So That's How It's Going to Be

A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser.

[...]

“My party in particular has allowed itself to be taken over by someone who claims to be a Republican but doesn’t represent any of our values, principles or traditions,” he wrote in The Hill in October 2016.

The firing was reminiscent of the decision by the White House to block a senior Republican foreign policy adviser, Elliott Abrams, from becoming deputy secretary of state. The move came after Mr. Abrams’s anti-Trump writings came to the president’s attention.

[...]

A person close to Mr. Singleton said an initial vetting of the 26-year-old by HUD and White House personnel had come up with his criticism. He answered a number of questions regarding the article and expressed remorse for the piece and support for Mr. Trump.

  NYT

Yeah, that was his first mistake.

On Wednesday, Mr. Singleton was presented again with the piece and told it was the reason for his termination.

Now how stupid does he feel? Black man groveling, then whacked anyway.

Mr. Singleton plans to return to a previous job he held as a vice president with Howard Stirk Holdings, a media company run by Armstrong Williams, a conservative media personality and close friend of Mr. Carson’s.

It's hard for me to understand why a black man would be a Republican in the first place. Hard to feel sorry when someone who won't stand up for himself gets canned. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the reason here is abhorrent and disturbing.

You must not criticize the T-Rump.

When he can get his Supreme Court nominee in, perhaps he can sign an EO firing all journalists who do not speak glowingly of him. He'll start with the prize-winning journalist - black man with some dignity - who wrote this:

Dear Mr. So-Called President:

So let me explain to you how this works.

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The bottom line is, you were elected.

And this does entitle you to certain things. You get your own airplane. You get free public housing. You get greeted with snappy salutes. And a band plays when you walk into the room.

But there is one thing to which your election does not entitle you. It does not entitle you to do whatever pops into your furry orange head without being called on it or, should it run afoul of the Constitution, without being blocked. You and other members of the Fourth Reich seem to be having difficulty understanding this.

[...]

Three weeks ago, your chief strategist, Steve Bannon, infamously declared that news media should “keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

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Just last Sunday, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller declared on CBS’ “Face The Nation” that “our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

What you do “will not be questioned?” Lord, have mercy.

[...]

Just who the hell do you think you are?

Meaning you and all the other trolls you have brought clambering up from under their bridges. Maybe you didn’t notice, but this is the United States of America. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Nation of laws, not of individuals? First Amendment? Freedom of the press? Any of that ringing a bell?

Let’s be brutally clear here. If you were a smart guy with unimpeachable integrity and a good heart who was enacting wise policies for the betterment of all humankind, you’d still be subject to sharp scrutiny from news media, oversight from Congress, restraint by the judiciary — and public opinion.

And you, of course, are none of those things.

[...]

I know, too, that you’re accustomed to being emperor of your own fiefdom. Must be nice. Your name on the wall, the paychecks, the side of the building. You tell people to make something happen, and it does. You yell at a problem, and it goes away. Nobody talks back. I can see how it would be hard to give that up.

But you did. You see, you’re no longer an emperor, Mr. So-Called President. You’re now what is called a “public servant” — in effect, an employee with 324 million bosses.

[...]

Yet you and your coterie of cartoon autocrats think you’re going to cow them into silence and compliance by ordering them to shut up and obey? Well, as a freeborn American, I can answer that in two syllables flat.

Hell no.

  Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Hell yeah.