ADVENT: Dossier

Nicole Treduant, 45th President of the United States of America

"People wonder why Treduant is so popular; it's actually pretty simple: She keeps her promises."

- Anonymous American citizen

XCOM Profile 1776

Authorization Level: Internal Council

Subject: Nicole Treduant

Current Occupation: President/Head of State of the United States of America

Threat Level: Minimal

Assessment Author: Haley Yates, XCOM Psychologist

Approved By: The Commander of XCOM

SECTION 1: Physical Characteristics

Hair color: Black

Eye color: Brown

Skin color: White

Height: 6'0"

Weight: 167 lbs.

Age: 46

Scars or markings: None

Physical Condition: Keeps in shape thanks to previous military service, but far below peak performance.

Nation of Birth: United States of America

State of Birth: Wisconsin

SECTION 2: Assessment

Nicole Treduant is an interesting woman to say the least. I had personally found her mindset rather fascinating, but further investigation has left me very impressed with her accomplishments. From our previous discussions, I deduced that you were rather unfamiliar with the current political landscape in the United States due to your years locked up, and I suppose at this point you were only concerned about if America would continue providing support.

Let us just say that the landscape is very different after the War on Terror and your subsequent capture, and while you likely attributed it to said war (And a good portion of it was), a surprising portion was shaped by the Madam President herself, as well as being influenced by EXALT to some degree, as Zhang has showed me.

While the political landscape is largely irrelevant now with ADVENT in control, it isn't gone completely and I intend for this to provide some insight into the current administration and congress, as well as a detailed look into the President herself. I suppose it would do good to start at the very beginning.

Childhood: Nicole had a rather unremarkable childhood, from what I can gather. She was born and raised in Wisconsin to two very loving parents, her mother was a Senator for a time, and her father was private security, so it stands to reason that those were definite influences in her decision to go into the military, and afterwards government.

She was a good student, by all accounts. Not a prodigy by any means, but always ranked in the top ten students in her class. In high school she was heavily involved in government clubs and was an active follower of politics, and her mother personally mentored her in the various aspects of government during that time.

Nicole then pursued a political science degree, achieved it in three years, and promptly enlisted in the Marine Corps, which came as a surprise to many of the people that knew her, as most assumed she would follow in her mother's footsteps and enter politics. Knowing certain aspects now, I am convinced she planned this out well ahead of time, perhaps even before attending college.

Military Service: You will be interested to know that Nicole did indeed see action during the War on Terror. Nothing particularly major, but she participated in the Battle of Syria and was recognized for her performance afterwards. Much like her schooling, she wasn't a military prodigy, and appeared to never intend to reach a rank of significant command.

However, the soldiers under her command were some of the more efficient in the entire Corps. Nicole ran a very tight ship, much like she does today, and spent a good portion of the time also befriending other officers and caught the attention of some higher officials, though didn't attract more attention beyond that.

Given how she exited the service immediately after four years, I am almost wondering if this was a long stunt to make her more politically viable in her future endeavors. Given what she did next, I do not think this is far-fetched.

Governor: The first thing Nicole did immediately after exiting the service was prepare her run for governor. She spent a full two years preparing for it, using her military and political connections to assemble a team that was more suited for a presidential run than for governorship. From the beginning it was apparent that Nicole was determined to not be an ordinary politician.

She was planning on running as a Republican, but her cabinet had exactly no people connected to the RNC leadership or donors, instead it was comprised of economists, owners of small businesses, former union reps and former military and intelligence personnel. If that sounds like overkill, it probably was. But Nicole was much like you, Commander, thinking ahead.

Before any campaigning had actually begun, Nicole was actively forging relationships with everyone that she deemed mattered. Police Commissioners, Unions, veterans, mayors, senators, representatives and even went so far as to speak to supporters of the current governor to win them over. It wasn't entirely successful, but Nicole proved herself extremely persuasive, and had essentially locked up entire sections of votes before campaigning had officially begun.

So when campaigning officially kicked off, it was a show of support that has yet to be duplicated. The current governor was already rather unpopular, and Nicole portrayed herself as everything he was not: Young, charismatic, eloquent and had a clear vision of what she wanted to achieve. She promised to 'get things done' and set out to make it a reality from day one.

Honestly, it is impressive just how much she prepared for this. From the very first day she had an entire website and agenda, complete with legitimate legislation she said she planned to introduce into the state congress. It made her competition look almost like a joke from the start, and when state senators and representatives from both sides began endorsing her, it was rather clear who was going to win.

Now, you are probably asking how she could have possibly accomplished something like that, given the bitter hatred both sides publically have for each other, but it's rather simple. Nicole never once said she was a Republican. She ran as a Republican, but anyone even taking a cursory look at her agenda could clearly see that there were some stark differences between her agenda and the regular Republican platform.

Economically, she was an odd hybrid. She promised to audit and cut waste out of every single branch, but in an interesting twist, also promised to put any money from the waste back into the department it had come out of. It was how she convinced the Teachers Union to back her, since she promised that any money saved would go directly to increasing teacher salaries.

She kept this promise, by the way.

After firing most of the education board.

She also planned to remove a number of "superfluous" regulations on businesses, and also promised cuts to small businesses. Standard Republic promise, but in yet another twist, she also stated that taxes would be moderately increased on larger businesses. Same with people – middle-class and below would receive tax cuts, the upper class would receive slightly higher taxes.

You can imagine how well that went with the Republican leadership, but I'll cover that in a moment, suffice to say they really didn't do anything.

She also did something similar to welfare programs in the state. Many Republicans simply threaten to cut funding or end the program altogether (A truly terrible solution that doesn't solve anything). Treduant didn't do this, but promised the same level of scrutiny for the programs, as well as a number of additional restrictions (IDs, expiration dates, limits on what it could be used for, etc.) with the promise that no funding would be cut.

If Treduant is starting to sound more like an independent candidate, it is likely by design. Were it not for her stances on crime and the police, she could have almost run as a Democrat with similar results. Like most of her campaign, I do believe this her manipulating traditional systems as usual. As a whole, Democrats are not as united as Republicans, and typically have multiple schisms between various sects. "Ideological standards" is an excuse typically employed, and while a Democrat voter might refuse to vote for one of their own party because they cannot ideologically support them, the inverse is very true.

Republicans fall in line as the saying goes. And fairly accurate, I've found. Simply put, Treduant deliberately exploited this and pushed a more left-wing agenda than was typical, knowing that Republicans would vote for her no matter what.

Finishing up on her stances, the final one that without a doubt secured the Republican vote was her views on crime and the Police. She promised to increase their funding and to let them do their jobs without fear of unjust public reprisal. This of course came with a price, since Treduant also turned this to her advantage to appeal to liberal and third-party voters by adding the inclusion of body cameras to the increased funding and also declaring that unjustified action would be punished by the state attorney.

If that wasn't enough, Treduant also released a list of people currently in the executive branch, which would later be referred to as "Treduant's Hit List", which listed all the people she intended to replace, as well as page-long reasons for why they were incompetent (And she also included their replacements). The sheer gall she had to even consider this is astounding.

I do not I need to elaborate on the campaign itself. Nicole ultimately won in a landslide and became governor of Wisconsin. Since she had everything prepared, bills were immediately introduced and true to her word, she began a purge of the executive branch and installed her own people who immediately began conducting audits of their respective departments.

Within six months there had been eight major pieces of legislation signed into law by Treduant, and the government was running like a well-oiled machine. The next few years saw a remarkable increase in the quality of life for the citizens. Teachers were happy, the police were happy, congress was (mostly) happy and the citizens were happy.

Treduant's first major test came when footage of several police officers shooting an unarmed black man surfaced, and true to her word, she immediately ordered an investigation and thanks to the body cameras installed, it confirmed the initial video. She then sicced the state attorney on the former policemen in question and I believe they now currently reside in jail.

This was only one way Treduant steadily gained public approval. Over the years she gained an almost ruthless reputation in government, and had no qualms about firing people for sheer incompetence. If it was found someone was taking bribes, she put them in jail. If someone accused of improper conduct or found with illegal drugs, she would investigate and would prosecute if guilty.

Now, this was about the time where the state legislature was starting to get nervous. Politicians are corrupt, it isn't a secret, and here they were faced with someone who had no issue prosecuting not only prominent officials, but also her own party, which is anathema to any party, regardless of affiliation.

At this point she got the full attention of the RNC which had mostly let her do her own thing because, hey, it was another Republican in charge and that's all they care about. The revelation that they were dealing with someone who actually wasn't a complete partisan thrall was apparently alarming, if the emails Zhang forwarded are to be believed.

The RNC disliked Treduant long before now, it seems.

I didn't mention it earlier, but funding for her campaign was a surprising non-issue for her. She didn't have many donors and relied almost exclusively on individual donations and endorsements from various public figures. It appears that the donors behind her opponent declared him a lost cause almost immediately and moved on to better territory. So she entered office without many ties to the RNC or major donors.

So I find it rather amusing that the RNC practically threatened in all but words that if she kept the scrutiny on the Wisconsin GOP, then there might be issues with finding support for her reelection. She responded first by sending the donation numbers from her campaign, a list of her accomplishments so far – and a list of GOP members that were later investigated for illegal fraud, including the current senator, along with a message "Good luck".

The email communications between RNC members after that are rather amusing, but they internally fumed and quietly blacklisted her if she ever applied for support. In the meantime, just past the middle of her term, Treduant was already preparing for her eventual presidential run. She was not only grooming an eventual replacement, but selecting a presidential cabinet for her campaign years ahead of time.

She kept the state running smoothly, but was laying the groundwork for her run well before anyone else. Nicole was already planting the idea of running for president in the media and from various talks, so when she announced she would run, almost no one was surprised, and the RNC was prepared-or so they thought.

President: For all intents and purposes, Treduant was an outsider. She might have run as a Republican, but she was an independent through and through, with no modern ideology truly suiting her. There were quite a few primary contenders for her to deal with, and going in many of them had an advantage. Several were part of old GOP families, dynasties of political influence with millions of dollars at their disposal.

However, Treduant had enormous public support and was the highest-ranked governor in the country, and had attracted national attention well before her decision to run. Upon her announcement, she finally let the country see her vision for America with prepared legislation and her agenda posted from day one.

Essentially, everything she had done in Wisconsin, she wanted to apply to the entire country. She touted her accomplishments as successes, displayed her lack of partisanship by pointing to the Republicans and Democrats she'd purged from her administration and promised to devote the same level of attention to Congress and the multiple federal agencies.

Now this is where it gets interesting, Commander, Treduant knew that she would have to have some large donors behind her, but in the end, most of them really weren't that well-known or influential. The RNC stubbornly refused to support her literally until she received the nomination, but we're getting ahead of the story here.

However, she did receive the endorsement of Matthew Solaris, and while he personally didn't donate to her, a lot of things suddenly seemed to go her way. Primary opponents were embroiled in scandals, money was cut off from them, and Treduant was somehow untouched by anything. It does seem that initially EXALT wanted her in charge, though for what reason I can't say, as she is not exactly prone to manipulation.

I can definitely say that Treduant received a pounding in the primaries. Attack ad after attack ad was aired attacking her various 'liberal' stances. One of the things attacked mercilessly was her faith, or lack thereof. In contrast to literally every other candidate, Treduant was a self-proclaimed atheist. She wasn't very public, but did confirm it once and that was all it took.

In the end, it was a largely failed attempt to discredit her, which more or less ended when she held a televised town hall devoted exclusively to addressing the topic where she rather effortlessly fended off probing questions from various audience members. I'm impressed she kept her cool then, since some of the stuff asked was rather asinine, but she put her debating skills to use and the result was that the right was actually shaken by the event and that 'issue' eventually died down soon after.

Attacks on Treduant were difficult because she rarely fell on one side or the other. If someone made an ad stating that she supported raising taxes on the wealthy, she responded by releasing ads that showed (with proof) that she cut taxes for the middle class and that the ones under the tax hikes were still doing perfectly fine.

Treduant knew how to play the game well, and once more rode a wave of public support to secure the nomination to the continued disgust of the RNC. Upon that, Treduant began campaigning in solid democratic states as there was almost no way any Republican was going to vote for the opposition.

What did somewhat hurt Treduant were her stances on social issues, or lack thereof. Around this time identity politics was actually becoming prominent, and most fell along the lines you would imagine. But Treduant never once commented on them. She ignored issues relating to women, such as abortion rights or pay (Actually, at one point she stated that the latter was a myth).

She said that such topics would be up to the states, and never brought it up again. The fact that she was a woman was also never mentioned by her, and most of the media, believe it or not (With the exclusion of right-wing stations, who were happy to parade around a woman that was 'on their side'). Surprising, but not unwelcome.

On other similar topics such as gay rights and racial profiling, she flatly stated she didn't care about the former, and only said she would work towards a bipartisan solution to the latter. That didn't exactly endear her to several special-interest groups, but it hardly damaged her image. She also attracted the ire of anti-war groups with her stated vision of upgrading the military and declaring her intention to make America the most powerful nation in the world militarily.

She actually challenged some of her detractors to debates, and was the clear winner each time. Eventually people started to stop openly questioning her since they feared they might be challenged to actually back up their claims. Some did it better than others, but in general Nicole knew exactly what she was doing.

Ultimately, as you know, she won and has made massive improvements to the executive branch, military and judicial branch. However, during her run she definitely made enemies of both the RNC and DNC, neither of whom truly supported her hybrid of ideologies. It made getting legislation passed difficult, to say the least.

It certainly wasn't for lack of trying, and now-President Treduant once more sought to turn that to her advantage by publically shaming congress. She was and is one of the most involved Presidents in relation to the common citizen as well as many in the media. She holds press briefings biweekly, and town halls monthly and regularly published legislation she introduced into congress which was stopped.

She also returned to publishing her 'hit-list' of people actively opposing her measures for no reason, turning the public against them. Her transparency regarding her administration is one reason why she enjoyed (Until making the USA join ADVENT) approval ratings in the high eighties, while congress never passes single digits.

In this time she forged very strong relations with all branches of the military, the CIA, FBI and NSA to a rather surprising degree. There was speculation that she was going to have them investigate someone, and everyone suspected it would be a congressman opposed to her. But to the surprise of everyone, it was the Vice President who was being investigated on bribery charges and was later revealed to have taken money from various foreign nations, most notably China.

Safe to say Treduant prosecuted him in a military court for treason and he's now serving time. Probably for life. Needless to say this drastically hurt the Republican image, and the Democrats were concerned she didn't use civilian courts, and were already uncomfortable with how she had drastically expanded all intelligence and military branches. To them, it looked like she was preparing for war and they were already exasperated at her due to their agenda being completely stalled thanks to her.

So in short, Nicole Treduant is handicapped by a deeply split congress, united in their dislike of her, while simultaneously being one of the most popular presidents ever. I don't think I need to go into more detail, Commander, as you can no doubt surmise her mindset and personality from her tale. ADVENT has a major asset here, and I don't think we should let her go to waste.

SECTION 3: Psychological Profile

If nothing else, Nicole has patience and the foresight to seemingly develop plans that take entire years to fully come together, but otherwise seem almost foolproof and the long-term outlook she holds makes it sometimes difficult for opponents to openly stop, and at the same time gives her plenty of time to adapt to changes that may arise.

She has a meticulous and methodical mind similar to yours, Commander, and has a single-minded drive to complete her goals at the exclusion of all else. When she develops a plan, she sticks to it until completion, and appears to account for most, if not all, obstacles in her way. She also applies this same level of attention to personal opponents or general opposition, specifically targeting their weakest points and destroying them utterly, or at the very least making it impossible for them to effectively counter her own points.

I would not describe her as completely vindictive, but most certainly ruthless as she doesn't simply seek to discredit ideas, but discredit opponents entirely in the court of public opinion. She is not above exploiting groupthink mentality in order to appeal to a wider range of people, allowing her to get away with positions that would be unthinkable were she anyone else.

However, she holds a rather clear set of morals and principles that temper the extent of her influence. For better or worse, she is essentially incorruptible. She dislikes the game of politics, and will do everything possible to undermine and negate it, even if she has to participate herself. She despises lawbreakers and incompetence, hence why she is rather infamous for firing or dismissing people who don't perform to her standards.

I would not class her as an American supremacist, but her views on what role America should take in the world is essentially that of a world military and police. She wants America to surpass every nation by a large margin and remove any sort of obstacle to American interests. She will work with other nations, but will always angle for results that primarily benefit America.

I can't say for certain what her views are now, but her views on military usage are far more ethical than anyone in ADVENT currently. She didn't support any sort of attacks on civilians, is against enhanced interrogation techniques and has staunchly promoted diplomatic solutions as opposed to military ones. You said that she would have executed you, had she been president at the time of your capture, and I can safely say I believe her.

However, Treduant has a much different view on intelligence agencies and usage. She appears to think open war is too crude and prone to error, and has invested heavily in experimental technology and intelligence equipment. I believe this is to limit the impact of operations, since she has stated more than once that she fully intends to bring the guilty to justice, but not at the expense of innocent deaths.

She doesn't like you, Commander. Keep that in mind when you interact with her. With people like Stein and Saudia in charge, there is also a good chance friction might develop in response to more controversial decisions that might have to be made. I believe she will support fighting the aliens to the end, but afterwards she might attempt to enact changes.

I would forward this to Saudia, just so she knows what she is dealing with.