{"id":178490,"date":"2018-11-13T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T00:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/13\/seriously-3\/"},"modified":"2018-11-13T19:56:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T00:56:00","slug":"seriously-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/13\/seriously-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Seriously?"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ve seen a lot of weird sh%$ in my day, but I never expected to see a first lady demanding the resignation of a senior national security council staffer<\/a>:<\/div>\n

First lady Melania Trump demanded the ouster of National Security Adviser John Bolton\u2019s top deputy, Mira Ricardel, on Tuesday as reports swirled about an imminent shakeup of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House,\u201d Melania Trump\u2019s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement in response to a question about reports the first lady had sought Ricardel\u2019s removal. <\/p>\n

Ricardel, Bolton\u2019s top deputy, clashed with the first lady\u2019s staff after threatening to withhold National Security Council resources during Melania Trump\u2019s trip to Africa last month unless Ricardel or another NSC official was included in her entourage, one person familiar with the matter said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So basically she tried to shake down the first lady so that she could go along on a junket with her.<\/p>\n

I guess that she wanted to go on safari, but if the alleged behavior is true, Ricardel’s behavior is beyond the pale, which would be typical of anyone who is a John Bolton protege.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rare for first ladies to publicly intervene in West Wing staffing decisions, but when they do the clashes usually turn out badly for the aides involved. In what was probably the highest-profile such incident, President Ronald Reagan ousted his chief of staff Donald Regan in 1987 after he crossed Nancy Reagan.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It should be noted that Nancy Reagan did not PUBLICLY CALL FOR REGAN’S FIRING<\/b>, and Melania Trump just DID<\/b>. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Melania Trump said in an ABC News interview during her Africa trip she had told her husband that people she didn\u2019t trust worked for him. Asked what happened to those people, she said: \u201cWell, some people, they don\u2019t work there anymore.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> While Bolton likes her, according to Trump administration officials, Ricardel is widely disliked among other White House staff. She\u2019s regarded as inflexible and obsessed with process, which some officials complain has complicated coordination between the NSC and cabinet agencies.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span> Basically, she’s an incompetent and insufferable ass, which explains why John Bolton wanted her as his deputy, he sees himself in her.<\/p>\n

This is unbelievavly f%$#ed up though, itn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen a lot of weird sh%$ in my day, but I never expected to see a first lady demanding the resignation of a senior national security council staffer: First lady Melania Trump demanded the ouster of National Security Adviser John Bolton\u2019s top deputy, Mira Ricardel, on Tuesday as reports swirled about an imminent shakeup …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[450,481,541,406,403,454],"class_list":["post-178490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-employment","tag-intelligence","tag-security","tag-stupid","tag-wanker","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}