Trump Cabinet Appointments

[ChumpDumper]

He could've gotten 10 Kia Tellurides.

[Winehole23]

Bill Pulte seems to favor colorful characters

Last year, as Reuters exclusively reported in November, Pulte brought on Michigan restaurant owner Mark Zarkin as a consultant to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Zarkin, a prominent Detroit-area Trump backer with no real experience in the mortgage sector, was convicted in 2000 of a felony sex crime involving a sexual encounter with a “mentally incapacitated” woman. He served time in jail and was listed on Michigan’s sex offender registry for about nine years, according to a 2019 investigation by the Detroit Free Press.For unknown reasons, a judge later overturned his conviction in an “unusual” and “rare” case, as the Free Press put it.

Right around the time Pulte brought on Zarkin, he also hired Aaron Kofsky, who four months earlier was fired from his job as a financial policy adviser with then-Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

Kofsky was the subject of an October 2024 WIRED story that revealed he’d been posting on Reddit under a pseudonym for nearly a decade about his use of cocaine, heroin, Ritalin, MDMA and other drugs. One of his posts mocked Vance as “a Trump book licker.” Another gave advice on how to transport drugs through TSA checkpoints at airports.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bill-...b087bc4f0b3433

[Winehole23]

[Winehole23]

the Trump administration is objectively pro-explosive diarrhea

As of July 1, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NBC News.

Before July, the program had been tracking infections caused by six additional pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some of them can lead to severe or life-threatening illnesses, particularly for newborns and people who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems.

Monitoring for the six pathogens is no longer required for the 10 states that participate in the program, though those states aren’t precluded from conducting surveillance on their own.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...ses-rcna227089

[Winehole23]

[Winehole23]

[Winehole23]

The cyclospora outbreak (“explosive diarrhea”) is the largest in US history and we don’t know what’s causing it.

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/explosive-...

[Winehole23]

Todd Blanche is a member of the NY Bar

[Winehole23]

corrupt from the get go

According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, sources close to the development shared that Corey Lewandowski may have improperly awarded government contracts while he was in a senior position at the Department of Homeland Security.

The investigators are reviewing several contracts signed during Kristi Noem’s tenure, and the department officials had been perplexed by Lewandowski’s involvement in the process. As per the people who reviewed the do ents or had knowledge of the approvals, despite not serving as a full-time US government official, he personally signed specific contracts.


Mullin recently informed the White House Officials about the probe and its findings. He and his team have also reportedly been cooperating with the investigation. Meanwhile, Lewandowski’s representative said that he has denied issuing contracts during his stint with the department. He also claimed that he hasn’t been reached out to by anyone regarding the ongoing probe.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ns/ar-AA27YSSc

[Winehole23]

ODNI nominee Jay Clayton waffled under scrutiny by the US Senate, refused to say who won the election in 2020

(The prose below is by longtime GOP flack turned Trump-resister Steve Schmidt)

I’ve been on the losing side of a presidential election. I helped place John McCain’s concession call to Barack Obama.

Not once — not for a single second — did anyone in our campaign suggest that John McCain’s disappointment justified an assault on the Cons ution. No one proposed inventing fraud claims to soothe his pride. No one imagined that protecting a candidate’s ego was more important than protecting the Republic.

The idea would have been considered insane. Because serious people understood something that has become almost revolutionary in today’s Republican Party: candidates don’t own elections.

The American people do.

The concession call isn’t an act of generosity. It isn’t an expression of friendship. It’s not an acknowledgment that the winner is admirable or deserving.
It’s an acknowledgment that the people have spoken.

It’s an affirmation that the Cons ution governs the transfer of power — not the emotions of the defeated.

Donald Trump rejected that principle.

What has followed has been one of the most shameful spectacles in American political history: accomplished men and women humiliating themselves by pretending not to know what they know.

Jay Clayton joined that procession.

[Winehole23]

can a hurt feelings tantrum triumph over a 250 year old republic?

Donald Trump is uniquely well-placed to attempt to strike the coup de grace

[Winehole23]

Ossoff responded to Clayton’s responses in this way:

You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election. But you ask to lead America’s intelligence community. Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question? To have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to the question. Why can you not give it?