Get your story straight
Stop looking at the circus. Look at the actions.
I was very pleased to sign this letter advocating for the creation of a Coalition of the Willing to secure Ukraine and thus secure Europe. I joined an august group of signatories, including my good friend former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, chess champion Garry Kasparov, and Terry Virts, who has the absolute coolest title ever: Colonel USAF (retd.) Former Astronaut and ISS Commander.
I also joined Ken Harbaugh on the MeidasTouch Network to discuss Trump’s nomination of conspiracy theory maven Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence and user of Russian disinformation for loyalty purposes John Ratcliffe for Director CIA. You can watch the video here. And if you missed last week’s Rant! which covered my “we’re totally fucked” analysis of the situation, catch up here.
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
Donald Trump is already taking steps to break down the administrative state and move America away from liberal democracy. You’d think after years of struggling with how to report about this, the press would be better prepared to cover the actual story, rather than the circus. Nope.
I’d like to touch on (or more to the point, take issue with) this Washington Post article that talks about how the Trump transition team is breaking all the transition norms:
Trump has yet to collaborate with the General Services Administration, which is tasked with the complex work of handing over control of hundreds of agencies, because he has not turned in required pledges to follow ethics rules. His transition teams have yet to set foot inside a single federal office.
In calls with foreign heads of state, Trump has cut out the State Department, its secure lines and its official interpreters.
As his team considers hundreds of potential appointees for key jobs, he’s so far declined to let the Federal Bureau of Investigation check for potential red flags and security threats to guard against espionage — instead relying on private campaign lawyers for some appointees and doing no vetting at all for others. Trump’s transition team is considering moving on his first day in office to give those appointees blanket security clearances, according to people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations.
That private lawyer doing background checks for security clearances?
Thus far, Trump has left the job of vetting candidates to Stanley Woodward, a Palm Beach lawyer on his campaign who has represented several Jan. 6 rioters and Trump associates caught up in the classified documents case, according to transition staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the decision.
Did you catch that? The lawyer vetting people for security clearances represented the people who helped move thousands of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago and hide them from the FBI. Cool, right?
WaPo also notes Trump has so far refused to sign an ethics pledge to avoid conflicts of interest, adding:
It is also unclear if Trump plans to require his nominees to submit to separate ethics reviews required by the Office of Government Ethics. If not, once his appointees are in the job, the office will be unable to ensure they divest from companies or other entities to avoid potential conflicts.
WaPo then makes this brilliant observation: “But his transition alarms some officials who say the president-elect is weakening transparency, eroding checks and balances, and risking national security.”
Well, yeah. That’s the point! Trump wants zero accountability, zero checks and balances. And the fact that that is the point should be provided as important context. Trump has openly stated he intends to deconstruct the administrative state and get rid of all checks and balances, and so far, his steps show that is what he is trying to do in practice. And this makes America less safe and weaker. That’s the story!
It’s good that we report this in order to remember that this is not normal. But no one should be surprised, as WaPo’s strange style of reporting makes it seem. Trump did all of this last time around! Ok, he did sign an ethics pledge (but he never followed it). And I will concede, it took him some time in his last administration to eschew the security clearance investigation system and just give clearances to whomever he pleased.
But he will move much faster and reach more broadly this time, and we need to be prepared for it. But we need the press to report it in a way that makes everyone understand not only is this not normal, but Trump is beginning from a place that was already not normal, taking the not normal to a much higher degree.
M. Gessen, a Russian-American journalist, outlined in the New York Times how Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban have provided the road map for Trump to dismantle the state. (I’ve said this before and I will say it again: why anyone wants to reshape the superpower that is the United States into a definitely not superpower country like Hungary is beyond me.)
Gessen begins by explaining Trump’s appeal: he gives people the right not to care about others. Gessen writes:
Around the world, populist autocrats have leveraged the thrilling power of that promise to transform their countries into vehicles for their own singular will. Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban vowed to restore a simpler, more orderly past, in which men were men and in charge. What they delivered was permission to abandon societal inhibitions, to amplify the grievances of one’s own group and to heap hate on assorted others, particularly on groups that cannot speak up for themselves. Magyar [an expert in authoritarianism] calls this “morally unconstrained collective egoism.”
Steps both Putin and Orban took to consolidate their movement and their power included: deriding experts, getting rid of “superfluous” civil servants, attacking universities, and attacking the press (while rewarding the loyal press).
Trump has already stated his intention to do similar things, including taking on higher education, making civil servants loyal to him and not the constitution, and consolidating control over the information environment, including getting the press to be loyal (think here about Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski going to Mar a Lago this week). I discussed some of this in last week’s Rant! too. Trump has also cultivated the idea that we no longer should care about each other, only ourselves.
We know where this leads. History is full of instructive examples. We don’t know if Trump will succeed. But we need to be clear eyed about his intentions, not just cover the circus.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
TRUMP AND RETRIBUTION
Some Trump critics are preparing for his vow of retribution once in office (Washington Post)
TRUMP AND TRUTH
The Right’s Triumph Over Social Media (NYT)
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
The majority of Americans voted for the Trump Circus and I assume all that it brings to town. Not sure there is an antidote or vaccination to what is happening, but I hope that those currently in charge are shielding America’s intelligence assets and planning for an organized withdrawal of those that may be compromised by Trump’s gang of mouth breathing cretins.
Good extension of the Rosen Principle.