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Loyalists and jesters fill Trump’s ‘winter White House’ for court of King Donald
by Evelyn Reynolds 16 November 2024, 12:00
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View image in fullscreenThe shutters are down, the curtains are open, and Donald Trump’s opulent, waterfront palace of intrigue is open for business once more. A succession of ambitious, ultra-loyal subjects has paraded through, vying for attention and seeking favors from the throne. Servants fall over themselves to indulge their master’s every whim. And then there are the jesters …Given this week’s extraordinary developments at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, as he builds the cabinet with which he will govern in January, it is difficult to escape the notion that the operation is being run something akin to a royal court.Trump certainly gives the appearance of acting as America’s first monarch since the official end of the revolutionary war in 1783, plotting, scheming and playing favorites, and setting individuals against each other as his courtiers are assembled.His unexpected nomination as attorney general of the Mar-a-Lago regular Matt Gaetz, the controversial Florida congressman under investigation for sexual misconduct, was a power move that wrong-footed even his closest advisers, and threw a gauntlet to Republicans in the US Senate who must confirm the appointment.It followed Trump’s equally astonishing choice a day earlier of a weekend presenter from the rightwing TV station Fox News to be the US defense secretary in charge of the world’s largest and most potent military: Pete Hegseth, the ultimate entertainer who caught the eye of the king.Public health experts decried the choice of the vaccine denier Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary. And perhaps the most bizarre spectacle of all is the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, a billionaire who has been elected to precisely nothing, strutting around the expansive resort’s perfectly manicured lawns and flaunting his new bromance with the next supposed leader of the free world.Reports say Musk has accompanied Trump almost every day since the election, joining telephone calls to multiple world leaders, offering advice on policy and staffing decisions, playing golf with Trump family members, and dining with them on the open-air patio.Musk received a standing ovation from assembled guests on the other side of the red velvet rope, according to the New York Times, and joined Trump and the classical singer Chris Macchio in a cringy rendition of God Bless America at a Thursday night gala.On Tuesday, five days into his tenure as Trump’s most favored house guest, Musk was named joint head of the freshlycreated Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), where he will generate plans to “slash and burn” government spending. It remains to be seen if any proposed cuts extend to the billions of dollars in lucrative government contracts and subsidies enjoyed by his own companies, SpaceX and Tesla.“He loves Mar-a-Lago. Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him,” Trump joked to Republicans on Wednesday in his first return to Washington DC since the election, before adding ominously: “Until I don’t like him.”Observers say it is no surprise that these machinations are playing out at Mar-a-Lago, the $1m-a-head private members’ club haughtily branded his “winter White House” by Trump during his first term, where he handed out ambassadorships to wealthy friends and donors, and where he took policy advice from regulars written on cocktail napkins.“A lot of action will get done down there during Trump’s second term, as we’re seeing right now with the transition,” said the political historian Matt Dallek, professor of political management at George Washington University.“It’s really a hub. People come in and out of there all the time, he spends a great deal of time there, and as he famously likes to do, he has multiple people telling him different things and he talks to a lot of people.“He’ll be talking to his wealthy friends, and people who come to the resort from around the world to pay homage to him there. He partly likes it because it’s kind of a shrine to him, and it’s his best version of himself, his best vision of himself and the kind of power that he wants to cultivate. He loves the attention. He loves the people coming in and around him.”Dallek noted that Trump also thrived on the atmosphere of unpredictability his presence at Mar-a-Lago creates. This was evident this week by his unorthodox cabinet hiring and procession of hopefuls desperate for an interview in a hastily assembled war room at what CNN called the “chaotic epicenter” of his transition.“There’s a certain amount of chaos that has long surrounded Trump, that Trump really cultivates, and that is a core part of his political identity. And Mar-a-Lago has been a center of that chaos,” Dallek said.“It’s been a kind of hothouse of fringe figures who’ve come there. He dined there with Ye, the antisemitic rapper, and Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist. There have been foreign spies who have attempted to penetrate the resort. It’s where he stored some of the most highly classified documents on the planet in his bathroom.“We don’t need to look very far back in time to get a sense of the goings-on, how freewheeling and just how bonkers it is. He’s dealing with these incredibly important matters of life and death, of national security, and doing it in this unsecured, chaotic atmosphere where people are coming and going all the time, and where some of his more memorable, and memorably unhinged, moments have occurred.”Dallek, and others, expect Trump to spend considerable time at Mar-a-Lago during his second term. During his first four years in office, the Washington Post calculated in 2021, he was there for all or part of 142 days, and played an estimated 87 rounds at his Trump International golf club in West Palm Beach. Mar-a-Lago’s 128 guest suites are always full when he is in residence.“It’s possible that some people just want to hang out with the president and the people who are around the president, but I think people were explicit about it and the first presidency was an opportunity to be able to tell him what your thoughts were, but also to seek favor,” Robert Weissman, president of the Washington DC-based pro-transparency group Public Citizen, told the Guardian in August.“There are profound and systemic issues regarding ethics, and big money, and access for the rich, but Trump is in a category by himself.”As well as operating Mar-a-Lago as his command center ahead of his second administration, Trump is also reaping a significant financial windfall.Mar-a-Lago is expected to be at full occupancy until January’s inauguration, and CNN reported that members had been offered money by outsiders eager to accompany them on to the grounds to get face time with him.Even after he takes office, return trips to Mar-a-Lago will keep Trump’s coffers swollen. In October, it was revealed that Trump properties had overcharged the Secret Service by 300% for rooms occupied by agents providing security for Trump and his family.“Of course it’ll be a money-making opportunity for him,” Dallek said. “Which he’ll never pass up.” More
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Hardliners, loyalists and a dog killer: Trump’s new White House team – podcast
by Evelyn Reynolds 15 November 2024, 02:00
When Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017, he came with a team of veteran Republicans, conventional politicians and celebrated generals, as well as the odd Trump ideologue or family member.As Guardian US political correspondent Lauren Gambino explains to Michael Safi, it was often a bad fit – marked by a record churn of senior staff.This week, as Trump again prepares a cabinet for office, he is doing things differently, valuing loyalty above all, and – from the Department of Defence to Justice to Homeland Security – nominating a series of extreme figures for his next government.Will the Republican-controlled Senate still wave them through? And what effect will the appointments have on Trump’s four years in power if it does? More
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Line up to kiss the ring! How to join the brownnosers sucking up to Trump | Arwa Mahdawi
by Evelyn Reynolds 14 November 2024, 13:00
Let the humiliation Olympics begin. As Donald Trump readies himself for his revenge tour, world leaders and business moguls are falling over themselves to show the incoming president how much they admire him. Even if it means making an embarrassment of themselves in the process.While it’s only natural for the rich and powerful to try to ingratiate themselves with the incoming president of the United States, the extent to which people are lining up to kiss the ring is remarkable. This isn’t just diplomacy as usual: it speaks to Trump’s unapologetically transactional politics. He has made it very clear that loyalty will be richly rewarded and promised to ruthlessly pursue his enemies. As a result, we appear to have entered into a golden age of brown-nosing.Step one in transforming yourself into Trump’s lapdog: delete any previous criticism of the former president that you may have ill-advisedly put out back when you still had a spine. See, for example, Australia’s ambassador to the US, the former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who appears to have stayed up all night recently hitting the delete button on Twitter.“[Trump is] the most destructive president in history,” Rudd declared on Twitter, now X, in 2020, for example. “He drags America and democracy through the mud.”That tweet, along with others critical of the former president, has now been wiped clean. In a statement posted on his personal website last week, Rudd explained he had made those remarks back when he was a political commentator and deleted them to “eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as Ambassador”.A more honest explanation might be that Rudd is terrified Trump will come up with a nasty nickname for him (Rudd the dud?) and impose enormous tariffs on Australia as payback.You can press the delete button as much as you like, but the internet has a very long memory. So, if you can’t completely delete your way into Trump’s good books the next step is to deny and defuse. Technically, you may have made some nasty comments about Trump in the past but you didn’t mean them and, anyway, you’ve seen the light now.This appears to be how the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, is dealing with the fact that, during his days as a backbench MP, he described Trump as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Lammy has also called Trump “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and “no friend of Britain”.Seems pretty unambiguous. According to Lammy, we should forget all that because it is “old news”. In an interview with the BBC, Lammy added that he’d made those comments when he was a silly backbencher and he knows better now. “[W]hat you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the real duty of public office are two different things,” Lammy explained. “And I am foreign secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then.”What exactly does the older and wiser Lammy now know? Perhaps that he really likes having power and doesn’t want anything as silly as having consistent morals to jeopardize it?To be fair, it seems that a lot of people are now finding out a lot of important facts about Trump that they didn’t know before because JD Vance has also made good use of Lammy’s “older and wiser” defence. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Vance called Trump an “idiot” who was “unfit for our nation’s highest office”. He also characterized the man who would become his boss as “America’s Hitler”. The incoming vice-president has of course, now realised that he was “wrong about Donald Trump”.And he is in powerful company: you would struggle to find a titan of industry who hasn’t criticized Trump in the past and who isn’t rapidly backtracking now. The Apple CEO, Tim Cook; the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai; the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella; and the former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos are among the high-profile business figures who have radically changed their tune when it comes to Trump.The Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has also undergone a Trumpian metamorphosis. He once accused Trump of inciting violence and undermining the law; now he is lining up with the rest of the tech bros to gush about how excited he is to work with the Trump administration. Does Zuck always fawn over incoming presidents? No, he doesn’t. As Popular Information has noted: “Zuckerberg offered no congratulatory message at all to Biden after his 2020 victory.”More broadly, Zuckerberg, who has been busy drastically revamping his wardrobe and public image, seems to have decided that Trump is a figure to admire and emulate. He called Trump a “badass” in July, after the former president survived an assassination attempt. Then, during a recent conference, Zuckerberg said the biggest mistake of his career was apologizing too much. Trump, after all, has proved you can get away with anything; that power puts you above the law.Weaseling your way into Trump’s good books may be humiliating but it comes with a big payday: the president-elect is already busy doling out favours to friends. Elon Musk, for example, who spent over $100m getting Trump elected has been tapped to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. This allows Musk, whose companies have received more than $15.4bn in government contracts, to be a lot more efficient about rerouting public funds into his private purse.Meanwhile Trump is assembling his cabinet, and it is has become apparent that the most important qualification for office is a history of saying nice things about the president-elect. Pete Hegseth, for example, a Fox News personality and military veteran with no meaningful foreign policy experience has been picked to be secretary of defense. The New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who stood by Trump when he faced impeachment and became one of his staunchest cheerleaders, is being rewarded for her sycophancy with a gig as ambassador to the United Nations. Like Hegseth, she also has no meaningful foreign policy experience but she will support Israel and Trump no matter what they do, which is all that matters.The South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, will reportedly lead the Department of Homeland Security. She doesn’t have a huge amount of experience in this area, nor does she represent a border state, but she does have a lot of experience in trying to curry favour with Trump. Noem, who is famous for once shooting her family dog, has echoed Trump’s hardline immigration rhetoric and plied the president with gifts. In 2020, the New York Times reported that Noem welcomed Trump to her corner of the country with a “a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore” that included his face on it. Noem also moderated the famous campaign town hall in Pennsylvania where Trump stopped taking questions and, instead, danced (along with Noem) to his favourite songs.Then there’s “Little Marco”. Trump levelled some very personal attacks against Marco Rubio and the senator responded in kind back in 2016. Since then, however, Rubio has fallen into line and groveled at Trump’s feet enough that it seems he’s being forgiven for mocking the size of Trump’s hands and saying “he’s gonna make America orange”. Rubio is reportedly being considered for secretary of state.So there you go: we are officially a quid pro quo economy now. It’s no wonder that Trump’s former critics are all suddenly reinventing themselves and tech bros are lining up to say how “excited’ they are to work with the Trump administration. What’s a little bit of brown-nosing, when you’re rewarded with a giant pot of gold? More
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Trump announces Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard for top intelligence post – US politics live
by Evelyn Reynolds 13 November 2024, 20:40
Donald Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz, of his most prominent defenders in Congress, to serve as attorney general.The appointment could put Gaetz in charge of Trump’s promised effort to retaliate against his political opponents, including officials who served in his previous administration but have since repudiated him. Trump announced the nomination, which must be confirmed by the Senate, on Truth Social:
It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States. Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department. On the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of DOJ, Matt played a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and exposing alarming and systemic Government Corruption and Weaponization. He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law…
Gaetz, a congressman representing a very conservative district in the Florida panhandle, became known nationally last year when he was a key player in the putsch that ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.Susan Collins, the moderate Republican senator of Maine told reporters she was “shocked” but the Matt Gaetz nomination.“I was shocked by the announcement — that shows why the advise-and-consent process is so important,” Collins said. “I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing.”Matt Gaetz has been one of the most loyal backers of Donald Trump in the capitol, supporting Trump’s attempts to deny the results of the 2020 election. He voted with about 150 Republicans to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Along with members of the far-right group the Proud Boys, he took part in protests against the result of a Senate race in Florida.He also evoked language adopted by the Proud Boys at Trump’s hush money trial earlier this year, posting on social media: “Standing back, and standing by, Mr. President” along with a photo of him with Trump and other congressional Republicans.Hill reporters are gathering shocked and evasive responses from Republicans reacting to the Gaetz nomination.Senator Chuck Grassley stopped talking to reporters when asked for his reaction.House Appropriations chair Tom Cole avoided responding as well: “I know nothing about it.”Senator Ron Johnson: “The president gets to pick his nominees.”Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who Donald Trump just nominated to be his attorney general, has for years faced allegations of sexual misconduct.Last year, Gaetz said the justice department had closed an investigation that began after allegations emerged of the congressman having sex with a 17-year-old girl and paying for her travel. The House ethics committee earlier this year announced that it was beginning its own inquiry into whether Gaetz “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favours to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct”.That investigation has not yet been publicly concluded. Here’s more about it:Since he first arrived in Congress in 2017, just days before Donald Trump took office, Matt Gaetz has been one of his most vocal advocates on Capitol Hill.Now, Gaetz may lead the justice department, and ensure that prosecutorial decisions, which are normally made independently by the attorney general, are to Trump’s benefit.From a profile of Gaetz the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino published last year, shortly after he led the successful effort to oust fellow Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House:
“Florida Man. Built for Battle,” reads Gaetz’s bio on X, formerly Twitter.
Gaetz followed his father into politics more than two decades ago. After serving in the Florida statehouse, Gaetz was elected in 2016 to represent a ruby-red chunk of the Florida panhandle.
Since his arrival in Washington, the pompadoured lawmaker has built a political brand as a far-right provocateur, courting controversy seemingly as a matter of course.
Like Donald Trump, to whom he is fiercely loyal, Gaetz is more interested in sparring with political foes than in the dry business of governance, according to his critics. On Capitol Hill, he has repeatedly disrupted House proceedings, including once barging into a secure facility where Democrats were holding a deposition hearing.
In 2018, he was condemned for inviting a Holocaust denier to Trump’s State of the Union address. A year later, he hired a speechwriter who had been fired by the Trump White House after speaking at a conference that attracts white nationalists.
Months after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Gaetz embarked on an “America First” tour with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman, in which they amplified the former president’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. He also continued to attack Republicans critical of Trump, using language that reportedly alarmed McCarthy, who feared the lawmakers’ words could incite violence.
Donald Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz, of his most prominent defenders in Congress, to serve as attorney general.The appointment could put Gaetz in charge of Trump’s promised effort to retaliate against his political opponents, including officials who served in his previous administration but have since repudiated him. Trump announced the nomination, which must be confirmed by the Senate, on Truth Social:
It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States. Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department. On the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of DOJ, Matt played a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and exposing alarming and systemic Government Corruption and Weaponization. He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law…
Gaetz, a congressman representing a very conservative district in the Florida panhandle, became known nationally last year when he was a key player in the putsch that ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.The Senate confirms nominees for director of national intelligence, a cabinet-level position created after 9/11 to oversee the intelligence community and liaise directly with the president.There is reason to think that Tulsi Gabbard might raise a few eyebrows in the Senate, even when it is controlled by Trump-aligned Republicans, as it will be from January.As a congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard visited Syria, met with its president Bashar al-Assad, and expressed skepticism about well-documented atrocities attributed to his forces during the country’s civil war. More recently, she has spent time attacking Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It’s all a turnabout from her days in Democratic politics, when she vyed unsuccessfully for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 and backed Bernie Sanders’ candidacy four years prior. Here’s more about how her views have shifted dramatically:Donald Trump has named former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as his nominee for director of national intelligence. Gabbard is another loyalist who frequently joined Trump at campaign events.Here’s what he had to say in announcing in picking Gabbard, who represented Hawaii from 2013 to 2021, and endorsed Trump after leaving the Democratic party:
I am pleased to announce that former Congresswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Tulsi Gabbard, will serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our Country and the Freedoms of all Americans. As a former Candidate for the Democrat Presidential Nomination, she has broad support in both Parties – She is now a proud Republican! I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength. Tulsi will make us all proud!
Donald Trump has just officially named Florida senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for secretary of state.News of the choice filtered out over the past day or so, but Trump had not made it official, until now. Here’s what he said:
It is my Great Honor to announce that Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The United States Secretary of State. Marco is a Highly Respected Leader, and a very powerful Voice for Freedom. He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries. I look forward to working with Marco to Make America, and the World, Safe and Great Again!
Joe Biden’s meeting with Donald Trump was attended by Susie Wiles, who the president-elect recently announced would serve as his White House chief of staff.Wiles, who co-managed Trump’s campaign, will be the first woman to hold role. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, also attended.While Donald Trump appears to have mostly stayed out of the race for Senate Republican leader, the Maga hardcore were rooting for Florida senator Rick Scott.He unsuccessfully challenged Mitch McConnell for the leadership post two years ago, and his bid this year was similarly unsuccessful. In a statement released after John Thune won the race, Scott said:
I may have lost the vote, but I am optimistic. I ran for leader with one mission: to fundamentally change how the Senate operates and upend the status quo so we can actually start representing the voters who put us here. When I announced, I said that we are in a moment where we need dramatic change. The voters confirmed that last week when they elected President Trump and Republicans took the majority in both chambers of Congress with a clear mandate.
…
While it isn’t the result we hoped for, I will do everything possible to make sure John Thune is successful in accomplishing President Trump’s agenda.
When asked about comments made by Trump’s new pick for secretary of defense, Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth, that “we should not have women in combat roles”, Jean-Pierre spoke to the “importance of gender equality, of women in the workforce”.She said the Biden administration does not agree with those views.Biden “looked forward to the conversation and appreciated the conversation,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that the two met for nearly two hours.“I think the length of the meeting tells you they had an in-depth conversation on an array of issues.”A reporter asked Jean-Pierre if there were any conversations between Biden and Trump about not accepting the results of the 2020 election, but she said it was now about “moving forward”.“There was an election last week and the American people spoke.” More
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Trump’s early second-term choices fuel fears of extremist agenda
by Evelyn Reynolds 13 November 2024, 20:09
Donald Trump may have won a second term in the White House just last week, but his recent administration appointments have already heightened fears among some who believe his return to the White House will lead to an extremist agenda.On immigration, Trump has chosen loyalists and hardliners: Stephen Miller will serve as deputy chief of staff for policy and Department of Homeland Security adviser; Tom Homan as “border czar”, and Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor, will lead the Department of Homeland Security.Miller, previously a Trump adviser, played a significant role in crafting Trump’s immigration policies in his first administration, including the Muslim ban. Homan was the former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump’s first administration and a supporter of the family separation policy. Noem has been a vocal and strong Trump ally for the better part of a decade.This trio is likely to help bring to fruition Trump’s campaign promise of the mass deportation of millions of undocumented migrants living in the US.On Wednesday, Trump stunned many by announcing that he would be nominatingRepublican congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of his most prominent defenders, to serve as attorney general. Gaetz represents a conservative district in the Florida Panhandle, and became known nationally last year when he was a key player in the putsch that ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.Gaetz was also the subject of a federal sex-trafficking investigation that ended in 2023 when the Biden justice department declined to bring charges. Gaetz had insisted throughout he was innocent of any wrongdoing.Trump also nominated former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence.Gabbard, who served in the US military in Iraq, spent four terms as a Democratic congresswoman representing Hawaii, and ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020, before quitting the party in 2022, and becoming a supporter of Trump.On Tuesday, Trump shocked the Pentagon and the wider defense world by appointing the army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as the new defense secretary.A staunch conservative, Hegseth opposes what he calls “woke” military programs aimed at promoting equity and inclusion and has questioned the role of women in combat. He has also advocated for pardoning service members accused of war crimes.He reportedly formed a friendship with Trump during his appearances on Fox & Friends.Speaking with Politico, Eric Edelman, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official during the Bush administration, said that Trump’s choices so far revealed that he “puts his highest value on loyalty” adding that one of the main criteria appeared to be “how well do people defend Donald Trump on television?”Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Independent Veterans of America, criticized Hegseth’s appointment on X, describing the Fox News host as “undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history” and “the most overtly political”.“Brace yourself, America,” he added.Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who previously claimed “there is no such thing as a West Bank”, was chosen as the next US ambassador to Israel, indicating a return to an explicitly pro-Israel administration reminiscent of Trump’s first.The Jewish Democratic Council of America criticized Huckabee’s nomination, stating that his “extremist views” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not advance US national security or prospects for peace.Signaling a more combative US position toward the United Nations, the New York representative Elise Stefanik has been chosen to be the next ambassador. Stefanik has called to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.Stefanik gained attention last year after her aggressive questioning of three university presidents over antisemitism on campuses.Gerry Connolly, a Democratic representative, criticized the appointment of Stefanik, telling the Hill it was a “gift to Vladimir Putin” and adding that “she abandoned Ukrainians in April” and “this further signals Donald Trump and Maga’s retreat from the global stage”.On Saturday, Trump announced that Michael Pompeo, the former secretary of state who has criticized the former president and his policies over the years, and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who challenged Trump in the Republican primary, would not be part of his second administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe rejection of Haley and Pompeo may also be viewed as the rejection of two individuals who have backed US support for Ukraine.John Ratcliffe, a close ally of Trump and former director of national intelligence, has been appointed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence at the end of Trump’s first term, during which he faced accusations from Democrats and former officials of declassifying intelligence to aid Trump and attack political opponents such as Joe Biden, a claim his office has denied.Lee Zeldin, the former New York congressman, has been chosen to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, leading to criticism from environmental groups.As a representative, Zeldin voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed billions of dollars to expand clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and also opposed climate-related legislation, according to the environmental advocacy group League of Conservation Voters.Ben Jealous, Sierra Club’s executive director, called Zeldin an “unqualified, anti-American worker who opposes efforts to safeguard our clean air and water”, adding that his appointment “lays bare Donald Trump’s intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs, and our future out to corporate polluters”.Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, Trump said, which aims to cut federal bureaucracy by roughly a third.Although not a government agency, it will operate externally to drive significant reforms and introduce an entrepreneurial approach to government.Musk’s appointment drew criticism from Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights non-profit.“Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack,” co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.Marco Rubio, the Florida senator known for his hardline policies on China, Iran and Venezuela, is expected to be appointed as Trump’s secretary of state, and Trump has asked Mike Waltz, a congressman, retired Green Beret and a longtime ally known for his tough stance on China, to become his national security adviser.Notably, Rubio has received support from John Fetterman, the Democratic senator who stated on Tuesday that despite their political differences, he believes Rubio is a strong choice and looks forward to voting for his confirmation.Other appointments have included Susie Wiles, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, as chief of staff; the real estate investor and longtime friend and Trump donor Steve Witkoff to be his special envoy to the Middle East; and William Joseph McGinley, who served as cabinet secretary in the first term, as White House counsel, among others.In his announcement, Trump said McGinley would help him “advance our America First agenda” while “fighting for election integrity and against the weaponization of law enforcement”. 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Trump selects Elon Musk to lead government efficiency department
by Evelyn Reynolds 13 November 2024, 04:29
Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said on Tuesday.Despite the name, the department will not be a government agency. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.” He added that the move would shock government systems.Trump said the duo “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.Posting on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk pledged to document all actions of the department online for “maximum transparency”.“Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!” he said, while also promise to keep “a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars”.Ramaswamy also responded to the announcement of his appointment on X. “We will not go gently, @elonmusk”, he said, adding an American flag emoji.It is not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu and the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk promotes. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.The value of dogecoin has more than doubled since election day, tracking a surge in cryptocurrency markets on expectations of a softer regulatory ride under a Trump administration. Shares in Tesla are up about 30% since the election.Trump said their work would conclude by 4 July 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.Ramaswamy is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican party nomination last year. After dropping out of the race, he threw his support behind Trump. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump’s cabinet.He also has no government experience, but has pushed for cost-cutting in the corporate sector. After building a stake in the struggling online media firm Buzzfeed, he urged the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.Musk, speaking to reporters last month, stated a goal of reducing government spending by $2tn. Practically speaking, experts say those cost cuts could result in deregulation and policy changes that would directly impact Musk’s universe of companies, particularly Tesla, SpaceX, X and Neuralink.Adding a government portfolio to Musk’s plate could benefit the market value of his companies and favored businesses such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.Equities analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a research note: “It’s clear that Musk will have a massive role in the Trump White House with his increasing reach clearly across many federal agencies.”But Musk’s appointment was criticized by Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights NGO that challenged several of Trump’s first-term policies. “Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack,” co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September. “He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost-cutter.” More
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Elon Musk handpicked by Trump to carry out slash-and-burn cuts plan
by Evelyn Reynolds 13 November 2024, 00:49
Donald Trump, president-elect of the US, announced on Tuesday that he has selected Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, with plans to reduce bureaucracy in the federal government by roughly a third.Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.In a video posted on X two days after the election, Trump said he would “immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order, restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats”. He wants to “clean out the deep state”. His promises echo his slogan on The Apprentice: “You’re fired!” And Project 2025, an influential and controversial blueprint for Trump’s second term, lays out ways to make bureaucrats fireable.Musk has extensive experience slashing corporate spending, and he has promised to cull federal payrolls in much the same way. He cut staff at X, formerly Twitter, by 80% after buying it in 2022, a move he said prevented a $3bn shortfall, but which has not otherwise paid off. Revenue is in steep decline and advertisers have absconded, making a comeback seem unlikely. As the CEO of SpaceX, however, he has garnered a reputation for launching rockets more cheaply than competitors by negotiating with suppliers and keeping operations lean.The billionaire does not seem to be under any illusions of what will happen after his proposed cuts, admitting that reducing spending “necessarily involves some temporary hardship”. Americans do want to spend less – of their own money. Do they want austerity and less financial assistance from the federal government? Do they want the world’s richest person admonishing them to cut their expenses?Ramaswamy, meanwhile, is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican nomination last year. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump’s cabinet. He also has no government experience, but has pushed for cost-cutting in the corporate sector. After building a stake in the struggling online media firm BuzzFeed, he urged the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.Musk has already asked Trump to appoint SpaceX employees to top government positions, the New York Times has reported. The president-elect promised to ban bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they regulate. Such a rule would seem to bar SpaceX’s lieutenants from the Pentagon’s door. But Trump has never shied away from cronyism. The two are not trying to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest: Musk’s role in the government will be structured so that he can maintain control of his companies, the Financial Times reports.In his first term, Trump and his team struggled to fill the thousands of government appointments needed to run the federal government. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said the administration never fully recovered from its failure to find those appointees. Perhaps adding Musk to the equation is meant to prevent a repeat of such laggardness.In an extreme version of the new administration, Trump and Musk simply eliminate any position for which they cannot find a friendly appointee. In John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer-winning 1980 novel A Confederacy of Dunces, the idiot hero, tasked with organizing an intractable pile of files at his new job, eradicates the company’s mess. Ignatius J Reilly is no genius of organization, though; he is just throwing cabinets full of records away. It is easy to imagine Trump and Musk following his example.What will stand in Musk’s way, however, is one of his sworn enemies: labor law. Tesla is the only major US carmaker that does not employ a unionized workforce. The billionaire CEO wants to keep it that way. Federal government employees, by contrast, enjoy strong employment protections that would hinder Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to cost-cutting and possibly render it impossible.For all the different companies he runs, Musk has little experience managing public sector employees. He may find them less pliable lions than he is used to taming.Kira Lerner contributed to this report More
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First came the bots, then came the bosses – we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation | Joan Donovan
by Evelyn Reynolds 11 November 2024, 13:00
I’m a researcher of media manipulation, and watching the 2024 US election returns was like seeing the Titanic sink.Every day leading up to 5 November, there were more and more outrageous claims being made in an attempt across social media to undermine election integrity: conspiracy theories focused on a tidal wave of immigrants plotting to undermine the right wing, allegations that there were millions of excess ballots circulating in California, and rumors that the voting machines were already corrupted by malicious algorithms.All of the disinformation about corrupt vote counts turned out not to be necessary, as Donald Trump won the election decisively. But the election proved that disinformation is no longer the provenance of anonymous accounts amplified by bots to mimic human engagement, like it was in 2016. In 2024, lies travel further and faster across social media, which is now a battleground for narrative dominance. And now, the owners of the platforms circulating the most incendiary lies have direct access to the Oval Office.We talk a lot about social media “platforms”. The word “platform” is interesting as it means both a stated political position and a technological communication system. Over the past decade, we have watched social media platforms warp public opinion by deciding what is seen and when users see it, as algorithms double as newsfeed and timeline editors. When tech CEOs encode their political beliefs into the design of platforms, it’s a form of technofascism, where technology is used for political suppression of speech and to repress the organization of resistance to the state or capitalism.Content moderation at these platforms now reflects the principles of the CEO and what that person believes is in the public’s interest. The political opinions of tech’s overlords, like Musk and Zuckerberg, are now directly embedded in their algorithms.For example, Meta has limited the circulation of critical discussions about political power, reportedly even downranking posts that use the word “vote” on Instagram. Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, suspended journalists for reporting on Trump’s former chief of staff describing Trump’s admiration of Hitler. Threads built in a politics filter that is turned on by default.View image in fullscreenImplementing these filtering mechanisms illustrates a sharp difference from Meta’s embrace of politicians who got personalized white-glove service in 2016 as Facebook embedded employees directly in political campaigns, who advised on branding and reaching new audiences. It’s also a striking reversal of Zuckerberg’s free speech position in 2019. Zuckerberg gave a presentation at Georgetown University claiming that he was inspired to create Facebook because he wanted to give students a voice during the Iraq war. This historical revisionism was quickly skewered in the media. (Facebook’s predecessor allowed users to rate the appearance of Harvard female freshmen. Misogyny was the core of its design.) Nevertheless, his false origin story encapsulated a vision of how Zuckerberg once believed society and politics should be organized, where political discussion was his guiding reason to bring people into community.However, he now appears to have abandoned this position in favor of disincentivizing political discussion altogether. Recently, Zuckerberg wrote to the Republican Jim Jordan saying he regretted his content moderation decisions during the pandemic because he acted under pressure from the Biden administration. The letter itself was an obvious attempt to curry favor as Trump rose as the Republican presidential candidate. Zuckerberg has reason to fear Trump, who has mentioned wanting to arrest Zuckerberg for deplatforming him on Meta products after the January 6 Capitol riot.X seems to have embraced the disinformation chaos and fully fused Trump’s campaign into the design of X’s content strategies. Outrageous assertions circle the drain on X, including false claims such as that immigrants are eating pets in Ohio, Kamala Harris’s Jamaican grandmother was white, and that immigrants are siphoning aid meant for Fema. It’s also worth noting that Musk is the biggest purveyor of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories on X. The hiss and crackle of disinformation is as ambient as it is unsettling.There are no clearer signs of Musk’s willingness to use platform power than his relentless amplification of his own account as well as Trump’s Twitter account on X’s “For You” algorithm. Moreover, Musk bemoaned the link suppression by Twitter in 2020 over Hunter Biden’s laptop while then hypocritically working with the Trump campaign in 2024 to ban accounts and links to leaked documents emanating from the Trump campaign that painted JD Vance in a negative light.Musk understands that he will personally benefit from being close to power. He supported Trump with a controversial political action committee that gave away cash to those who signed his online petition. Musk also paid millions for canvassers and spent many evenings in Pennsylvania stumping for Trump. With Trump’s win, he will need to make good on his promise of placing Musk in a position on the not-yet-created “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge – which is also the name of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency). While it sure seems like a joke taken too far, Musk has said he plans to cut $2tn from the national budget, which will wreak havoc on the economy and could be devastating when coupled with the mass deportation of 10 million people.In short, what we learn from the content strategies of X and Meta is simple: the design of platforms is now inextricable from the politics of the owner.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis wasn’t inevitable. In 2016, there was a public reckoning that social media had been weaponized by foreign adversaries and domestic actors to spread disinformation on a number of wedge issues to millions of unsuspecting users. Hundreds of studies were conducted in the intervening years, by internal corporate researchers and independent academics, showing that platforms amplify and expose audiences to conspiracy theories and fake news, which can lead to networked incitement and political violence.By 2020, disinformation had become its own industry and the need for anonymity lessened as rightwing media makers directly impugned election results, culminating in January 6. That led to an unprecedented decision by social media companies to ban Trump, who was still the sitting president, and a number of other high-profile rightwing pundits, thus illustrating just how powerful social media platforms had become as political actors.In reaction to this unprecedented move to curb disinformation, the richest man in the world, Musk, bought Twitter, laid off much of the staff, and sent internal company communications to journalists and politicians in 2022. Major investigations of university researchers and government agencies ensued, naming and shaming those who engaged with Twitter’s former leadership and made appeals for the companies to enforce its own terms of service during the 2020 election.Since then, these CEOs have ossified their political beliefs in the design of algorithms and by extension dictated political discourse for the rest of us.Whether it’s Musk’s strategy of overloading users with posts from himself and Trump, or Zuckerberg’s silencing of political discussion, it’s citizens who suffer from such chilling of speech. Of course, there is no way to know decisively how disinformation affected individual voters, but a recent Ipsos poll shows Trump voters believed disinformation on a number of wedge issues, claiming that immigration, crime, and the economy are all worse than data indicates. For now, let this knowledge be the canary warning of technofascism, where the US is not only ruled by elected politicians, but also by technological authoritarians who control speech on a global scale.If we are to disarm disinformers, we need a whole of society approach that values real Talk (Timely, Accurate Local Knowledge) and community safety. This might look like states passing legislation to fund local journalism in the public interest, because local news can bridge divides between neighbors and bring some accountability to the government. It will require our institutions, such as medicine, journalism, and academia, to fight for truth and justice, even in the face of anticipated retaliation. But most of all, it’s going to require that you and I do something quickly to protect those already in the crosshairs of Trump’s new world order, by donating to or joining community organizations tackling issues such as women’s rights and immigration. Even subscribing to a local news outlet is a profound political act these days. Let that sink in.Joan Donovan is the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and assistant professor of journalism at Boston University More

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