John Kelly’s exit interview lifts the curtain on the chaos within the Trump White House

The outgoing chief of staff is trying to save face after a rocky tenure under Trump.

Outgoing Chief of Staff John Kelly is out defending his time trying to wrangle the Trump White House. And while the disarray at the White House has long-been well-documented — between public staff upheaval and reported details of Trump’s TV-binging habits — Kelly is taking the rare move of lifting the veil and confirming bits of the chaos that happen behind the scenes.

In a wide-ranging exit interview with Los Angeles Times reporter Molly O’Toole, Kelly discussed his tumultuous 17 months overseeing President Donald Trump’s White House. And while Trump has earned a reputation as a rash decision-maker who sometimes ignores the advice of his own experts, Kelly wants to make clear that it’s not because he didn’t do his job of keeping the president informed:

Kelly said he made sure that Trump had access to multiple streams of detailed information before he made a decision — even if the president says he often relies on his gut, rather than U.S. intelligence.

“It’s never been: The president just wants to make a decision based on no knowledge and ignorance,” Kelly said. “You may not like his decision, but at least he was fully informed on the impact.”

Kelly was supposed to be the “adult in the room” — a highly disciplined, retired Marine Corps general tasked with wrangling an understaffed administration and bringing order to a White House beset with rivalries between advisers and different agencies.

But his relationship with the president has reportedly soured in recent months. Kelly reportedly called Trump an “idiot” numerous times, according to NBC News, (Kelly says those allegations are “total BS”) and told the LA Times he continued to serve out of a sense of duty.

“Military people,” he said, “don’t walk away.”

https://www.vox.com/2018/12/30/18161410/john-kelly-exit-interview-chaos-trumps-white-house

Fundraiser aims to build tunnels under Trump’s border wall

A fundraising page has been launched to buy shovels to help tunnel diggers burrow a passage underneath President Donald Trump’s controversial wall along the US border with Mexico.

The GoFundMe campaign is aiming to raise a whopping $150 million in order to help immigrants crawl beneath the president’s proposed barrier.

The effort is a tongue-in-cheek response to the popular ‘We The People Will Fund the Wall’ campaign which has crowdfunded more than $18 million to help Trump get some of the $5 billion he needs to proceed with the build. Another GoFundMe campaign to purchase ‘Ladders to Get Over Trump’s Wall’ raised more than $156,000.

“o the thousands of people raising money for a wall…..I’m raising money to supply tunnel builders with shovels,” wrote Rigo Torres, the creator of the latest fundraising drive. “I’m sure we won’t need the $150,000,000 but in all reality who gives a s***…let’s see how much I can raise.”

Torres said any money actually raised through the campaign will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union, who will in turn “defend the rights of immigrant families and fight until they are reunited”.

The campaign has so far raised just over $4,900 from 309 donations in nine days – substantially less than the $4 million the ‘We The People..’ campaign raised in its first three days.

More than 300,000 backers – some of which have given fake names like ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘Hillary Clinton’ – donated to the wall-building cause, raising a total $18,240,463, an impressive amount but still a far cry from their goal of $1 billion.

"Democrats are going to stall this project by every means possible and play political games to ensure President Trump doesn’t get his victor,” wrote Brian Kolfage, who set up the GoFundMe page.

“They'd rather see President Trump fail, than see America succeed. However, if we can fund a large portion of this wall, it will jumpstart things and will be less money Trump has to secure from our politicians.”

The government is in the midst of a partial shutdown over Trump’s demand for an additional $5.7 billion to fund the wall - which he previously claimed would be paid for by Mexico.

https://www.rt.com/usa/447793-trump-border-wall-gofundme/

>>4523730

why do you ask?

Fox News Anti-Vaxx Commentator Bre Payton Dies at 26, Likely From Swine Flu

There’s a saying that comes from the Bible, “you reap what you sow.” The idea behind that axiom is pretty simple and has been tweaked and changed many times over the years to things lik e “you get what you give” or even the famous Beatle version, “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” So if you’re an anti-vaxxer who also happens to be against universal healthcare, no one should be surprised if you die from a preventable disease that you could have been inoculated from — and it would be paid for out of your taxes. To be completely fair to Bre Payton, I don’t know if she got her flu shot this year. But we do know that her doctors say the 26-year-old conservative commentator and Fox News contributor died from H1N1, or, “the swine flu.” We do know it all happened very quickly.

We also know that at least at one point in her past, Payton had said “vaccines are from the devil.” No, really, she tweeted it, and here’s the tweet.

To be completely fair to the late Ms. Payton, I found that tweet pretty easily, but it’s also from 2011. That was seven years ago, and she would have only been 19 years old at the time. It’s very possible that her views on vaccination changed since then, but I couldn’t find any pro or anti-vaxx writings she did since, so unfortunately the only primary source of information we have paints her very clearly as anti-vaxxer. Considering that among some on the right there’s a push to shun vaccination because somehow it’s conflated with liberalism, it’s not a very far leap of logic to make that Payton could have been someone who avoided vaccinating herself along those ideological lines.

Even if Payton had decided by the time of her death that vaccines were a good thing, and even if she did in fact get her flu shot this year, that doesn’t change the fact that there is an unavoidable, if not sad, irony to the way in which she died. Bre Payton died suddenly of a disease that is very preventable, especially when one lives in a country with universal health care. Hell, we have Obamacare here in the United States, and it’s definitely not universal healthcare, but even it offers cost-free vaccinations as one of it’s primary selling points. The irony in Payton’s death comes from the fact that literally just this month she was heavily critical of the notion that affordable healthcare is a human right. She was so biting and sarcastic about something that most definitely could have saved her life. Again, this is not to imply that Payton herself couldn’t afford healthcare, but there are millions of people in this country who don’t have access to affordable healthcare and could certainly die from the same causes Bre did, so it is absolutely worth noting her strident anti-universal healthcare stance.

One of the best arguments for universal healthcare is that it allows for the kinds of preventative medicine that could have caught Payton’s symptoms sooner, and diagnosed the flu in time to keep her alive. It’s truly tragic that someone has passed away before the age of 30, but at least maybe a lesson can be learned here, about just how heavy a cost one might pay for their ideological entrenchment.

https://ascienceenthusiast.com/fox-news-anti-vaxx-commentator-bre-payton-dies-at-26-likely-from-swine-flu/

>>4523936

why?