That’s the message Donald Trump is sending about himself with the firing of Andrew McCabe, 26 hours before he would have earned his full pension for 21 years of service in the FBI. What amazes me is that he thinks he’s sending a positive message.
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2018
“a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI”…I think what those hard-working men and women ought to see is that their retirement is now subject to the whims of a tyrant — that what they earn can be whisked away at the last moment by a president who is going to gloat over his ability to punish them. Every federal employee has got to be questioning how reliable their employer actually is.
Get ready. Trump is surrounding himself with sycophants and is probably thinking of firing Mueller next. Do you think Republican-controlled congress will react responsibly to that?
My take is that Mueller already has the goods on little Donny, and if the latter attempts to fire him he will unload them to the public. I think that little Donny knows that and it’s what’s keeping him from action he knows will be disastrous. But he is also at the mercy of his whims, and may do it anyway.
Fun to watch, though I can wish I lived in a country rather further away than Canada.
That was my first thought as well.
The Trumpists have hearts as big as…an earthworm or caterpillar.
By itself, it’s one data point and not that big a deal.
But you know their callous, sadistic, brutality is going to influence everything they do.
It will effect all 323 million Americans.
What you see is what you get.
Considering the highly successful and ongoing campaign to demonize and other federal, state, local and municipal employees, Trump probably sees this as a way to placate the base.
Before the last redistricting (not the current court redistricting), I was in Barletta’s district. Barletta is on record pushing to cancel the FEHP (Federal Employees Health Plan), do away with what is left of the FERS (Federal Employee Retirement System), and do away with all civil service protection which protects me from political rewards/punishments in hiring, firing and promotions. And, in his current gerrymandered district, the voters love it. They view federal employees as lazy, overpaid, coddled, protected, and obstructionist. After all, federal workers get all the benefits and protections that most workers in private jobs used to get and have lost because of malignant capitalism. And the campaign to demonize federal workers has succeeded — look at the bogeymen of the right wing — gays, atheists and public workers.
So, for Trump, this vindictive firing, denying McCabe his FERS pension, will play well with the Fox News crowd.
I don’t think it will play well with any of the federal rules that protect federal civil servants from being punished or rewarded for political reasons. I think McCabe will win in the long run and get his pension and benefits but, in the short run, Trump gets what he wants — a short term victory to impress the base.
Hey, all Trump did was take someone’s pension; it’s not like he did anything really awful, like use deportation to destroy hundreds of families, or try to deprive people of health care, or openly promote racism, or brag about sexually assaulting women. Oh wait.
At this point, it would be an amusing parlor game to speculate over what will be the single most vicious and cruel act Trump commits before leaving office, but for all of the real people who are suffering real pain because of this administration. And every time you think he’s hit bottom, he just proves you wrong.
thirdmill:
Well, why not? How many small businesses (which, for a small business owner IS the pension) has Trump put out of business by refusing to pay or paying pennies on the dollar? How many pension plans has Bain Capital, or other vulture investment groups, emptied? Taking away the pensions of the middle class is standard operating procedure for the 1%ers. The only difference is that now they can go after pensions of public, not just private, employees.
That is easy.
Nothing causes mass misery better than war.
Just look at what happened to the millions and tens of millions in Iraq and Syria.
I’m sure at some point, Trump et al. are going to try to start a war somewhere.
Young people take note: Republicans don’t give a damn about you, your Constitution, or your country. Please remember this each and every Election Day.
I can’t see a lot of people in the FBI being happy about this. Between McCabe and Comey, Donald seems intent on making enemies out of the entire bureau.
Ed Seedhouse
I doubt that. So far, Trump has shown to be immune for any kind of backlash to anything he does. Time to stop thinking that the next revelation will be the one that finally brings him down. It won’t.
#8
no it does not look like the wisest thing to do in the long run.
At some point there is going to be some faction of the FBI and other government institutions that are going to come to the conclusion that they have nothing to loose and what ever information there is about him that would be the most damaging will be made public. He is alienating those he needs to succeed.
kind of reminds me of the kid who is pelting rocks at the bull dog tied up with a slim old rope and not a log chain. At some point that rope is going to break.
uncle frogy
It’s really hard not to panic and freak out when you look at the bigger picture. The US is going insane, and much faster and much worse than even our most pessimistic predictions thought. China has just set itself up to become the Fourth Reich, and with all their tech, they may very well succeed. Russia might very well start WWIII through a proxy, maybe Syria or North Korea, simply out of nihilistic-minded sour grapes.
We are in the most precarious situation we have ever been in since the Cuban Missile Crisis, if not worse, and this time, we won’t have an emergent Pax Americana to save us. I can feel the end of the timeline blowing in the temporal breeze, and most of the places it can land and stick are hellish.
Sent to my Congresscritter:
Mr. Boyle:
Please introduce a measure, or support others if such are in the offing, to re-instate the pension or similar residual stipend, for former Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Regardless of whether he made a judgmental error in handling information in his purview it is unseemly that a long standing and highly regarded officer of the FBI should be dismissed so cavalierly.
The manner and timing of his firing, particularly as he had already voluntarily agreed to vacate his position due to disagreements with the administration, reeks of political retribution. Congress has oversight authority of the FBI in particular, but more widely of policies and practices of the treatment of federal employees.
Please act to see to it that whether or not a finding of of policy violation is upheld in a particular case against McCabe, that an employee of long and honorable service cannot be arbitrarily stripped of his pension without an adjudicated finding of criminal wrongdoing. Such a standard should be a matter of law, but for now I think in Mr. McCabe’s case in particular it warrants a particular action by congress.
— TWZ
“Ed Seedhouse
I think that little Donny knows that and it’s what’s keeping him from action he knows will be disastrous.”
>I doubt that.
Well feel free. It’s just my opinion which if you don’t mind I will stick with until I think the evidence is agin’ me.
Apparently, McCabe kept contemporaneous notes on all his interactions with Trump. Should be interesting.
Oggie @ #5
“Taking away the pensions of the middle class is standard operating procedure for the 1%ers. The only difference is that now they can go after pensions of public, not just private, employees.”
This ^. I’ve been saying this for years. The entire idea of pensions for loyal employees has been destroyed, The whole IRA thing simply does not work for most middle class workers. The only place that a person could still have a long career and still be guaranteed a pension has been the public sector. The republican congress is probably delighted by this idea. I’m sure that the gop will be working very hard to take pensions away from many other Federal employees.
Trump sent his attack dog Sessions to fire McCabe. Now, watch and see. Sessions will be the next to go. Ha,ha! Mueller has to much on Trump and will definitely make his findings public if Trump dares to fire him.
It won’t be much longer now.
When Mueller is fired, there are a few things that will become very important:
1. Mueller’s legal fight. He has legal options to keep his job, as I understand, and he is prepared for this; he won’t be blindsided. But even the court systems are straining as it is, and they may not be able to enforce laws at all much longer.
2. This will be the signal to the Republicans to drop the last shreds of appearing to not be traitors. Their target will be to fix, deligitimize, or disrupt the November elections, possibly with Russia’s overt help (they apparently have their finger on the light switch; power goes out to all those voting machines on Election Day – oops!).
3. The time between Mueller’s firing and the elections will be the window they have to destroy us. That is the time they will be going all in to attack the elections. Unfortunately, I don’t know what, if anything, we can do about that – protests won’t mean anything to a party that is seeking a coup.
It may well be that all we can do is sit and watch the democracy die, as millions of shrieking monkeys cheer it on. At any rate, I would expect this to begin within the next few days.
Rep Tim Walz (D-MN) stepped up and offered McCabe a tempory job so that he can collect the pension he has earned. ( no idea if it was accepted, but the offer makes it official) I am delighted by the news, and proud that a Minnesotan managed to do the right thing, and snub the petty vindictive cheato at the same time. #minnesotan-ice
Tethys#18, Rep. Guitierrez (D-IL), member of the House Judiciary Committee, made an offer of employment to to McCabe last through his (Guitierrez’s tenure, he’s not running for re-election). Oversight of the DOJ could be a real enticement.
There must be a Wormtongue in there somewhere.
I’ve been labelled as too optimistic before. I’m prepared for it again.
I have a suspicion that we are going to see a presidential melt down that surpasses anything before. Mad little boy Dahhnie is going to break sometime soon. He simply does not have the innate ability to process reality or digest more than a tweet’s worth of information at a time.
Commentary from many diverse news organizations are getting to him. Mueller is dogged and closing in. The serial dismissal of career public professionals is focusing many eyes on the Pretender in Chief and he is feeling the pressure.
I could be wrong but I think it’s shaping up to be one hell of a year, one that will be rightly regarded as historic. The curtain is being slowly drawn back not only on that thing in our White House but on all of those who have leaped to its defense. (Discussion of his family and their “business” is best left for another conversation but is still a pertinent factor.) The charade is likely to erupt in a geyser of public ridicule and an explosion of criticism from even the most reactionary Americans.
Failing that, maybe the sad bastard will suffer a debilitating stroke that leaves him mute, unable to walk and unable to sign his name.
I could find a way to live with the first or the second but, dear friends, I would take much greater pleasure in the second.
Take heart, everyone. The Trumping of our country is not yet a certainty! To look at Dahhnie now is to see a man under extreme pressure and without a relief valve.
Stand fast and don’t give up the ship!
America needs you!