Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Donald Trump In "The Purge"

Now that Donald Trump is the official GOP nominee for President, his transition team is hitting the ground running so that it can tackle the toughest problems facing America should Trump be elected, and apparently at the top of the list is a mass purge of Obama appointees (and other political enemies) to the federal government, led by transition team head Chris Christie.

If he wins the presidency, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and could ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers, Trump ally, Chris Christie, said on Tuesday.

Christie, who is governor of New Jersey and leads Trump's White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,” Christie told a closed-door meeting with dozens of donors at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to an audio recording obtained by Reuters and two participants in the meeting.

Christie was referring to Trump's starring role in the long-running television show "The Apprentice," where his catch-phrase was "You're fired!"

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump's transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said.

“It’s called burrowing," Christie said. "You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up ... roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.” 

And of course a newly incoming administration is going to change personnel, but not even Dubya went this far this fast, announcing that a mass purge was a top priority the day Dubya was officially nominated.  Most people at least have the grace to draw up an enemies list after they get elected, but not our Donald!

Oh, and Christie mentioned that Congress needs to pass legislation for Trump to sign that will get rid of civil service protections making government employees easier to purge and that the agency Trump's going after first will be the EPA.

So yeah, probably no difference between Trump and Clinton.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails