Today Gen X Chronicle is debuting a new feature where we chronicle the doings, comings and goings of the Trump Administration. I say comings and goings because no other American administration has had such a high rate of turnover as the current one. It would seem that as Special Counsel Robert Mueller closes in on Trump’s Russia ties, the canaries really are fleeing the coal mine.
So here we go.
***************
Wednesday, February 28, 2018: So the bombshell today is that White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, a 29-year old former model with no political experience whatsoever prior to her appointment, is stepping down from her position.
Not coincidentally, Hicks testified yesterday before the House Intelligence Committee for no less than nine hours on her role as Communications Director. Hicks maintained that while she had definitely told “White Lies” in her role as the head of Trump’s communications team, she had never outright “lied” about the Trump campaign and the Trump Administration’s ties to Russia or Russian operatives.
Well OK then. Really Hope? One day after you testify about how you told white lies but not black lies, you step down? Something smells funny here, and I see a canary fleeing the doomed coal mine that is the Trump Administration.
And since we’re on the subject of canaries fleeing the coal mine, what happened yesterday? Josh Raffel, who had served as the chief communications spokesperson for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, announced that he would be stepping down in the coming months.
Raffel’s resignation came on the same day it was announced that Jared Kushner, Trump’s key advisor and son-in-law, would be stripped of his “top-security” clearance and would instead be downgraded to “secret.”
So, John Kelly, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and the man who ordered Kushner’s clearance to be downgraded, clearly saw something in Kushner’s background, business dealings or advising of Trump that gave him pause. Like, major pause, enough to downgrade his security clearance.
And that very same day, Josh Raffel, a loyal Kushner ally, announces he’s stepping down. Coincidence? Or another canary fleeing the coalmine before it explodes?
And just to round out the day’s events, today it was also announced that Kushner met regularly at the White House last year with Joshua Harris, a head of a private equity firm, Apollo Global Management, to discuss infrastructure policy.
The two men never worked out a deal, but in November of 2017 Apollo Global lent $184 to Kushner’s family’s real estate empire to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.
Um, can you say corruption? Because if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it’s usually not a chicken but is in fact a duck.
So, just to wrap up. Hope Hicks resigns. Jarred Raffel resigns. Jared Kushner engages in blatant corruption. And Jared Kushner loses his top-secret security clearance. As this point, the question we must ask is, when does Jared flee the Trump coal mine, or is he so embedded in it that’s he’s become a part of the organism itself?
Only time will tell.
And that’s today’s roundup from the ever-more-corrupt, ever-more-shady, and ever-more-chaotic Trump Administration.
*********
We at Gen X Chronicle will keep the updates rolling, and we hope you’ll check in from time to time to see what the latest developments are.
After all, nothing less than the very future of our democracy is at stake.
