Category Archives: Donald Trump

How President Trump Normalized Neoconservatism

Bush, Democracy, Donald Trump, Intelligence, Iran, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Terrorism

THE NEW COLUMN, “How President Trump Normalized Neoconservatism,” is now on WND.com. An excerpt:

It’s fact: Neoconservatives are pleased with President Trump’s foreign policy.

A couple of months back, Bloomberg’s Eli Lake let it know he was in neoconservative nirvana:

“… for Venezuela, [Donald Trump] came very close to calling for regime change. ‘The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable,’ Trump said. ‘We are prepared to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.'”

“For a moment,” swooned Lake, “I closed my eyes and thought I was listening to a Weekly Standard editorial meeting.”

Onward to Venezuela!

Mr. Lake, a neoconservative, was loving every moment. In error, he and his kind confuse an expansionist foreign policy with “American exceptionalism.”

It’s not.

As it happens, neocons are in luck. Most Americans know little of the ideas that animated their country’s founding. They’re more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical-liberal philosophy of the Founders, and, hence, wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive, colossal, Warfare State.

That’s just the way things are.

So, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have enlisted the West in “a proxy Sunni-Shia religious war,” Riyadh’s ultimate aim. Donald Trump has been perfectly willing to partake.

After a campaign of “America First,” the president sided with Sunni Islam while demonizing Iran. Iranians have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks in the US between 1975-2015; Saudi Arabians murdered 2369!

Iranians recently reelected a reformer. Pray tell who elected the Gulf petrostate sheiks?

Moderates danced in the streets of Tehran when President Hassan Rouhani was reelected. Curiously, they’re currently rioting.

If past is prologue, Ron Paul is probably right when he says the CIA is likely meddling in Iranian politics. For the Left and the pseudo-Right, this is a look-away issue. As the left-liberal establishment lectures daily, to question the Central Intelligence Agency—its spooks are also agitating against all vestiges of President Trump’s original “America First” plank—is to “undermine American democracy.”

Besides, “good” Americans know that only the Russians “meddle.” …

… READ THE REST.  “How President Trump Normalized Neoconservatism” is now on WND.com.

AND REMEMBER: John Quincy Adams (July 4, 1821) counseled detachment in foreign policy. America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher of freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. … She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

UPDATE (1/5/018):

Let Iranians figure out their own destiny. Wild guess: They want TRADE, not sanctions.

UPDATED: Question To Steve Bannon: If This Is What You Think, Why Not Warn Deplorables?

Conflict, Critique, Donald Trump, Family

What Mr. Bannon said about the Trump family (he’s correct about Ivanka) and its dealings is unflattering, to say the least. Via NBC News:

In a new book, Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, calls a meeting of Trump campaign officials with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

The book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” soon to be published by Henry Holt, was written by Michael Wolff, a columnist and an author who has written several books, including a biography of Rupert Murdoch. In it, Bannon rips into Donald Trump Jr.; White House senior adviser Jared Kushner; and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort for taking a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. …

Via Politico.com comes the full statement from President Donald Trump, in response to Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.

Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.

A question to Steve Bannon: If this is what you think, why did you not warn Deplorables?

UPDATE: MORE UGLY details from the new book on Trump’s White House.

1. Trump’s team had concerns about his ability to process information and make decisions

Trump has excoriated media accounts that he spends hours a day watching television and has said he spends a good deal of time reading “documents.”

Wolff’s reporting indicated Trump’s team felt otherwise.

“He didn’t process information in any conventional sense,” Wolff wrote. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate. He trusted his own expertise — no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said [former deputy chief of staff Katie] Walsh, ‘like trying to figure out what a child wants.’” …

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Steve Bannon Said Ivanka Trump Is ‘Dumb As A Brick.’ You Can Take That To The Bank.

Donald Trump, Ethics, Family, Morality

I said so myself in “What Ivanka Wants, Ivanka Gets“:

Donald’s daughter has no place in the White House, no matter how cutely she “argues” for her ambitions:

“I want to be a force for good.” (Who defines “good,” Ivanka? Limited and delimited government means that it’s not you.)

“I want to pursue my passions.” (Your passions, Ivanka, are not necessarily the people’s passions—or even within the purview of their government.)

Whether she’s tweeting about the accomplishment that is the war on Syria or about inflicting her kids on China’s first couple, Ivanka’s tweets have the insipid emptiness of a contestant in a beauty pageant.

“Proud of my father for refusing to accept these horrendous crimes against humanity.”
“Proud of Arabella and Joseph for their performance in honor of President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan’s official visit to the US.” …

In the same column, I also called Jared Kushner her poodle, and asked readers “to study Mr. Kushner. The man’s a mouse. Have you ever heard Jared Kushner utter a word in public? Do you even know what he sounds like? The poor man looks low T—like he might one day go the way of Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner. (I love LGBTQ, so long as they come in peace.)”

It transpires now that, “Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner reportedly agreed that if either ran for president, it would be Ivanka.“ Well of course.

From “Steve Bannon says Ivanka Trump is ‘dumb as a brick’“:

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, called Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and top White House adviser, “dumb as a brick” in journalist Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed a manuscript of the book on Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, The Guardian and New York Magazine published excerpts of the book, which included a host of critical comments by Bannon about top West Wing advisers and members of the president’s family.

A spokesman for Ivanka did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This isn’t the first time Bannon has taken a public shot at Ivanka.

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Troops In Niger And Norway Now Cheered, As Neoconservatism Is Normalized

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

Have you noticed that it’s now quite acceptable, on the so-called Left and phony Right, to casually quip about our troops in Niger and Norway? There is hardly any debate, disagreement or daylight, for that matter, on this dangerously united front between the brain-addled, muddled political factions at all.

This is the gift President Trump has given the neoconservatives, which now comfortably encompass neoliberals and all of Conservatism Inc.

Via Military.com (as everyone cheers for war or considers it inevitable if we want to flex our muscle):

VAERNES GARRISON, Norway — The stated goals of the Marine Corps’ newest rotational force in Norway are to enhance partnerships with European allies and improve the service’s ability to fight in cold weather.

But on a brief visit to the 300-member unit ahead of Christmas, the commandant and the sergeant major of the Marine Corps both described the strategic role the small unit fills — and the fact that a peacetime mission can be preface to combat if circumstances change.

The Norwegian Home Guard base near Trondheim that houses the Marine rotational force was the first stop on Gen. Robert Neller’s annual Christmas tour. …

… The stop was a new one for the tour. The first Norway rotation, from 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, deployed in January and was replaced by a new unit from 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines, in late August.

Neller emphasized to the Marines that they should remain ready to fight at all times, predicting a “big-ass fight” on the horizon.

NEOCONSERVATISM HAS BEEN NORMALIZED.