Agreed. Milley is a hard left individual. Trump should have given him the boot along with many other such left wing thinkers.
But Trump is, or at least he was, a NYC denizen. As such he lacked the instincts of real Americans. So has Trump by now learned to despise the left? I hope so. They certainly kicked him around enough. But with Trump nothing is for certain. When you spend your entire life in a left wing town it’s tough to get your head right.
I start to wonder if doing so was even an option for Trump?
It’s a reasonable concern. My own take on Trump is as follows:
I think Trump is a fraud, or at least there is a fraudulent aspect to him, as follows:
Trump is not a natural conservative. Rush used to opine that he has no real political ideology. I think Trump’s principal goal was/is acquisition of power, being the “big man” . . . the guy in charge. He saw America’s vast unserved constituency on the right as a means to that end. But catering to that constituency is more difficult if you’re not a natural, and especially if you have lived your entire life in as left wing a town as New York City.
I think Trump tried and continues to try. But he had a WHOLE LOT to learn. And Trump clearly is not a quick study where such as this is concerned. There are countless examples. I will offer you one:
Trump needed to choose, for the SCOTUS, persons who never went anywhere near the Ivy League . . . middle America types. He did do that with ACB, a home run. Gorsuch was a single or a double. He unfortunately has that disgusting northeastern exposure (Columbia, Harvard) but his mother, Anne, was a true blue American old fashioned Conservative Coloradoan. She REALLY pissed off the liberals and that was excellent training for son Neil.
Finally, Kavanaugh was/is a strikeout. He is a northeasterner to his core. You do NOT learn midwestern values at Yale. Period.
It’s a really big country. There are countless wonderful, bright Americans who do not reside, and did not grow up, east of Ohio and north of Virginia. Trouble for Trump is he doesn’t know many such Americans, even though it is people with their traditional values who make this country work.
The tragedy is that Trump appointed Milley.
Appointments are the President’s biggest failing. I agree with your comments about his Scotus appointments.
But as to Kavanaugh, the President may have been backed into a corner by Anthony Kennedy. Maybe the President had to appoint Kavanaugh in return for getting Kennedy to resign.
iirc The president was very displeased with Kavanaugh’s letter of recommendation for Merrick Garland. After seeing Garland as attorney general, that was indeed very poor judgment by Kavanaugh.
Edit. I could not find a reference to a letter of recommendation by Kavanaugh but I did find that he said this during the confirmation hearing
Kavanaugh will attempt to downplay the controversy when he says in his opener that he serves on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, ‘a court now led by our superb chief judge, Merrick Garland.’
Trump isnt a career government guy. He isnt a military guy. He had no roster of appointees in his back pocket. So he basically had to guess. And while I’m sure he was highly qualified, it really wasnt predictable that Milley would also decide to put his personal feelings above the chain of command.
Speaking of the military, our Dear Leader (or his political handlers) has decided it’s time to purge the bipartisan advisory boards of the military academies, because some of them weren’t partisan enough for his tastes.
Jen Psaki’s in her Sept. 8 press briefing… gave the game away when she defended the firings, saying among other absurdities, that “the president’s qualification requirements are …. whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration .”
… part of the political left’s relentless drive to force political conformity in thought, word, and deed on all segments of society, including the military. It is also an attempt to overthrow the fundamental military ethos and tradition of being apolitical.
Perhaps the pesky justices on the Supreme Court need to be “reconstituted” with more compliant political appointees as well?
In two polls (Quinnipiac, Rasmussen) just released this morning, President Biden continues to score very well. His approval in both polls is well over 40%, with approval among Democrats overwhelmingly strong.
The only hopeful sign is that Biden is losing favor, to some extent, among independent voters. However, there are not many independent voters left today and this trend might not be at all determinative.
Note:
Many people believe Trump sort of went nuts following his election loss and use that as justification for Milley’s traitorous act.
It is very important not to confuse the time line. Milley contacted the Chinese at the end of October, 2020. This obviously was prior to the election and prior to anyone knowing the outcome of that election. There is no justification for what Milley did in any event. But certainly his having acted prior to the election is indefensible.
In an absolutely shocking turn of events, Trump hater Alexander Vindman has called on Milley to resign. I detest Vindman. But he is correct on this one:
Biden needs all the Democrats in the Senate and can only afford to lose three Democrats in the House. I think,the Democrats will stick together and screw our economy.
As I posted up thread, Milley called his Chinese counterpart on thirtieth of October, 2020. Everyone here knows that was prior to last year’s presidential election, which took place in November.
This morning the AP has posted a story which includes the following:
Milley and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are scheduled to testify Sept. 28 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in what initially was going to be a hearing on the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaotic evacuation of Americans, Afghans and others from that country.
Now, however, Milley is expected to face tough questioning on the telephone calls, which came during Trump’s turbulent last months in office as he challenged the results of the 2020 election.
Apparently the AP writer believes Trump was challenging the outcome of the election before it took place, an election which Trump at the end of October surely expected to win.
This sort of BS is typical of the left wing crazies at the AP. But how many people are aware of such lies?
Here is the entire piece, which was excerpted above:
Link to AP article - Don’t waste your time
ETA
By purposefully muddling the timing the AP writer is attempting to defend Milley, in the following sense:
Trump went nuts after losing the election so Milley was justified in calling the Chinese and reassuring them.
Of course that defense falls apart when the actual timing of the call is revealed. And the AP is careful to avoid mentioning that the call really took place prior to the election.
To be fair, he kind of was; he had been railing on about tampering and rigging since the summer, even if he expected to overcome it anyways. But that’s a politically-driven opinion, which the AP should not be indulging when reporting supposed facts. I agree with you that the clear implication that this call happened after the election is inappropriate (to be polite).
First of all, Milley had no justification for calling the Chinese as he did in any event. Nobody elected Milley, and in America our elected officials run the military . . . not the other way around.
But to be fair Milley certainly had even less justification for making the call before the election even took place. Or did Milley have a crystal ball which provided him with the election outcome? You see:
Even Milley should have been smart enough to know how wrong, how unAmerican, such a call was. Did Milley believe Trump, even had he won, would attack China? I seriously doubt that. So to what must we attribute such a call on thirtieth of October?
It was either consummate arrogance on Milley’s part, or absolute certainty Trump was going to lose the election.
I’m going with the former.
We have seen this before . . . from another General, Al Haig. Trump had Milley, Reagan had Haig. Neither Milley nor Haig was ever elected by the people. But they both have, and had, a very exalted opinion of their own importance.
Bringing in immigrants to do the job Americans won’t, vote Democrat. Trying to make Texas a bit more like Haiti apparently, not with the permission of the Texans either.
I just posted about this elsewhere. An executive branch agency stopping the news from documenting newsworthy events that cast the administration in a bad light should really be a much bigger story.
I hope to be proven wrong.
Edit: as Shinobi noted above, $1.5 trillion is still large enough to cause inflation and other problems with our economy.
https://www.axios.com/scoop-biden-bombs-manchin-b2b4acbd-24d0-40a3-ba6f-c0509e0e0224.html
If you look beyond the large number, you kinda have to admit that a lot of our infrastructure has been very neglected for decades. If we want to maintain what we have, we are going to have to bite a pretty big bullet at some point regardless. Of course there’s still the questions about if it will actually be spend on what it’s suppose to be spent in, but I think that’s the big difference between $3.5T and $1.5T.
I’m sure the justification is the risk of us crazies using drones to attack the poor illegals, and/or invade their privacy. Not saying I agree, but I doubt stopping the news from documenting a newsworthy event was their motivating purpose, even if it was the result.
I think the $1.5 trillion is in addition to the infrastructure bill agreed to by some Republicans in the Senate. The Democrats are calling everything infrastructure to confuse the voters. The second one is a leftist wishlist that has nothing to do with roads and bridges and airports that everybody wants.
That would make it a different story.
Just the fact they’re trying to obfuscate gives the impression of something shady. I really don’t know what conspiracy theories are true, if any - but Democrats are pulling out all the stops to make sure their opposition continues to believe them.
