Gorka Sees the Future, and You're Not in It

Sebastian Gorka, Trump's former White House Lucifer-lookalike, told an auditorium full of College Republicans last night in Chapel Hill that he predicted and firmly believed that Trump will complete eight years in the presidency and will be followed by eight years of Mike Pence. The students cheered. According to the News and Observer, there were about 200 in the room.

I love political prognosticators. They make my corpuscles bunch and run. I listen to them avidly and read their opinions wherever I can find them, and then if they're writers, I want to see what they look like and whether I can take what they predict as possible. Or anyways likely. Or merely self-congratulatory fantasy based on living in a box.

Gorka is not clothed in credibility. He's all about macho dominance of perceived enemies. He famously bragged about Trump, “the alpha males are back,” and he itched to give Islam -- the whole religion apparently -- some alpha male comeuppance. He was in on drafting the first Muslim ban. He was and still is a satellite of Steve Bannon and a regular contributor to Breitbart News. He had an ill-defined job in the White House -- like Omarosa -- and new Chief of Staff John Kelly got rid of him on August 25, 2017.

Gorka wrote a "resignation letter" that was excerpted in The Federalist. It's a "kiss my white ass!" directed at John Kelly:

“given recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House. As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

So Gorka tells the students in Chapel Hill last night that he wasn't fired. He resigned. And then predicted an Era of Trump/Pence. He described Trump as “Kryptonite to political correctness” and an “unstoppable steam locomotive.” Macho authoritarianism? Yes indeedy, there's authoritarianism, but it's all coming from the Middle East, or from anyplace Muslims are in the majority. Trump is, in essence, an alpha male saving the race.

What a time we live in! Members of churches all over Alabama have become winkers at child molestation, perhaps in concert with also thinking Trump was divinely appointed to the job. Trump has finally bullied Sessions into pursuing Hillary Clinton with a Special Prosecutor, and the president just appointed his lawyer's husband to a federal judgeship (in Alabama, no less), a man who only became a lawyer three years ago and has never tried a case and has a social media history that strongly suggests he lacks a judicial temperament, and oops! he failed to tell Congress he has a conflict of interest with the Trump White House.

So in such a whirling world, Gorka predicts 16 years of Trump/Pence. I ask you, in a world so warped, who can confidently prognosticate otherwise? (Though my corpuscles are telling me another story altogether.)

Storm Saturday: ICYMI

Palatucci

1. Yesterday the Republican National Committee, meeting in Nashville, declared that there are no "very fine people" marching with racists, in an official resolution. But the resolution's author quickly added that denouncing white supremacists has nothing whatsoever to do with Big T in the White House, who had said that there were "very fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville.

“This has nothing to do with the president,” said Bill Palatucci, an RNC committeeman from New Jersey who wrote the resolution. “This is the RNC saying that racism and bigotry have no place in America” (therefore evidently making the White House an island unto itself, and not a part of America as a continent at all).

"Mr. Palatucci served as General Counsel to the Presidential Transition Committee of President Donald J. Trump. In this role, he was responsible for all legal matters related to ethics compliance and contracts and agreements between such agencies as the U.S. Department of Justice, General Services Administration, and the White House." (Gibbonslaw)

2. While a Cat 4 hurricane was bearing down on Texas, Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to fellow Birther and Hispanic tormentor, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County.

Message received! (There's a whole lot more being pardoned beside just Joe Arpaio.)

Question: Why didn't Trump pardon Arpaio at his rally in Phoenix, mere hours ago?

Reportedly, some White House aides convinced him it would create a storm of controversy. But he swished around and previewed the pardon anyway in front of that crowd, like a perfect little slut.

Hell-lo, Harvey! Just in time to provide cover! Not just for pardoning the whole concept of racial-profiling but also cover for this: 

3. WH Chief of Staff fires Sebastian Gorka.  Put a Marine in charge, you get ass-whippings. Gorka was a Steve Bannon creature (he also came from Brietbart), who had no defined job and lurked about in the alt-right, Islamophobic, Trump nimbus all through the Trump campaign, and looks like a Twilight Zone villain. Has an accent to go with it.

Retired Marine General John Kelly, recently put in charge of running the White House, revoked Gorka's security clearance while Gorka was on a two-week vacation, which essentially also eliminated his "job." Boom! Death by drone.

Gorka did not go quietly. The Federalist published his written "resignation" letter: “[G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the [MakeAmericaGreatAgain] promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House. As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

So, Bannon and Gorka will be together again, back at Breitbart? If not America, they'll make Trump great again if it takes destroying the Republican Party.

4. Trump signs "memorandum" banning transgender troops from serving in the US Armed Forces. Remember he had tweeted on July 26 that he was banning preverts in the military, because he needed a distraction in the press from the catastrophic failure of the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The military essentially rebuffed the tweet and said (either in effect or literally), "Show us the beef in a signed order," which by the way would be stupid and offensive). 

But Trump finally signed what passes as an order (but was labeled "Memorandum") to the Pentagon, because he thought he couldn't afford to look weak ever, on any stupid topic, and with Harvey roaring on the Texas coast for distractive cover, he returned the military's pre-2016 policy under which no transgender individuals are allowed to serve openly in the armed forces. But with the memorandum Trump also simultaneously telegraphed the weakness of his case, leaving it totally up to General Mattis at the Defense Dept. and Whoever's Left at Homeland Security to decide what to do about transgender soldiers currently serving. "You guys decide," said the for sure entirely not weak Commander in Chief.

SNAFU, Trump-style. Shifting into Reverse while going downhill.

5.  Actual Harvey News: The Department of Homeland Security is currently without a permanent head. Two deputy director nominees at FEMA still await confirmation (either because Congressional Democrats have bogged down the process or because they're all going slow on nominations by a man who wanted his son's wedding planner as the director of New York Federal Housing). Trump has not even nominated someone to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

Trump, in his proposed budget released in May, recommended slashing FEMA programs and grants that help cities and states prepare for natural disasters (to the tune of $667 million), and he proposed cuts to the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program. Trump recommended a 16 percent cut to the overall NOAA budget and a 32 percent cut to the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the agency’s main ocean, weather, and climate research office.

Because knowing science never pays off.

Trump and History

To cut to the chase: Trump knows as much about history as a dog knows his father.

In the statement Trump read aloud on Saturday about the violence in Charlottesville (a part of it not usually replayed on TV news), he said "We must ... cherish our history." That's an interesting line, as it shows up all the time as camouflage on the Web and elsewhere: "We're just celebrating white heritage. We're just honoring history." Well, particularly, the specific history of pain and loss of property by Civil War Americans defending their right to own and sweat human beings for a profit. 

L to R: Trump, Bannon, Gorka, Miller

Josh Marshall asked a crucial question yesterday: Who wrote that statement about "cherishing history" for Trump. He didn't write it himself. He can't write. He can barely read.

Was it White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, who reportedly has Trump's ear as some kind of international sage. Very recent headline about Gorka: "White House Aide Says People Should Stop Criticizing White Supremacists So Much."

Or was it NortoriousSB, Stephen Bannon? Everybody knows his fondness and nurturing care for the "Alt-Right."

Or was the author the other Stephen? Stephen Miller, the man who wrote Trump's Inauguration speech ("Darkness Falls") and the subsequent Trump Anti-Immigration Presidential Order that crashed. This Steve hung out at Duke University not long ago with Richard B. Spencer, the now-president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank. Richard Spencer's big media moment came soon after the election of Trump and in a Washington venue to boot: "At a National Policy Institute conference, [Spencer] quoted from Nazi propaganda and denounced Jews. In response to his cry "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!", a number of his supporters gave the Nazi salute and chanted in a similar fashion to the Sieg heil chant used at the Nazis' Nuremberg rallies. Spencer has also refused to denounce Adolf Hitler."

Jeffrey C. Billman, in The Independent Weekly, threw down the gauntlet to a major political party that is now left holding the coats of resurgent white supremacists:

At minimum, every decent Republican—looking at you, Tillis and Burr—should be demanding that Trump immediately fire Gorka, Miller, and Bannon .... In any normal administration, Republican or Democrat, [people] half that repugnant would have been prevented from getting anywhere near the Oval Office. In Trump’s, they’re top advisers.

History, who hasn't been introduced yet to Mr. Trump, will not be kind in telling this tale of a bad seed moving into the White House.