The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Instagram Influencer Grift: What Is Caroline Calloway’s ‘Brand’ Value Now?

Posted on | September 12, 2019 | 3 Comments

Caroline Calloway spending Daddy’s money in Europe, 2013.

Back in January, I told you the story of “Caroline Calloway and the ‘Creativity Workshop’ Influencer Tour From Hell”:

Parlaying a popular Instagram feed (and maybe also a YouTube channel) into a lucrative income is a matter of “branding,” and one of the most popular “brands” of recent years is a young woman named Caroline Calloway. She comes from money. Her parents sent her to an elite boarding school in New Hampshire, and she attended New York University ($69,984 a year, including room and board). In 2013, at age 21, she spent the summer traveling in Europe, meeting good-looking Italian guys, and posting what she hashtagged #adventuregram photos with long storytelling captions. and then in the fall, she went to Cambridge University in England, studying art history and — ZOOM! — she soared to Instagram superstardom.

Based on her Instagram fame, Calloway scored a $500,000 book deal for a memoir at age 24, but failed to deliver the manuscript and then attempted to retrieve her fortunes by organizing a “Creativity Workshop” tour that turned into a disaster nearly as notorious as the Fyre Festival.

Now comes the exclamation mark, in the form of a tell-all article by Calloway’s former NYU classmate Natalie Beach who, it turns out, not only acted as a ghostwriter on Calloway’s #adventuregram posts, but also co-wrote the book proposal that got that $500,000 advance, and tried to help Calloway produce the manuscript before the would-be memoirist proved unwilling to cooperate. As Beach says: “Caroline claimed her failure to write the manuscript was an intentional stand against the patriarchy and a publishing industry that insisted her life story be defined by the men she dated.” Calloway’s failure actually had a lot more to do with her Adderall addiction and her infinite phoniness.

A couple of excerpts from Beach’s account:

It was around this time [2015, at Cambridge University] that Caroline revealed to me that for all these years, she had been lying about her origin story. She hadn’t, in fact, gotten famous from a picture of macarons on Instagram’s favorites page. The real story, she told me, is she took a series of meetings with literary professionals who informed her that no one would buy a memoir from a girl with no claim to fame and no fan base. And so Caroline made one online, taking out ads designed to look like posts to promote her account and buying tens of thousands of followers.

And again:

If it was just money and fame she was after, all she had to do was be quiet and let me do the work. She could have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, gone on the tour she always wanted, and recorded the audiobook in that beguiling voice of hers. But she had to be the one to tell her own life story, even if she couldn’t. Caroline was caught between who she was and who she believed herself to be, which in the end may have been the most relatable thing about her. This is why, when people ask me if Caroline is a scammer, I try to explain that if she is, her first mark is always herself.

Two words: Impostor syndrome.

Caroline Calloway knew she was not who she had made the world believe she was. She had created a public image that was essentially false and, when she was required to commit this image to print — to tell her life story — she experienced an existential crisis. It was one thing to post a photo to Instagram with a clever caption (and editorial assistance from her uncredited helper Natalie), but to compile these scattered vignettes into a narrative and say, “This is my life”? No, she couldn’t do it.

All of this — the Adderall addiction, buying fake followers on Instagram, failing to follow through on her promises — is symptomatic of Caroline Calloway’s narcissistic personality disorder. She was obsessed with creating an image of herself, and used this image to exploit others.

Caroline Calloway’s most recent portrait.

One of the themes in Natalie Beach’s story is how she always felt like the ugly girl in the shadow of Caroline Calloway’s beauty. Some guys might look at Calloway’s photos and say, “Not even an 8,” but keep in mind that in 2013-2015, when she was a rising Instagram star, she was in her early 20s, at her peak SMV. Even a girl who rates no better than a solid 7 can have lots of #adventuregram fun at 21 or 22, if she’s got the requisite combination of nice teeth, perky breasts and Daddy’s money.

Also, well . . . white privilege.

Let me say some things so politically incorrect that Heidi Beirich at the SPLC might find them interesting: Despite all the left-wing demonization of white people that has saturated elite culture in recent years, the Nordic type is still quite a popular commodity in the dating market. A young white person who is generally attractive won’t be lonely, no matter how many academics, journalists and politicians blame them for all the evil in the world. My youngest son — so blond-haired and blue-eyed he could be a poster boy for the Hitlerjugend — is remarkably popular among his peers of all races. While the paranoid prophets of demographic doom obsess over declining white fecundity (“It’s the birth rates,” as the New Zealand shooter proclaimed in his manifesto), life is not so bad for young people who were lucky enough to be born white. Unless you’re a pathetic Beta loser, which my son is not. The doomsayers are misguided, and their fear-based perspective on demographics is not helpful. But I digress . . .

It was easy for Caroline Calloway, a white girl with nice teeth and perky breasts, to enjoy her #adventuregram life and even get a book deal from a major publisher for a memoir at age 24. She’d just finished college and, like so many upper-middle-class white girls, had the cushion of Daddy’s money to support her Instagram celebrity dream life. That’s the dirty little secret behind so many of these victim-of-the-patriarchy types: They’re really just spoiled brats — Daddy’s Little Princess, grumbling because she’s not treated with the deference to which she considers herself entitled by birth. Remember that Caroline Calloway’s parents were willing to spend $70,000 a year to send her to NYU, send her to Europe for a summer and then send her to Cambridge for grad school! And yet somehow she still thinks she’s oppressed?

Her reaction to Natalie Beach’s story was typically narcissistic. Last month, apparently aware that Beach was working on a tell-all, Calloway wrote a piece for Refinery 29 making fun of how her failed “Creativity Workshop” tour had given her a reputation as a scammer. One could read into that an attempt to “get ahead of the story” by pretending she felt no real embarrassment about her failures, and therefore who cares?

In fact, however, she cared very deeply, as became clear after Calloway got a call from a fact-checker and completely freaked out. Her Instagram feed turned into a frenetic spin machine as she tried to turn the story around and rescue what remained of her precious image. Natalie Beach’s story generated more headlines, not flattering to Calloway:

Caroline Calloway, her “one-woman Fyre Fest,”
and her ex-best friend Natalie, explained
— Vox

Caroline Calloway’s ex-best friend Natalie Beach
has published a story about all her scams
— Cosmopolitan

Who is Caroline Calloway, and why can’t
the internet stop talking about her?
— Guardian

Who Is Caroline Calloway? Natalie Beach,
Influencer’s Ghostwriter, Claims
Instagram Star Bought Followers
— Newsweek

You can go check out Caroline Calloway’s Instagram feed to see how she’s still desperately trying to rescue her “brand” from the wreckage.

It’s possible to fake your way to success — what do the Kardashians actually do, that anyone should want to “keep up” with them? — but the key to such a money-for-nothing scam is to prevent your audience from getting wise to the total bogusness of your scam. Caroline Calloway has left enough bridges burning behind her that she isn’t likely to get many new opportunities to cash in on whatever value her “brand” still has.

UPDATE: Rotten Chesnuts weighs in:

I know this kind of girl well, quite simply, because she’s every single college girl in America.  I’m retired now, praise Buddha, but in my career I must’ve had ten thousand Caroline Calloways pass through my classroom.  It’s important that we get to know them, because they are, quite literally, our future.
And yeah, before you ask — they’re ALL like that.  Why do you think I took early retirement? . . .
Caroline Calloway is a cute, rich girl who wasn’t satisfied with being cute and rich.  She wanted to be famous, too, and so she set about constructing an online identity for herself. . . .
As incredible as this is, chicks care about this bulls–t. “Educated” women, with fancy degrees from big-league schools, writing for posh media outlets in the cultural capital of the world.  The rights and wrongs of it don’t matter, because the answer is: “Who cares?”  Whether she’s a lunatic scammer, or merely a lunatic, doesn’t matter at all.  She’s toxic, and any sane person would change zip codes to avoid her.

Read the whole thing — it’s excellent, and also depressing.



 

Category: Celebrities

In The Mailbox: 09.11.19

Posted on | September 12, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.11.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Try To Remember – A September 11th Musical Interlude
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #740
EBL: T. Boone Pickens, RIP
Twitchy: Rekt Again – Occasional Cortex Doesn’t Like Being Reminded By Tom Homan Who Makes The Laws ICE Enforces
Louder With Crowder: Son Of 9/11 Victim Blasts Ilhan Omar – “We Know WHO And WHAT Was Done!”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Bill Gates Is Our Very Own Bond Villain
American Greatness: Never Forget How U.S. Intelligence Failed You
American Thinker:  Is Christopher Wray Protecting Andrew McCabe?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: European Union Gleefully Deepens Its Support Of Cuban Repression
BattleSwarm: Brief Thoughts On John Bolton’s Departure
Camp of the Saints: Friend In The Ether @Dustbury Has Passed Away
CDR Salamander: Your Next Airwing, also, Transgenerational War
Da Tech Guy: Joel Gilbert Will Tell The World What We Bloggers Already Know About Trayvon Martin
Don Surber: Media Got The Economy Wrong, Too, also, Highlights Of The News
First Street Journal: California Passes Red Flag Law Expansion Bill, NRA Sues San Francisco
The Geller Report: Watch “Palestinian” Muslims Celebrate The 9/11 Attacks, also, Van Filled With 1000 Gallons Of Gasoline Found In Downtown Baltimore Parking Structure Ahead Of Trump Visit
Hogewash: You Can’t Buy Back What You Never Sold, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Burr & Chappelle Bring Cancel Culture To Its Knees, also, Yakov Smirnoff Compares Cancel Culture To Soviet Union
Joe For America: Federal Audit Finds Illinois Spent $5 Million On Medicaid For Dead People
JustOneMinute: Our Gal Val Back In The News
Legal Insurrection: SCOTUS Rebukes Lower Court, Allows Administration To Enforce Asylum Rule, also, The Other 9/11 Anniversary
Michelle Malkin: Seven Democrat Debate Questions Jorge Ramos Won’t Ask
The PanAm Post: Social Media & The Death Of Critical Thinking
Power Line: A Day To Be Proud, also, Are Blacks Moving To The Center As Their Party Lurches To The Left?
Shark Tank: “Red Flag” Gun Violence Law Passes House Judiciary Committee
Shot In The Dark: Happy Birthday, Modern American Conservatism
STUMP: Selling Universal Basic Income – Life Is A Game!
The Political Hat: Eighteen Years Ago Today – NEVER FORGET
This Ain’t Hell: Lest We Forget
Victory Girls: Alyssa & Ted’s Bogus Debate
Volokh Conspiracy: “Saved By The Militia”
Weasel Zippers: More Than 300 Congresscritters Blow Off 9/11 Minute Of Silence, also, Democrats Secretly Trained Thousands Of Activists To Manipulate Media
Mark Steyn: Tuxedo On The Lido, also, The Language Of Losing

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Eighteen Years Ago Today

Posted on | September 11, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

My wife woke me up and handed me the phone. My brother Kirby was calling: “Stacy, it’s terrorism. They hit the World Trade Center.”

What the hell? I was an assistant news editor at The Washington Times, and my workday didn’t usually begin this early, especially on a Monday* after I’d worked the late shift Sunday night. To be awakened so early startled me, and I began trying to process what my brother was saying.

“Stacy, turn on Fox News,” Kirby said, and I stumbled into the living room where the TV was showing the smoke billowing from one of the iconic twin towers on the New York City skyline. Terrorism? It seemed absurd to leap to such a conclusion. I recalled how a B-25 plane had accidentally hit the Empire State Building in 1945, and began to argue with Kirby that this could be a similar accident — a small plane, an inexperienced pilot perhaps — but my brother was adamant.

“No, Stacy, this is terrorism,” Kirby said. “Remember how they tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993?”

Well, we weren’t going to settle this dispute by phone, and obviously I needed to get ready for work, so I hung up the phone and got in the shower. A few minutes later, my wife came in and handed me the phone again. It was Kirby: “They hit the second tower! I told you it’s terrorists!”

Getting dressed quickly, I left for work about 9:30 with an hour’s drive to The Washington Times office, and listened to news radio in the car as events unfolded: A plane slammed into the Pentagon, then the Twin Towers collapsed — one at 9:59 and the other at 10:28.

By the time I got to my desk, the staff had already put together an extra morning “bulldog” edition of the paper, and the next few hours were a blur of activity. One thing I remember very clearly was watching an evening news broadcast on the TV in the newsroom that showed crowds dancing in the streets of Cairo and Gaza — the Islamic world was celebrating this deadly terrorist attack. My office phone rang.

“Stacy, two words — nuke Medina,” Kirby said.

My brother’s logic was obvious: Destroy the second-holiest city of Islam, with the clear implication, “Guess what’s next?”

Some people might accuse Kirby of “extremism” for this kind of cold logic, but there is beauty in simplicity, and by the night of Sept. 11, 2001, it was clear that something had to be done to send a message to those people who believed America could be attacked with impunity.

The idea of blood guilt, a collective blame that justifies unlimited reprisal, is abhorrent to the civilized mind — and that’s a problem. We are perhaps too civilized, and our barbaric enemies therefore believe that we are weak. Are they right about us? Have Americans become so decadent that we lack the will to defend our civilization? This morning, I watched the ceremonies at Ground Zero, with relatives of the 9/11 victims reading the roll of names of those killed that morning in 2001. One of those was a young girl, probably only 12 or 13, who gave a brief tribute to her uncle, who had died in the Twin Towers. I didn’t catch the name, so I don’t know whether her uncle was a businessman working in his office that day, or whether he was one of the heroic NYPD officers or FDNY firemen who died in the collapse of the towers. Yet I was struck by the idea that children who weren’t even born in 2001 have suffered losses — their uncles and aunts, their grandparents or other relatives who were among the innocent killed that day — and all of our children have inherited a world permanently changed because of the 9/11 attack.

* NOTE: After publishing this, I was informed by commenters that Sept. 11, 2001, was a Tuesday, not a Monday. Memory plays tricks, I guess.



 

Category: History, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 09.10.19 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | September 11, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.10.19 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: This May Be The Biggest Accounting Fraud In History
EBL: Get Girls With Garlic?
Twitchy: The Duo Who Exposed Planned Parenthood Are In Court And The Testimony Is Horrifying
Louder With Crowder: Beta O’Rourke Demonstrates His Inability To Understand How Rights & Property Work

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Abortion As Sexual Pleasure
American Greatness: How Conservatives Can Protect The Environment & Win Voters Too
American Power: Dive Boat Concepcion’s Design Scrutinized After Catastrophic Fire
American Thinker: Education Is Driven By False Premises & Practices
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Capitalism News
Babalu Blog: Three More Players From Cuba’s National Soccer Team Defect In Canada
BattleSwarm: Pat Miletich On Joe Rogan Show Talks About Clinton/McCain/ISS Funding Dirt
CDR Salamander: LCS – The Case For Skeptical Optimism
Da Tech Guy: Has Any Player Had Less Leverage With A Team Than Antonio Brown With The Patriots? also, There Will Be Math
Don Surber: Democrats Don’t Want Trump Supporters
First Street Journal: Philosophy Of Eternalism Can Help With Climate Distress Or Something
The Geller Report: New State Dept. Docs Reveal Last-Minute Efforts By Obama Appointees To Undermine President Trump, also, Burger King Thinks The “Ham” In “Hamburger” Is Offensive To Muslims
Hogewash: Forget It, Jake, It’s MoCo, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Out Magazine Complains Pennywise Isn’t Gay, Blames Trump
Joe For America: Nadler-Led Dems Seek To Seize Power Of Judicial Branch Via “Oversight”
JustOneMinute: Back To Brexit
Legal Insurrection: Leprosy The Next Infectious Disease To Plague LA? also, Oberlin College Denied New Trial In Gibson Bakery Case
The PanAm Post: Macron Uses The Amazon As A Smokescreen For Protectionism
Power Line: Ringo Gets It, also, On Bolton’s Bolt
Shark Tank: Rubio Urges Military Support For Beleaguered Bahamas
Shot In The Dark: When All You Have Is A Hammer
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Chicago Wants All The Money
The Political Hat: The EU Suggestion Box For Slaves
This Ain’t Hell: John Bolton Out As National Security Adviser, also, It’s Tanker Tuesday
Victory Girls: 9/11 – Evil is Real & So Is Courage
Volokh Conspiracy: Shouting Down A Speaker Isn’t “Lawful Activity”
Weasel Zippers: ICE Says Nearly 500 Illegal Alien Criminals Released From NC Jails Despite Detainers, also, Leftists Throw An “Impeach Trump” Event And Nobody Shows Up
Megan McArdle: Why Conservatives Feel Threatened By The Illiberal Left
Mark Steyn: Just In Time, also, The Old World & The New Colonialism

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Brain Candy

Posted on | September 10, 2019 | Comments Off on Brain Candy

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Many years ago, when I was living in Minnesota and involved in an amateur press association yclept Stipple-APA, one of the other contributors used the term “brain candy” in reference to SF that didn’t make you think too hard, but was nonetheless entertaining, and didn’t make you feel like you’d wasted your time and money.

This week’s first contender in the brain candy category is an Ace Double I picked up at a local VA clinic’s exchange table, Mack Reynolds’ The Five Way Secret Agent/Mercenary From the Future. The first is set in a future where the negative income tax provides everyone a more or less comfortable living, but private investigator Rex Bader wants something a little more…and winds up in what comes close to being a screwball spy comedy where’s he’s hired to do a little espionage for a huge multinational corporation, the CIA, the Mafia, the KGB, and a group of libertarians who can’t decide whether or not they really want to be revolutionaries. “Mercenary From The Future” seems to be set in a similar future to “The Five Way Secret Agent”, except caste lines have become formal and various legal disputes are being settled by combat. The rules limit the combat to pre-1900 technology, and our hero, hard-luck Captain Joe Mauser, deliberately signs up for what looks like the losing side in a corporate battle. Joe’s got a trick up his sleeve, but will it be enough to beat the legendary commander Stonewall Cogswell?

I have very mixed feelings about the late Harlan Ellison. From personal experience and what others have said, the man was a thoroughgoing asshole, but on the other hand, there was no question that he could write, and write well. I always thought of him as a horror writer who tended to use SF tropes, but most of his stuff was marked SF, and he’s known for doing the script for one of Star Trek’s most famous episodes, City On The Edge Of Forever. While unpacking some of my all too numerous book boxes, I came across Dangerous Visions, a collection of what were considered rather provocative tales from the New Wave. It hasn’t aged well, in my opinion. Most of the thirty-two authors in the collection are old hands like Larry Niven and Frederik Pohl; none of the “new talents” except Laumer, Zelazny, and Delany are remembered at all. One can regard Dangerous Visions as a typical artifact of the New Wave – a few mediocre literary talents bulked up by works by authors that were never really part of their movement. Partners In Wonder, on the other hand, being an anthology of collaborations between Ellison and fifteen (mostly) topflight SF writers, is a much more solid work, with very few disappointments, and I would definitely recommend it over the more famous Dangerous Visions.

Larry Niven’s N-Space is an interesting combination of short stories, essays on SF and science, and novel excerpts, plus a really thorough bibliography. I don’t know for the life of me why Tor hasn’t released it as an e-book, but then Tor does a lot of stupid things. Dragon Award Winner Brad Torgerson credits it for making him the studly hard-SF author he is today, and are you going to argue with the iron-thewed, clear-eyed Powder Blue Care Bear of the Evil League of Evil? I thought not.


Did I mention I have an anthology of SF short stories out?


Category: Books

UPDATE: GOP’s Dan Bishop Wins Special Election in North Carolina’s 9th District

Posted on | September 10, 2019 | Comments Off on UPDATE: GOP’s Dan Bishop Wins Special Election in North Carolina’s 9th District

UPDATE 11:25 p.m. ET: In addition to Bishop’s win in the Ninth District, the GOP also picked up a victory in a special election in the Third District, where Republican Greg Murphy beat Democrat Allen Thomas by 19 points, 59%-40%. What went wrong for Democrats? As the Daily Caller notes: “McCready came under fire after he accused Bishop of having no faith in public schools, however, the North Carolina Democrat sends his children to an $18,000 a year private school.” Oops.

When early polls showed Bishop trailing, the media began calling the Ninth District a “bellwether” of prospects for the 2020 election, but now we can expect them to forget NC-9 ever happened. Except of course, Trump will just rubbing salt in their wounds:

UPDATE 10:20 p.m. ET: Republican Dan Bishop has apparently won the 9th District special election in North Carolina. With all but two precincts reporting, Bishop has a margin of more than 4,000 votes over Democrat Dan McCready. With 99% of precincts (208 of 210) reporting:

Dan Bishop ………. 94,984 ….. 50.81%
Dan McReady ……. 90,824 ….. 48.59%

UPDATE 10:05 p.m. ET: With 92% of precincts (193 of 210) reporting:

Dan Bishop ……. 89,941 ….. 50.78%%
Dan McReady ………….. 86,120 ….. 48.62%

With only 17 precincts still to be counted, and Bishop leading by nearly 4,000 votes, this is starting to look like a win for the Republican.

UPDATE 9:30 p.m. ET: With 67% of precincts (140 of 210) reporting:

Dan Bishop ……. 72,682 ….. 50.27%
Dan McCready ………….. 71,082 ….. 49.16%

Still too close to call, but encouraging.

UPDATE 9:15 p.m. ET: Bishop takes the lead with 58% of precincts (122 of 210) reporting:

Dan Bishop ………….. 66,956 ….. 50.05%
Dan McCready ……. 66,074 ….. 49.39%

UPDATE 9:10 p.m. ET: With 55% of precincts (115 of 210) reporting:

Dan McCready ……. 65,673 ….. 49.92%
Dan Bishop ………….. 65,138 ….. 49.51%

OK, now we have legitimate good news. McReady’s lead is now barely 500 points. Bishop might pull this out yet. Cross your fingers.

UPDATE 9 p.m. ET: With 40% of precincts reporting:

Dan McCready ……. 56,921 ….. 50.39%
Dan Bishop ………….. 55,415 ….. 49.05%

You see that Bishop is closing the gap, but without knowing which precincts are still unreported, we don’t know if this trend will continue.

UPDATE 8:20 p.m. ET: With 14% of precincts reporting:

Dan McCready ……. 47,439 ….. 54.15%
Dan Bishop ………….. 39,727 ….. 45.35%

I’m informed that this reflects a surge of absentee ballots being reported from precincts in urban Mecklenburg County.

UPDATE 8 p.m. ET: With 3% of precincts reporting:

Dan McCready ……… 23,526 ….. 50.44%
Dan Bishop ………….. 22,895 ….. 49.09%

PREVIOUSLY (7:32 p.m. ET)

Polls closed at 7:30 p.m. ET in North Carolina’s 9th District special election, where Republican Dan Bishop is facing Democrat Dan McReady. Trump carried the district by double digits in 2016, and he held a giant rally Monday night in Fayetteville, but Republican leaders were lowering expectations today in what is regarded as a toss-up.



 

Category: Congress, Election, North Carolina

CNN Story ‘Simply False,’ CIA Says

Posted on | September 10, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Never trust CNN:

The Central Intelligence Agency on Monday evening slammed what it called CNN’s “misguided” and “simply false” reporting, after the cable channel’s chief national security correspondent authored a hole-filled piece claiming that the CIA had pulled a high-level spy out of Russia because President Trump had “repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.”
The extraordinary CIA rebuke came as The New York Times published a bombshell piece late in the evening, which largely contradicted CNN’s reporting. According to the Times, CIA officials “made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia” — weeks before Trump even took office.
Concerns about media reporting on Russian election interference drove the decision, according to the Times, which described the source as “the American government’s best insight into the thinking of and orders” from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency’s sources alone was the impetus for the extraction,” the Times wrote.

In other words, what really endangered the source was the media asking questions about where the CIA was getting its Russia information, and let us ask, why was the media asking those questions? Could it be because Obama administration officials, including CIA Director John Brennan, were feeding the media the “Russian collusion” narrative, which naturally led reporters to try confirming the leaks from Brennan & Co.?



 

Category: CNN, Corruption, Russia

He Was the Walrus, Goo Goo Ga Joob

Posted on | September 10, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

They are the egg men:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he had fired national security adviser John Bolton after a string of disagreements over how the U.S. should handle North Korea, Afghanistan and Iran.
Trump announced on Twitter that he had asked for Bolton’s resignation on Monday night, saying he had “disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions.”
“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning,” Trump said on Twitter.

Via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, who quotes J.P. Freire: “Press is about to go from ‘John Bolton is a radical warmonger who never should be permitted near the Oval Office’ to ‘This is a story of how a reasonable, respected expert was dismissed by a chaotic, megalomaniacal Administration, and whatever his critique is, we agree!’” In other words, everything Trump does is wrong, because Orange Man Bad!

Ace of Spades has a nice explanation of the staffing problems that have plagued the Trump administration:

[Trump] had to rely heavily on Establishment GOP and NeverTrumpers to serve as his top staffers, and those people then got to pick the next level of staffers and the levels after that.
These people made sure that their people — GOPe people, NeverTrump people — got in to the Trump Administration, and that the few conservatives with government experience or subject-matter expertise who were actually Trumpites were kept out.
I know a guy who had a great deal of experience in diplomacy and was a day one Trump supporter. And I mean a public supporter; he put his name to it.
He was literally told, “That’s going to count against you” when he sought a State Department posting under Trump, the man he had publicly supported.
And in fact it did; he was given the runaround in his interview process until anti-Trump forces could fill the job that Trump wanted him to have with an anti-Trumper.
So Trump doesn’t have a lot of people he can call upon to serve, and a lot of the people who he could call upon have already been frozen out by the anti-Trump political staffers he put in place because he had few other options.

In other words, because most veteran GOP operatives were anti-Trump, once these operatives established themselves within the administration, they made it impossible for Trump to hire people who might actually be loyal to him. So the President is surrounded by people who never wanted him to be President, and who are deliberately sabotaging his presidency.



 

Category: Donald Trump
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