Mediaboss Marketing

It is a classic of the form. I went through and pulled out the strangest of the strange Trump lines. They're below in the order Trump said them.

1. "But once you get that motion, it's in pretty good shape, once you get in. It's hard to get in, but once you get in."

Trump is talking here about the motion to proceed on the health care legislation, in case you were wondering.

2. "John McCain was a great help, coming in as he did. And so it was something I very much appreciate, and we'll see what happens."

3. "Many conversations. I just had one with a certain senator that was very convincing to that senator. So I've done a lot."

Hmmm. You would assume this had to do with health care given the timing of the interview. And, if so, was Trump really "very convincing" given that the vote failed hours later?

4. "And I you know, I think I you know, look, just don't quote me on this unless it happens, but I think we have a pretty good shot."

They did quote you. And the vote failed.

5. "If it's repeal and replace, which one do you want to go? Which form of existing conditions? I mean, there's many things."

Here's the truth: Trump isn't a details guy. Never has been. He comes in at the end and uses the power of his #brand and personality to close deals. In this quote he makes clear he knows very, very little about the specific policies being debated in the health care fight. "Which form of existing conditions" is not a phrase anyone who knows the law and the proposed changes says.

6. "It was nice to see you out in Southampton a couple weeks ago."

OK, I'm cheating a little bit here since this quote is from Wall Street Journal executive editor Gerard Baker. But what a quote! He's talking to Ivanka Trump who stopped by the interview. And who says media tycoons don't live like regular people!

7. "He's a good he's a good boy."

According to Politico, Trump is talking about Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, here. And, apparently Jared is a good boy.

8. "If you remember, it was you know, it was an idea that I had very early on, repeal."

Trump appears to be taking credit here for calling for the repeal of an Obamacare, an idea that has been kicking around in Republican circles for almost as long as the Affordable Care Act has existed.

9. "It's a very difficult -- it's a very difficult thing, always has been."

"On my first day in office, I am going to ask Congress to send me a bill to immediately repeal and replace, I just said it, Obamacare." -- Donald Trump, September 2016.

10. "I honestly believe for six months I have done more than just about any president when you look at all of the bills that were passed, 42, 43."

11. "Look, I had 45,000 people there yesterday. It's the biggest crowd they've ever had, and they were they were going wild yesterday in West Virginia."

12. "And, you know, it is it would have been easier to start with taxes, but this is better if it works, OK? If it works, this is better."

So ...Trump thinks, in hindsight, he should have started with tax reform rather than health care? Or no? Yes?

13. "And then I'm going to do a very big we're doing very big trade deals, and we're looking forward to that."

Things to look forward to: "Very big trade deals." So, we got that going for us, which is nice.

14. "She lost easily, you know, 306 to 223 I think, right -- 223, something like that."

This was a question about whether Democrats have any incentive to work with Trump. Also, he won 304 electoral votes.

15. "So you have the governor of Ohio not supporting you and you win by almost 10 points, which is pretty good because Ohio's not if you remember, you guys were always saying you have to win Ohio, right?"

The 2016 election ended 259 days before this interview was conducted.

16. "Biggest crowd they've ever had. What did you think?"

This quotes proves two things. First, Trump is obsessed with crowd size and it always being the biggest and best. Second, he cares deeply what reporters and their editors think of him.

17. "I'd be the first to admit mixed. I'm a guy that will tell you mixed. There was no mix there. That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix."

NO MIX. Trump is insistent that the Boy Scouts crowd loved him. Every second of his speech. One long standing ovation. NO MIX.

18. "I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful."

19. "I call him Mr. Elegant. I mean, that was a great debate. We did such a great job."

Who is Mr. Elegant? Lester Holt, who moderated the first general election debate? Or Maybe CNN's own Anderson Cooper, who moderated the second one? Oh, yeah, Trump is answering a question about his tax policy here. But, he wants you to know he did a great job in that debate.

20. "So I deal with foreign countries, and despite what you may read, I have unbelievable relationships with all of the foreign leaders. They like me. I like them. You know, it's amazing."

Same.

21. "You know, a lot of people say they say, well, but the United States is large. And then you call places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and you say, you know, how many people do you have? And it's pretty amazing how many people they have."

Wait, there are countries that have more people in them than the US??? That IS amazing.

22. "You know, I was with Bob Kraft the other night. He came to have dinner with me. He's a friend of mine."

23. "When George Steinbrenner died, like with the estate taxes, the estate paid nothing."

24. "We think we're going to have tremendous growth. We think money's going to come pouring into the country."

Well, I'm satisfied! [shakes hands, nods, walks away]

25. "They go to Ireland, they go to other -- I own a lot of property in Ireland."

26. "We'll have companies pouring back into our nation. I mean, it's going to be -- you know, it's going to be beautiful."

So, so beautiful.

27. "We have Tim Cook I spoke to, and he's promised me three big plants -- big, big, big."

28."I just don't know if he'd like -- this is off the record -- if he wants to sit down."

It wasn't off the record.

29. "I mean, you don't hear the word Britain anymore. It's very interesting. It's like, nope."

Like, nope.

30. "What would they do with the British Open if they ever got out? They'd no longer have the British Open."

31. "So for a guy to go -- you know, to me, that's almost worse than, like, a triple bogey, because -- but for a guy to go through these horrible holes, hit a bad drive like I've never seen -- I mean, he was 150 yards, right."

In case you needed Trump's thoughts on Jordan Spieth's victory at the Open Championship, here they are.

32. "There'll be certain pieces. It's not -- there'll be certain pieces."

Trump's answer when asked to get specific on what a trade deal with the United Kingdom would look like.

33. "I was last night in West Virginia, and I had farmers coming up to me and hugging me and kissing me because of the cattle stuff."

34. "The word reciprocal, to me, is very important."

I am more of a "reciprocity" guy myself.

35. "We're the people that are getting beat up -- one of the reasons I think I'm talking to -- I'm sitting behind this beautiful desk as opposed to somebody else."

????

36. "Well, we're doing major studies. Oh, I would be very surprised if they will be -- look, we've been extremely nice to them. We've been extremely nice to them in saying they were compliant, OK?"

The president of the United States on Iran.

37. "I know, that's just -- and Anthony will handle that. I can -- Anthony can do that out of his back pocket, OK?"

38. "But I was -- I appointed a man to a position. And then shortly after he gets the position, he recused himself. I said, what's that all about? Why didn't you tell me that you were going to do that, and I wouldn't have appointed you? But I appointed him. And shortly thereafter, he recused himself."

Here's how it went down: First Trump appointed Sessions. Then Sessions recused himself. Then Trump was like "WHAAAAA?"

39. "That's a total witch hunt, the whole Russia story. It's a hoax. It's a hoax. We had no collusion with Russia. We never dealt with Russia."

Trump's oldest son, Don Jr., released an email exchange in which he is told that "incriminating" information about Hillary Clinton has been obtained by a Russian government program. He agrees to meet in hopes of obtaining that information. When the meeting is revealed, Donald Trump is involved in the crafting of Don Jr.'s statement to The New York Times about it -- a statement that is, at best, misleading on the details of why the gathering took place and what was discussed.

40. "You know, I put out a letter from a very -- from the biggest law firm saying Trump has no involvement with Russia. I don't."

41. "So he wasn't in love with me for a short period of time."

Trump on The Mooch. Yes, really.

42. "He looks at 40,000 people and he probably says, what do I have to lose, and he endorsed me. So it's not like a great, loyal thing about the endorsement."

Trump has rewritten history in his own mind to suggest Jeff Sessions, then a senator and now his attorney general, only endorsed him because Trump was so incredibly popular. And, therefore, Sessions deserves no credit for the endorsement.

43. "And if Jeff Sessions didn't recuse himself, we wouldn't even be talking about this subject."

Trump really believes this -- that if Sessions had not recused himself on Russia it would have all disappeared. Which is, um, not right.

44. "I make good deals. I don't make bad deals. I make good deals."

Good deals only here. Bad deals need not apply.

45. "But I'm very happy with Anthony. I think Anthony is going to do amazing."

Scaramucci was pushed out six days after this interview.

Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that Trump was referring to his son-in-law Jared Kushner and not Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker when he used the term "good boy."

Read the rest here:
The 45 oddest quotes from Donald Trump's secretive Wall Street Journal interview - CNN

Ad Age "Media Guy" columnist Simon Dumenco's media roundup for the morning of Wednesday, August 2:

Today's accidental theme, dear reader, is spin -- as in deft spin (No. 6), inept spin (Nos. 3 and 4), spin about "transformation" (No. 1) and counterspin (No. 7). Feeling dizzy and nauseous? That's normal. (Take two aspirin and read me in the morning.) Anyway, let's get started ...

1. "Time Inc. is about to name a new C-suite executive -- a chief transformation officer," Keith Kelly reports in his "Media Ink" column in this morning's New York Post. "The move is expected to be made by next week's earnings report, according to well-placed sources. ... The CTO will be charged with implementing many of the recommendations made by consulting giant McKinsey & Co., sources said, including shaving $300 million in costs."

2. Speaking of Time Inc., a story in the Aug. 7 issue of its Sports Illustrated (and hosted on the website of SI's Time Inc. sibling Golf magazine) is making noise thanks to one particular detail (bolded below) that comes in the 24th paragraph. In his piece politely headlined "First Golfer: Donald Trump's relationship with golf has never been more complicated," Alan Shipnuck writes of Trump's golf club in Bedminster, N.J.:

During election season, Bedminster morphed into a kind of permanent campaign rally site. Trump posters and bumper stickers were plastered across the property, and an anti-Hillary shrine was built in a bar in the men's locker room. ... As President, Trump has already made four visits to the club. He has his own cottage adjacent to the pool; it was recently given a secure perimeter by the Secret Service, leading to the inevitable joke that it's the only wall Trump has successfully built. Chatting with some members before a recent round of golf, he explained his frequent appearances: "That White House is a real dump." (A White House spokesperson denies this occurred.)

3. In a column published this morning at TheWeek.com titled "Trump has lost his gift for propaganda," Paul Waldman writes that "you can't deny that when he ran for president, Trump displayed a kind of mad genius for propaganda," citing the way he branded opponents with belittling nicknames ("childish and stupid, but they worked") and his "extraordinarily powerful" campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again." But that was then, this is now. Waldman continues,

Yet in office, Trump has turned out to be an absolutely terrible propagandist. He can't convince the public to get behind his policy agenda -- his party's health-care bill scored as low as 12 percent approval in polls -- while his personal popularity languishes in the 30s. Every time he's interviewed he blurts out something damaging, like the time he admitted on national television that he fired FBI Director James Comey because he wanted the Russia investigation to disappear. These days it seems that half the speeches he gives are followed by public apologies from the people who invited him, whether it's the Boy Scouts or the police.

Waldman also cites the president's "ham-handed attempt at deception" in dictating the spin on Trump Jr.'s notorious Russia meeting (see The Washington Post item in yesterday's media roundup). Speaking of which ...

4. "Ex-Watergate prosecutor: Trump Jr. statement like a fake sick note," via The Hill.

5. In media-about-media-about Trump news, "Politico embarrasses WSJ by publishing Trump transcript," per the Columbia Jounalism Review. Pete Vernon writes that The Wall Street Journal's July 25 interview with the president ...

... was a golden opportunity to reestablish the Journal's political reporting bonafides and catch up on a story where it has fallen behind its competitors, and indeed the Journal broke standalone stories on several newsy details from the interview. But the Journal published only excerpts of the interview, deciding not [to] follow the precedent set by other news outlets in releasing a full or lightly edited transcript of its own Oval Office interview. It took the work of reporters from a different outlet -- Politico's Hadas Gold and Josh Dawsey, who on Tuesday published a full transcript of the Journal's interview with Trump -- for the public to find out everything that was said. There was still meat on the proverbial carcass of the interview, including banter that provides new fodder to the newspaper's critics. In fact, the very leak of the transcript suggests internal turmoil over the coverage.

6. Well done, Mr. Cook! "Tim Cook offered a master class in avoiding a Trump-related question," per Quartz.

7. And finally ... "I am now going to go dark. Then I will reemerge. As me." --shortlived White House comms director Anthony Scaramucci in an interview with HuffPost's Vicky Ward.

+ this 2012 Scaramucci tweet, which has been rediscovered by the Twitterati and has been a getting a fresh surge of retweets and hearts:

Thanks to Ann-Christine Diaz, Laurel Wentz, Jessica Wohl and Chen Wu for their roundup suggestions.

Simon Dumenco, aka Media Guy, is an Ad Age editor-at-large. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

Read this article:
The Rise and 'Absolutely Terrible' Fall of Donald Trump, Master Propagandist - AdAge.com

The trade case is said to focus on supposed Chinese violations of American intellectual property.

Meanwhile, in a cutting editorial, Beijing fired back at President Trump over his tweets accusing China of failing to tame its ally North Korea. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. was not seeking regime change in North Korea.

_____

Defense officials told our national security reporter that the Pentagon and State Department have offered the White House a plan to supply Ukraine with antitank missiles and other arms.

Vice President Mike Pence, visiting Europe, said that President Trump would very soon sign a law limiting his ability to lift forceful new sanctions against Russia and that Moscows destabilizing activities and support for rogue regimes has to change.

Also, the White House confirmed that Mr. Trump was involved in drafting a misleading statement issued by his son about a meeting with a Russian lawyer.

_____

In Washington, congressional Republicans bypassed the president to work toward bipartisan legislation to shore up the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

And the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Christopher Wray, above, as the next F.B.I. director.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is preparing to redirect Justice Department resources toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

_____

A new poll shows that global warming is essentially tied with the Islamic State as the most-feared security threat around the world except in the U.S., where cyberattacks and ISIS are considered the greatest dangers.

On to developments in those two realms. Our photojournalist documented harrowing scenes and battlefield calculations at the front lines of the fight against ISIS in Mosul. And Lewis Pugh, a British endurance swimmer, swam 22 minutes in the freezing Arctic Ocean to call attention to climate changes effect on the worlds oceans.

_____

Volkswagen was barred from receiving European Union research financing over allegations it misused a previous loan to cheat on emissions. The move comes ahead of a meeting on diesel emissions today between automakers and the German government.

Apple exceeded revenue expectations in the quarter that ended July 1 even as buyers waited for new iPhones this fall. But projections suggest at least some phones may be delayed.

Joining Apple, Amazon also bowed to Chinas tough new restrictions on online content.

Documents released in a lawsuit against Monsanto raised new questions about the companys efforts to influence the news media and scientific research.

The eurozone economy outperformed Britain again in the second quarter.

Heres a snapshot of global markets.

Masked agents of the Venezuelan government barged into the homes of two prominent former mayors overnight, hauling them off to jail in the dark. [The New York Times]

In Turkey, nearly 500 suspects in last years failed coup attempt went on trial. [Reuters]

U.S. border agents are testing a system to scan the faces of people leaving the country in an effort to better identify travelers who overstay their visas. [The New York Times]

Travelers in Europe are facing long lines at airports because of stricter security checks on those entering and leaving the Schengen area. [BBC]

In Moscow, three gang members were killed at a courthouse while trying to escape. [The New York Times]

J. K. Rowling apologized to the family of a boy with spina bifida after accusing President Trump of ignoring him. The boys mother said Ms. Rowling misinterpreted the situation. [The New York Times]

The interim prime minister of Pakistan, picked to temporarily replace his corruption-scarred predecessor, said he was no bench warmer. [The New York Times]

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

Recipe of the day: Take some time in the morning to make watermelon ice pops. Youll thank yourself later.

Is it possible to drink too much water?

How well do you know the world? Take our quiz.

At the Bayreuth Festival, Barrie Koskys savvy new staging of Wagners Die Meistersinger von Nrnberg stepped gracefully around the works potential land mines, our critic writes.

In London, our visiting critic considers three plays that look to the past to consider the uneasy state of the present.

The British brand behind Wonder Womans leather armor is having a major fashion moment.

The German soccer star Bastian Schweinsteiger has immersed himself in his new city, Chicago.

Our departing book critic, Michiko Kakutani, above, has been hailed as the most powerful critic in the English-speaking world.

Her output during 38 years at The Times attracted plenty of response, and on the day she announced her plans to step down, a colleague revealed a letter that Ms. Kakutani received early in her career.

Ms. Kakutani had written a profile of Pat Carroll, an actress who was then portraying the writer Gertrude Stein on stage. She described her home as filled with books by Stein and about Stein, as well as xeroxed Ph.D. theses and obscure literary journals.

The next day, Aug. 2, 1979, a letter addressed to Mr. Michiko Kakutani arrived, sent by an employee of Xerox, a company famous for protecting its brand name.

There is no adjective xerox, the letter explained. If in the future you wish to use the name Xerox, it should be used with a capital X and no ed.

Indeed, The Times style arbiters agree.

Richard Samson, who is on The Timess legal team, said a multitude of companies had objected to their trademarks being used as generic substitutes. Over the years, he said, we have received concerned letters from owners of the trademarks Spinning, Hula-Hoop, Sheetrock, Jeep and many others.

Andrea Kannapell contributed reporting.

_____

This briefing was prepared for the European morning. You can browse through past briefings here.

We also have briefings timed for the Australian, Asian and American mornings. You can sign up for these and other Times newsletters here.

Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings and updated online.

What would you like to see here? Contact us at europebriefing@nytimes.com.

See more here:
Donald Trump, France, Venezuela: Your Wednesday Briefing - New York Times

Washington in the summer is a never-ending stream of tour groups and packs of students, here to swarm the monuments, stroll the National Mall, and learn about our nation's history and government.

In the heat of the summer of 2001, I was part of one of those groups, the American Legion Auxiliary's "Girls Nation." For one week, a hundred of us high school girls came to D.C. to pretend that we were running the government. We visited the White House, met with President George W. Bush, and halfway through the week, we elected a president of our own from our ranks, and she being a young woman from the state of Arizona was "sworn in" by a Congressman from her home state, then-Rep. Jeff Flake.

Two very separate but nonetheless related events in the last week have brought me back to that experience sixteen years ago.

First, there was President Trump addressing the participants of this year's Boys and Girls Nation class, just as presidents have done for decades.

With the speech coming just days after the President caused controversy with his campaign-style remarks at the national Boy Scout Jamboree, I tuned into the livestream, curious and holding my breath. As the remarks began, they seemed quite on the right track: optimistic, upbeat, extolling American greatness and the spirit of our nation's people. When President Trump gave an across-the-aisle nod to perhaps the most famous alumnus of the program, Bill Clinton, I held my breath until it was clear, blessedly, there'd not be a peep about "missing emails," or anything more sordid.

But then, as I feared, it came, the off-note I'd been dreading. It wasn't a glaring, made-for-cable outrageous moment, but it unsettled me all the same.

"Just think of the amazing moments in history you will witness during your lifetime," Trump said to the assembled teens. "Well, you saw one on Nov. 8, right? That was a pretty amazing moment ..."

Suddenly, it about him: his greatness, his election victory. And what a shame. Most presidents aim to eschew politics in this sort of setting; there are likely students in that group for whom Nov. 8 did not feel like that amazing a day. Yet even after being chastened for the Jamboree mess, Trump couldn't help himself.

It may seem like extreme nitpicking to zero in on one, probably unscripted, line in an otherwise standard, quite lovely little speech. But I couldn't shake it. I tried to see it through the eyes of young people there. Is this what a new generation of leaders will grow up and think of as normal? When they are leading the nation and just as the millennials are now the largest bloc of eligible voters, these "Gen Z" post-millennials will begin entering the electorate during the midterms and will be elected to Congress themselves before you know it will they emulate what they are seeing today?

This sort of concern, among others, is surfaced loud and clear by now-Sen. Jeff Flake in Conscience of a Conservative, his book explaining his frustrations and fears about the damage the Trump presidency is doing to America. In an excerpt released last week, Flake bemoans not just the policy areas where Trump has diverged from the usual party line, but the demeanor and tone Trump has brought to the presidency, and the way in which too many conservatives have sat silent in the face of a president who, especially temperamentally, is anything but.

The announcement that the book existed came as a surprise to many, even reportedly to Flake's own staff, who were kept in the dark so that they would not be able to attempt to talk their boss out of putting a major target on his own back.

And target he now is. Pro-Trump voices like former Gov. Mike Huckabee, hardly a true limited-government champion, have pounced on Flake as a "globalist," the insult-du-jour in a party where many have forgotten why they so recently supported free trade and American global leadership. And of course, the Left has come at Flake for being insufficiently courageous in opposing Trump, despite the fact that it is Flake, not liberal activists and pundits, who has something to lose by making his voice heard.

(This is to say nothing of the silliness of those who claim Flake cannot properly oppose Trump while "voting with him 95 percent of the time, given that a large number of the "votes" used in these calculation are things like Senate confirmations of fairly conventional, uncontroversial appointees.)

The fact of Flake being up for re-election in a red, pro-Trump state in 2018 sets this book apart from the calls of the Evan McMullins of the world; what Flake has done can be rightly called brave in a way many "#Resistance" voices cannot, because there are actual risks, actual stakes for Flake in what he has done.

Like I did over a decade and a half ago, some bright, earnest "Gen Z"-ers today are looking at our nation's leaders for guidance on how to act. I continue to hope against all odds that this president can become someone who can offer that guidance, that example. But failing that, Sen. Flake saying what he knows to be right, no matter the cost offers a worthy lesson of his own.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of "The Selfie Vote."

See the article here:
Will our future leaders emulate Donald Trump or Jeff Flake? - Washington Examiner

Secretary Ryan Zinke speaks prior to Donald Trump signing an executive order at the Department of the Interior, April 26, 2017. (Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)

Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every Tuesday.

Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue.

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.

Sign up for Take Action Now and well send you three meaningful actions you can each week.

Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.

Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?

On July 19, Joel Clement, a top climate scientist and policy analyst at the Department of Interior (DOI) filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel alleging that his reassignment to an accounting position was retribution for speaking out about the dangers of climate change. Clement, who had raised the alarm about the potential catastrophic impacts of rising sea levels and warming temperatures on Native communities in Alaska, had been transferred to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue, which collects royalty checks from the fossil-fuel industry. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Clement accused the Trump administration of choosing silence over science.1

But Clement wasnt the only leading climate scientist at DOI who was targeted. As part of a radical, department-wide restructuring that Secretary Ryan Zinke has described as probably the greatest reorganization in the history of the Department of the Interior, at least two dozen senior executive employees have been moved to new positions. Although new administrations often shake up agency personnel, the transfers of senior officials at DOI are unprecedented in scale and, in several cases, viewed as politically motivated or designed to intimidate staff who work on environmental issues. Zinke has defended Trumpsplanto reduce the DOI budget by $1.6 billion next year, costingroughly 4,000 employees their jobs androlling back many of the regulations put in place by the Obama administration.2

Among the initial transfers at DOI was Dr. Virginia Burkett, the former Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), who contributed to several reports on climate change by theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. According to interviews with several DOI employees, Burkett was originally reassigned to the office of the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, which would have movedher from overseeing vital climate science research at USGS to an as yet undefined advisory role at DOI headquarters in Washington.3

Burkett, who joined the DOI in 1990 and has been at the USGS for more than 15 years, is an internationally recognized expert on climate change, sea level rise, and coastal wetlands. She has written extensively on the impacts of climate change on coastal communities, as well as on strategies for adaptation. As an advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, its unclear what her new role would have been. The office reports directly to newly named deputy secretary David Bernhardt, a former high-powered lobbyist who had previously sued the DOI and whose conflicts of interest related to water use issues have been well documented.4

Matt Larsen, former Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at USGS who now heads up the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said that under normal circumstances, Burkett could have played an important role in shaping policy on national water resource issues. In her case, the reassignment was a reasonable one, Larsen said. It was in line with her expertise, assuming that the special advisor would have been asked to give advice about climate science and land use change science. But Larsen noted that her role would ultimately be limited to serving theadministrations political agenda.5

As a citizen DonaldTrump dismissed climate science as a hoax, and as president he has continued to undermine the role of science in guiding government policy. References to global warming have been removed from government websites, and regulations designed to limit greenhouse gas emissionsmany of them promulgated through the DOIhave been reversed. Most notably, Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord. Although Secretary Zinke paid lip service to climate change during his confirmation hearings, the DOI seems to have fallen into line with the administrations overall agenda of suppressing climate science. Just a weekbefore Clement blew the whistle, another USGS climate scientist was told not to attend a tour of Glacier National Park with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.6

According to a leaked draft of a USGS science guidance memo obtained by The Nation, the word climate is quietly being scrubbed from various program titles and research initiatives. Under the Trump budget, the Climate and Land Use Change mission area has already been renamed the Land Resources mission area, suggesting that climate science research will no longer be a priority. Funding for climate science centers, which are on the front lines of helping regional and local natural resource managers adapt to climate change, will be reduced from $25 million to $17.4 million, and the agency is preparing for the possibility that four of those centers will be shuttered. The memo instructs program managers and scientists to focus on a small subset of existing projects and research priorities rather than seeking funding for any new initiatives.

This larger context aside, a DOI employee with knowledge of Burketts reassignment said the move raised a number of particular red flags. Burketts special advisory role was a newly created position, in an office that was not yet fully staffed. Typically, the employee said, assistant secretaries like to choose their own advisors. Anne Castle who served as Assistant Secretary for Water and Science under Obama confirmed that it was unusual to name special advisors before having the leadership team in place. Moreover, unlike many of the other Senior Executive Service employees who were transferred, an immediate replacement for Burkett was notnamed. Doug Beard, another USGS scientist, is now serving as acting associate director for Climate and Land Use Change, but it is unclear whetherthe position will ultimately be filled or eliminated. According to another DOI employee, the reassignment was a signal to us that the mission area not only might be renamed but might be removed.8

The DOI declined to respond to specific questions about Burketts reassignment but said the personnel moves were being conducted to better serve the taxpayer and the Departments operations.9

As a citizen Donald Trump dismissed climate science as a hoax, and as president he has continued to undermine the role of science in guiding government policy.

Notified of her reassignment in mid-June, Burkett was given just 15 days to accept the new position, resign, or retire. But instead, she was able to negotiate a departure from the Senior Executive Service, the upper echelon of federal government employees, and return to her previously held position as chief scientist of the Climate and Land Use Change mission area, taking a pay cut in the process. 10

Reached by phone as she was driving from Virginia to Louisiana,where shell be stationed, Burkett said she preferred not to speculate on the reasons for her reassignment. Im sure it would have been a different role, she said. The office has a different mission. Burkett, along with two other DOI employees, did express concern that nobody had yet been named to fill her old job as Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change at USGS, a key leadership role. There are hiring freezes presently, and Im just unclear about how and if the position will be refilled, Burkett said.11

More here:
Donald Trump and Ryan Zinke Are Purging Climate Scientists for Telling the Truth - The Nation.