Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder discuss the turn around rate of Trump’s administration.
Transcription of the above video:
Sam:
Pap, usually when people talk about purges, it implies that there’s been a pre-existing regime and people are purged from it. The Trump administration-to-be is already experiencing purges just days after becoming not even an administration.
Pap:
Yeah, they looking ahead, aren’t they?
Sam:
Yeah, exactly. They’re getting into the rhythm of things quite early. This is pretty stunning, and so people should understand this: Chris Christie was the head the transition team for, ostensibly, the past couple of months. He is the one, and there’s a private agreement that is signed between the head of the transition team and a representative from the current Obama administration, who’s actually I think is part of a private transition team too. They could not get anything done because last week they fired Chris Christie and nobody had signed the contract Mike Pence [inaudible 00:01:07] put ahead. Hadn’t signed the contract. There was no agreement as to who was going to get what type of physical [crosstalk 00:01:12] …
Pap:
Yeah, I saw a pitiful picture of poor little Chris. It wasn’t just Chris. He wiped out the entire, everybody related to Chris Christie was wiped out.
Sam:
Yep.
Pap:
Part of the story has to do with the fact that Trump’s son-in-law had his father targeted by Chris Christie when Chris Christie was a prosecutor. So Trump’s-
Sam:
Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, is his top advisor.
Pap:
That’s right.
Sam:
Top advisor.
Pap:
Son-in-law says, ‘Well, it’s not enough for me just to humiliate, you know, the little bowling ball here, it is I have to take out everybody.’ He took out everybody who had Chris Christie’s initials anywhere around it. I think we’re going to see a lot of that. There’s going to be a lot of time spent in the next four years where we’re going to be seeing a lot of that. We’re going to be seeing, day one, somebody’s there, day two, Trump believes that he’s still filming a program called ‘You’re Fired.’ These people are going to be moving through at an alarming rate.
Sam:
Well, Pap, let me ask you your opinion on this, okay? I want to talk about some potential personnel picks. This is, honestly, it’s like if I had a 105 degree fever, and was delirious, rolling around in my bed from food poisoning, let’s say, it’s not inconceivable to me to be screaming out that I’m having this nightmare where people like Trey Gowdy or Frank Gaffney or-
Pap:
Newt Gingrich.
Sam:
Newt Gingrich or John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani are being considered for actual positions in the administration. Let me ask you this. Here we have the single most inexperienced president with a team that seems to be in complete disarray. There’s no real experience there. This week, a long time soft neo-con, I would call him, from the George W. Bush administration, who was a foreign policy never-Trumper, a guy named Eliot Cohen, and who the idea that I would even want him close to the White House is completely far fetched, but he went in there to help them out. Within a day, he started tweeting out and writing op-eds saying, “I encourage no one to go work for this administration.”
We have a transition that’s in disarray, there…
Pap:
Ben Carson, I mean, as goofy as the guy is, he says, ‘Ahh, I don’t think I’m equipped to be on a cabinet.’ This is a guy who’s running for president.
Sam:
Yeah, I-
Pap:
What he’s really saying, ‘You know, this scares the heck out of me when I look at it.’
Sam:
That’s what it’s got to be, right? How do you go from, ‘I’m willing to run the whole thing-‘
Pap:
‘But now I can’t-‘
Sam:
‘But I can’t handle a department.’ He sees what a complete disarray this is.
Here’s the thing. It’s funny to talk about, but if you were a person or an entity or a nation around the country that sees yourself as a rival or enemy of the United States, or even neutral, but had designs on doing anything that, in the past, there has been hesitation because you were afraid of the American reaction, whether it would be militarily, whether it would be in terms of sanctions, or whether it would be just diplomatically, or sales of grain or technology, whatever it is, can you imagine a more opportune time for you as that entity to do what you wanted to do than from January 20th of this year over the next six to nine months?
Pap:
Oh no, no, no, absolutely-
Sam:
This country, we are literally going to be adrift.
Pap:
Yeah, let me just tell you this. We’ve talked about this so many times, let me give you the contrast. The contrast is Obama coming into office, and for the first two years when he controlled the House and the Senate, when he could have done whatever he wanted to do, Rahm Emanuel has him focused on healthcare, on Obamacare. While we hear, go back and look at this because it’ll just freak you out, the number of times that we hear Obama, ‘We all have to get along, we all have to reach across the aisle, we all have to sing Kumbaya. We have to look forward, we can’t worry about what happened in the past.’ We’re going to see absolutely the opposite here. We’re going to see him loading up with people like John Bolton, with people like Newt Gingrich, Bob Corker, Robert Grady. These people that you go, “My god.” Pam Bondi, how about that?
Sam:
Right.
Pap:
Pam Bondi from Florida. We’re going to see him loading up with these people. Jeff Sessions. You following this?
Sam:
Yep, yep.
Pap:
I mean, Jeff Sessions now is also on the short list for Attorney General. This is a guy that, his whole goal, what he got elected on, was dismantling the justice process, civil justice. He wanted to close the door to any consumer that had a case. This is a guy that’s going to be the Attorney General of the United States. Your point is, I think, if I’m hearing you right, the first nine months is going to be like a blitzkrieg.