It seemed as if there were a program in place to charge this new President with as much symbolic and semiotic power as possible. Those were heady days.
How intentional any of this is is hard to say, but one thing is certain; we are looking at the ascendancy of a new Praetorian Guard, a new incarnation of the old Roman military elite-slash-secret police.
This is not speculation on my part: all you have to do is glance at the resumes of the people involved in the new administration.
The Praetorians were known to engage in espionage, intimidation, arrests and killings to protect the interests of the Roman emperor. For clandestine operations, they may have employed a special wing of troops known as “speculatores.” Formerly a reconnaissance corps under the Roman Republic, by the imperial era this unit had graduated to serving as couriers and intelligence operatives in the service of the Caesar.
More so than any prior election we’re going to need to go by what is done rather than what is said when trying to figure out what’s going on with these very strange times we find ourselves in.
The New York Times reports that the four posts filled are that of Director of Central Intelligence, Attorney General, National Security Adviser and Chief Strategist. So not only is the new Administration front-loading its national security portfolio first, it’s doing so with men charitably described as “hardliners,” by both friends and foes.
Christie has a reputation, for– how do I put this? — not exactly being the “team player” type. Being kind of… difficult. Kind… of tetchy. His administration hasn’t been widely cited for its spotless ethical standards, either.
It was home base for corporations as mammoth as Bell Labs and Exxon (originally known as “Standard Oil of New Jersey”). It was the unlikely location for Orson Welles (and Steven Spielberg’s) War of the Worlds, for Earth’s first extraterrestrial contact (the Project Diana experiments, which bounced radar signals off the Moon in 1946), where L-RON chose to write Dianetics.
It’s also where the fabled Flight 93 took off the morning of September 11th.
The thought that Mitt Romney would ever join the Cabinet of Donald Trump — given their hostility, mutual contempt and venomous rhetorical exchanges — might be the most absurd notion yet of a crazy political year.
But the possibility that Trump and the man he labeled a “choke artist” could find common cause in the new administration was nonetheless a hot topic ahead of their meeting Saturday at the President-elect’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf retreat.
The 2012 Republican nominee, who once warned in a CNN interview that a Trump presidency would mean “trickle-down racism” and “trickle-down bigotry” instead sat down with Trump and discussed the job of secretary of state, an appointment that would make Hillary Clinton’s decision to serve in the same post under her 2008 primary rival Barack Obama seem routine in comparison.
But interviewing the de facto head of the vitriolic #NeverTrump movement for a top post in the Trump Administration might be a little teensy, tiny signal that maybe- just maybe– things aren’t quite as they seem.
Several executives from the network news divisions were also spotted on the way into Trump Tower: CNN president Jeff Zucker, ABC News president James Goldston, Fox News co-presidents Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, and NBC News president Deborah Turness.
According to CNN, the meeting was organized by Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who is now a senior adviser to Trump. NBC’s Chuck Todd and Lester Holt; CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Erin Burnett; CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, Charlie Rose, John Dickerson, and Gayle King; and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos were some of the anchors who were seen entering Trump Tower shortly before 1 p.m.
Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.
“It was like a f–ing firing squad,” one source said of the encounter.
“Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said ‘I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,’ ” the source said.
“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added.
