The Wednesday Plus Advocate
Trump Pirro-ettes
For years I have been talking about the Government/Media complex and the dangers it presents. It’s a take-off on the Military/Industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell address to the nation.
If you have been paying attention, you must have noticed the trend of people in one administration after another jockeying back and forth between high profile jobs for the sitting president and the cable news shows.
It’s an unholy alliance that has blurred the lines of demarcation between those who run the country and those who report on the ones who run the country. It is a synergy that is unhealthy for any free and open society.
There is the expression that politics make strange bedfellows. However, when politicians and news “journalists” start sharing the same bed, the relationship morphs from strange to dangerous.
I use quotation marks around the term journalists because many of these “news” personalities do not emanate from traditional careers one would associate with journalism, or the impartial gathering of facts to be reported in an objective manner.
Rather we have former stand-up comics and TV personalities “reporting” the news, which has become more akin to “news entertainment”. We see White House appointees getting network gigs on this or that cable outlet, depending upon how the appointee and the cable station jive politically.
Of course, we also see people being appointed to positions because of their friendship with the president or other appointing authority.
While this kind of political nepotism is nothing new, Mr. Trump seems to have taken things to a new level. His recent appointment of TV personality, Jeanine Pirro, is just the latest case of someone obtaining an important job more because of her connections and TV persona than her credentials.
According to various reports:
She was elected to both a district attorney’s office and then a judgeship. She was an attractive candidate. She had been a producer/writer for the TV show, Law and Order, Special Victims Unit, and her own reality TV show, Justice with Judge Jeanine, which was cancelled after four years due to low ratings.
Her former husband was convicted and sentenced to jail for conspiracy and tax evasion charges in 2000 when Jeanine Pirro was Westchester County Prosecutor. He was later pardoned by Trump. Her 2006 campaign to be New York Attorney General was derailed when it was leaked that she wanted to bug the yacht she believed her husband was having an affair on. The bug caught a conversation between her and former New York City Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik, who was under federal investigation.
This commissioner was later convicted on charges of tax fraud and making false statements. He too was later pardoned by Trump after serving three years in prison.
There were also reports of mob money being donated to Pirro’s campaign for New York State Attorney General. She lost that 2006 election in a landslide to Andrew Cuomo, who went on to become New York’s governor, until he resigned in disgrace for his handling of the Covid pandemic. Trump had donated $20,000.00 to her campaign.
Pirro has been a longtime friend of Donald Trump, a relationship that goes back to her marriage days. As she gained prominence as a Trump ally, especially promoting her belief about the 2020 election having been stolen, Pirro curried more and more favor with Trump. She and Trump had become friends in the elevated circles of New York society and they supported one another.
Unfortunately, her exuberance in defending Trump in the 2020 election was part of a lawsuit against Fox news that resulted in a nearly $800 Million settlement paid by Fox.
Her allegiance to Trump has landed her the new position of US Attorney for the critical District of Washington, D.C. It will be interesting to see if she pursues legal action against those who waged “lawfare” against Trump during the Biden years.
One can assume that there is a myriad of people who would be more qualified for the position than this “personality”, but as we have seen with Mr. Trump, glamour trumps qualifications. She is simply the latest of his apprentices who have been given jobs based more upon allegiance to Trump rather than merit.
It would appear that the man who came to Washington to drain the swamp has forgotten his mission. At least his swamp creatures make a nice appearance, which seems to be the top criterion to be on the Trump team.
This is what I dislike about politics. What’s the man supposed to do?? I think I’ll hire people that disagree with me. Not this time around. He has an agenda that requires people that share his ideals and vision of a different America. He is like the old ad for “Slim Jim’s; you either love em or you hate em”. Personally I don’t understand the hate and I’m against hateful rhetoric. He has a plan, let’s give him his choices for staff and see where it goes.
If there is one thing the last President showed us, if you do it wrong, the American people will kick you and your ideas out faster than ink dries on your pension check.
It’s tough to “drain the swamp” when district court judges thwart one’s every move. The original pick for the DC DA was superior but, since powers that be nixed it, I view the Pirro pick as a “poke in the eye”. As for the Fox lawsuit, there is overwhelming technical evidence that that machines were indeed rigged. Fox were cowards to cave.