Category: Hire The Best People

Trump Was Unfamiliar With the Scope of the President’s Job When Meeting Obama

President-elect Donald Trump celebrated his status as a Washington outsider during his campaign for the presidency, but his lack of familiarity with the US government appears to be coming into view as he transitions to the White House.

During Trump’s private meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday, Trump “seemed surprised” by the scope of the president’s responsibilities, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Trump’s aides were also apparently unaware that the entire staff of the president working in the White House’s West Wing would need to be replaced, according to The Journal.

Obama reportedly will spend more time counseling Trump about the presidency than most presidents do with their successors.

Trump and Obama were highly critical of each other during the campaign season but appear to have struck a conciliatory tone since Trump’s election, at least publicly.

(h/t Business Insider)

Trump Policy Staffers Quit After Not Being Paid

Many of Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., policy staffers quit working for the campaign after not being paid or publicly recognized, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

According to former employees, they were told they would be paid when Corey Lewandowski was campaign manager. But Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski in July, said the staffers would remain unpaid.

“It’s a complete disaster,” a campaign adviser told the Post. “They use and abuse people. The policy office fell apart in August when the promised checks weren’t delivered.”

Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman, said that the D.C. policy shop has been “very successful” but added that “no such oral agreements were made” in respect to paying the staffers.

The two leaders of the policy shop, Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn, allegedly promised the workers that the money was coming. The report notes, however, that Dearborn failed to get an approved budget for the D.C. branch after Manafort was appointed.

“I heard it from Dearborn, I heard it from Mashburn. It was understood that we would be paid. The campaign never discussed how much the pay would be. It was never in writing,” another staffer told the newspaper.

“There were some people who were treating it as a full-time job. I suspect that those people were quite astonished when the pay didn’t come through.”

There were also workers who did not hold the policy shop’s leaders responsible.

“Rick Dearborn was always professional and forthcoming with me,” said the former policy coordinator.

“I was certainly under the expectation I would be paid at some point, but I don’t blame Rick Dearborn.”

The list of staffers who left the D.C. policy shop includes Ying Ma, a former staffer to Trump adviser Ben Carson; Tera Dahl, a former assistant to ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); J.D. Gordon, the shop’s director of national security; and conservative writer William Triplett, among others.

The staffers who remained in the Washington office are now working on a volunteer basis, the report added.

(h/t The Hill)

 

Trump Surrogate Admits Falsifying Military Service and College Degree

A top Donald Trump surrogate admitted to falsifying some of his professional accomplishments after a contentious confrontation with CNN anchor Victor Blackwell.
South Carolina preacher Mark Burns, who regularly introduces Trump at his campaign events, had listed on his church’s website that he had a Bachelor of Science degree and served six years in the Army Reserve.

Burns, however, was never in the Army Reserve. He was in the South Carolina National Guard, from which he was discharged in 2008, CNN found.

As far as a Bachelor’s degree, North Greenville University told CNN he only attended the school for one semester. Burns admitted that he did not finish his degree when CNN asked him about it.

When CNN confronted Burns about the various professional and social exaggerations he had featured on his biography, Burns first said the page had “obviously” been either “manipulated or either hacked or added.”

But the site host, Wix, said there was no evidence of a hack.

“This is not fair at all,” Burns told Blackwell during the interview. “I thought we were doing a profile and all of a sudden you’re here to try to destroy my character.”

“I’m not here to destroy your character,” Blackwell replied.

At one point, Burns told Blackwell he believed the interview was off the record, to which Blackwell responded, “I didn’t agree to that.”

Burns abruptly ended the interview by walking away.

CNN followed up with the Trump campaign and was provided with a statement from Burns:

“As a young man starting my church in Greenville, South Carolina, I overstated several details of my biography because I was worried I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a new pastor. This was wrong, I wasn’t truthful then and I have to take full responsibility for my actions,” Burns’ statement reads.

Burns said he did not know if he had been vetted by the Trump campaign.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Donald Trump wants to have “extreme vetting” for immigrants, but he can’t even successfully vet his own team.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GmDqeZr97w

Trump Adviser Calls on Long Deceased Muslim Leader to Condemn Nice Attack

Hiring ‘the best people‘ shouldn’t be this difficult.

Former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, an adviser to Donald Trump who was rumored to be on his list of possible running mates, called on Muslim leaders to condemn the attack in Nice, France.

“The radical Islamist ideology is alive, well and kicking,” Flynn said in an interview with “Fox and Friends” Friday morning.

“In the last 24 hours I have called out for the leaders of Iran — Khomeini — and the leaders of the Muslim world, and I can tick them off if you want, there’s a bunch of countries with a bunch of so-called leaders, to step up and call this what it is. They know they have a problem inside of their own system.”

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader, died in 1989. He was replaced by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Media

 

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