Who Is In Charge in the Trump White House? The Worst People

Just in case we were all distracted by how Trump and the Republicans are behaving towards refugees and immigrants, there's this little tidbit to make you run screaming for the fallout shelters (via Raw Story):

In another series of executive orders on Saturday, Pres. Donald Trump restructured the National Security Council (NSC) and created a position on it for senior aide and former Breitbart.com CEO Stephen K. Bannon...

...The Post reported that Bannon has been given a regular seat on the National Security Council’s principals committee, which will include the nation’s highest ranking security officials, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State.

Unlike previous presidential administrations, Trump’s Saturday memo specified that the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs will only attend principals committee meetings that pertain to their specific “responsibilities and expertise...”

In short: Trump is letting a known media wingnut participate in a key council dedicated to our national security... all the while kicking out the actual military and intelligence officials whose job it is to provide such national security.

And who is Bannon? If the connection to that wingnut rag Breitbart News doesn't tip you off, this interview about him from Ronald Radosh at Daily Beast should give you nightmares:

Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press...

As much as he's a documented anti-Semite, Bannon is the Far Right version of the bomb-throwing anarchist, eager to destroy every last piece of government and lawful institutions just to have his fun. He's not only out to wreck things to piss off liberals, he's keen on breaking apart conservative institutions just so he can recover and rebuild everything to HIS design.

And Bannon is not some ineffective guy standing on the sidelines basking in the glow. When this whole recent Muslim Ban executive order dropped this past Friday, Bannon was deep in the shit on making that go:

It wasn’t until after Trump had signed his name on the dotted line that DHS really got a chance to sit down and try to determine if the order was even legal. A person with knowledge of the matter said that homeland security staff didn’t even get to lay eyes on the order until Friday. Even Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Department of Homeland Security leadership didn’t get to see the document until just before Trump signed it into law. The administration also chose not to allow the Office of Legal Counsel to provide legal guidance on the matter.

After they were finally allowed to review the order, DHS reportedly decided that the ban could not apply to green card holders, who are legal residents of the U.S., but Trump’s Bannon overruled them. CNN reports:

Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen — did not apply to people who with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.

The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President’s inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US...

This is the man who's essentially in charge at the White House. When it comes to the Presidency, you look at his key aides, who he relies on to do the dirty work on a day-by-day basis. In this administration, it's not the Chief of Staff (Reince Priebus) and it's not a key Cabinet figure and it's not the head of the Intel or security agencies and it's not the Vice President (like Cheney was to Dubya).

It's a guy whose previous work experience was creating fake news, with no experience in public administration and with every intent to abuse his authority to wreak havoc on the nation.

Here's your Kakistocracy in action, boys and girls.

We will be lucky to survive all this.