MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

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The Trump administration has installed political operatives to watch over and "advise" cabinet secretaries and their departments, according to a recent Washington Post article:

Most members of President Trump's Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged -- above all -- with monitoring the secretaries' loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration.

This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary's suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request.

This Week notes an ironic similarity that apparently the Pentagon noticed and The Post got wind of:

Pentagon officials privately call Brett Byers, charged with keeping an eye on Defense Secretary James Mattis, "the commissar," The Post reports, helpfully explaining that the nickname is "a reference to Soviet-era Communist Party officials who were assigned to military units to ensure their commanders remained loyal."

Vanity Fair headlined a story about the new appointees, "Trump's Soviet-Style Plan to Create His Own Deep State." Journalist Emily Jane Fox, who wrote the Vanity Fair story, also pointed out how the White House is forcefully assuming some significant cabinet responsibilities itself:

While there are certainly large numbers of bureaucrats creating headaches for the White House, the Trump administration is also seeking to infiltrate and control the inner workings of the federal workforce, circumventing the usual chain of command to centralize power. As I have reported for weeks, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, is running something of an in-house State Department within the West Wing, serving as the first line to the president for foreign leaders, undercutting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and leaving his staff at Foggy Bottom listless and disempowered. As sources told me, Kushner and Tillerson have been taking meetings and making plans together, and Tillerson has run things by Kushner before going to the president with an idea.

Even the right-wing website Newsmax ran a critical story about the political appointees, following the Post's revelations. NewsMax noted:

The political appointees report to Rick Dearborn, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy. John Mashburn, a top Dearborn aide, checks in weekly with the aides during a conference call he leads....

But they also monitor Cabinet leaders and their staff members to "make sure they carry out the president's agenda and don't stray too far from the White House's talking points," several officials told the Post.

The fact that even a right-wing publication would call attention to this practice is revealing. Trump seems to have raised concerns even among his most loyal followers within the media.

If one is of the opinion that Trump is trying to pursue a totalitarian style of governing, this development would certainly bolster that argument. The Post article makes the reasonable case that cabinet secretaries should not be under such intense scrutiny and micro-management from the White House:

The arrangement is unusual. It wasn't used by presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. And it's also different from the traditional liaisons who shepherd the White House's political appointees to the various agencies. Critics say the competing chains of command eventually will breed mistrust, chaos and inefficiency -- especially as new department heads build their staffs.

"It's healthy when there is some daylight between the president's Cabinet and the White House, with room for some disagreement," said Kevin Knobloch, who was chief of staff under Obama to then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

Raw Story reminds us that Trump is the "first president in history to appoint a political staffer to the National Security Council." That would be white nationalist Steve Bannon, who has reportedly been heavily influencing Trump's domestic and foreign policy, including the effort to "deconstruct" the government.

This Week offers an example of the somewhat farcical -- yet highly dangerous -- nature of Trump's authoritarianism: "Most of these political overseers, placed near the Cabinet secretary's office in every department, have little expertise in the subject matter handled at their assigned agencies -- Frank Wuco at Homeland Security, for example, plays a fictional jihadist on YouTube to illustrate his blogged contention that Islam is the root of the terrorist threat..."

Trump isn't draining the swamp in DC; he's filling it up to flood levels.



