Merkel Says Europe Shouldn’t Rely on U.S. or U.K.: About Time She Figured It Out

Now that Angela Merkel has figured out that the United States isn’t big brother to Europe and Europe isn’t big brother to the United States, we can finally start to deal with each other on equal terms.

It’s a moment that’s been in the making for a long time.

We’re also seeing the difference in between an Omega leader and an Alpha leader, in terms of President Obama and President Trump’ s leadership styles.  Obama meekly went along with the crowd, while Trump won’t tuck tail and submit to European groupthink. 

I suspect Trump will keep the U.S. in the Paris Accords, but he’ll insist on stringent new conditions and exemptions in return for the U.S. honoring the treaty.   I also think that he will submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification, which is what should have happened years ago, but Obama chose not to out of fear that the GOP-controlled Senate would (rightly) reject it.

Merkel’s frustration with Trump is a very good sign; his speech calling on NATO members to pay their fair share was dead-on too.  It’s too bad it seemed to fall on deaf European ears, but hopefully they’ll come around.

There’s too much evil in the world for NATO to confront without having to deal with a budget shortfall created by its own members.

Government People Leaking Information to the Media Need to Be Found and Prosecuted: British Police Stop Sharing Information with U.S. Because They “Don’t Want Their Investigation Hindered”

The news from Britain was not entirely unexpected; British police have stopped sharing intelligence from their bombing investigation with the United States out of fear that it’ll be leaked to the news media over here and set their investigation back.

When our own allies don’t trust our government to handle sensitive information, that’s one more indicator that the sources---all of them---need to be found and prosecuted.   And the price they pay needs to be so high that it’ll discourage others from considering doing the same thing.

And President Trump needs to stay on-script with foreign leaders too, especially with governments that are not our friends.   Trusting them with intelligence gathered by the Israeli intelligence network?   That may not have been the best move, but what’s done is done.   Hopefully Israel asked President Trump to check with them first before revealing Israeli-generated intelligence.

Time to go back to Cold War tactics to catch spies and serial leakers.

Trump Fires FBI Director: He Didn’t Have Much of a Choice; This FBI Director Made Too Many Mistakes and Was Badly Damaged

The office of the FBI Director needs to be clear of political entanglements, and Director Comey was up to his eyeballs on them.  He had to go.  The timing was awful, but with everything going on, there was no guarantee that there would be a better time down the road.

An FBI director who doesn’t follow the chain of command is among the most dangerous people in federal government, because of the power of his agency.  He may not be able to order nuclear missiles to be launched, but his was the power to order investigations of national security issues on all levels of government, and out in public too.   Counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, and criminal investigations are just the tip of the FBI spear.

The FBI director also needs to be an independent observer and do his/her part to protect the public and to stay out of politics, which he didn’t do.  He was badly damaged from his foray into the political realm.

I had said on this blog back in October that I felt that the FBI Director had been overthrown because President Obama wouldn’t order an investigation of his preferred Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, and that the Department of Justice was probably involved.

It’s a reality now.

The hypocrisy of the Democrats who were screaming for Comey’s head eleven days before the election was on full display MINUTES after news broke, of course, but that label also extended to Republicans as well.   Senators and Congresspeople alike from both parties who wanted Comey gone were screaming bloody murder about his dismissal.

This firing has created another circus for the Administration to deal with, and it’s self-inflicted.   I’ve never seen an Administration stab itself in the leg as often as this one does.   Trump should have appointed an independent prosecutor at the same time…this would have given Trump some credibility that he so badly needs.

This is going to get seriously ugly.

Fox’s Letting O’Reilly Go Was the Right Move to Make in Spite of the Pain in the Ratings the Move Will Cost: Now They Need to Find Another Conservative Firebrand

Bill O’Reilly is out at Fox News, and it was the correct move to make.   O’Reilly’s alleged behavior was a continued liability exposure to Fox that could no longer be tolerated.

In doing this, Fox will probably lose their ranking in the ratings during the “O’Reilly Factor” timeslot for the time being, but if they put someone in there who is a firebrand and can keep part of the conservative audience that O’Reilly enjoyed, they’ll do OK and claw their ratings and advertisers back. 

Fifty companies pulled their ads out of the “Factor” timeslot when news of this scandal broke, which were worth in the neighborhood of $100 million.

Fox may be at risk of a lawsuit from O’Reilly, and possibly from the victims for failing to act, so their legal troubles aren’t over.   They’ll have to pay more out, but if they can change the culture over there, the hemorrhage will slow and stop, or move to a more manageable level, similar to other like-sized companies. 

It will be interesting to watch.

Fox Still Has Problems Over at Their News Division: Nothing’s Been Done to Deal With Fox & Friends Issues, and Now Bill O’Reilly’s on the Radar Too

The sexual harassment problem plaguing Fox News is still there and is intensifying; this is not good.

They’ve done nothing to reprimand members of the Fox & Friends team, and now Bill O’Reilly has popped up on the radar, and not in a good way.  One F&F cast member featured prominently in a sexual harassment lawsuit and helped to establish a hostile work environment, as I wrote about back in 2016.

Now, Bill O’Reilly has been settling lawsuits with accusers who have come forward to the tune of $10 million of his own money, and $3 million of the network’s money. 

If he was using just his own money to settle with women who are after him, I’d be willing to accept his explanation that he’s a target for lawsuits, and that he was trying to protect his kids from being humiliated.  But the fact that the network is contributing to payoffs to these women tells me there’s much more to the story than what has been revealed.

Fox management needs to deal severely with these situations.  It’s already cost them a lot of credibility with their conservative audience, at least $60 million to settle the Gretchen Carlson lawsuit and millions more to cover up whatever O’Reilly’s doing,  and they’ll lose a lot more if they don’t start making some examples out of these people and enforcing sexual harassment laws on and off the set.

Workplace sexual harassment is ILLEGAL.

Solution to North Korean Problem Rests With Chinese PLA Forces: They Could Seize Control of North Korean Nuclear Facilities, Missile Complexes and Weapons and Make It Unnecessary for U.S to Launch Military Strikes

China holds the key to solving the North Korean nuclear problem once and for all, and it is going to have to make a decision soon.

We already know that China doesn’t like the idea of U.S. and South Korean troops near its border with North Korea, as demonstrated in the 1950s when the Chinese sent their army across the border into North Korea to attack advancing UN troops.   

In this current crisis, North Korea doesn’t seem interested in following the advice of China, which has threatened to use force if North Korean actions lead to any kind of damage to northeastern China.  This is very interesting, especially since any use of nuclear weapons above ground will undoubtably damage large swaths of the Chinese electrical grid, and not just in the northeastern part of the country.

I say “above ground” because it is entirely possible that if a military confrontation begins between the U.S. and South Korea against North Korea, the idiot running Pyongyang will use nuclear weapons first, possibly on South Korean territory, possibly on his own territory or elsewhere.   Hopefully he hasn’t developed nuclear torpedoes yet.

China could stop this before it even started, if they were to send their army across the border and seize the missile fields, nuclear facilities/materials and weapons and take them back to China with them, along with North Korea’s nuclear scientists.   I think North Korean nuclear weapons under Beijing’s control is preferable to the immature and insane North Korean leader’s questionable control. 

I find it doubtful that the North Korean military would be prepared for a sudden Chinese military move.  They’re focusing all their attention south and not taking China seriously.

This is probably all wishful thinking, but if it were to happen, China could keep the peace on it’s own terms, prevent an exodus of North Korean refugees, and put Pyongyang in check, so that it would start to behave to international norms. 

I think we’d leave North Korea alone if they started behaving like grown-ups and not the petulant child nation.

Major Turn-Around in Trump’s Reaction to Assad and Syrian Use of Chemical Weapons: U.S. Military Hits Syrian Airfield Where Airstrike Originated

Finally, some decisive action on the Syrian chemical weapons attack.  Hopefully North Korea and China are watching very carefully, and considering what kind of U.S. President that they’re dealing with now.  

President Trump may still be formulating his foreign policy, but once he decides to do something, it’s become very clear that he will.   It’s very encouraging, and a reversal of his words from a couple of days before.  The videos coming out of Syria horrified President Trump, too.  

U.S. forces struck the Syrian airbase where the chemical airstrike originated from.   I think that Assad took a gamble that the U.S. would do nothing, and he miscalculated very badly.  This is not the previous Administration.

Russia and China should encourage their clients to start behaving to international norms.   They’re in a very good position to do so now, if they weren’t before. 

I found it interesting that Russian air defenses apparently did not engage the Tomahawk cruise missiles.  I’m sure we’ll hear more about this as the story develops.

Trump Language on Syria Chemical Weapons Attack is Disappointing: We Need a Really Strong Response

President Trump took the opportunity to blame Obama’s weak red line foreign policy concerning Syria’s chemical weapons and ducked saying what he’s going to do about today’s chemical weapons attack.

Old news, Mr. President.  What are you going to do differently?

And for that matter, are we sure that is was the Syrian government, or was it ISIS with aircraft that they’ve seized from Syrian air bases during the initial  ISIS overrun of Syria?   I doubt it was Russia.

What I saw on TV this evening in the aftermath of the chemical attack is going to give me nightmares.   

If the world doesn’t react with overwhelming negativity and start handing out some severe punishments, this won’t be the last time that we’ll see chemical weapons being used in a war zone.  They’re either illegal, or they’re not.

I hope President Trump watches those videos coming out of Syria in detail.  They’re HORRIFIC.

“Nuclear Option?” Nonsense! Senate Should Have Been on Majority Vote (51 Votes to Cloture) LONG Before Now, Not This 60 Votes Garbage That Has Paralyzed Congress for Far Too Long

I’ve never liked the 60 vote rule in the United States Senate, and think they should have been doing majority votes LONG before the current Supreme Court nominee was up for a vote.

The sooner they go back to majority rules in the Senate, the better.

The only 2/3 or 3/4 votes that should be required are the ones specifically mentioned by the Constitution of the United States.  Everything else should be a simple majority, like in the House.

If a Supreme Court nominee is truly awful, or is discovered to be an axe murderer during the confirmation process, he or she will not get 51 votes.  Enough people in Congress will vote against the nominee, or they’ll convince either the nominee or the President to withdraw the candidacy and choose someone more palatable.

And if the party who doesn’t control the Senate doesn’t like being in the minority, then they need to do a better job of getting people in their states out to vote for their party’s candidates. 

Currently the Republicans run the Senate, but there will more than likely be a turnover eventually, as control has swung in both directions at one point or another.

If anything, we’ll get better Congressional performances from both parties, which have been dismal going back to before the 2000 elections.

Forget about Friday, change the rules now.

GOP Sabotaged Their Own Bill By Trying to Go It Alone: With Their Own Party in Disarray, How Could They Possibly Hope to Pass Anything Until Their Ducks Are in a Row?

I’m trying to comprehend how a political party that is as fractured as the GOP possibly thought they could ramrod their incomplete health care bill through the House with every Democrat prepared to vote “No” on it.  

The attempt to do this was done in extreme haste, and without doing the groundwork first.   Votes should never have been scheduled until the GOP had their entire party on board, which they never did with the health care reform bill.   Moderate Republicans thought the bill went too far, the conservatives didn’t think it went far enough, and everybody else was scattered across the divide.

The GOP couldn’t have more than twenty-one of their members vote against the bill; in between thirty and forty indicated that they wouldn’t support it.  That number, combined with the Democratic numbers was enough to cause the GOP leadership to pull the vote.

If this kind of GOP thinking continues, and they don’t do their homework, I fully expect this kind of thing to happen again on the other agenda items that President Trump has.  I’d prefer he didn’t rule by Presidential fiat in the same way that President Obama did (through Executive Orders). 

I don’t know if Speaker Ryan will be able to hold onto his leadership position, given the kind of defeat he’s just been handed.  If he can’t control his own party in the House, he can’t be expected to control the direction of the whole House either.

Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

GOP Effort to Repeal and Replace Obamacare Will Likely Fail: Their Plan, Quite Frankly, Isn’t As Good as What They’re Attempting to Repeal, So They Should Probably Focus on Fixing What’s Already in Place

I can’t support the Republicans on their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare until they present a plan that is much better and less expensive than what’s already in place.

Which leads me to this point: the original Affordable Care Act was put into place with a plan to put amendments in to fix shortcomings of the law, but the wind direction shifted in Washington and the GOP got control of both houses of Congress, and those amendments were never made.

Someone in Washington needs to look at those amendments and see if they are viable fixes that will help fix the problems, or if they’ll make the situation worse.   Nobody in Washington seems to be talking about this.

People see and feel the monthly premiums the most, and many states have seen double-digit increases in their monthly premiums; insured citizens in Arizona will see a 116% jump in 2017.   This isn’t right or affordable. 

I think the GOP needs to focus on fixing what’s already in place.   Those who are saying that if the GOP screws this up are right: they (the GOP) will pay a heavy price during the midterm elections if millions lose their health insurance.

It may be “Obamacare Light”, but it will have a better chance of succeeding in both houses of Congress, especially with enough of the Republicans in open revolt over supporting the GOP alternative.

They need to do what is necessary to lower premiums, lower costs, and get rid of the mandate. 

Get it right, GOP, or suffer the consequences at the next election.

Police Agencies Should Be Reimbursed for President’s Weekend Trips to Florida and for Protecting Trump Tower: Local Police Aren’t Equipped to Protect President and His Family 24/7/365

President Trump seems to be asking a lot of police departments in New York City and in Florida.   They’re being required to supplement the Secret Service and provide equipment and personnel to protect the President and his family in areas of the country where it’s traditionally not happened before.

Presidential vacations are one thing, but the First Family is residing in Trump Tower in downtown NYC, instead of the White House, and President Trump has spent 1/4 of his Presidency living in Florida.

What gives?  He tweeted in 2016 that he was going to be so busy that he wouldn’t leave the White House.  Yet he’s been in Florida every weekend at his resort, resulting in $60,000 a day in police protection that was not budgeted by Palm Beach County for their Sheriff’s Department.  Residents shouldn’t have to have their taxes raised to pay for President Trump’s protection.

In New York, where the First Family is, it’s even worse.  It’s $146,000 per day, which is actually down from the November-January transition time, which cost NYC $308,000 per day.

The sooner that the First Family moves to the White House, the better.  That way the Secret Service can boost their personnel on the White House grounds, and provide better protection to the President and his family.  Recent security problems at the White House illustrate the need for more Secret Service agents to be on the grounds.   Taking 17 minutes to detect someone (who has no military or infiltration training) who hopped the fence?  That’s a huge problem.

The federal government should reimburse Palm Beach County and New York City for the extra protection that they’re providing.   And President Trump should spend more weekends at the White House to give the residents of Palm Beach a break.

Also, President Trump’s budget will cut federal funding to cities for anti-terrorism efforts, so why is he asking them to spend more while cutting the budget for their police forces?  That doesn’t make sense.

Arrangements need to be made, and a policy written or updated for the future protection of the First Family.

Streisand Tweets That Trump is Making Her Gain Weight: No, Mrs. Streisand, Your Choices Are Doing That

Understand that this is not a fat shaming post as I despise fat shamers.

Barb Streisand tweeted over the weekend that President Trump was causing her to gain weight.

With all due respect to Mrs. Streisand, her choices in foods and when she eats them are responsible for all that, not another person.   If the news is causing stress, turn it off.   Throw the maple syrup out if it’s causing a problem and switch to something else.

Hypothetical: I just ate fifty jelly donuts, and it’s Barbara Streisand’s fault because I don’t like her political stands.   It’s all her fault for my eating fifty jelly donuts and putting on 200 pounds as I eat fifty jelly donuts a day.   Barbara Streisand is going to kill me!   Sound utterly ridiculous?  Now read the story in that vein.

Reality: I hate jelly donuts.   And I eat what I want because I want to.  That’s on me.   Barbara Streisand and her political beliefs have nothing to do with it.   It’s all about making personal choices and taking responsibility for them.   That’s how I see it.

Where Did Trump Get His Information About Wiretapping Going On at Trump Tower From? Did He Get a Briefing on It? And If So, Who Gave It?

If President Trump doesn’t get his act together fast, and start providing information on where he got the notion that Trump Tower was being wiretapped, his adversaries are going to multiply exponentially.

Trump needs allies in Washington if he’s going to make anything of his first term of office, and going off the way he has based (according to some) on the meaningless prattling of an ultra-right wing radio show host (not Rush Limbaugh) simply will not do.  The petulant child routine from President Trump is getting real old, real quick, whether the Tower was bugged or not.

Was President Trump briefed by someone at 6am in the morning?  His first tweet at 6:35am said that he had just found out that the Tower had been wiretapped.  Context, please, Mr. President.

I liked the President Trump I saw on TV addressing Congress.  That’s the one that needs to be out in front, not the Twitter lunatic.

Yes, he should be upset at the Russia story upstaging him again.   And Sessions probably should have talked to the White House as a professional courtesy before having his press conference.

Trump’s chief of staff isn’t doing his job in coordinating the efforts of the Administration.   It’s time to get rid of some people, starting with the chief of staff.

Some Liberal Networks Replace “Fact Check” With “Reality Check”: Former Term Became Too Politicized, And So Will the New One

I see that NBC News and CNN both replaced their “fact checks” with “reality checks.”  I thought something like that was going to happen as “fact checks” and all the variants had become political hot potatoes.   And since President Trump is openly treating the news networks as an opposition party, the fact check terminology was not working to their advantage anymore.

A lot of people would instantly start to bristle if they heard a news anchor even say “fact check” or read it on an openly biased news network’s web site.    I looked at CNN’s evaluation of the President’s address to Congress last night, and the only thing that changed was the title of the piece.

They still issued verdicts of Trump’s statements as being “true”, “true but misleading”, “mostly true”, and “false.”

The problem with these kinds of checks is that the statements of CNN and other news organizations in their fact checks also have to be checked for accuracy.  They got into a nasty habit of misleading readers with inaccurate statements in their own fact checks.

For instance, the following on-screen fact check was put on the air on August 11th, 2016, in response to Trump’s political statement that Obama founded ISIS:

See the fact check?  It’s wrong.  ISIS was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, while al-Baghdadi was the leader of ISIS after al-Zarqawi’s death.   I found it particularly funny that CNN had “He’s Not” in parenthesis in their defense of their Great Leader.

Trump was making a political statement that because the Obama Administration pulled troops out of Iraq too soon, it became possible for groups like ISIS to fill the vacuum as the still-in-training Iraqi Army wasn’t up to the task of fighting off ISIS.   (The Iraqi Army was badly beaten in 2014 and ISIS took over a large swath of Iraq).   Trump was saying Obama should be credited for making the conditions possible for ISIS to flourish, but it didn’t come across right and the left tried to make political hay about it with….mixed results as the photo above shows.

And then there’s the question of one news outlet saying that a statement is true, and another one blasts the same statement as being absolutely false, especially if both news outlets are of the same political color—such as CNN vs. MSNBC.   Throw both fact checks out and go to a third, fourth, fifth or sixth source.

I couldn’t help but notice that the Washington Post’s fact check piece focused in only on statements it considered false and ignored everything else from the rest of the speech, including statements that CNN said were true. 

“Reality checks” will take on the same hue as “fact checks” did, and possibly faster, even without a red-hot political campaign raging across the country.  They’re mostly political attack articles from the Democrats, who really need to get over themselves.

What? The Second Round of the Celebrity Democratic Pity Party Was On Last Night? Oh, Gee, I Missed It When I Turned Off the TV and Went to Bed: Did Anything Happen Other Than the Usual Bull?5

Not that I care.

The news people keep talking about some kind of a screw-up at the end of the show, but I think the entire show is a screw-up.   If they kept the politics out of it and would cease their unending meltdown over the election, I’d probably stay up to watch it or at least DVR it.

I’m not remotely interested in anything that a melting/melted down celebrity has to say about politics.  Get over it.

Quick Repeal of Obamacare Was Never Realistic: GOP Needs to Slow Down, Take a Good Look at Existing Health Care Law, and Proceed One Step at a Time

The GOP is finally realizing that a quick repeal of Obamacare was never a realistic goal.   To quickly repeal it would lead to even more chaos in the health care insurance field than there already is, and no Republican wants to be responsible for large numbers of American losing what they already have.

This is why I’m in favor of a slow examination of  the law, and gradual implementation of a new system, which may or may not involve keeping the better parts of the ACA.

Caution is warranted, not speed, when it comes to health care.  The repeal of Obamacare cannot be done by Executive Order alone, which is as it should be.   It took an act of Congress to pass the ACA, and the repeal or replacement has to follow the same course.

Whatever they do, at the end of the process, people need to have access to health insurance, whether by mandate or by their own volition, and it can’t involve raising premiums much higher than they are now.   A decrease in premiums would be very welcome news, especially in states that have had huge increases in premiums.

Oh, and an $89,000 medication?   I think not.  A $600 epipen injector that’s available in Britain for $69?  That kind of health care robbery has to end.  The $89,000 drug is available overseas for $1,200 and has been for years.

Proceed with caution, GOP.

John McCain Pulled a Bill Clinton-Like Stunt With a Twist: Protesting Against the Government He’s Overseas Representing?

I jumped all over Bill Clinton in 1992 when it came out that he participated in anti-Vietnam War protests against his own country (while he was a student living overseas) in 1969, and now it appears I must jump all over a United States Senator for pulling a Clinton-like stunt over the weekend.

John McCain also made waves during the 1992 campaign, criticizing Bill Clinton’s choices while he (Clinton) was protesting overseas as a student (and at the same time that McCain was being tortured in North Vietnam for information), so I’m having a hard time believing that John McCain would do this.

McCain made a mistake when he traveled to Germany and delivered a speech that was critical of the Trump Administration.

I’m sorry, but a senior Senator like McCain should know better than to pull a Bill Clinton.  He has every right to say what he did, but not off American soil.  He’s over there representing the United States government, and he just slapped it in the face in the presence of a foreign audience.  Gee, thanks for nothing, Senator.

It was a bad decision, and one I can’t support.   And I don’t care how mad he is; American domestic politics stops at the waterline.   Politicians should know better than to air their laundry away from home.
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Just how many of Senator McCain's Arizona constituents live in Munich, anyway?

If the Mainstream Media Still Thinks It’s Part of the Government After Yesterday’s “Press Conference”, Then They’re Delusional: A Free and Independent Press Cannot Be Joined At The Hip With the President The Way That They Were During the Obama Administration

The liberal headlines about President Trump’s impromptu press conference yesterday were exactly as expected.  Terms that they used were mostly negative (epic rant, unhinged, rambling, media-bashing, unplugged, crazy, scorched-earth, wild, shock, bluster, bravado, exaggeration (that’s the one term I agree with), and about a dozen other terms that they looked in the thesaurus to find). 

I called it brilliant, and exactly what the arrogant elitist press needed to hear: a sitting President putting them into their place.

Some of the elitists still believe that the press is part of the federal government, which is dead wrong.  A free, independent and healthy press must not seen to be a part of the government, or they run the risk of becoming presidential spokespeople, which is what they were for the Obama  Administration, and for the failed Obama heir-apparent . 

I believe Trump served them up a big helping of humble pie yesterday.  And the press is still trying to figure out what it is they’re dealing with.   They withered under Trump’s fire, and that’s a good thing.   He’s treating the media as political opposition, which is what they’ve allowed themselves to become.  And it’s a good strategy for now.   He needs results when the public gets bored with his current antics. 

Now, there are still a lot of unanswered questions that President Trump hasn’t answered yet, and he said some things that were blatantly incorrect during the press conference, like his Electoral College being the biggest one since Reagan.   Nope.  Not even close.  In the eight Presidential elections after the 1984 Reagan landslide, five of the victors had more electoral votes than President Trump’s 306 electoral votes.  He really needs to get with the program, stop putting out incorrect information and be honest about how rough things have been so far.

And it is the media’s job to ask probing questions. but as the free press, and not the political opposition, and certainly not as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

The real free press has been missing in action for a long time.  I wonder if we’ll ever see them again, without all the liberal bias that currently exists in today’s news media.

In the meantime, the liberal press can have fun with the monster that they themselves helped to create.  

White House Chief of Staff, National Security Advisor and Press Secretary’s Jobs Are in Varying Degrees of Danger: Chief of Staff and Press Secretary Will Probably Be Able to Hold On, But National Security Advisor is Likely to Resign or Be Fired

Three members of the Trump Administration appear to be in danger of being forced to resign or being fired outright.

The National Security Advisor appears to be in very hot water as he may have misled the White House on his communications with the Russian government prior to President Trump taking office.   This is not good.   If something happens here, it will happen in the next day or two.

The Chief of Staff doesn’t seem to have a handle on the White House staff.   A good Chief of Staff not only manages the staff, but also the message being put out by the staff as representatives of the Executive Branch.   He/she also controls who gets access to the President.   With so many contradictory statements coming from the Executive Branch, they need to get things under control fast.  This is a very disorganized White House.

Finally, the Press Secretary is a fool and is putting on quite the side show, and given the President’s reputation for being a no-nonsense businessman, he may be forced to find someone else who will more accurately represent him to the media, which he doesn’t particularly care for.

It’s likely that the Press Secretary and the Chief of Staff will keep their jobs, but I’m not so sure about the National Security Advisor.   He’s in big trouble.