What to expect in the first 100 days

[GMDino]

WSJ reports...Trump's people deny.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-frank-gaffney-national-security-advisor-beliefs-conspiracy-theorist-islamophobia-a7420241.html

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Quote:[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/DonaldTrump]Donald Trump has reportedly asked an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist to help him choose the next government of the United States.


The president-elect is believed to have appointed Centre for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney to his transition team, to oversee the appointment of his national security advisers.

Mr Gaffney’s contentious think tank is known for claiming Barack Obama might be a closet Muslim, that the "Sharia system" is
replacing American democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood is infiltrating the US government at high levels.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre has described the former Reagan-era defence official as "one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes".

Mr Gaffney, who was originally part of Ted Cruz’s security team, conducted a flawed survey in 2015 which claimed to show that many US Muslims were willing to use violence against other Americans, and that  a huge number wanted to be governed by Sharia law.

The research was used by Mr Trump as justification for his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country, despite the fact experts had already rubbished the methodology.  

Mr Gaffney and his organisation have a history of disseminating Islamophobia.  Mr Gaffney has accused a bipartisan array of political elites of being secretly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, including longtime Hillary Clinton Aide Huma Abedin.

In 2009, Mr Gaffney questioned whether Mr Obama was America’s first Muslim president or simply playing one.

“The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently engaged in the most consequential bate-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich,” Mr Gaffney wrote in an opinion piece published in the Washington Times. 

In 2010, Mr Gaffney accused Mr Obama of dismantling American missile defence capability in an act of US submission to Islam.
He cited a “new” Missile Defence Agency logo as evidence, suggesting the logo appeared to be a combination of Mr Obama’s campaign symbol and the Islamic crescent and star. He later corrected himself, acknowledging that the logo was neither new nor produced under Mr Obama’s direction.

When Mr Obama nominated Elena Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court in 2010, Mr Gaffney accused her of being soft on Sharia law during her time as dean of Harvard Law School. His group financed an ad that asked, “if Kagan tolerates promoting the injustice of Sharia law on the campus of Harvard, what kind of injustice will she tolerate in America during a lifetime on the Supreme Court?”

Mr Gaffney also suggested that general David Petraeus, commander of US troops in Afghanistan at the time, was submitting to Sharia law when Mr Petraeus condemned the burning of a Quran by a Florida pastor.

Mr Gaffney has reportedly already suggested that his vice president at the Centre for Security Policy, Clare Lopez, be shortlisted to become Mr Trump's deputy security adviser.

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/muslim-hating-conspiracy-theorist-frank-gaffney-joins-trumps-transition-team/

Quote:ACCORDING TO THE Wall Street Journal, Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, has joined Donald Trump’s transition team to work on national security issues. Trump’s campaign has denied that Gaffney is officially part of the transition, and the New York Times is reporting that Trump is merely relying on “advice” from Gaffney.


Either way, this is an extremely bad sign. Every society has people like Gaffney, but in healthy, functioning democracies they live quietly in their parents’ basements, free to play with action figures and construct intricate fantasy worlds without hurting anyone else.

In 2016 America, however, Gaffney is now sitting at the right hand of the president-elect. Here are some highlights from Gaffney’s bizarre, hateful career, in chronological order. You will see a pattern emerging:

• Gaffney, now 63, was a deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration until he was forced out. He then immediately founded the Center for Security Policy, funded by right-wing foundations and some defense corporations, to noisily oppose arms control agreements and agitate for more money for the Pentagon. For many years the “center” consisted mostly of Gaffney and his fax machine.

Board members and advisors of the Center for Security Policy would eventually include people like Charles Kupperman, vice president of space and strategic missiles sector at Boeing and Terry Elkes, former CEO and president of Viacom. The center gives out an annual award called “Keeper of the Flame”; its recipients have included Joe Lieberman and Donald Rumsfeld.

• The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a godsend for Gaffney, allowing him to repurpose Cold War conspiracy theories about the U.S. government being infiltrated by communists into conspiracy theories about the U.S. government being infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Soon he was warning of “an Islamist Fifth Column operating inside our own country with the inherent capability to exploit the vulnerabilities, and the civil liberties, of our society.”

• Gaffney was predictably a vociferous supporter of the Iraq War. But for extra credit he adopted various loopy theories about Saddam Hussein being behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

• Defending the Iraq War in February 2007, Gaffney approvingly quoted Abraham Lincoln as declaring that “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” Lincoln never said this, although that didn’t stop Gaffney fan Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, from repeating the imaginary quote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

• The same month Gaffney excitedly proclaimed that the CIA had found that “there was a hot production line for chemical and biological agents in Iraq, that there were plans to ramp it up when sanctions were lifted, which was imminent, and to place the products of those lines into aerosol cans and perfume sprayers for shipment to the United States and Europe. That’s documented fact!”

• In 2009, Gaffney suggested that Barack Obama was “still” a Muslim and by concealing this had “engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain.” In this analogy, of course, Obama was playing the role of Hitler.

• In 2010, writing for Breitbart, Gaffney discovered that the logo of the Missile Defense Agency had been redesigned to be “a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo.” Gaffney’s article ended: “Watch this space as we identify and consider various, ominous and far more clear-cut acts of submission to Shariah by President Obama.”

• Gaffney was banned for several years from speaking at the popular right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference because he had begun claiming that it too had been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

• In 2011, Gaffney claimed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had committed “misprision of treason” by appointing a Muslim lawyer to a state court.

• In 2013, Gaffney said that top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “longstanding ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood and “was brilliantly placed to run Islamist influence operations.”

• In September 2015, Gaffney invited infamous white nationalist Jared Taylor to appear on his radio show. Gaffney told Taylor he “appreciated tremendously” his “wonderful” work.

• Trump may now be considering Clare Lopez, vice president of the Center for Security Policy, as his deputy national security adviser. Lopez believesthat “infiltration [of the U.S. government by the Muslim Brotherhood] is obviously very deep and very broad within the bureaucracy, not just the top level, but throughout the federal system, including the intelligence community.”

If you want more of the evidence Gaffney’s uncovered about the ways Islam has tainted our precious bodily fluids, it’s just a click away.

Update: November 16, 2016
This article has been updated to note that a Trump transition official has denied that Gaffney is officially part of the transition team.