Thread: Top Aide To John Kelly Named To Head DHS

Top Aide To John Kelly Named To Head DHS



DOUG MATACONIS · THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2017 · 1 COMMENT

Kirsten Nielsen, who currently serves as Deputy White House Chief of Staff under retired General John Kelly, has been selected to become the new head of the Department of Homeland Security:

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that he intended to name Kirstjen Nielsen, a top White House aide, to lead the Department of Homeland Security, elevating a former homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration who has lately worked to impose order in Mr. Trump’s chaotic West Wing.

Mr. Trump announced his choice in a statement that noted Ms. Nielsen’s “extensive professional experience in the areas of homeland security policy and strategy, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure and emergency management.” She is the first nominee for the homeland security post who had served in the department, according to the statement.

If confirmed, Ms. Nielsen would replace John F. Kelly, who was homeland security secretary until he left in July to serve as the White House chief of staff and bring discipline and direction to a West Wing plagued by disorganization and infighting. Mr. Kelly had drafted Ms. Nielsen to be his chief of staff at the Homeland Security department, and when the president plucked him for the White House, he brought her as his No. 2.

Known as a no-nonsense player and policy wonk, Ms. Nielsen appears unlikely to land at the center of the type of controversies that have engulfed Mr. Trump’s presidency. But her regimented style in a freewheeling and often dysfunctional West Wing frustrated some senior officials and people close to the president, who chafed under her dictates. On Wednesday, some of them described Ms. Nielsen’s promotion as a solution to a toxic personnel situation, while others fretted privately that her departure would create a void at the White House that would be difficult to fill.

Mr. Kelly pushed hard for her selection, making a personal appeal to Mr. Trump during a months long search process. Among the other candidates considered, according to people familiar with the process, was Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Former colleagues said on Wednesday that Ms. Nielsen was well qualified.

“She’s a total homeland security expert — absolutely has no learning curve,” said Michael Allen, who worked with Ms. Nielsen during the Bush administration. “She’s an experienced manager, she’s an implementer, she knows how to get under the hood and figure out what needs to be connected to what.”

Added Frances Townsend, her boss at the White House during the Bush administration: “She is tough as nails, competent and has rightly earned the president’s respect.”

Mr. Kelly and Ms. Nielsen arrived at the White House after a tumultuous period that led to the departure of Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s first chief of staff, and Sean Spicer, his original press secretary. Mr. Kelly, who spends much of his time managing the president and working to defuse brewing confrontations between Mr. Trump and senior advisers, has leaned on Ms. Nielsen to manage and impose discipline on the rest of the White House staff.

It is not clear who will play that role after she leaves, and her departure will leave a hole at the White House as Mr. Trump faces an array of challenges, including confronting the threat from North Korea, addressing ruptures with his cabinet and crucial Republican lawmakers and trying to push a large tax cut through Congress.

There’s been some suggestion from Gabe Sherman in Vanity Fair and others that this move could be a sign that Kelly himself, who is rumored to be becoming increasingly frustrated in a position where it has proven impossible to control the White House since he can’t control the President, is getting ready to jump ship himself and that he’s looking for a “soft landing” for someone who has been a loyal aide going back many years. Whether that’s the case remains to be seen, but with Trump back to irrational tweeting on a daily basis and warring with everyone from Tennessee Senator Bob Corker to his own Secretary of State and NBC News, one could certainly understand if Kelly were frustrated.

As for this pick itself, Nielsen does appear on paper to be qualified for the position and it’s about time that the role of DHS Secretary, which has been filled by a deputy since Kelly left in July, finally gets filled with a Presidential appointee.



Read more: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/top...#ixzz4vJg9jecd

What do we know about Ms. Nielsen? One black mark against her in my opinion is the fact that she was Kelly's #2, which could mean she too supports illegal immigrant amnesty. Sounds like this was more Kelly's pick to head DHS than President Trump's.

Originally Posted by MW

What do we know about Ms. Nielsen? One black mark against her in my opinion is the fact that she was Kelly's #2, which could mean she too supports illegal immigrant amnesty. Sounds like this was more Kelly's pick to head DHS than President Trump's.

MW, from the following story, she is a globalist, more aligned with John Kelly in thinking.

Report: Trump Chief of Staff Ensuring ‘Exposure to Populist Nationalism Now Close to Zero’

306

The Associated Press

by TONY LEE19 Sep 2017


President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly and his Never Trump bureaucrats and globalist minions are ensuring that Trump’s “exposure to populist nationalism is now close to zero,” according to an Axios report that details how Kelly is isolating Trump from the concerns of working-class Americans of all backgrounds and parties who got Trump elected.

Since former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon left the White House, Trump has caved on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), reportedly is thinking about staying in the Paris Climate Accord, has palled around and made deals with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and supported increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Axios noted “who is around President Trump matters much more than with most presidents, because of his impulsiveness, lack of ideology and willingness to make snap decisions.”


“So if you wonder why President Trump has been willing to seriously entertain — and in one case so far, execute — policies that would’ve been anathema to Campaign Trump, it’s partly because of the feedback loop built by Chief of Staff John Kelly and the process adhered to by the national security team before briefing Trump,” Axios’ Mike Allen wrote in his Tuesday AM newsletter.


Allen further pointed out that Kelly and “Staff Secretary Rob Porter pick and choose what information gets to Trump and who’s allowed to weigh in, that’s supreme power.” Kelly’s deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, is also a globalist bureaucrat who has no idea about what concerns Trump’s coalition of working-class Americans and what got Trump elected in the first place. She now symbolically occupies Bannon’s office.
More from Allen’s report:

Trump’s willingness to publicly entertain an immigration deal that doesn’t include funding for the wall would have been unimaginable to Campaign Trump or Travel Ban Trump.

No administration official we talked to at the time thought that Trump was being sincere when he originally said he’d be open to staying in the climate deal if more favorable terms were offered to the U.S. On Sunday, Trump officials were on the shows saying exactly that.

Trump’s decision to raise troop levels in Afghanistan is testament to the power of a unified, controlled info flow to Trump. National Security Adviser McMaster, SecDef Mattis, CIA Director Pompeo, SecState Tillerson, et al. were all on the same page and they kept showing Trump — with highly detailed and planned presentations — why it’d be a disaster if he presided over a troop drawdown like Obama in Iraq.

He also notes that “Trump’s instincts were strongly against adding to troop levels — he really didn’t want to do it.”


“Part of the reason he kept veering was because he had Steve Bannon in his ear,” he continued. The former White House Chief Strategist who had a whiteboard in his office with Trump’s campaign promises on it worked, as former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, “24 hours a day” for Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that enabled him to shock the world in 2016.


According to Allen, with Bannon gone from the White House, “it’s easier” for Trump’s team of globalists, Democrats, and Never Trump saboteurs to “shape Trump’s perceptions on certain issues. Some Trump decisions — that would have been surprising in the past — are the natural result of the highly controlled information he sees and voices he hears.”

Axios also noted that after Trump’s decided to make a deal with Schumer and Pelosi on DACA, he enjoyed the “positive media coverage and coherent reinforcement from his top aides.” It goes without saying that Trump probably did not receive Breitbart News’ John Binder’s superb reporting on illegal immigration and DACA, which is much different than the DREAM Act, that could have better informed Trump.

Breitbart News’ Neil Munro also pointed out that Kelly ensured that Trump “was literally surrounded by amnesty boosters the night he agreed to give away a huge, expensive and unpopular amnesty in exchange for an empty bag of ‘border security’ promises.” Kelly seated Trump next to Pelosi and Schumer and ensured that Marc Short, who used to run the Koch brothers’ pro-amnesty group and worked for “Gang of Eight” Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) presidential campaign, was also at the dinner.

As Ann Coulter, one of the most loyal Trump supporters who has been a fearless and fierce champion of Trump’s agenda (memo to Trump: Dance with the one that brung ya!), recently told hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel B. Pollak on Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125, Trump ran on an America-First agenda but “suddenly Goldman Sachs and Rubio staffers [and their fellow Never Trumpers] are running everything” in the White House.

“He ran on, well, immigration, immigration, immigration, trade, and not starting any more wars. And we basically have Bush/Clinton out of this guy – because who’s he hiring? People who want to go to war constantly,” Coulter, the best-selling author of Adios, America, said on Breitbart News Sunday. “What was that idiotic bombing in Syria about? At least we got him to back away from starting yet another pointless war. The human meat grinder in Afghanistan. Why do we even have troops in South Korea? He’s not doing the reaching out to Russia. And immigration is a bipartisan issue. Who does it hurt most of all? African Americans.”


With Trump surrounded by those who are hostile to the agenda that got him elected, Bannon and other economic nationalists like Sebastian Gorka are now supporting candidates who will go to Washington to support Trump’s agenda. Gorka and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be going to Alabama on Thursday to campaign for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore against establishment Republican Luther Strange before Tuesday’s runoff. Axios highlighted the absurdity of the situation: “A month ago, Gorka and Steve Bannon were working in President Trump’s White House. Now they are preparing to go head-to-head against the president to support an anti-establishment candidate who is loathed by the same establishment that originally loathed Trump.”



http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...close-to-zero/

Originally Posted by GeorgiaPeach

Report: Trump Chief of Staff Ensuring ‘Exposure to Populist Nationalism Now Close to Zero’

306

The Associated Press

by TONY LEE19 Sep 2017


President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly and his Never Trump bureaucrats and globalist minions are ensuring that Trump’s “exposure to populist nationalism is now close to zero,” according to an Axios report that details how Kelly is isolating Trump from the concerns of working-class Americans of all backgrounds and parties who got Trump elected.

Since former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon left the White House, Trump has caved on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), reportedly is thinking about staying in the Paris Climate Accord, has palled around and made deals with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and supported increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Axios noted “who is around President Trump matters much more than with most presidents, because of his impulsiveness, lack of ideology and willingness to make snap decisions.”


“So if you wonder why President Trump has been willing to seriously entertain — and in one case so far, execute — policies that would’ve been anathema to Campaign Trump, it’s partly because of the feedback loop built by Chief of Staff John Kelly and the process adhered to by the national security team before briefing Trump,” Axios’ Mike Allen wrote in his Tuesday AM newsletter.


Allen further pointed out that Kelly and “Staff Secretary Rob Porter pick and choose what information gets to Trump and who’s allowed to weigh in, that’s supreme power.” Kelly’s deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, is also a globalist bureaucrat who has no idea about what concerns Trump’s coalition of working-class Americans and what got Trump elected in the first place. She now symbolically occupies Bannon’s office.
More from Allen’s report:

Trump’s willingness to publicly entertain an immigration deal that doesn’t include funding for the wall would have been unimaginable to Campaign Trump or Travel Ban Trump.

No administration official we talked to at the time thought that Trump was being sincere when he originally said he’d be open to staying in the climate deal if more favorable terms were offered to the U.S. On Sunday, Trump officials were on the shows saying exactly that.

Trump’s decision to raise troop levels in Afghanistan is testament to the power of a unified, controlled info flow to Trump. National Security Adviser McMaster, SecDef Mattis, CIA Director Pompeo, SecState Tillerson, et al. were all on the same page and they kept showing Trump — with highly detailed and planned presentations — why it’d be a disaster if he presided over a troop drawdown like Obama in Iraq.

He also notes that “Trump’s instincts were strongly against adding to troop levels — he really didn’t want to do it.”


“Part of the reason he kept veering was because he had Steve Bannon in his ear,” he continued. The former White House Chief Strategist who had a whiteboard in his office with Trump’s campaign promises on it worked, as former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, “24 hours a day” for Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that enabled him to shock the world in 2016.


According to Allen, with Bannon gone from the White House, “it’s easier” for Trump’s team of globalists, Democrats, and Never Trump saboteurs to “shape Trump’s perceptions on certain issues. Some Trump decisions — that would have been surprising in the past — are the natural result of the highly controlled information he sees and voices he hears.”

Axios also noted that after Trump’s decided to make a deal with Schumer and Pelosi on DACA, he enjoyed the “positive media coverage and coherent reinforcement from his top aides.” It goes without saying that Trump probably did not receive Breitbart News’ John Binder’s superb reporting on illegal immigration and DACA, which is much different than the DREAM Act, that could have better informed Trump.

Breitbart News’ Neil Munro also pointed out that Kelly ensured that Trump “was literally surrounded by amnesty boosters the night he agreed to give away a huge, expensive and unpopular amnesty in exchange for an empty bag of ‘border security’ promises.” Kelly seated Trump next to Pelosi and Schumer and ensured that Marc Short, who used to run the Koch brothers’ pro-amnesty group and worked for “Gang of Eight” Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) presidential campaign, was also at the dinner.

As Ann Coulter, one of the most loyal Trump supporters who has been a fearless and fierce champion of Trump’s agenda (memo to Trump: Dance with the one that brung ya!), recently told hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel B. Pollak on Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125, Trump ran on an America-First agenda but “suddenly Goldman Sachs and Rubio staffers [and their fellow Never Trumpers] are running everything” in the White House.

“He ran on, well, immigration, immigration, immigration, trade, and not starting any more wars. And we basically have Bush/Clinton out of this guy – because who’s he hiring? People who want to go to war constantly,” Coulter, the best-selling author of Adios, America, said on Breitbart News Sunday. “What was that idiotic bombing in Syria about? At least we got him to back away from starting yet another pointless war. The human meat grinder in Afghanistan. Why do we even have troops in South Korea? He’s not doing the reaching out to Russia. And immigration is a bipartisan issue. Who does it hurt most of all? African Americans.”


With Trump surrounded by those who are hostile to the agenda that got him elected, Bannon and other economic nationalists like Sebastian Gorka are now supporting candidates who will go to Washington to support Trump’s agenda. Gorka and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be going to Alabama on Thursday to campaign for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore against establishment Republican Luther Strange before Tuesday’s runoff. Axios highlighted the absurdity of the situation: “A month ago, Gorka and Steve Bannon were working in President Trump’s White House. Now they are preparing to go head-to-head against the president to support an anti-establishment candidate who is loathed by the same establishment that originally loathed Trump.”



http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...close-to-zero/

In the end there is nobody but Trump to blame for this. He is the one responsible for choosing those he has decided to surround himself with. At this point, "drain the swamp" just seems like more campaign rhetoric.

Originally Posted by GeorgiaPeach

MW, from the following story, she is a globalist, more aligned with John Kelly in thinking.

Makes sense since it was John Kelly who chose her as his #2 and encouraged Trump to make her Secretary of DHS. Kelly wouldn't love her so much if he didn't believe she was his mini-me on ideology.

Cheap Labor, Open Borders Swamp Embraces Trump’s DHS Pick: ‘Experience Being Valued over Outsiders’



by JOHN BINDER
12 Oct 2017
Washington, D.C.
883 comments

The Washington, D.C. political establishment – which supports a constant inflow of cheap, foreign workers to take American blue-collar jobs – and open border policies, is heaping praise on President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kirstjen Nielsen.

Nielsen, a donor to Republican establishment darling Jeb Bush and former DHS official under President George W. Bush, is being praised by pro-open borders Bush allies with whom she’s previously worked.

In the Washington Post, former Bush official and lobbyist Stewart Verdery welcomed Trump’s choice to pick Nielsen to run DHS because she was not an outsider.

“Nielsen’s nomination is a strong signal of competence and experience being valued by the White House over ideologues and outsiders,” Verdery told the Washington Post. “The homeland mission requires an unusual, diverse set of skills, and she has expertise in almost all of them.”

In 2014, Verdery urged House and Senate Republicans to give in to amnesty for the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens living in the U.S., writing for CNN how the GOP needed to support the expansion of foreign work visa programs, where cheaper foreigners are brought to the U.S. to take American jobs.

As a lobbyist, Verdery’s Monument Policy Group represents tech firms like Microsoft and Amazon, both of which have lobbied the Trump administration for more foreign workers to be imported to the U.S., further driving down the wages of American workers, immigration reformers argue.

Microsoft, which Verdery’s lobbying firm represents, even admitted to hiring illegal aliens who have been shielded from deportation by the Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as Breitbart Texas reported.

Also praising Nielsen’s appointment to DHS is pro-amnesty Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who has a long record of opposing the pro-American immigration agenda that got Trump elected.

In the Washington Post, Ridge said of Nielsen:

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R), the first secretary of homeland security, said in a statement that Nielsen was a “homeland security veteran” who was “extremely well versed in the all-hazard threats” challenging the nation’s security and resilience.

“Kirstjen can hit the ground running and there won’t be a learning curve,” Ridge said. “Most importantly, in this hyper-political environment, Kirstjen is not a self-promoter. She is a patriot and takes a mission-focused approach to her work.”

When Ridge was serving as the head of DHS under Bush in 2003, he demanded that the entire illegal alien population be “legalized” and allowed to remain in the U.S.

At the time, Trump ally and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) slammed Ridge for indirectly pushing amnesty, all while potentially creating a surge at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Mr. Ridge ought to read the laws he is charged with trying to enforce,” Tancredo told the Washington Times. “We have laws on the books that call for him to find and deport these people, and if he is unwilling to do so, he should resign.”

In 2010, Ridge railed against Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s pro-American immigration enforcement — which Trump ally and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach helped craft — saying that instead of deporting illegal aliens, the federal government should have stepped in and legalized the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S.

“It’s ridiculous to think … we’re going to identify 12 million to 14 million people and send them back,” Ridge told the Associated Press at the time.

In 2016, Ridge even went on a media tour to announce that he refused to support Trump’s “America First” candidacy, writing in US News:

My disregard for Donald Trump has been well documented by multiple media outlets over the last several months, so I won’t belabor it yet again. Suffice to say that I am disappointed that he is our party’s nominee. With a bumper sticker approach to policy, his bombastic tone reflects the traits of a bully, not an American president and statesman. If he cannot unite Republicans, how can he unite America? I simply cannot endorse him.

Nielsen’s DHS appointment was additionally cheered by former Bush official Frances Townsend, with the D.C. establishment figure telling the New York Times that Nielsen is “competent.”

“She is tough as nails, competent and has rightly earned the president’s respect,” Townsend said.

In 2013, Townsend welcomed the failed effort to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens — known as the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill — saying the open borders plan was in-line with the Bush administration’s goals on immigration.

“This is a redux of the Bush effort and the underlying principles,” Townsend told the Daily Beast at the time.

Nielsen has no record of working specifically on immigration-related issues, despite Trump making pro-American immigration reforms the main theme of his administration. The yet-to-be-confirmed DHS head also does not hold any clear record when it comes to supporting initiatives that reduce legal immigration and limit foreign guest worker programs in order to give wage and competitive relief to America’s working-class and middle-class workforce.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ver-outsiders/

Well, I guess that tells us all we needed to know about Nielsen. Why does Trump continue to hire folks that seem to differ from the agenda he convinced us he would pursue? I guess it all goes back to the "easy to influence" comments I've made about Trump many times in the past. He hired her because her buddy, Chief of Staff Kelly, encouraged him to to so.