OK folks – slack-off time is over, with means it’s time to don our ISO suits and push open the airlock!

First up? Leaking on The Darnold!
( I know it’s a long article, but bear with me)

Leak Plugged? Trump’s Personal “Gatekeeper” Hits The Exit
Hotair ^ | 08/30/2019 | Ed Morrissey

Posted on 8/30/2019, 9:17:32 AM by SeekAndFind

In any White House, discretion is a prized value in staffers, and perhaps even more so in the Donald Trump era. As Trump’s personal assistant in the Oval Office, Madeleine Westerhout should have known that better than most. Yet Westerhout has been shown the door, as multiple news organizations reported overnight, for sharing personal information about the First Family with reporters:

President Trump’s personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout resigned from her job abruptly, a White House official and another person familiar with the situation told NBC News late Thursday night.

One of the sources said that Westerhout left the job because she shared personal information about the president’s family and Oval Office operations at an off-the-record dinner with reporters earlier this month in Bedminster, N.J., where a Trump-owned golf club that the president often visits in summer months is located.

All of the outlets reporting this departure call it a resignation, but they all also strongly suggest that the resignation came under considerable duress. The New York Times first reported it and noted that the sequence of events started when Trump found out she was leaking information to reporters, and that she’s already persona non grata anywhere in the White House. Needless to say, that’s not a departure on mutually agreeable terms.

The Times’ Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman also take note of Westerhout’s political pedigree:

“Ms. Westerhout, a former Republican National Committee aide who also worked for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, reportedly cried on election night because she was upset over Mr. Trump’s victory. As such, the president at first viewed her warily, as a late convert to his cause who could not be trusted.”

(snip)

Ms. Westerhout’s power in the White House came almost entirely from proximity. She is not a name-brand White House aide and has never appeared on television, unless it was an accidental shot of her hovering behind her boss. But while she was not a decision maker, she enjoyed unique access to Mr. Trump.

Trump tends to be a little paranoid about working with other Republicans, but in this case his first instinct might have been correct. Karni and Haberman hint at Westerhout’s state of mind in the last paragraph of the above excerpt. Politico later reported that Westerhout was attempting a little empire-building in the White House, which might have led to a slap-down or two from more senior officials:

“In the past six months, Westerhout had tried to expand the boundaries of her job to encompass a broader set of tasks and to include foreign travel, said one adviser close to the White House, who suggested Westerhout had tried to act like a de facto chief of staff. This irked several White House officials and Cabinet secretaries who thought she should stick to her primary task of serving as the president’s personal secretary with a desk just outside the Oval Office. …”

(snip)

The close White House adviser called this “the final straw” for someone who did not have many allies left in the building.

Under those circumstances, one has to wonder whether Westerhout got set up by rivals within the White House. That’s the kind of games that get played when low-level staffers try acquiring power at the expense of others with better connections. It’s just as likely, if not more so, that a lack of success led Westerhout to lose her sense of discretion and/or attempt to gain more power by manipulating the press against her real and perceived rivals.

At least, those are the fun explanations. If this turns out to be just the mundane circumstance of a secretary with trouble keeping her mouth shut after having a couple of drinks, it’ll be a disappointment. Even so, Westerhout’s exit will serve as a warning to others to keep their mouths shut whatever the circumstance might be.

1 posted on 8/30/2019, 9:17:32 AM by SeekAndFind

To: SeekAndFind 

This is appalling  appealing.

Neil Cavuto Slams Trump Attacks on Fox News: ‘It’s Called Being Fair and Balanced, Mr. President’

https://www.mediaite.com ^ | August 29, 2019
Posted on 8/29/2019, 4:32:51 PM by NKP_Vet

Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto heavily criticized President Donald Trump over his complaints that Fox News isn’t sufficiently pro-Trump enough.

Cavuto gave a long monologue to close out Thursday’s Your World with Neil Cavuto, hitting at Trump complaining to Twitter followers that “Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”

“I think the president watches Fox,” Cavuto said. “I also think he’s getting sick of Fox, which is weird because I think he gets pretty fair coverage on Fox, but the president making clear that to fact-check him is to be all but dead to him and a legion of supporters, who let me know in no uncertain terms that I am either with him totally or a never-Trumper bully.”

“First of all, Mr. President, we don’t work for you. I don’t work for you,” he continued. “My job is to cover you, not fun over you or rip you, just cover you. Call balls and strikes. Our job is to keep score, not settle scores. In my case, to report the economic numbers with their good and when they’re bad. But when the markets are soaring and with her tumbling. When trade talks looking they’re coming together and when they are look like falling apart. It’s called being fair and balanced, Mr. President.”

“You’re entitled to your point of view, Mr. President, but you’re not entitled to your own set of facts,” Cavuto said.

1 posted on 8/29/2019, 4:32:51 PM by NKP_Vet

To: NKP_Vet

 

Trump, “gets pretty fair coverage on Fox”?? El tu, Cavuto?

18 posted on 8/29/2019, 4:47:05 PM by Bookshelf

And, of course – the post of the thread!

To: NKP_Vet

 

Fox News cannot be Pro-America if they are not Pro-Trump.

51 posted on 8/29/2019, 5:18:55 PM by Meatspace

Serial killer who targeted gay men executed in Florida after eating hearty last meal
FOX News ^ | 08/23/2019 | By Danielle Wallace
Posted on 8/23/2019, 1:58:51 PM by Red Badger

A mass murderer known as the “I-95 killer,” who spent the majority of 1994 targeting gay men — including a Navy World War II veteran — ate three burgers, fries and bacon before he was executed late Thursday in Florida.

Gary Ray Bowles, 57, was pronounced dead at 10:58 p.m. Thursday evening after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said. Bowles had already eaten his last meal by 3 p.m. that afternoon, prison officials told WJXT.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal filed by Bowles’ attorneys earlier Thursday that argued their client was not mentally fit to receive the death penalty, clearing the way for his execution to proceed as planned.

Bowles was condemned to die for his murder conviction in the 1994 slaying of Walter Hinton, a 42-year-old who was strangled and had his head smashed with a concrete block, in Jacksonville Beach, Fla. That was one of the six known killings that terrorized the Interstate 95 corridor that year and earned him the nickname of the “I-95 killer.” In each case, Bowles had a signature: He stuffed the victims’ throats with objects, including rags, toilet paper, dirt, leaves — even a sex toy.

Police were on Bowles’ trail after his first killing in 1994 in Daytona Beach. Bowles left investigators a slew of evidence, including a probation document left at the scene and ATM footage showing him trying to withdraw money from the victim, John Hardy Roberts,’ bank account.

1 posted on 8/23/2019, 1:58:51 PM by Red Badger