President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition was in disarray on Tuesday, marked by firings, infighting and revelations that American allies were blindly dialing in to Trump Tower to try to reach the soon-to-be-leader of the free world…
One week after Mr. Trump scored an upset victory that took him by surprise, his team was improvising the most basic traditions of assuming power. That included working without official State Department briefing materials in his first conversations with foreign leaders…
Despite the haphazard nature of Mr. Trump’s early calls with world leaders, his advisers said the transition team was not suffering unusual setbacks. They argued that they were hard at work behind the scenes dealing with the same troubles that incoming presidents have faced for decades…
And so forth.
President-elect Trump pushed back on the NYT tonight and reassured the American people that the transition is going according to plan. And he also let it slip that his new job will be a spin-off of his old one. Think the Ultimate Celebrity Apprentice…
–Dana
UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Hillary’s go-to reporter Maggie Haberman strikes again! Her name is on the byline . . .
Let’s review the bidding, shall we? First CBS News reported yesterday, based on anonymous “sources,” that Trump had asked for security clearances for his kids. Then, an anonymous transition team official last night told reporters that the CBS News report was false, offering this bold and stirring denial: “That’s not something I’m expecting right now.”
Tonight, the Trump organization has spun on a dime, and now admits that security clearances were indeed requested for the Trump brood . . . but an anonymous “top aide” blames it on a low-level staffer:
The Trump transition team is saying that a low-level staffer requested security clearances for three of Donald Trump’s children, according to a top aide.
According to the aide, the request was made “without authorization” and the staffer, who is no longer with the team, “overstepped his boundaries.”
Sources say the request was not made by the president-elect.
I will add that I am getting tired of all these stories being based on anonymous sources. There’s a lot of flippity floppity flopping going on and nobody is being named.
Paul Ryan was unanimously chosen for another term as House speaker by his Republican colleagues on Tuesday as he called for his party to unite behind President-elect Donald Trump.
The 46-year-old Wisconsin Republican, who was often at odds with Trump during the long presidential campaign, has pledged to work closely with the president-elect to advance Trump’s agenda.
“Welcome to the dawn of a new unified Republican government,” Ryan declared at a news conference a few hours before the closed-door leadership elections. “It feels really good to say that, actually. This will be a government focused on turning President-elect Trump’s victory into real progress for the American people. Our team is very excited, and we cannot wait to get to work.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — a.k.a. “Lyin’ Ted” — was spotted visiting Trump Tower on Tuesday.
According to a Trump transition team pool report, “Cruz managed to sneak into the tower without any of us seeing him (which is easy to do and often done), but I will update everyone if we learn more.”
A Cruz spokeswoman released a statement about the visit.
She said Cruz, who ultimately backed Trump, was there visiting with President-elect Donald Trump to help him achieve his goal: to “drain the swamp.
He was rewarded with some gratifying, meaningless, anony-yapping about being considered for AG.
The archive of the Constitutional Vanguard has been updated with the email that went out yesterday, which you can view here. I won’t link every update to the archive with a post, but I’m trying to whet your appetite by showing you some of the content you’re missing out on if you’re not a member.
Because you can read yesterday’s email at the link, you can also see the instructions for signing up to the forum. But you’re not supposed to post at the forum unless you’re actually a member (and if I catch you trying, I’ll whack your account). The archive is a way to entice people to sign up, and a way for people to keep up with the content if they absolutely refuse to become a member (and there are some who fall into that category).
The next email on Article V comes out tomorrow.
The way to get these emails in your inbox, be allowed to sign up for the private Facebook group, and get access to the private forum, is to sign up to be a member, here.
Short on time this morning, I intended to do a feel-good story about the Churchill bust being restored to the White House, based on a link from a commenter. Except the link was to Gateway Pundit, so no. Gateway Pundit linked to this story, which claims it’s true. But then there’s this story, which says otherwise. I can’t sort it all out, so I’m taking the lazy (actually short on time) blogger’s way out and crowd-sourcing it. I know some commenters left links about this in comments recently (e.g. here), in particular this one:
Yesterday following his column, I sent the following email to Charles Krauthammer. Charles asked that I make the email public and I have agreed.
Charles,
I take your criticism seriously and you are correct that you are owed an apology. There was clearly an internal confusion about the two busts and there was no intention to deceive. I clearly overshot the runway in my post. The point I was trying to make – under the belief that the Bust in the residence was the one previously in the Oval Office— was that this oft repeated talking point about the bust being a symbol of President Obama’s failure to appreciate the special relationship is false. The bust that was returned was returned as a matter of course with all the other artwork that had been loaned to President Bush for display in his Oval Office and not something that President Obama or his Administration chose to do. I still think this is an important point and one I wish I had communicated better.
A better understanding of the facts on my part and a couple of deep breaths at the outset would have prevented this situation. Having said all that, barring a miracle comeback from the Phillies I would like to see the Nats win a world series even if it comes after my apology
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