Donald Trump fires Rex Tillerson, replaces him with Mike Pompeo. Update!

Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018

Courtesy of CNBC: 

Rex Tillerson is out as secretary of State, ending a tumultuous tenure as America's top diplomat that was marked by a series of public disagreements with his boss — President Donald Trump. 

Trump plans to appoint CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace the former Exxon Mobil chief executive. The president picked deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel to run the spy agency.

That tweet up above was how the world learned that Trump was kicking Tillerson off the island, no press conference, no official statement, just a tweet. Because apparently that is how these things are done now.

There has of course been talk that Trump was displeased with Tillerson going way back to when he called Trump a "moron" back in October.

Though of course Trump responded to talk that Tillerson may be on his way out with this tweet:

The media has been speculating that I fired Rex Tillerson or that he would be leaving soon - FAKE NEWS! He’s not leaving and while we disagree on certain subjects, (I call the final shots) we work well together and America is highly respected again!https://t.co/FrqiPLFJ1E

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2017

I cannot say that I was ever a fan of Tillerson, but at least he comported himself like a grown up most of the time.

Mike Pompeo is just a Trump ass kisser and a rubber stamp on anything and everything that Trump will want to do going forward.

Clearly this administration is in free fall right now, and when it finally makes impact it is going to leave a hell of a crater.

Update: Apparently Tillerson learned he was fired in the same tweet where everybody else learned about it. 

Donald Trump misrepresented a New York Times story in order to attack his own intelligence agencies.

According to the @nytimes, a Russian sold phony secrets on “Trump” to the U.S. Asking price was $10 million, brought down to $1 million to be paid over time. I hope people are now seeing & understanding what is going on here. It is all now starting to come out - DRAIN THE SWAMP!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018

So that was the Trump tweet from from Friday.

Today this is tweeted out by former sepcial counsel Ryan Goodman.

I think this is important:

CIA Director Pompeo just told the Senate: the NYT story—which
is the basis for Trump’s tweet below—was false. Pompeo’s words: the reporting
was “atrocious” and “ridiculous.”

Someone should ask White House why Trump then used the NYT story like this 👇 https://t.co/hds8TIxOqW

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) February 13, 2018

Well that is all well and good to point out that Trump is using false information to smear American intelligence agencies, but Goodman failed to note that Trump completely misrepresented what the Times story said.

Here is the pertinent portion:

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials. 

The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing. 

Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian, who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia. Instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data. 

The United States intelligence officials said they cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian operation to create discord inside the American government. They were also fearful of political fallout in Washington if they were seen to be buying scurrilous information on the president.

Now of course I have no sources to prove the accuracy of this reporting, or to discredit it. But it should be noted that the article does NOT say that the intelligence agencies were shopping around for dirt on Trump.

In fact they were trying very hard NOT to access any potential dirt on Trump.

What they were after was to get back the stolen NSA cyber weapons that have made it so easy for the Russians to hack agencies and businesses here in America.

Now if the intelligence agencies were tricked out of $100,000 dollars in pursuit of those, that could be a story in an of itself.

But this article clearly states that the agencies were wary of stumbling onto any potentially information about Trump's ties to Russia, and aborted the mission in order to escape entanglement.

Neither one of the above tweets reflect accurately the contents of the actual article.

The New York Times reports that Rex Tillerson may be on his way out at State.

Bad news boss, I think I'm about to lose my job.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

The White House has developed a plan to force out Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, whose relationship with President Trump has been strained, and replace him with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, perhaps within the next several weeks, senior administration officials said on Thursday. 

Mr. Pompeo would be replaced at the C.I.A. by Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who has been a key ally of the president on national security matters, according to the White House plan. Mr. Cotton has signaled that he would accept the job if offered, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations before decisions are announced. 

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump had given final approval to the plan developed by John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, but the president has been said to have soured on Mr. Tillerson and in general is ready to make a change at the State Department. Mr. Tillerson was at the White House on Thursday twice for meetings, but neither the president nor his team gave a public reaffirmation of his position in the administration.

When given the opportunity to confirm his confidence in Tillerson, and to assure folks that he was not going anywhere, this was Trump's reply.

Reporter: "Do you have Rex Tillerson on the job?"

President Trump: "He's here. Rex is here." pic.twitter.com/H72H8X529y

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 30, 2017

"He's here. Rex is here."

Yeah, but the question was how long would he be there.

Some have suggested that putting Mike Pompeo in charge of the State Department would be a good move as he takes the position more seriously than Tillerson apparently did. 

However Pompeo is also ideologically more pro-war, so if Tillerson was the obstacle keeping Trump from going off half cocked and attacking North Korea, it is unlikely that Mike Pompeo will continue to obstruct that decision.

One thing is for certain Trump's claim that he "only hires the best people" has now become a running joke.

You know, much like this presidency.

Only no one is laughing anymore.

At Trump's bidding CIA Director met with promoter of conspiracy theory that DNC hack was an inside job, and NOT the Russians.

Courtesy of The Intercept: 

CIA Director Mike Pompeo met late last month with a former U.S. intelligence official who has become an advocate for a disputed theory that the theft of the Democratic National Committee’s emails during the 2016 presidential campaign was an inside job, rather than a hack by Russian intelligence. 

Pompeo met on October 24 with William Binney, a former National Security Agency official-turned-whistleblower who co-authored an analysis published by a group of former intelligence officials that challenges the U.S. intelligence community’s official assessment that Russian intelligence was behind last year’s theft of data from DNC computers. Binney and the other former officials argue that the DNC data was “leaked,” not hacked, “by a person with physical access” to the DNC’s computer system. 

In an interview with The Intercept, Binney said Pompeo told him that President Donald Trump had urged the CIA director to meet with Binney to discuss his assessment that the DNC data theft was an inside job. During their hour-long meeting at CIA headquarters, Pompeo said Trump told him that if Pompeo “want[ed] to know the facts, he should talk to me,” Binney said.

So if you are wondering if this is about that old debunked story about the murder of Seth Rich by Hillary Clinton (Which is referenced below.), yes it most certainly is.

This Binney guy is a frequent guest on Info Wars with Alex Jones and just about any fringe conspiracy focused radio show or blog that will have him.

He has some impressive credentials so people often take him seriously, but the majority of the charges he makes remain unsubstantiated. 

This particular conspiracy theory has been debunked by essentially every intelligence agency in the country, including the CIA by the way, so the very fact that Pompeo talked to this guy speaks to Trump's desperation to get Robert Mueller and the other investigators off his back.

This of course is another reason why I was so frustrated with Donna Brazile, because her mentions of Seth Rich in her book only pour more gasoline on the dying embers of the "DNC hack was an inside job" conspiracy theory.

CIA officials keeping a watchful eye on their new director to see if he is running interference for Donald Trump on the Russia investigations.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

As CIA director, Mike Pompeo has taken a special interest in an agency unit that is closely tied to the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, requiring the Counterintelligence Mission Center to report directly to him. 

Officials at the center have, in turn, kept a watchful eye on Pompeo, who has repeatedly played down Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and demonstrated a willingness to engage in political skirmishes for President Trump. 

Current and former officials said that the arrangement has been a source of apprehension among the CIA’s upper ranks and that they could not recall a time in the agency’s history when a director faced a comparable conflict. 

“Pompeo is in a delicate situation unlike any other director has faced, certainly in my memory,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a CIA official for 23 years who served in Russia and held high-level positions at headquarters, “because of his duty to protect and provide the truth to an independent investigation while maintaining his role with the president.”

The Russia issue has complicated Pompeo’s effort to manage a badly strained relationship between the agency and a president who has disparaged its work and compared U.S. intelligence officials to Nazis. Amid that tension, Pompeo’s interactions with the counterintelligence center have come under particular scrutiny.

I think it's pretty obvious that Donald Trump is appointing folks to various agencies in order to protect him from any potential investigations which might take him out of office. 

Along with Pompeo I would also suggest that FBI agents keep an eye on their new Trump appointed director Christopher Wray as well.

Trump tried to get James Comey to stop the investigation and to pledge loyalty to him, it seems more than reasonable that he is asking these individuals to do the same.

And don't forget that he also asked Mitch McConnell to protect him from the investigations as well.

Trump is clearly guilty, because only guilty people work this hard to keep the facts from coming out.

CNN anchor calls Fox and Friends "State TV." Which of course it is.

Courtesy of The Hill:

CNN anchor John King blasted Fox News's morning show as "state TV" on Friday as he accused Fox's Ainsley Earhardt of throwing President Trump softball questions in a new interview. 

King made the comment after airing a clip of the interview from "Fox and Friends" where Trump explained his recent declaration that he had no tapes of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey. Trump implied on Twitter weeks ago that he could have recorded Comey. 

As Trump answered, Earhardt added that she believed Trump's tactic was a "smart way to make sure [Comey] stayed honest in his hearings." 

"Let's set aside the tough, probing questions on state TV there," King said Friday on CNN's "Inside Politics" to chuckles from the panel. 

This somewhat offhand comment is of course factually accurate, as Trump constantly fires off tweets based on what he sees on Fox and Friends, while in return they kiss his ass so hard it leaves bright orange lip shaped bruises.  

However the problem is that it is coming from CNN. And Trump supporters think that CNN is the epicenter of "fake news."

They have been conditioned to believe that any news they do not want to hear is "fake," and anything that backs up their racism, superstition, or distrust of "the other" is of course true.

And don't think that Fox News is the only source of Trump propaganda TV either.

I woke up this morning to Hugh Hewitt, a man that Salon labeled "Sean Hannity in glasses," pretending to interview CIA Director Mike Pompeo with such delicately phrased questions that I was surprised he was not gently cradling his scrotum while asking them.

And this was on MSNBC.

Donald Trump is right about one thing, there is an awful lot of fake news out there.

And it is spreading even to places where we thought we were safe from hearing it.

New CIA director calls Wikileaks a "hostile" intelligence gathering service.

Courtesy of ABC News:  

CIA Director Mike Pompeo blasted anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks on Thursday calling it a "hostile" intelligence-gathering service that is often "abetted by state actors like Russia." 

"WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service," Pompeo said during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, saying, "it's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it is." 

He called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a "fraud" and "coward" and criticized NSA leaker Edward Snowden for championing "nothing but his own celebrity." 

"I am quite confident that had Assange been around in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history," Pompeo said.

Well, somebody needed to say it.

Though I have to admit that I never thought I would find myself in agreement with Mike Pompeo.

However it is beyond clear now that Wikileaks is no longer (If they ever were.) the non-partisan data gathering entity that they advertised themselves to be during the Bush Administration.

Now it is clear that they are working alongside Russia and other hostile nations to undermine and  ultimately damage our very foundation as a country.

Interestingly enough Pmpeo himself was not always quite this hostile toward Wikileaks himself.

Courtesy of HuffPo:

Pompeo encouraged people to read WikiLeaks’ first dump of hacked Democratic National Committee emails. 

“Need further proof that the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down? BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC Leaked by Wikileaks,” he tweeted in July from his congressional account. The account, @RepMikePompeo, no longer exists. 

Boy that confirmation bias is a powerful thing, don't you think? 

Well at least he did not go as far as his boss who praised Wikileaks during the campaign and often cited documents they had leaked in his attacks on Hillary Clinton.