May 26, 2016

Essentially, this is a Personnel Department problem.

Healy Baumgardner is what happens when you put an incompetent employee in a position with a job title with no idea what the job actually is or how anyone should actually do it.

It's not like she lacks experience. She has a degree from West Virginia University in Public Relations, and while an undergraduate (?) got a job at the George W. Bush White House.

She was also Press Secretary to the Secretary of Energy and served as a Deputy Communications Director for Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Despite that resume, it appears she was not hired for her deft and articulate ability to spin word salad as well as many spokespeople do. That sentence I just wrote is as absolutely nice as I can be about it. The editorial standards at Crooks and Liars quite correctly preclude me from making any remarks about her appearance or other attributes,

And yes, that's a non-denial denial from me about Healy Baumgardner.

Her latest appearance is just more of the same. She does not know if there will be a Trump-Sanders debate, because she doesn't speak for Donald Trump. She doesn't know what a more moderate Muslim ban will look like. As Mediaite reports:

Even toward the end of the segment, when Berman prodded Baumgardner to give her own personal opinion — “just as a human, not as a representative of the Trump campaign” — on whether the selection of minority vice presidential candidates as running mates is “pandering,” she stuttered through a vague answer and somehow ended up talking about Trump’s success in international business.

So her abilities or lack thereof are only half the story. The other half is that Healy Baumgardner has been given the completely impossible task of speaking for Donald Trump, a candidate whose positions change from day to day and who does not read position papers or even believe in a "campaign strategy going forward (tm)" that is usually what people on a campaign staff are paid the big bucks to develop. As Huffpo's Howard Fineman notes, "TrumpWorld is, in fact, a seething mosh pit of ambitious egos vying to influence Trump, who keeps them all at bay, milking them for advice, until he decides everything on his own — often on a whim or in an odd-hour tweet."

Being a 'Senior Press Rep' for someone who could blow everything you just said about his positions sky high with one tweet, while you are on the air, is an impossible position for even a mentally agile employee.

For a person who "utilizes public relations, public affairs, techniques, in order to get the word out, in the community, and we do that through a very robust media relations plan as well as leveraging our corporate sponsors" ....

No, that is her OWN description of her OWN job as a public relations person in this video from 2014.

Nevermind, America! She's totally qualified.

ADDED: Some "mentally agile" internet user took the website address for Healy's former PR Firm (listed here)

myagencypr.com

and redirected it to HillaryClinton.com.

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