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NYT: White House Plans to Have Trump Ally Review Intelligence Agencies

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HotHamBoy

Member
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Maybe I'm not pessimistic enough (yet) about this entire ordeal, but were I Stephen Feinberg in this very moment, I would be trying to distance myself like crazy from Trump et al, and telling anyone who even touches the executive branch to keep my goddamn name out of their mouth. I can't even begin to imagine the kind of shady, possibly illegal shit that a determined, pissed off Intelligence Community could find on most investment bankers.
 

kess

Member
Gotta love how the payback for Comey's collusion with the Trump campaign is the potential loss of autonomy and a sham audit by a corrupt Trump crony.
 

HariKari

Member
You'd need a living saint to even attempt this with how pissed the IC is currently. This won't end well for Trump, as usual.
 

paskowitz

Member
This is bad. Anybody in finance can confirm how influential and powerful Cerberus is. Their holdings stretch into some very deep dark places and speaking generally are a big player. The NYT article hints at this. Other poster mention GeoEye. There are many more that are concerning.

NYT said:
Through Cerberus, his private equity company, Mr. Feinberg has strong ties to the government contracting industry. Cerberus owns DynCorp International, which has had a wide array of large contracts providing security to the State Department and other agencies. DynCorp is now locked in a major legal dispute over the fate of a $10 billion State Department contract that it previously held to provide air support for counternarcotics operations overseas.

John F. Kelly, the new Homeland Security secretary, was paid $166,000 a year as a DynCorp adviser until he was named to the new administration.

Cerberus also owns Remington Outdoor, a major firearms manufacturer.

In 2008, Mr. Feinberg also considered investing in Blackwater, the security firm founded by Erik Prince, a former member of the Navy SEALs, before it was ultimately acquired by other investors.

I haven't been nervous so far... now i am nervous. Cerberus has many holdings in defense and IC related/assisting companies. Congress may be able to block big changes... but pressure from the inside would be much hard to fight off.
 

HotHamBoy

Member
"Mr. Trump blamed leaks from the intelligence community for the departure of Michael T. Flynn"

This is the scary part of this article. He blames the leaks for having to get rid of Flynn. So if the info didn't leak he would have been fine keeping the guy around? Trump is in deep with Russia.

He immediately started contradicting Spicer's Tuesday briefing as soon as he woke up this morning. Apparently he got some big, bright idea that this was going to play.

One thing is clear: Trump DID NOT want to lose Flynn and he is really shitty about it because we hit him where it hurts the most: his pride.

This is bad. Anybody in finance can confirm how influential and powerful Cerberus is. Their holdings stretch into some very deep dark places and speaking generally are a big player. The NYT article hints at this. Other poster mention GeoEye. There are many more that are concerning.



I haven't been nervous so far... now i am nervous. Cerberus has many holdings in defense and IC related/assisting companies. Congress may be able to block big changes... but pressure from the inside would be much hard to fight off.

This is actually going to be good because it will for the IC to show their full hand. It definitely doesn't look good for the WH, either, because it makes them look like they are desperate to hide things.

Trump is going to fight tooth and nail and he's gonna fight dirty, but he is a moron and his entire administration is an unorganized, chaotic, paranoid mess. They will bring themselves down.
 

~Kinggi~

Banned
This is bad. Anybody in finance can confirm how influential and powerful Cerberus is. Their holdings stretch into some very deep dark places and in general. The NYT article only mentions a few...



I haven't been nervous so far... now i am nervous. Cerberus has many holdings in defense and IC related/assisting companies. Congress may be able to block big changes... but pressure from the inside would be much hard to fight off.

Poster in this thread claimed they did work with them and they shouldn't be fucked with. Then edited their post....
 

Ac30

Member
This is bad. Anybody in finance can confirm how influential and powerful Cerberus is. Their holdings stretch into some very deep dark places and speaking generally are a big player. The NYT article hints at this. Other poster mention GeoEye. There are many more that are concerning.



I haven't been nervous so far... now i am nervous. Cerberus has many holdings in defense and IC related/assisting companies. Congress may be able to block big changes... but pressure from the inside would be much hard to fight off.

Literally all of this is fucking terrifying. Trump is going to destroy the IC and then there's nothing left.

We're actually begging the CIA to do something, what is happening
 

UberTag

Member
"Mr. Trump blamed leaks from the intelligence community for the departure of Michael T. Flynn"

This is the scary part of this article. He blames the leaks for having to get rid of Flynn. So if the info didn't leak he would have been fine keeping the guy around? Trump is in deep with Russia.
They initially tried to lie and pretend that Flynn's resignation was due to the President's trust in him being compromised but nobody was buying that nonsense in light of the obvious contradictions so they've switched tacts to simply being forthright about the fact that Trump would have kept Flynn on board, Trump will continue to meet and talk with Flynn (probably at Mar-a-Lago and no longer as part of his NSA role) and that he considers the IC to be his enemy.
 
Dammit, either Trump goes down soon, or this asshole is going to lobotomize our IC to Trump's intellectual level. The damage would definitely be the beginning of the end for the USA as the world power.

All empires must end, I suppose. I would hate for it to be due to a narcissistic, hateful simpleton and his white supremacist yes men.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
It's such a weird situation that we end up rooting against the president. This is one big mess. I doubt the Intelligence Agencies are scared at all. They are probably thinking 50 moves ahead of whatever Trump can do, and they would actually listen to their smart people.

Trump is so in over his head, this is going to be a train wreck. Though that's probably what old Pooty Bear wants.
 

Caja 117

Member
This is bad. Anybody in finance can confirm how influential and powerful Cerberus is. Their holdings stretch into some very deep dark places and speaking generally are a big player. The NYT article hints at this. Other poster mention GeoEye. There are many more that are concerning.



I haven't been nervous so far... now i am nervous. Cerberus has many holdings in defense and IC related/assisting companies. Congress may be able to block big changes... but pressure from the inside would be much hard to fight off.

If the IC sees itself endangered, they will retaliate, even with this company reach, the last thing they want is an scandal smearing them.
 

HotHamBoy

Member
We are currently dealing with a WH that believes every other government body, the media and more than half of the people in this country are their hostile enemies. Scary.
 
How far could Trump go if backed into an inescapable corner? Would his closest guards have to choose which side of the line they stood on? I can actually see him giving crazed, desperate orders for his SS guards to gun down anyone trying to apprehend him.

Perhaps I'm over thinking this...
 

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
If the IC is sitting on the smoking gun that even Congress can't ignore, they better leak it fast before they're all shitcanned.

Trump would rather have incompetent zealots loyal to him than what he currently has.
 
trump and his cronys are fucked if they think they can take the IC head on with amount of dirt they have these are the most power intelligent agency's in the world this is practically suicide any sane person would resign and gtfo
 

paskowitz

Member
This is actually going to be good because it will for the IC to show their full hand. It definitely doesn't look good for the WH, either, because it makes them look like they are desperate to hide things.

Trump is going to fight tooth and nail and he's gonna fight dirty, but he is a moron and his entire administration is an unorganized, chaotic, paranoid mess. They will bring themselves down.

That is assuming IC has all the necessary intel for an ouster. They may not. It isn't what you can claim, it is only what you can prove.

Poster in this thread claimed they did work with them and they shouldn't be fucked with. Then edited their post....

I would.

Literally all of this is fucking terrifying. Trump is going to destroy the IC and then there's nothing left.

We're actually begging the CIA to do something, what is happening

Destroy is not the word I would use. Don't hit the panic button until there are reports of mass (>hundreds) of firings/people leaving the IC or reports of that potentially happening due to "up top" decisions.

If the IC sees itself endangered, they will retaliate, even with this company reach, the last thing they want is an scandal smearing them.

By retaliate, what do you mean exactly? Who specifically is retaliating? It isn't this clear cut. IC is many organizations and fabrics. Also, they could care less about a scandal, as long as they get their funding and their operations aren't disrupted.
 
I'm seriously utterly confused as to why Trump went and declared war on the intelligence community. Where did such an utterly stupid move come from?
 
he's probably read Ayn Rand, he knows what to do. be selfish, fuck everyone over and.. thats it.

I know it's sort of off topic, but I continue to marvel at the love fest the Right Wing has with a staunch atheist.

Fuck Ayn Rand. That troll woman has done more to shape current Republican thought than anyone. Leading to the fucking unholy mix of Objectivism and Fundamentalist Christianity we have now.

You give a teenager a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and he or she is ruined for life, like Rand Paul and Paul Ryan.
 
They gathered intelligence

Yeah, but openly going against the media, IC, and judiciary in one swoop? If you're president and your party is control of both houses and most state legislatures, that's the exact combo that might seriously threaten your administration's ability to get anything done
 

Slime

Banned
I'm surprised someone in the IC hasn't just pulled his tax returns and given them to the press. There's no way there isn't something sketchy in there.
 
The IC has options that go beyond intelligence and leaks to defend themselves and the United States from all threats, foreign and domestic.
 

Furio53

Member
Yeah, but openly going against the media, IC, and judiciary in one swoop? If you're president and your party is control of both houses and most state legislatures, that's the exact combo that might seriously threaten your administration's ability to get anything done

Maybe that's been his plan since he won... won't resign cause it makes him look like a coward, so... political suicide? lol
 

leroidys

Member
Fuck Ayn Rand. That troll woman has done more to shape current Republican thought than anyone. Leading to the fucking unholy mix of Objectivism and Fundamentalist Christianity we have now.

You give a teenager a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and he or she is ruined for life, like Rand Paul and Paul Ryan.

At my high school English teacher's urging, I started reading Atlas Shrugged as part of a scholarship competition. I wasn't a complete fucking idiot though so I noped out of it about 200 pages into that trash.

Still disturbs me though that there's some society out there waving scholarships around, trying to indoctrinate college bound kids.
 
Yeah, but openly going against the media, IC, and judiciary in one swoop? If you're president and your party is control of both houses and most state legislatures, that's the exact combo that might seriously threaten your administration's ability to get anything done

Trump is jealous of the IC agencies for having the intelligence that he lacks.
 

Toki767

Member
Hilariously, from an old Rolling Stone article

"We try to hide religiously," explained Steven Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. "If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person," Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. "We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it."

I'm not sure he's going to want this job.
 

UberTag

Member
Here's a Reuters article from last Thursday that goes into more depth on Feinberg's likely new role...

Exclusive: Trump considers private equity's Feinberg for U.S. intelligence review

And of particular note...
While cautioning that the appointment was not final, the U.S. officials said Feinberg, if named to the role, would look for ways to streamline 17 separate agencies, a roughly $70 billion annual budget and tens of thousands of employees.

Trump's advisers have expressed particular interest in reforming the role of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to coordinate the work of U.S. spy agencies.

Destroy is not the word I would use. Don't hit the panic button until there are reports of mass (>hundreds) of firings/people leaving the IC or reports of that potentially happening due to "up top" decisions..
Is streamline a more palatable word that you would use?
 
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