If they aren’t on Fox, do they exist?
by digby
After all, that’s where Trump gets his briefings. This exchange on Morning Joe with Mick Mulvaney about the departure of Brett McGurk, the ISIS envoy, is another sign of how out of touch they all are:
HOST: “His title is the special presidential envoy to the global coalition to counter ISIS. How is it that the president doesn’t know his — the point person in the battle against ISIS?”
MULVANEY: “You know the answer to that, the administration is thousand — the executive branch of government is millions of people. I have no idea who that person is.”
HOST: “You don’t know Brett McGurk.”
MULVANEY: “Never heard of him until yesterday. There is an Obama appointee who saw an opportunity.”
HOST: “He was a Rehnquist clerk, he served throughout the Bush administration, he was a lifelong Republican, he is not an Obama appointee.”
MULVANEY: “Did he take that position under the Obama administration?”
HOST: “He was held over from the Bush administration. This is not a Democrat, sir.”
MULVANEY: “I’m certain he is well known in the folks who follow this topic. The fact that the president of the United States doesn’t know him I don’t think should cause anybody any concern.”
It looks like the new chief of staff, a Freedom Caucus hack, is just as ill-informed as his boss. If he really thought that McGurk was some left wing partisan then he’s getting his news from Fox too.
This is not a good sign. Mulvaney said their point man on ISIS is known to “folks who follow this topic” — and it’s clear that neither the president or the chief of staff are among those folks.
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cheers — digby
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