Not Even McConnell's Right-Wing Senate Majority Has The Stomach For Another Nominee From Trump's Overt Anti-Semitic Menagerie-- At Least Not This Close To November

Yesterday the (Jewish Daily) Forward asked, rhetorically if at a time when statues of racists in the U.S. Capitol are being unceremoniously removed, should an anti-Semite like Billy Graham have one of him put up?. "Last week," wrote PJ Grisar, "a North Carolina legislative committee approved a scale model of the 10-foot, 10-inch Graham statue, which would be placed at the Capitol sometime next year pending the approval of a congressional committee. If that approval comes through, Graham’s effigy will replace a statue of Charles Brantley Aycock, a North Carolina governor and white supremacist named in a House Appropriations bill calling for the removal of the likenesses of Confederates and white supremacists from the Statuary Hall... His record with regard to civil rights was mixed, as he accepted segregation at some of his crusades and critiqued the tactics of marches and sit-ins to end Jim Crow laws. Like many Evangelicals, he also believed homosexuality to be a sin, calling it a 'sinister form of perversion.' And while he had a reputation for building interfaith bridges, a major rift with his relationship with the Jewish community emerged in 1994, when Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman’s White House diaries became public. Haldeman wrote that Nixon and Graham, alone in the Oval Office after a prayer breakfast in February of 1972, discussed Jewish control of the media. Graham denied having this conversation, but in 2002, the tape was released by the National Archives. In the recording, Graham agreed with Nixon that liberal Jews had too much influence, saying, 'This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.' Graham further accused Jews of 'putting out the pornographic stuff' in the culture and contended that, while he was friendly with Jews who 'swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I’m friendly with Israel,' those Jews 'don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances.'"

OK, I hope that works out well. Meanwhile though, Trump has nominated another anti-Semite, Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret), this one as ambassador to, of all places, Germany. He has a lot going for him-- in Trump-world. He's anti-Merkel and pro-Putin for one thing, but he's also considered an anti-Semite by Jews. Remember reading about how Trump had a spat with Israeli super-donor Sheldon Adelson over the weekend? That was right around the time when the Times of Israel was publishing a story about Macgregory's problems with Jews. "Jewish groups," wrote Ron Kampeas, the paper's correspondent in DC, "are taking aim at President Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to Germany for his past statements about Muslim immigrants and for downplaying the importance of Nazi history. The nomination of Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran who now frequently appears on Fox News, made headlines this week after CNN’s K File unearthed a long history of the retired colonel’s comments. In 2018 he said 'There’s sort of a sick mentality that says that generations after generations must atone sins of what happened in 13 years of German history and ignore the other 1,500 years of Germany.' He also called Muslim immigrants “invaders” who want to turn Europe 'into an Islamic state' and called for martial law at the US-Mexico border, saying US authorities should 'shoot people' if necessary to prevent immigrants from entering the country."

Prior to the CNN report, B’nai B’rith International had already expressed concerns about Macgregor. In a July 28 release, it noted his past propensity to insinuate that “neocons” serving Israel’s interests were controlling US foreign policy.

“It is important that American diplomats not question the patriotism of other Americans who hold political views different from their own, especially given that questioning Jewish loyalty to America is an anti-Semitic trope,” B’nai B’rith said.

The American Jewish Committee on Friday urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to withdraw Macgregor’s nomination.

“It is because of our intensive engagement with Germany that we were so troubled by the reports of recent days regarding Col. Macgregor’s many incendiary comments over the years about the German government, Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, the NATO alliance, immigration policy, and other topics,” AJC CEO David Harris said in a letter to Pompeo.

The Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said on Twitter that some of Macgregor’s past statements were “bigoted and abhorrent.” He also critiqued Macgregor’s comments on Nazi Germany.

J Street Vice President Dylan Williams on the same platform decried Macgregor’s “shameful record of expressing profoundly bigoted views.”

Republican Senate aides have been telling the press that Trump needs to withdraw the nomination immediately because Macgregor is unconformable and that a number of Republican senators have already indicated they will vote with the Democrats to reject him if it comes to a vote on the floor. "Trump should run from this one, blame it on Tucker Carlson or Lou Dobbs or someone," one GOP aide told me this morning. "This guy's a walking disaster... There are a number of senators eager to show the independent voters back home that they aren't Trump asskissers. Primaries are over; they won't hesitate to vote against him."

Under The Bus! And Don't They All Deserve It!

Trump is hardly the first corrupt politician who greased his way into the White House and then illegally sold position, particularly ambassadorships to countries that matter very little. But only Trump was stupid enough to leave a written trail for law enforcement. And, of course, Trump has done it more than any other White House occupant. Most presidents use some ambassadorial posts to reward supporters, the way Trump has with the latest wealthy skank Newt Gingrich married (Vatican City). But yesterday CBS News exposed a pay-to-play scheme that could land some people in prison and has already ended the still-born diplomatic career of Doug Machester.

Papa Doug

Manchester is a wealthy and crooked developer in San Diego with the reputation of as a shady wheeler-dealer, so... right up Trump's alley. He's been bribing Republicans for years:

• September 30, 2015- $50,000 to a Trump's shady superPAC
• August 31, 2011- $25,000 to a Mitt Romney SuperPAC
• October 16, 2014- $10,000 to the NRCC
• May 6, 2015- 10,000 to a Carly Fiorina SuperPAC
• March 21, 2016- $10,000 to the San Diego County Central Committee
• May 15, 2014- $10,000 to the Republican Party of San Diego
• June 10, 2016- $5,000 to the Republican Party of San Diego
• August 28, 2013- $5,000 to a Marco Rubio SuperPAC

He also maxed out to Darrell Issa (at least 6 times), Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio (3 times) and several others. But Trump doesn't sell ambassadorships for $50,000. Trump had Ronna Romney (AKA- RNC chair Ronna McDaniel) hit Manchester up for another half million dollars, after he wrote a check to Trump's inauguration committee, money that is unaccounted for and widely believed translated right into Trump's own bank account.

Trump offered Papa Doug," as Manchester was known in GOP circles, the ambassadorship the day after the inauguration. BUT... while the confirmation was working its way through the Senate, McDaniel told him to write another $500,000 check, this one for the RNC. He refused and that was the end of the nomination, which stalled for 2-and-a-half years in MoscowMitch's corrupt sewer-Senate. "That’s part of politics. It’s unbelievable. You give and you give and you give and you give some more and more and more," Manchester told CBS News. He offered McDaniel a $100,000 check from his wife instead... if MoscowMitch had him confirmed. That never happened and Trump withdrew the nomination last week. Once Manchester basically ratted McDaniel out, to CBS she had the RNC return a small part of the money Papa Doug has given them.

OK, so Trump is selling ambassadorships. Big surprise! Not. Right now about half of the U.S. ambassadors bought their posts, including putting money into Trump's pockets directly (via Mar-A-Lago memberships) and schemes like that. And Pompeo seems perfectly fine with it. Maybe he'll change his tune now that Trump is increasingly turning venomous towards him.

Under The Bus by Nancy Ohanian

An all-star NBC News team-- Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Andrea Mitchell-- reported that Trump is getting on Pompeo's case over the diplomats testifying against him in the House. "Trump," they wrote, "has fumed for weeks that Pompeo is responsible for hiring State Department officials whose congressional testimony threatens to bring down his presidency, the officials said. The president confronted Pompeo about the officials-- and what he believed was a lackluster effort by the secretary of state to block their testimony-- during lunch at the White House on Oct. 29, those familiar with the matter said. Inside the White House, the view was that Trump 'just felt like, rein your people in,' a senior administration official said. Trump particularly blames Pompeo for tapping Ambassador Bill Taylor in June to be the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, the current and former senior administration officials said."

A crack in the seemingly unbreakable bond between Trump and Pompeo is striking because Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, is viewed as the “Trump whisperer” who has survived-- and thrived-- working for a president who has routinely tired of and discarded senior members of his team.

But the impeachment inquiry has put Pompeo in what one senior administration official described as an untenable position: trying to manage a bureaucracy of 75,000 people that has soured on his leadership and also please a boss with outsized expectations of loyalty.

“He feels like he's getting a bunch of blame from the president and the White House for having hired all these people who are turning against Trump,” an official familiar with the dynamic said of Pompeo, “and that it's the State Department that is going to bring him down, so it's all Pompeo's fault.”

...Trump has hinted publicly at tensions with Pompeo, and while the comments might go unnoticed by the untrained ear they’ve been heard loudly by people close to the president.

The first was on Oct. 23, officials said, when Trump wrote on Twitter: “It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats. Nothing good will ever come from them!”

Trump followed up with another tweet specifically calling Taylor, and his lawyer, "Never Trumpers."

Two days later, Trump said Pompeo “made a mistake” in hiring Taylor.

“Here’s the problem: He's a never Trumper, and his lawyer is,” the president told reporters about Taylor. “The other problem is-- hey, everyone makes mistakes-- Mike Pompeo. Everybody makes mistakes.”


The next day, Oct. 26, Pompeo was notably absent as the president sat with his national security team during the U.S. military raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pompeo was not informed about the raid until late Friday after he was home in Kansas for his son’s friend’s wedding, officials said.

Throughout the impeachment inquiry, Pompeo and Trump have maintained their weekly lunches at the White House, according to the president’s public schedule.

But the president was angry when he arrived in his private dining room on Oct. 29, two officials said. Pompeo defended himself, officials said, by telling Trump he doesn’t know who half of these State Department officials are, officials said. He also noted that there are thousands of employees at the agency, explaining that he can’t control them, those familiar with the matter said.

...The tension with Trump comes as Pompeo weighs whether to leave the administration to run for Kansas’ open Senate seat.

Pompeo has served in the administration since its start. Trump tapped him as CIA director, then moved him to secretary of state after he fired Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson. For almost three years, Pompeo seamlessly navigated a finicky president. He’s remained, and became more influential, as Trump churned through two chiefs of staff, three national security advisers, an attorney general, and secretaries of defense, state, labor, homeland security, interior, veterans affairs and health and human services.

But in recent weeks Pompeo has been under steady fire over his role in the Ukraine scandal, as well as his handling of it.

Initially when the Ukraine controversy became public, Trump wanted Pompeo to publicly defend him against the State Department bureaucracy, officials said. But the White House thought Pompeo appeared unprepared in his television interviews, and his performance only fueled the president’s frustrations, they said.

Pompeo has faced criticism for saying, during an interview on ABC’s This Week, that he didn’t know anything about the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the center of the controversy. Pompeo didn’t disclose until more than a week later that he had listened in on that call.

Like the White House, he has attempted to block State Department officials from testifying. And he has refused to turn over State Department documents related to Ukraine.

His decision last week, however, to allow the State Department to help pay for the legal fees that officials ensnared in the impeachment inquiry are accruing could further strain his relationship with the president.

That decision underscores the balance Pompeo is trying to strike between the president and the department he leads.

State Department officials had thought Pompeo’s move to the agency in April 2018 would be a welcome antidote to what they viewed as the bureaucratic fecklessness of Tillerson, given Pompeo’s unfettered access to Trump and their close relationship.

But morale at the State Department has sagged for months, and it plummeted further as the Ukraine scandal unfolded, according to multiple officials.

State Department officials are critical of Pompeo for buckling to pressure from the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and abruptly recalling Yovanovitch while she was serving as U.S. ambassador in Ukraine. Yovanovitch had been vilified by Giuliani, who convinced the president she was working against his interests.

Criticism of Pompeo inside the State Department escalated when he refused to publicly defend Yovanovitch after a reconstructed transcript of the July 25 call revealed Trump disparaged Yovanovitch to Zelenskiy, administration officials have said. Pompeo’s closest aide, Ambassador Mike McKinley, resigned over the secretary’s refusal to defend Yovanovitch.

Testimony from Taylor and others show Pompeo was keenly aware of the concerns his top officials had about Giuliani’s efforts and his handling of Yovanovitch.

In public testimony on Friday, Yovanovitch appeared to excoriate Pompeo for “the failure of State Department leadership to push back as foreign and corrupt interests apparently hijacked our Ukraine policy.”

“It is the responsibility of the department's leaders to stand up for the institution and the individuals who make that institution the most effective diplomatic force in the world,” she said.

According to administration officials, Pompeo’s refusal to publicly defend Yovanovitch cemented a wider view within the State Department that he has enabled some of Trump’s impulsive foreign policy decisions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. special forces from Syria after a phone call with Turkey’s Erdgoan.

“Pompeo is hated by his building,” a person close to the secretary said, adding that he “feels the heat a great deal and feels it’s personal at state.”

Should Trump Be Impeached? He Builds The Case Against Himself Tweet By Tweet

If you were watching NBC's Today show Monday, you likely saw Kellyanne Con-man making the case-- a case the Regime makes more and more frequently-- that the media should ignore Trump's tweets. They wish-- but that's how Trump chooses to interact with the American people. When's the last time he held a press conference like a normal president? What the Regime was embarrassed about at the moment was just Trump bothering the mayor of London while he was trying to deal with a terrorist incident-- something likely to lead to Trump being subtly uninvited as a state guest of the U.K.-- but his deceitful, nonsensical babbling about Senate Democrats obstructing his nominees. The aggrieved, victimized Trumpanzee-- like the moron degenerates who support him-- is whining about something he has no understanding of. Imagine this concept: no one's obstructing any nominees because there aren't any nominees. The orange-hued buffoon is too busy golfing and tweeting to nominate them.

So far, the worst president in all of American history has nominated only 10 ambassadors, out of 188 positions he's supposed to fill. And what makes that even worse, is that he fired all the ambassadors who were in place without any intention of or plan for replacing them. He'd rather just cry about it and point fingers. In fact, there are only 6 pending ambassadorial appointments wending their way-- in an orderly, responsible fashion-- through the Republican-controlled Senate. And one that horrid wife of New Gingrich, who Señor Trumpanzee is foisting on Pope Francis.

Over all, there are 15 Trump appointments waiting confirmation by the Senate-- not just ambassadorial but all jobs-- while 39 have been confirmed. There are still 442 jobs the imbecile hasn't nominated anyone for. Like, for example, the U.S. Attorneys. Eager to further obstruct justice, he suddenly fired all the U.S. Attorneys in the country-- every single one of them-- and forced them to leave their offices immediately. And he had-- and still has-- no replacements lined up. Trump is a danger to the United States. Congress should begin impeachment proceedings. And if the Democrats win back the House in 2018 and Pelosi pulls one of her "off the table" bullshit excuses, she should be unceremoniously fired by the Democratic members from leadership-- and replaced by someone who will do what she won't. Whatever this fiasco cost Vladimir Putin, it was the best investment he ever made in his whole miserable life.

An Ambassadorship Is Nice-- But Would YOU Want To Be Implicated As A Conspirator In The Trump Regime?

Trump gets to nominate 188 ambassadors. With his bizarre selection of John Huntsman to run the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, he's now chosen 6, two of whom are career professionals-- Todd Philip Haskell to Republic of Congo and Tulinabo Salama Mushingi to Senegal and Guinea-Bissau.The others are a bunch of political cronies. The only one confirmed so far is Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador. Many crucial embassies have no ambassador right now at all-- and none nominated-- like France, the U.K., India, Canada, Germany, Afghanistan, Japan, Saudi Arabia, NATO, Italy, South Korea, Australia and the European Union.

Awaiting confirmation are Iowa Governor Terry Branstad to China, vicious psychopath David Friedman to Israel. Presumably Trump will officially nominate Huntsman for the Russia job and Scott Brown to New Zealand and submit their names too. A note about Ambassador Mushingi. He has a long Foreign Service career and worked all over the world and recently in DC first for Hillary and then for John Kerry. President Obama nominated him to serve as ambassador to Senegal and Guinea-Bissau but, for no apparent reason, Trump withdrew the nomination and soon after re-nominated him.

Among those who have claimed that Trump is going to appoint them to represent the U.S. at the Vatican are a truly hideous array of monsters-- Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, Bill O'Reilly, Peggy Noonan, Newt Gingrich, Callista Gingrich, shady real estate developer Joey Forgione and bankster Joe Ricketts. Among these rumored to be on Señor Trumpanzee's short list to serve in Mexico are Alberto Gonzales, ex-Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), Neugebauer's crooked son Toby, and CEO of the US-Mexico Chamber of Commerce Albert Zapanta. You probably recall that the deal fell apart that would have given Jeff Loria the plum Paris job for selling Kushner-in-law the Miami Marlins, when it was exposed by the media. And crackpot Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is being named Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture.

Trump has promised posh posts to cronies of his like ruthless New York real estate developer Peter Kalikow (who gave Trumpanzee $449,000 during the campaign) and crooked banksters Lew Eisenberg (like Trump a sexual predator) and Duke Buchan (who gave Trumpanzee almost $900,000 in contributions)-- supposedly Italy and Spain are going to 2 of those 3, although it's hard to imagine any of those shady crooks being confirmed by the Senate.



So who's representing American interests in the 187 empty ambassadorial jobs-- jobs that are likely to be open for quite a long time? Green Day. American music and American musicians have long represented America abroad and Billy Joe Armstrong has been doing it since Putin won the White House for Señor Trumpanzee... a kind of roving ambassador. Watch the two interview videos above-- and the song below. I'll take it!