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Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

Logistically / organizationally, what has to go wrong for the administration to nominate her, have her in place for less than a month, and then remove her? Like, before you send someone through confirmation, do you have a quick conversation to confirm, "I want to do X, I have expectations Y" etc and confirm that they're onboard? It sounds like Monarez wasn't willing to be a loyal obedient servant, and good for her -- but could the Trump administration really not determine that in advance?

Or was she put in that position for the purpose of being fired, just for the news story, and this is all going to plan?

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You’re giving too much credit to the admin. They’re a rag tag group of below average IQ wannabes. They can’t possibly be smart about everything all the time. They can only hope people will fall in line with implied threats.

Like, I don't expect this administration to be _good_. But Trump has had a _lot_ of experience fighting with his own appointees who aren't blindly obedient (e.g. he appointed Jerome Powell in 2017 and has spent months threatening to fire him). And this person was put up for confirmation b/c the last person had to be withdrawn at the last minute. You'd think the administration would at least have a checklist to confirm that people are willing to follow orders and parrot the party line.

I heard from someone high up in the administration that it’s really hard for some of the political appointments it’s been hard for them to find qualified people, who are willing to take the job, and who haven’t publicly criticized trump. For some of these positions they might not have many people to pick from

Yep. He was forced to pull his first nominee for CDC director due to the nominee being an anti-vaxxer: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/13/dave-weldon-vaccine...

> Weldon, a Florida representative from 1995 until 2009, has been critical of the federal government’s oversight of vaccine safety. While in the House, he sponsored a bill that would have taken vaccine safety oversight from the CDC and created a separate “Agency for Vaccine Safety Evaluation” under HHS, and as recently as 2019 repeated the disproved claim that “some children can get an autism spectrum disorder from a vaccine” in an interview.

Doubt that would matter today. How much things have changed in such a short time.

This doesn’t seem to match the reality i see where anyone can get confirmed - Fox News has an entire roster of current and ex hosts that capable of fulfilling Trump’s order. Career drunks (Hesgeth, Pirro) are actually in adult professional government positions. Wild. Is Kid Rock an ambassador yet?

The current nominee (not confirmed) for Surgeon General is a wellness influencer and health supplement promoter. The previous nominee (withdrawn) was a Fox News contributor.

The timing of this and the announcement yesterday that the causes of autism will be released in September is pretty interesting.

In terms of a CFO in a business: one month after you’re hired, the CEO asks you to lie on this year’s financial reports. You refuse, having joined up on the pretense that you’d be given some leeway to do what’s right, and they fire you. The CEO gets to filter out all future candidates for yeslings, makes clear to the marketplace that they’re powerful ans unconcerned with being viewed as evil, and gets to create suffering and woe for someone who stood up to them. Triple win, especially if sociopathy, and it’s a very effective honeypot for well-intended individuals with a “change from within” mindset.

I saw this happen once.

Old owners sell the business, become the C team with profit targets for a big payout.

Minutes after the payout the old C team resign to be with family/visit foreign country.

New C team comes on board.

New C team cant figure out how the numbers work.

New C team realises that the books arent as in the black as described.

New C team refuses to go down with the ship, resign to be with family etc.

Owner manages the business for a few months, sells it back to one of the original owners for pennies on the dollar.

Clawback clauses are a thing, both for company sellers and C-suite payouts.

So are the Seychelles.

The problem was that they did meet the letter of their obligations. The contract was allegedly worded to payout upon a certain revenue threshold. What it should have been crafted around, was a certain level of recurring revenue. So they sold a bunch of services, for quite a lot of money and simply never delivered them, delaying them for years.

The owner was very prideful and I think could not accept he had been conned, the only way out for him to keep his pride was to sell the business back to them.

You figure we'll get sold in pieces back to the UK, France, Russia, Spain, and/or Denmark? Or just picked up as one big colony for China?

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