington Post late Tuesday revealed that briefing materials had instructed Trump “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” during his call with newly reelected Russian President Vladimir Putin — guidance that Trump ignored.

The unexpectedly quick personnel change is the latest example of Trump’s mercurial nature and his newfound confidence to follow his gut instincts. Earlier this month, Trump pulled the trigger on firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after flirting with the decision for months but being advised against the move by some of his senior aides.

The ouster of McMaster also throws into disarray the still-forming plans to oust multiple top officials in one swoop. Shulkin has long been viewed negatively by senior West Wing aides because he has repeatedly said he has been given the blessing of the White House to purge insolent VA staffers, even though he's been given no such approval, according to one administration official. Carson, meanwhile, has been seen as largely ineffective at running a large federal agency, but senior administration officials and others close to the White House say Trump aides harbor reservations about ousting him because he is the only black Cabinet member.

Both have been accused of excessive spending, with Shulkin facing accusations of racking up extravagant travel expenses with his wife during government trips and Carson defending the decision to install a $31,000 dining room set in his office.

A representative for Carson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shulkin said in a statement, “It would be highly inaccurate to report that I have had extravagant travel expenses — that's simply inaccurate. My wife's ethics [sic] approved coach airfare for an official invite (as was the situation with previous VA secretaries), was the sole government expense (not a single per diem or other expense) and we repaid every penny.”

Representatives for Shulkin and Carson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Several people over there that did not want this to happen before they were ready to do the others,” said a separate senior administration official. “There was definitely a consensus view in the building that they were going to do all these at once.”

Though the timing was unexpected, Trump’s decision to dismiss McMaster, a three-star Army general who has never meshed with the president personally, was not.

McMaster, who replaced Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a little over a year ago, is an intensely focused intellectual whose detailed briefings, by all accounts, drove the president crazy. Trump took to mocking him openly in the Oval Office, asking other White House aides why McMaster was so serious.

“Everyone knew he’d be out eventually,” said a second senior administration official.

White House aides expressed mixed feelings about Bolton’s impending arrival, which will take place as Trump negotiates a historic summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and as he weighs a decision, in early May, about whether to scuttle the Iran deal.

Trump’s decision to bring in Bolton comes after rumors of an administration post for him last year shook many in the Senate and foreign policy establishment. The former ambassador has riled up critics by arguing that the U.S. should bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program, dismissing the idea of a Palestinian state, and taking a proactive stance toward international military conflicts.

McMaster’s tenure at the White House was an uphill battle virtually from the outset because he butted heads not only with the president, but with Kelly and with Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Both were also agitating for his ouster.

McMaster clashed frequently with Mattis and also with Tillerson on policy matters. Kelly, who, like Mattis, is a retired Marine general, served under Mattis in Iraq, and the two remain close friends, and White House aides say Mattis was able to openly relay his complaints about McMaster to the chief of staff.

Trump and Kelly both seriously considered firing McMaster in November, when they also came close to dismissing Tillerson, but held back when the two could not agree on a successor.

A White House official said Trump was ultimately drawn to Bolton, in part because he was impressed by his many appearances on Fox News.

Larry Kudlow, the economic analyst and CNBC contributor who was recently named as a replacement for former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, also appealed to Trump because of his appearances on cable news. Trump has also developed close personal friendships with both men, the latest indication that personality plays a central role in the president’s personnel picks.

We live in a reality show circus.

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"The real reason Trump’s choice of John Bolton should terrify you"

Spoiler

President Trump’s choice of John Bolton as his new national security adviser — and his ongoing escalation of trade hostilities and reshuffling of his legal team — have all been widely interpreted as evidence that Trump is finally governing and conducting himself as he wanted to all along. He’s tired of advisers who are steering him away from his true agenda and persona, goes this narrative; instead, he’s finally getting back to the basics that make Trump who he really is.

But this framing is built on a distortion that underplays just how dangerous Trump’s evolution really threatens to become. What’s really happening is that Trump is increasingly surrounding himself with advisers who are better than the “adults in the room” at manipulating his erratic and shifting impulses and whims, by giving a shape to them he can accept and act upon.

Axios reports this morning that sources close to Trump say he “feels” that Bolton “will finally deliver the foreign policy the president wants” on Iran and North Korea. What makes this account almost certainly dead on is the word “feels.” As Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard points out, Bolton has skillfully used his conservative media perches to send messages to Trump that nudge him toward “more hawkish stances” by “casting them as fulfillments of Trump’s own pledges and true beliefs.”

Bolton wants to bomb Iran. There is no particular reason to believe that Trump either favors or opposes that stance. Trump knows that the Iran nuclear deal is bad because Barack Obama negotiated it; Trump knows Trump is strong and Obama is weak; and Trump knows his supporters cheered when he vowed to rip the agreement to shreds. But Trump has not meaningfully articulated why we should pull out of it, because he can’t.

And so, when Trump was debating whether to certify the Iran deal last summer and was unhappy with advisers urging him to do so on substantive grounds, then-adviser Stephen K. Bannon handed him a piece by Bolton urging him to decertify. Bolton’s piece cast that as the only course consistent with Trump’s “view that the Iran deal was a diplomatic debacle,” because Obama had given Iran “unimaginably favorable terms.” Trump has no idea whether this is true — it isn’t — but it persuaded Trump to come close to decertifying, though ultimately the adults prevailed that time.

The point is that Trump doesn’t grasp the details, but Bolton skillfully gave shape to his impulses. Now Bolton will be in an even better position to persuade Trump to kill the Iran deal, and if and when that happens, to push Trump more in the direction of his own bellicose designs, which Bolton will almost certainly cast as in keeping with Trump’s vow to be tougher than Obama.

Or take North Korea. Everyone knows that when Trump agreed to meet with Kim Jong Un, he did so on an impulse, with no thought through rationale or sense of the risks and complexities involved. Bolton wants to go to war with North Korea and has dismissed talks. But he cleverly greeted Trump’s announcement by describing it as “shock and awe” and an opportunity for Trump to give North Korea an ultimatum if it does not immediately begin “total denuclearization.” This, too, gave a shape to Trump’s impulse that he will very probably find flattering, but also one that might move Trump toward Bolton’s position.

If Trump now “feels” that Bolton will give him the policies he wants on Iran and North Korea, it’s because Bolton is skilled at making Trump feel that way. That’s ominous, because it means Bolton may be able to push Trump toward believing that Bolton’s goals are a realization of his own foreign policy vision, such as it is.

Trump’s vision is formless

And that foreign policy vision is formless. During the campaign, Trump opposed the Iraq War, sending the message that he won’t get drawn into the misguidedly idealistic or stupidly conceived military adventurism so typical of our clueless, corrupt elites. But Trump has never been either antiwar or an isolationist. His posture was rather that he will magically smash our enemies and aggressively represent our interests abroad effortlessly, without any serious cost, because he’s tougher, stronger and smarter than those elites. How hard will it be for Bolton to shape those impulses into something more in line with his own vision?

On trade, the process leading to Trump’s decision to impose tariffs was a joke with no regard for specifics. But it did showcase the rising star of trade adviser Peter Navarro, who unabashedly stated that he had provided the “analytics” to “confirm his intuition,” which is “always right.” Trump just pushed out lawyer John Dowd, who advised careful cooperation with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and has added Joe diGenova, who has fed Trump’s fantasies of a “deep-state” plot against him, signaling the much more aggressive confrontation with Mueller that Trump clearly craves, without having the foggiest strategic rationale. In both cases, these people are successfully giving shape to Trump’s impulses.

As Michelle Goldberg recently observed, one after another, the people who are supposed to be “checking Donald Trump’s worst instincts and most erratic whims” have departed. But this doesn’t mean Trump is getting back to being who he always wanted to be. It means he is increasingly listening to people who are good at exploiting and shaping those instincts and whims.

...

 

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I hadn't thought of this, but now it scares me. I don't think Dumpy would have come up with the idea himself, but someone may have been whispering in his ear.

20180323_wapo1.PNG

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Please, Rufus: "John Bolton is dangerous. But Trump’s inept White House might restrain him."

Spoiler

President Trump finally did what everyone knew he was going to do, firing Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and replacing him with John Bolton. It is hard to find anyone enthusiastic about Bolton’s appointment: Liberals who have hated him for years are horrified that Bolton is now, finally, near the levers of power.

But even among conservatives, the ritual support from exhausted, hangdog Republicans (along with the usual, if tepid, praise from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal) cannot disguise the fact that Trump has finally run out of options and defaulted to a man who, in Trump’s eyes, is likely more qualified because of his appearances on Fox News than anything he knows about foreign policy.

Bolton is focused and has a reputation for being a relentless bureaucratic infighter who will certainly be more skilled at manipulating the process than McMaster was. His critics point to his antagonism toward the United Nations and his unrepentant support for the invasion of Iraq, but these views are not actually that unusual among conservatives. Far more dangerous is his fixation on military adventurism in the Middle East and especially in Asia.

That horrified reaction from all sides of the foreign policy world, though, shows why Bolton is unlikely to turn his most extreme ideas into actual policy. Make no mistake: He can do plenty of damage to the country as national security adviser, and he likely will. But the fact that Bolton has, for years, been kept out of the highest levels of government suggests that he has had difficulty finding any takers for views that verge on crackpot militarism. That is not likely to change.

Although media reports refer to Bolton as supporting “preemptive war,” this is inaccurate. Preemption is a form of self-defense in the face of immediate danger. (When Israel attacked Arab forces that were about to attack it first in 1967, for example, that was preemption.) What Bolton has advocated, repeatedly, is preventive war, a discretionary use of force far in advance of a gathering threat. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or when Nazi Germany invaded Norway, these were preventive wars. So, for that matter, was the U.S. invasion of Iraq; there’s a reason that Bolton himself regularly fudges these terms to use the more attractive notion of preemption.

Worse, Bolton thinks that preventive war can destroy regimes hostile to the United States as a way of enhancing its own security. He has advocated unilateral action against Iran, for example, as  a means both of stopping the Iranian nuclear program and as a path to regime change.

There are other reasons the new national security adviser will be in for a rough ride, aside from the extreme positions he advocates. Bolton represents yet another betrayal of the Trump base, as some of the most hard-line conservatives are already screaming. (That reaction is one small consolation in all of this for the Never Trump Republicans, of whom I am one.) Yes, there are still many Trump supporters who don’t know much and care even less about foreign policy. But that could change: Trump promised his voters that he was the alternative to a cabal of warmongers nesting in Washington’s darkest branches, and he cannot now deliver on that promise by hiring the most aggressive hawk in the tree.

Trump’s base, of course, does love to see distress among people who actually know things about policy, and in that sense, hiring Bolton could reap a short-term political benefit for the White House. But even Fox News will not be able to rescue its former talking head once Bolton starts proposing to embark on wars that Trump swore he would never start. Nor is it likely that Bolton will immediately seize control of a national security bureaucracy still coping with nearly two decades of continual war and whose most respected voice today is that of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Indeed, Bolton might find the tension of working for Trump irresolvable. The president ran as an isolationist and an America-firster; Bolton believes in military action to attack regimes that are even a potential threat to the United States. So far, Trump has corrupted the views of almost every adviser who has worked for him. Will Bolton change Trump’s mind, or will Trump mousetrap Bolton into backtracking on his own beliefs?

Perhaps the greatest danger is that this appointment represents Bolton’s last chance at a position of authority, and thus he will shoot for the moon in an all-out attempt to see if he can turn years of blunted and discredited plans into reality.

If so, Bolton’s adherence to his own agenda could well lead to a staff revolt in the National Security Council (if one is not already in the offing); to greater paralysis in the interagency policy process; to yet more destruction in the State Department; and to even greater political and operational distance between the White House and the Defense Department.

Which means that as panicked as the Trump administration’s opponents might be, the larger danger is not that Bolton will succeed in remaking American foreign policy as much it is that he will contribute to the utter incoherence of the Trump foreign policy team, and consequently accelerate the free-fall of American power and prestige in the world. And that, more than any of John Bolton’s weird schemes, could invite greater tests of American will and even raise the risk of war.

Bolton’s views are dangerous, and, yes, he could very well be the vehicle by which the United States yet again chooses a preventive war that no one knows how to finish. The more likely outcome, however, is also the one that would, somewhat pathetically, also be the best one: that Bolton turns out to be just another celebrity hire who thinks he has been brought on board to help steer the ship of state — only to find that the rudder has long been broken, and the captain is already extending yet another plank to be walked.

 

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"No modern elected president has run through Cabinet members like Trump"

Spoiler

There are rumors that President Trump is close to dumping his secretary for veterans affairs, David Shulkin, whose tenure under Trump has been marred by both scandal and a remarkable internal insurrection. Trump reportedly has been considering “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth for the role, which rings true to other Trump hires. Another “Fox & Friends” veteran is now acting undersecretary of state; his newly announced national security adviser, John Bolton, had to give up his Fox News contract to take the gig.

Trump is also reportedly frustrated with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has managed to make headlines recently for considering buying a $31,000 table and for being unable to fully explain why he was considering doing it.

Were Trump to drop both Shulkin and Carson by the end of the week, it would be the most Cabinet officials to leave a presidency within its first 450 days since Gerald Ford, whose first 450 days included transitioning the Cabinet he inherited from Richard Nixon post-resignation. Having two Cabinet members leave within the first 450 days would match the first term of William McKinley.

But, of course, those two Cabinet members wouldn’t be the only two for Trump. He has already lost three members of his Cabinet: Rex Tillerson, fired as secretary of state; Tom Price, resigned under pressure as health and human services secretary; and John F. Kelly, moved from the Department of Homeland Security to the White House to serve as chief of staff.

Of course, Cabinets are bigger than they used to be, so losing three (or up to five) members is a smaller bite than it would have been if, say, Thomas Jefferson had lost three members of his Cabinet.

... < interesting chart >

But when we compare Trump with other recent presidents who had at least 13 Cabinet members (everyone since Ford, in other words), he compares unfavorably.

... < graph >

The only other recent president to lose a member of his Cabinet within the first 450 days who wasn’t a holdover from a previous administration was Bill Clinton. His first secretary of defense, Les Aspin, resigned in 1994, a little over a year into his term, because of controversies in office and because of his health. He died in 1995.

A poll from CNN and polling partner SRSS released Monday found that Americans held Trump’s Cabinet in fairly low esteem. A plurality of respondents said members of Trump’s Cabinet were more likely to misuse taxpayer money than past Cabinet officials, and just shy of half said the Cabinet members were using their positions for personal gain. Half said Trump’s Cabinet members were less likely to actually be qualified for their jobs.

That is at odds with how Trump once viewed his Cabinet picks. Shortly before he took office, Trump described his team as having “by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled.” The question, then, is how the replacements to his Cabinet will fare. Will their IQs be even higher still?

A question for the White House press corps to ask.

 

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I've seen multiple items about Facebook 'freely' handing over personal information to ICE, and people are falling over themselves to condemn Facebook for doing this.

However, before you get indignant about it all, you have to realize that corporations are legally required to hand over certain information (namely metadata) to government entities if they so desire.

Here's an interesting thread explaining it all:

Plus, it turns out the email referenced in the original article from The Independant wrongly concluded the information request was for an illegal immigrant. It turns out it was information ICE needed to track a child molester. Changes your perspective somewhat, doesn't it?

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 I don't understand why Americans are not on the streets every day. EVERYTHING  he does is terrible. 

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Trump regularly hires people he lusted after while watching Fox but this is new I think, he''s progressed to doing the same on Disney Channel. 

 

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