Trump Transition Tidbits

- Ben Carson withdrew his name from consideration for any job in the Trump cabinet -- because he has no government experience and doesn't feel qualified to head a federal department! On May 3, 2015, this man announced his candidacy for president; he withdrew on March 4, 2016. You spend ten months running for president when you feel yourself unqualified to run a federal department? The mind boggles.

 - John Bolton, superhawk, curator of the Mustache of Doom, is apparently in the running for Secretary of State. Trump spent his entire campaign excoriating everyone (like Hillary) who supported the Iraq invasion; Bolton was the most extreme of the extremists cheerleading for it. Frederick Fleitz, Bolton's top aide, and James Woolsey, head of W's CIA, are other enthusiastic proponents of the Iraq war apparently being considered for a high-ranking post in the Trump administration; Woolsey for director of national intelligence?

- The other candidate Trump is apparently considering for Secretary of State is Rudy Giuliani, one of the least diplomatic and most incendiary and intemperate people on the political scene -- and who, as a former prosecutor and mayor of New York, has absolutely no experience in foreign affairs.

- Another hoax, shared thousands of times on Facebook:



In 2004, New Jersey real estate mogul Charles Kushner was sent to prison for two years (released after serving one) and fined a half-million dollars for tax fraud and other offenses. It was an ugly story of a rich family fighting over the disposition of the family business, and at one point Kushner paid a prostitute $10,000 to seduce Kushner's own brother-in-law; their activities were tape-recorded, and the tape was sent to Kushner's sister. It was very messy, and it all played out on the front pages of the New Jersey newspapers. The prosecutor, who humiliated Kushner very publicly, was Chris Christie; Charles Kushner was Jared Kushner's father -- the Jared Kushner who married Ivanka Trump and became a key adviser in the Trump presidential campaign. On Friday, November 11, Chris Christie was ousted as head of Trump's transition team; on Tuesday, November 15, there was a wide-ranging purge, characterized as "Stalinesque," of the Christie confidants he had gathered around him on his transition team.

Trump's transition website is now equipped with the official ".gov" federal web address. And while the "Meet The President Elect" section is typically dedicated to outlining an official's vision and background, there is one particular emphasis in his resume. More than one-quarter of Trump's bio refers to his business properties around the world.

Breitbart News is preparing a lawsuit against a "major media company" over claims that it is a white nationalist website, it said in an exclusive statement to The Hill. [...]

"Breitbart News cannot allow such vicious racial lies to go unchallenged, especially by cynical, politically-motivated competitors seeking to diminish its 42 million monthly readers and its number one in the world political Facebook page. Breitbart News rejects racism in all its varied and ugly forms. Always has, always will," the statement continues.