Posted on 10/05/2019 4:54:27 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
Allies to President Trump are furious with acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan for how they say he threw his boss and department officials under the bus in a recent interview.
“At a time when President Trump is facing the most partisan attacks of his administration, one of his own Cabinet-level officials aired his grievances with the president in the court of public opinion,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. “Regardless of your readers' political leanings: Left, right, or in the middle, the airing of grievances by a Cabinet-level official must be considered dishonest and unforgivable.”
McAleenan tried to distance himself from Trump, acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan, and acting Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli in the Washington Post piece. Judd was widely rumored to be interested in the CBP job when McAleenan got it in 2017, but told the Washington Examiner he had not applied for it. He said he was surprised at how the acting secretary publicly described the 240,000-person department.
“Mr. McAleenan is responsible for the security of this nation from attacks by bad actors both foreign and domestic; yet he announced to the world that he is unhappy with his job and that he doesn't have the authority he was promised. He further implied that the department was in disarray," said Judd. "What better time would there be for a terrorist attack? Acting Secretary McAleenan's public comments would be akin to a battle field general informing a hostile military that he and his troops weren't prepared for battle."
Trump has remained silent about McAleenan since the publishing of the story Tuesday. A second person who is familiar with the White House’s strategy said, “Right now, everything is impeachment."
The story credits McAleenan with having “guided the United States out of a crisis at the southern border."
In March and April 2017, roughly 16,000 migrants were encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border each month. Over the next two years, that number rose and, in May, surpassed 144,000. Judd said McAleenan did not do enough, including the lobbying of Congress to pass immigration reforms, starting in early 2017 to maintain the low levels. “Those numbers led to the deaths of multiple individuals in our custody including an 7-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy," Judd said. "By anyone's assessment, Mr. McAleenan's time as commissioner must be seen as a failure."
A former senior CBP official who worked with McAleenan described being “surprised” to read he felt isolated in the Trump administration.
“Ever since Mr. McAleenan became the Acting Commissioner at CBP he insured that he alone had access to DHS and then the White House, on behalf of the Agency. His isolation was self-imposed,” the official wrote. Since April, 17 White House political appointees have left Homeland Security.
“What kind of cabinet head sits down with the Washington Post to openly grieve his boss, ding his own agency heads, and then self-proclaim he’s the missing link separating an immigration utopia between two parties? Someone who has exclusively donated to Democrats his entire life isn’t apolitical, it’s someone who is of fundamentally different ilk than those who put him there,” the official wrote.
Former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan said McAleenan’s refusal to use the term “illegal alien” was “demeaning to every Border Patrol and ICE agent out there enforcing the law as the laws are written.”
“To try to say you’re not going to use legal terms is a slippery slope that we go down that makes enforcing the law a choice rather than an obligation,” Homan said. “He needs to understand that we are in a fight for this country because the Left wants open borders. The Left wants to abolish ICE and they want to end immigration enforcement. And it’s a political fight whether he likes it or not.”
Dead man walking, I knew that when I read of the report.
I think I speak for most of us here, this man does not impress us. He is in over his head, has no talent.
“I think I speak for most of us here, this man does not impress us. He is in over his head, has no talent.”
You don’t speak far enough. He needs to be fired immediately. We elected Trump, not his sorry ass, to set policy.
How long have you been in this town, McAleenan? It's an administration. You don't get to have your own policies independent of the administration. And, you are acting, poorly we all now see. You should be fired.
So rather than getting with the program and excelling at your job, the way to get additional authority is to back stab him?
I'm sure that's the best way to improve your circumstance.
Why is he still in the job?
Why does Trump appoint these idiots ?
Trump’s problem. Whether it’s him or his advisers he has a penchant for picking, incompetent or disloyal folks in his administration. Think of the Mooch, Amarosa, Bolton, Sessions, Bolton, that Sec. of State (whose name is forgotten) et al.
I agree, and its time to bring Holman out of retirement,
I see him telling off the Dems all the time, he is the man
for the job, at least until the wall is built and we get some Republicans in after they win the house back and change these crappy immigration laws.
And I might add let Tom pick his replacement.
A true believer will also make himself available for the "Feats of Strength" celebration where retribution for offending during the Airing of Grievances is settled.
You cant sling a dead cat without hitting one or two. I think he is doing good.
That is a CLASSIC!
Don’t forget Wray.
Who is vetting these appointees? With “friends” like this, the President doesn’t need enemies.
You left out Wray, a deep state hack of the worst kind. A golden opportunity wasted.
Who vets these Cabinet official hires?
Those people along with this Homeland Security hack
should be fired. NOW. They have not served Trump well.
“Trump has remained silent about McAleenan since the publishing of the story Tuesday. A second person who is familiar with the White House’s strategy said, “Right now, everything is impeachment.””
And that’s the whole point of all the hoorah. D’s don’t expect to impeach. They expect to occupy the white house with the impeachment inquiry to the point nothing productive gets done. They get to save Obama’s legacy of an overweening and all powerful administrative state.
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