I don’t disagree with any of that. But, even the people he surrounded himself with in the West Wing were just horrible. Horrible. These aren’t staffers who rely on Senate confirmation. Instead, Trump could have picked anyone. Look at his picks for Chief of Staff. They were dreadful up until Meadows and even Meadows was terrific.
I hate to say it, but Trump has a blind-spot when it comes to picking people to help him.
I do think knee-caping Flynn in the first weeks of the administration hurt Trump on two fronts. First, Flynn was really the only person with enough experience to understand the criminality Obama engaged in and may have been able to smother it in its crib. But worse yet, Trump’s failure to to stand tall for Flynn sent a message to other people who might have been thinking about joining the Administration: You do so at your own peril.
BTW and FWIW, Vindman didn’t work in the White House. I don’t even think he worked in the Old Executive Office Building. One thing many people don’t understand is how laughably large the National Security Council and its staff is. It’s freakin’ enormous, a bi-product of the War on Terror. Most presidents never meet most NSC staffers much less pick them. It’s a calcified bureaucracy like everyone else in DC.
“These aren’t staffers who rely on Senate confirmation. Instead, Trump could have picked anyone. Look at his picks for Chief of Staff. They were dreadful up until Meadows”
And THAT is the result of only family and low end people left because working there at any level meant you were a target. The decent people you would have wanted stayed FAR away, because of threats.
And as for Vindman at the NSC not being in the “White House” i mean in the larger sense. The NSC is in “the White House” as in listening to calls, going there for meetings, working with the results of other meetings.
and besides, he and his brother did indeed work at the White House.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/07/trump-impeachment-witness-vindman-escorted-out-of-white-house.html
“NBC News, citing a source familiar with the situation, reported later Friday that Yevgeny Vindman, Alexander’s twin brother who like him worked at the NSC as an attorney, was also escorted out of the White House. Yevgeny was not a witness at the House impeachment hearings.”
And my point is that the White House itself, and the Trump Presidency were utterly infested with deep state spies starting with Comey’s meeting with Trump. McMaster, Bolton, and all of the impeachment witnesses.
He was hated for winning, and the DC party conspired to allow him to sit in the White House, but constrained him and boxed him in very closely. And as you said, it started with Pence and Yates getting Flynn fired and bringing in neocon globalist McMaster in him place.
And it was not only the hiring, it was the lack of firing. Trump was told my Graham, McConnell, Ryan, etc that any firing after Comey’s surprise would result in instant impeachment and removal. So the FBI coup leaders, Sessions, Barr, etc were all protected to work against him.
You got that right. Flynn was Trumps ONLY loyal cabinet member and Pence capped him
MEGA DITTOS! ANOTHER EXCELLENT POST!