This posting got lost. Wrote it yesterday, when we still had an Acting Secretary of the Navy.
Are you still watching the President’s daily reality show? I can’t take my eyes off it. If this was a movie it would fail miserably. Implausible. No one would act that way, and if they would they would never have been elected! Preposterous. But I thought Christian Bail was good. Couldn’t recognize him.
Today was fascinating. The President had a full blown meltdown on TV. It was massively entertaining. He is a master showman, isn’t he? Must see TV. He brought out the heavy artillery against the Inspector General involved in the investigation into the early response to this virus disaster. When it was revealed that the IG was an Obama appointee, that was all that needed to be said. The President submitted that as some evidence of a crime, inherently a condemnation of the man and any actions he may take, now or in the future. Clearly tainted. As bad as a judge of Mexican decent. What had the country come to? Almost half the country bites on this bone, finding it delicious.
The nature of the position of Inspector General is to be the non-partisan resource for oversight of their designated area of responsibility. That is about to change. He fired Michael Atkinson, IG for the Intelligence community on Friday night. This poor man will not be far behind. These positions will not be filled by lifetime civil servants who proudly serve through diverse administrations. No. They will be replaced, as all positions have been replaced, by toadies. Non-partisan oversight is a thing of the past.
Other news items. The Acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly, stepped in it, and in a huge and odiferous way. He flew 8000 miles to Guam to personally address the men still on the carrier that had seen an unprecedented outbreak of Covid-19, where he proceeded to tell the men their captain was either stupid or naive, too much so to command a U.S. Navy ship, or he did it on purpose, whch violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The men present had not expected this at all, and responded in disgust at the faux Secretary’s accusations. Their colorful pushback can be heard in the recordings of the event. They had cheered the man as he disembarked the day before.
This is where it gets interesting. Trump was quizzed about this and he had already seen this had been a big mistake. He defended the Secretary, saying the captain had messed up, but he acknowledged that the captain had an unblemished military career. He was going to look into this deeper. It looks like one mistake, and I’m not the kind of guy who would ruin a man’s life over one mistake, and maybe the Secretary could have been nicer, too. (I’m not making this up. Watch it.)
The Acting Secretary came out with a non-apology apology mere hours later. He sure was sorry if his words caused any misunderstanding. He didn’t mean to suggest the captain was stupid or naive, he meant…..
I think he has a week or so. That’s what’s so great about having Acting Secretaries. Just get another one. No fuss, no mess. After awhile it becomes normal, and now Secretaries don’t have to be approved at all. That’s how it happens. He probably thinks he’s gonna be ok. Laughable. Talk about naive.
Skip to today.
He wasn’t okay. He resigned, and Trump applauded his patriotism for stepping down and putting this controversy to rest. He did it for the country, and wow, what a guy.
He wasn’t the only one to leave this week. Inspector General of the Defense Department, Glenn Fine, was also suddenly removed. Coincidentally, he was the guy that would oversee the spending of the 2 trillion dollars we just released into the world. His responsibility was to see the money was used for what it was earmarked for. Accountability in the largest spending bill in history. Seems like a jolly idea to me, but somehow Trump saw this guy as a threat. No one is watching the money right now. That’s ok. Remember what the President said at one of his daily briefings when the disaster relief was first being annnounced. A reporter asked who would be overseeing the half trillion that was earmarked for businesses. He reassured us all. “I will,” he said with a cockeyed smile.
The jokes on us. He meant it.