Trump Fires Mark Esper, His Defense Secretary

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Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper was fired by President Trump on Monday, the latest casualty in the president’s revolving door of top national security officials who fell on the wrong side of their boss.

Mr. Trump announced the decision on Twitter, saying in an abrupt post that Mr. Esper had been “terminated.”

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Trump Fires Mark Esper, His Defense Secretary

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.

I wish Trump would just limit himself to golf and cable television until January. 

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1 hour ago, chare said:

Trump Fires Mark Esper, His Defense Secretary

Thanks for posting chare! I’ve got to say, even though it doesn’t come as a huge surprise, this makes me a bit uneasy. I’m hoping this is just the usual White House musical chairs drama, but didn’t SecDef Esper push back on the President (earning him some major Presidential stink eye) when he wanted to deploy the military in U.S. cities? 

I wonder who’s next? Director Wray? 
 

@toomuchbaloney, that makes two of us. I too wish he’d stick to practicing his putt technique for the duration.

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Expected next on the Trump Twitter chopping block: FBI Director Christopher Wray & CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Can they apply for unemployment then???

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On 11/9/2020 at 7:51 PM, NRSKarenRN said:

Expected next on the Trump Twitter chopping block: FBI Director Christopher Wray & CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Can they apply for unemployment then???

Maybe.

But their short term replacements are unqualified "yes men" who can accomplish a great deal of damage on Trumps behalf before he is removed.  This is a very perilous time...despots don't concede. 

Buckle up. 

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The GOP Has Turned into an Autocratic Party

Please listen to this interview. 

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Wishy-washy Democrat opinion continues to believe that government institutions will somehow save the day, not understanding that the entire presidential apparatus has set out to destroy them. Early in the presidency, Gessen said: “Institutions will not save you.” How right this was. They had seen, after all, the way that Putin would use all catastrophes to his advantage, even atrocities such as the Beslan school siege, which was an excuse to cancel local elections and change federal structures. Putin also felt no need to be consistent, one day saying there were no troops in Crimea, the next month admitting there were. To trust one’s own perception in such a world is lonely. Russians are told their elections are free, but “when something cannot be described it does not become a fact of a shared reality”.

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This is where Gessen is so brilliant, taking apart the way language works for Trump and how it is an essential element of autocracy. Using the work of the Hungarian writer Bálint Magyar on post-Soviet states, Gessen argues that the language of liberal democracy can no longer describe what we are seeing. Trump mangles words making them meaningless, a constant hazing. He has flipped the phrase “fake news” to mean whatever he says it means. His first big lie in power was about the weather, claiming it was sunny when it was raining at his inauguration. The likes of Kellyanne Conway or Sarah Sanders then operate not to hide the truth exactly but to make the media pay respect to power.

Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen review – with Trump, there is no shared reality

Buckle up.

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Does hindsight suggest that Trump fired Esper to create a smoother roll out for his insurrection?

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