The Trump Cabinet and key post thread (2 Viewers)

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    Hours before President Donald Trump announced U.S. missile strikes on Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed 90 civilians in April 2017, Ed Martin said on the Russian state television network RT Americathat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might not be to blame. Instead, Martin told viewers, the situation was “engineered” in Washington “by the people that want war in Syria.”

    In early 2022, Martin told an interviewer on the same arm of RT’s global network that “there’s no evidence” of a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s borders, criticizing U.S. officials as warmongering and ignoring Russia’s security concerns. Russia invaded nine days later, igniting a war that continues today.

    Martin is now interim U.S. attorney for D.C. and Trump’s pick to serve full time in the role. But as a conservative activist and former Missouri Republican official, he appeared more than 150 times on RT and Sputnik - networks funded and directed by the Russian government - as a guest commentator from August 2016 to April 2024, according to a search of their websites and the Internet Archive’s database of television broadcasts.

    Martin did not disclose the appearances last month on a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, which asks nominees to list all media interviews. Analysis oftelevision archives suggests he went on RT and Sputnik more often than on any major cablenetwork during that span.

    Martin’s frequent appearances, reviewedby The Washington Post, drew rebukes from some national security analysts, who accused him of amplifying anti-American propaganda on Russian outlets that the State Department last year said had moved beyond disinformation to engage in covert influence activities aimed at undermining democracies worldwide for President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

    Martin’s brief tenure as top federal prosecutor in Washington has stoked controversy. Democrats accuse Martin - a Trump “Stop the Steal” organizer who has called the 2020 election and the 2016 Russian election interference investigation “hoaxes” - of violating the law and legal ethics in threatening to investigate or prosecute lawmakers, protesters, journalists and others whom he perceives as undermining Trump’s agenda.

    Former U.S. national security officials and analysts said Martin’s RTand Sputnikappearances, and his failure to disclose them, raise questions about his judgmentand candor. The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington is the largest in the country and has wide jurisdiction to prosecute important national security offenses, former officials said. Its leader should be alert to the threats and risks posed by Russia and other influence operations from overseas, such as the ones the office has prosecuted in recent years involving Russia and other foreign actors, they argued............

     
    President Trump's nominee to be the U.S. surgeon general, the Fox News contributor and family medicine physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, has described herself as a double board-certified physician with a degree from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine — credentials the president touted in his announcement.

    But those claims about her certification and schooling appear to be misleading.

    Nesheiwat actually earned her medical degree from the American University of the Caribbean (AUC) School of Medicine, located in St. Maarten, in the Caribbean, according to records reviewed by CBS News.

    A spokesperson for the University of Arkansas confirmed to CBS News she completed her residency through its family medicine program in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but did not obtain her medical degree there.

    Nesheiwat has not yet come before the U.S. Senate's health committee for a confirmation hearing, where she is expected to face questions about her credentials.

    The U.S. surgeon general is known for setting the national agenda on public health. Past surgeons general have marshaled attention for priority issues such as the dangers of cigarette smoking, gun violence and an epidemic of loneliness.


    Currently, Nesheiwat's LinkedIn profileincorrectly lists a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine, while omitting any mention of AUC.

    In at least one instance on social media, she has referenced attending "American University" when describing her education — without clarifying that it was not the similarly named American University in Washington, D.C., which does not have a medical school.

    In that same posting she said she completed her medical training at St. Thomas & Guy Hospital in London……





     
    CNN) — Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia and nominee to serve in the role permanently, says he now regrets praising a Capitol rioter who is an alleged Nazi sympathizer — claiming he was unaware of the man’s extremist views at the time.

    “I denounce everything about what that guy said, everything about the way he talked, and all as I’ve now seen it,” Martin told The Forward, a Jewish publication, last week after previously calling the rioter, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, “extraordinary.”

    “At the time, I didn’t know it,” Martin said.

    But a CNN KFile review of Martin’s podcast shows he repeatedly praised Hale-Cusanelli in interviews with him, including two where they openly discussed — and dismissed — allegations that Hale held pro-Nazi views, including an infamous photo of Hale posing with a Hitler-style mustache.

    Martin hosted Hale-Cusanelli at least five times on podcasts in 2024, including his show “The Pro-America Report with Ed Martin.”

    The interviews were conducted well after Hale’s Nazi sympathies had been widely reported in media coverage and documented in court records………


     
    Rodney Scott, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has been accused by a former top official of orchestrating a “cover-up” over the death of a man detained while trying to enter the country from Mexico, according to a letter obtained by the Guardian.

    Scott is a former US border patrol chief who has supported the president’s vow to build a wall along the border with Mexico and criticized Joe Biden’s handling of immigration policy. As commissioner of CBP, Scott would lead one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, which encompasses the border patrol and staffs ports of entry across the United States.

    The Senate finance committee will consider Scott’s nomination on Wednesday. Before the hearing, James Wong, a former deputy assistant commissioner of CBP’s office of internal affairs, wrote to the committee’s top Democrat this week with “concern” about Scott’s handling of the investigation into the 2010 death of Anastasio Hernández Rojas in San Diego, after he was beaten and tased by CBP agents who were preparing to deport him.


    His death was investigated by San Diego’s police department at a time when Scott was a top border patrol official in the city, which Wong said put him in a position to oversee a so-called critical incident team (CIT). The teams, which CBP disbanded in 2022, were created to investigate “use-of-force incidents” and “designed to mitigate liability for Border Patrol senior management and to present Border Patrol in the best possible light”, Wong wrote.

    The CIT used a subpoena to obtain Hernández Rojas’s medical records “likely in an effort to spin information for their own PR”, Wong said. “The use of a CBP administrative subpoena for this purpose was blatantly unlawful, and anyone signing it should have known that.”

    “By virtue of his position, Mr Scott would have overseen all CIT operations on the case, and all CIT information would have filtered through him to CBP headquarters,” Wong wrote in the letter, addressed to ranking member Ron Wyden.

    “This was not an investigation, it was a cover-up – one Mr Scott supervised. This abuse of power disqualifies him from leading one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the country.”

    Scott did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    Wyden called Scott’s handling of the Hernández Rojas case “deeply troubling”, and asked the Department of Homeland Security for records related to the death and investigation.


    “In the hands of someone who has allegedly repeatedly abused his position of power, the vast security apparatus for which CBP is responsible could be wielded for harm,” Wyden wrote in a letter to Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary.…….

     
    Yep, this seems nice and normal
    ========================


    Donald Trump has made no secret of his affinity for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s leadership style, and he got to experience it first-hand Thursday in a cabinet meeting that has been described as “Kremlin-esque.”

    Just a day after President Trump backtracked on a disastrous tariff policy that sent global markets into turmoil, cabinet members lined up to massage the president’s ego with sycophantic language that would make North Korean newsreaders blush.

    “I think that what you have assembled in your vision is a turning point and an inflection point in American history. And so just being a part of that is the greatest honor,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, said, after calling the president “family.”

    Kelly Loeffler, head of the Small Business Administration, had little to say about the many small businesses about to be made bankrupt by Trump’s tariff chaos.

    "Mr. President, on behalf of America's manufacturers, I want to thank you for standing up to the Chinese communist party and fighting for our main streets, for our workers ... Main Street is grateful for you," she said.

    Trump sat stony-faced through each tribute, occasionally offering commentary when they were done.

    It was unclear if a memo had been sent around or if Trump’s cabinet members are just beginning to understand what was required of them, but each followed suit and sprinkled their contributions with gratitude for his leadership.

    Elon Musk thanked Trump for his “fantastic leadership.” Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, thanked him for his “leadership at the border.”

    Attorney General Pam Bondi told the president his favorite fairy tale about the election and sought to rewrite the Constitution on the fly, implying that he should have control of the U.S. government’s budget, rather than Congress.

    “You were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority,” she said, repeating a lie that the president has often told. “The Americans want you to be president because of your agenda, and the courts are ruling that you have the authority to determine how the money of this country will be spent. That's what the American citizens wanted, and that's what they're getting,” she said.

    Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick was keen to make the president feel better about his capitulation on tariffs on Wednesday by assuring him that many as-yet unnamed nations are trying to negotiate new trade deals with the United States.

    “They have come with offers that they never, ever, ever would have come with but for the moves that the President has made, demanding that people treat the United States with respect. We're getting the respect we deserve now,” he said...........

    There were navy blue and red baseball caps up and down the table, strategically placed in front of every cabinet member, and each bearing the message “Gulf of America”.

    Yet the unorthodox collection of headwear, embroidered with Donald Trump’s forced new name for the centuries-old Gulf of Mexico, was far from the most bizarre aspect of an extraordinary White House gathering hosted by the president on Wednesday.

    The cabinet meeting to commemorate the first 100 days of Trump’s second term was, in the view of some social media commentators, something more akin to a gathering of Kim Jong-un loyalists in North Korea, each successive speaker trying to outshine the other in heaping lavish praise on their dear leader.

    There was the sight of Elon Musk, the outgoing head of the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, placing one of the red Gulf of America hats on top of the Doge one he was already wearing.

    There was also an outing for a favorite Maga – Make America Great Again – conspiracy theory, with the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, repeating the debunked claim that 300,000 unaccompanied migrant children were somehow “lost” by the Biden administration.

    Pam Bondi, Trump’s hand-picked attorney general, played the role of chief cheerleader, causing the president to nod his head as she commended him.

    “Mr President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever, ever,” she gushed. “[I’ve] never seen anything like it, thank you.”

    Recalling her Tuesday visit to the Drug Enforcement Administration she added: “They said to me you, Donald Trump, have taken the handcuffs off of DEA agents.”

    It was, however, some peculiar allegations made by Kennedy concerning the Biden-era health and human services (HHS) department that really raised eyebrows, coming soon after “loud quacks” from the health secretary’s duck-themed cellphone ringtone interrupted Trump, the Associated Press reported.

    “We have ended HHS, as the role as effector, the principal effector in this country, for child trafficking,” Kennedy said.

    He went on: “During the Biden administration HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking for sex and for slavery. And we have ended that and we are very aggressively going out and trying to find these children, 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration.”………

     

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