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Image: 2/2/1983, “President Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen in the White House…In clockwise order: Ronald Reagan, Gust Avrakotos [CIA], Muhammad Omar Babarakzai; Mohammad Ghafoor Yousefzai; Habib-Ur-Rehman Hashemi; Farida Ahmadi; Mir Niamatullah and Gul Mohammad”
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“Idlib province is largest Al Qaeda haven since 9/11″ – Brett McGurk, July 2017…"There would be a horrific political price to pay-an upheaval such as has not been witnessed in the U.S. since the Civil War-if the American people became fully aware of the scope of their leaders’ partnership with al Qaeda. Many suspect the war on terror is phony, or at least incompetently waged, but the fact that presidents of both parties [Obama and Trump] have nurtured and protected the same jihadist terrorists that were blamed for 9/11 is – too awful to contemplate.”...
9/6/2018, “Trump Protects Al Qaeda, “The Resistance” Applauds, Cursing “Russians”,” Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford
“The “Russians” had to be reinstalled as the “enemy” after Obama made his alliance with Islamist jihad. Trump has now signed on as Protector of the Idlib Caliphate.”
The Trump administration, just like the Obama regime, is willing to start World War III to protect the largest al Qaeda outfit in the world from annihilation by the Syrian government and its Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies. The New York Times and the rest of the corporate media have also chosen sides in the struggle against terror in Syria; they prefer the sons and daughters of Osama bin Laden to the internationally recognized government in Damascus. The same goes for most of the so-called “resistance” — the world’s phoniest “left,” who direct their righteous anger at the victims of U.S. imperialism and take their political cues from the corporate rag on 42nd Street, oligarch Jeff Bezo’s propaganda sheet in Washington, and Rachel Maddow, the MS-DNC’s 8 Million Dollar Woman.
The Times today [Sept. 6, 2018] (Wednesday) spent more than 800 words warning that a Syrian-Russian air offensive against “densely populated,” “rebel-held” Idlib Province could result in a “bloodbath,” without once informing its readers that Idlib Province is almost entirely controlled, militarily and civilly, by al Qaeda, now operating as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. Donald Trump, who two years ago [2016] accused President Obama of having “founded” ISIS , along with Hillary Clinton — an essentially correct assessment— is now all-in with the al Qaeda defense team.
“President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province,” Trump tweeted. “The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!”
Just in case the al Qaeda/White Helmets don’t get the message –– that the U.S. is eager to “retaliate” against Syria for chemical weapons use, no proof required — the White House issued this statement: “Let us be clear. It remains our firm stance that if President Bashar al-Assad chooses to again use chemical weapons, the United States and its allies will respond swiftly and appropriately.”
It is an invitation to al Qaeda to stage another “sarin” attack, as the jihadists did on April 4 of last year [2017], resulting in a [Trump] U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airbase.
Idlib Province is al Qaeda’s last bastion, the place where the Syrian government has allowed defeated Islamist jihadists to retreat, along with their families, so that battles to-the-last-man could be avoided. But al Qaeda cannot be allowed to continue its de facto “caliphate” in Idlib. Not only is the Syrian government entitled to exercise legal authority over all of its territory, but the U.S. is bound by a unanimous United Nations Security Council Resolution to take all steps necessary to destroy al Qaeda and its off-shoot, ISIS, wherever these terrorists raise their heads. Instead, Trump is threatening war to protect al Qaeda’s shrunken realm, while the remaining ISIS strongholds in Syria are located within the U.S. military sphere of influence, from which they have been allowed to stage attacks against Syrian Arab Army units and civilians.
There would be a horrific political price to pay — an upheaval such as has not been witnessed in the U.S. since the Civil War – if the American people became fully aware of the scope of their leaders’ partnership with al Qaeda. Many suspect the war on terror is phony, or at least incompetently waged, but the fact that presidents of both parties have nurtured and protected the same jihadist terrorists that were blamed for 9/11 is--too awful to contemplate.
The analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) also found it difficult to fathom, back in 2012, why the U.S. and its allies were doing everything possible to set the stage for the creation of an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
According to a DIA memo declassified in 2015, for “THE WEST, GULF
COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS
THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…” [caps as in the original memo]
ISIS declared its caliphate in 2014. The birth of a “rogue” ISIS –– as opposed to the more compliant al Qaeda army, then called the al-Nusra Front, which was content to fight the Syrian government and forswear a caliphate for the time being — was not necessarily the intention of U.S. war planners. However, the split in al Qaeda should have been seen as inevitable, given the billions of dollars and thousands of tons of arms that were lavished on the Islamist fighters descending on Syria. All al Qaeda members dream of a caliphate — it is only a question of timing.
But U.S. planners have even bigger dreams, of global domination. And to achieve their imperial aims, the secular, Arab nationalist government in Damascus had to go. This was Barack Obama’s “smart war” — to achieve, with a proxy army of rightwing fundamentalist Islamist maniacs, what George Bush could not accomplish with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops: U.S. military domination of the entire energy-rich region, allowing Washington to strangle China, the up-and-coming superpower, at will.
Bush and Obama lost both wars. Now Trump is digging in his heels to preserve an American military presence in long-suffering Syria, to play for time — to the applause of the phony left, the ridiculous “resistance,” the lying corporate media and the hideously criminal CIA, the architects of the Crime of the Century.
Donald Trump is now assuming the role of guardian of al Qaeda’s Idlib caliphate, to replace the diminished ISIS caliphate. He knows that he is aiding and abetting al Qaeda, as he accused Obama of doing, but, What choice does an imperialist have? If Syria is reunified and rebuilt, and its alliance with Iran, Lebanon and Iraq allowed to deepen, then the prospect of Washington derailing China’s New Silk Road evaporates--and with it, the future of U.S. empire. Trump doesn’t want to preside over that, and so he takes up the mission of the predecessor he despises.
The entirety of the corporate media are committed to their role in the mission. They must pull off the Deception of the Century, to cover up the Crime of the Century. Since the U.S. is so deeply enmeshed with Islamist fighters in Syria, the jihadist terrorists have lost their value as the “generational,” existential threat to America. The “Russians” have been drafted--capitalist oligarchs and all--to resume their historic place on the hit/hate list.…
The only U.S. political force that cannot be assimilated by either of these fascisms, is the Black polity, which yearns for self-determination. But, that won’t stop the Black Misleadership Class from trying to find its niche in the fascist corporate order of endless austerity and war, and to blame Russians for rich white Americans’ crimes. For the Black misleaders, opportunism is always in season.”
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(Sadly, the author Mr. Ford passed away in July 2021 of cancer at age 71).
“BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
COMMENTS?
Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report’s Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport
Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com”
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Added: Obama amped up US destruction of Middle East and Northern Africa the “smart” way by using massive numbers of jihadist Muslims as US foot soldiers, a technique his foreign policy guru Brzezinski had successfully employed in Afghanistan decades earlier, asserting that he weaponized the Taliban to cause collapse of the Soviet empire:
[Image: 2/2/1983, “President Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen in the White House….In clockwise order: Ronald Reagan, Gust Avrakotos [CIA], Muhammad Omar Babarakzai; Mohammad Ghafoor Yousefzai; Habib-Ur-Rehman Hashemi; Farida Ahmadi; Mir Niamatullah and Gul Mohammad”]
August 18, 2016, “Yes, Obama and Clinton Created ISIS – Too Bad Trump Can’t Explain How It Happened,“ by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Together, the U.S. and the Saudis gave birth to the international Islamic jihadist movement.”
“[Hillary] Clinton supporters rejected out of hand Donald Trump’s charge that she and Barack Obama “created” the Islamic State — and even Trump seemed to retreat from his statement. But, a solid case can be made that Obama and Clinton were, indeed, the “most valuable players” in spawining ISIS. Moreover, it is an historical fact that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia created the international jihadist network from which al Qaida and ISIS sprang, almost four decades ago.
Donald Trump has backtracked--sort of--on his assertion that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are “the founders” of ISIS, or the “most valuable players” on the Islamic State team. “Obviously, I’m being sarcastic,” said the self-styled “America-Firster” – quickly adding, “but not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”
Trump cannot articulate or fully grasp the horrific truth of his original statement because that would require a much more fundamental indictment of U.S. imperial policy in the Muslim world since the last days of 1979, when Zbigniew Brzezinski convinced President Jimmy Carter to set the jihadist dogs loose in Afghanistan. As stated in his memoir From the Shadow , Brzezinski advised Carter to aid the right-wing Muslim resistance to the leftist, secular government in Afghanistan in order to “induce a Soviet military intervention” and thus embroil the USSR in a Vietnam-like quagmire. Brzezinski viewed the so-called Mujahadeen as potential foot soldiers of U.S. global policy.
“What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?” Brzezinski asked, rhetorically, decades later.
Having acted in accordance with Brzezinski’s counsel, President Carter can accurately be described as a founding “creator” of al Qaida, along with fellow “most valuable player” Ronald Reagan, whose CIA partnered with Saudi Arabia to spend billions drawing Muslims from around the globe into the war in Afghanistan. Together, the U.S. and the Saudis gave birth to the international Islamic jihadist movement – a phenomenon that had not previously existed in world history. The jihadists would become an essential weapon in the U.S. imperial armory, a ghastly tool for regime change in the Muslim world which also doubled as justification for the never ending American quest for planetary dominance, now that the Soviet boogeyman was gone.
Brzezinski became Barack Obama’s foreign policy guru, with consequences that should have been predictable for U.S. Middle East policy but were largely ignored by liberals and so-called progressives in their euphoria at the exit of George W. Bush.
Clearly, the U.S. public would not tolerate another episode of massive, direct U.S. troop involvement in the region; that was no longer an option. But what force, then, was available to execute Washington’s unfinished agenda for conquest in this part of the world?
In 2011, Obama launched the Mother of All Proxy Wars, first against Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya, then swiftly mobilizing the totality of the international jihadist network that had been created out of whole cloth under Carter and Reagan nearly 30 years before. Washington and its NATO partners in the Libya aggression, in close concert with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, turned Syria into a cauldron of death, funneling billions of dollars in weapons to literally hundreds of Salafist and outright mercenary militias, with Al Qaida’s regional affiliate, al Nusra, at the core. This was Obama’s idea of a “smart” war: a frenzied terror offensive cloaked in lies and deception.
The criminal foreign policy pursued by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is rooted in the same worldview arrogantly articulated by Brzezinski when he derided those who fretted over the blowback that might result from deploying “some stirred-up Moslems” as foot soldiers of imperialism. As the U.S. and its allies literally competed with each other to flood Syria with the weapons, funds, intelligence resources and diplomatic and media cover to bring down the government in Damascus, they collectively created both the material basis and political space for the jihadists to pursue their own ideological objectives. ISIS emerged, to establish a caliphate of its own in Syria and Iraq. No one should have expected otherwise.”…
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2003, “Even as they put on a great show of “liberating” foreign peoples, they are in the process of enslaving the American people.…They seek to “export” democracy to the four corners of the globe, at gunpoint, starting with the most intractable region, the Islamic world.”..2010, “While Europeans are accustomed to being ruled by presumed betters whom they distrust, the American people’s realization of being ruled like Europeans shocked this country into well nigh revolutionary attitudes.” Codevilla
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March 19, 2003, “Shine, Perishing Republic: Kiss the good old USA good-bye, say hello to the American Empire,” by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com
“George W. Bush and the neoconservative cabal that has manipulated, bullied, and finally inspired him into war, invoke the ideals of the American Revolution even as they betray and corrupt the vision of the Founders. The Devil is known to invoke scripture, but this particular demonic clique has made a fetish out of it: they invoke “Americanism” to implement the most anti-American agenda imaginable….They seek to “export” democracy to the four corners of the globe, at gunpoint, starting with the most intractable region, the Islamic world….
Can “democracy” take root in the arid soil of the Middle East, forcibly implanted and fertilized with plenty of U.S. tax dollars? To the social engineers of the neoconservative persuasion, who see the world as their laboratory, it is an experiment worth conducting….They see themselves as revolutionaries, and that they are. But their revolution is not directed primarily against foreign tyrants: for even as they put on a great show of “liberating” foreign peoples,
they are in the process of enslaving the American people,
and destroying the remnants of the Constitution. They are worse than mere hypocrites: they are defilers, who pray loudly even as they desecrate the gravestones of their ancestors.
[Image: For his service to the Crown, Bush #1 was awarded Honorary Knighthood in the British Empire in 1993: “George H. W. Bush–The former president was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath-or GCB-the highest honorary rank Britain can give a foreigner. He received the honor in 1993.” getty]
The era of the American Republic is over, and age of Empire is begun. Where the US once fought wars in self-defense, it now wages wars of outright conquest. …
The difference is that now we are fighting a rearguard action. The enemy is not only within the gates: he has seized our main headquarters, and is now conducting mop-up operations against such pockets of resistance as still persist. The citadel is taken.
The war on Iraq [as of 2003] is going to be short, but the occupation will a task without end, a heavy burden that will be more than just punishment for our vainglorious “victory.”…
A future of endless conflicts, perpetual war for perpetual peace, and color-coded terror unto infinity – that is what we have to look forward to….
Our old Republic, once the enemy of kings and contemptuous of empires, is now donning the imperial purple….
The America we loved is lost, perhaps forever. That is the meaning of this [2003 Iraq] war.
The republic that bound its rulers with the chains of the Constitution
and freed the rest of us to live in peace is no more.
In its place arises…what? For answers I turn to books: Jeffers and Garet Garrett, to start with, the poet and the polemicist. Each were a bit of both, and it was the latter who predicted this day, this hour, half a century ago [under Truman]:
“We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night; the precise moment does not matter. There was no painted sign to say: ‘You now are entering Imperium.’ Yet it was a very old road and the voice of history was saying: ‘Whether you know it or not, the act of crossing may be irreversible.’ And now, not far ahead, is a sign that reads: ‘No U-turns.’”
Garrett thought we had crossed the Rubicon back in 1950, when Truman went to war without the consent of Congress, setting a precedent that would strip the peoples’ representatives of their constitutional prerogative. But the precise moment did not come for another fifty-three years, when day turned to night and the bombs fell on Baghdad….
This is what hurts: that the republic shines even as it murders, even as it morphs into a grossly misshapen parody of itself. So that its rulers can speak half-credibly of “liberation” when they mean conquest; can say “freedom” to signify subjugation, can commit war crimes and still call for the prosecution of war criminals, can do the Devil’s work and still invoke almighty God.”…
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Added:
31 among US interventions 1945-1999 including Afghanistan, 1979-92:
“In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.”…
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Added:
11/20/20, “Arguably the American country class’ principal mistake between 2016 and 2020 was to suppose that the Left was actually after Trump, rather than set about crushing them.” Codevilla…1/19/21, "Hate and disdain of ordinary Americans...binds the oligarchy together.” Codevilla
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“It is a curious thing that the greatest obstacle to an authentic populist and nationalist agenda is Trump himself and his coterie of hangers-on."…“Once elected [Trump] immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy.…When it comes to militarism and empire, Trump’s hypocrisy and bait and switch is one for the record books.…4/8/2019..."The America First Policy Institute is run and staffed by Kushner allies, and Trump’s inner circle is still dominated by Kushner allies. You get the package deal for as long as Ivanka is Trump’s daughter.” 9/22/21, Pedro Gonzalez, Emeriticus twitter
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July 30, 2021, “Just how America First is the America First Policy Institute?” Pedro L. Gonzalez, spectatorworld.com
“AFPI [America First Policy Institute] seems to actively seek out people who hold populism and nationalism in contempt."
After then-president Donald Trump issued an immigration ban amid the pandemic last year, the Daily Caller hosted a debate on its implications between populist author Ryan Girdusky and Di Martino. Shortly before that, Di Martino wrote in the Washington Times, ‘I’m afraid that Mr Trump’s immigration restrictions are transforming America from the welcoming, shining city on a hill I want to fight for into a dark, closed-off nation’. Unfortunately, Di Martino did not give up on the shining city and return to Venezuela or Spain, where he also holds citizenship.
Between his struggles to assemble points during the debate, Di Martino would assert that visa workers are simply more talented than Americans, dismissing all Girdusky’s evidence to the contrary. When Girdusky mentioned the human cost of the displacement of skilled American professionals by exploitable visa workers, Di Martino cracked a contemptuous smile. ‘These are real people with real families,’ said Girdusky. ‘That all sounds very good, Ryan, but it has no economic evidence behind it,’ replied the Venezuelan with a grin.
There’s no evidence, except for piles of data, the Disney workers replaced by foreign nationals who then-candidate Donald Trump campaigned alongside in 2016 and the corpses of American tech workers who killed themselves after humiliatingly training their incompetent foreign replacements for months before being handed a pink slip. Di Martino isn’t ignorant — he just looks down his nose at Americans, like most people at AFPI.
Leading up to his relationship with the official Trump think tank, Di Martino emerged on the scene as an interventionist and proponent of mass immigration — two of the main things against which Trump crusaded in 2016. He is dismissive of Americans who suspect the election may have been swayed by fraud and believes the only problem with pandemic lockdowns was that we didn’t do them hard enough. His byline in Bill Kristol’s latest failed publication, the Bulwark, proudly boasts his affiliation with the Koch-backed Young Voices organization and his Venezuelan citizenship. Indeed, in place of arguments, Di Martino likes to appeal to his nationality when calling for the deployment of US ‘military force’ to Venezuela or demanding America eradicate its borders — and if you disagree, he’ll likely call you a racist.
Nikki Haley’s populist critics? Racist.
Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar? Racist.
Tucker Carlson? Racist.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a think tank whose associates took up positions within the Trump administration? Racist.
Pro-Trump Twitter account the Columbia Bugle?‘Nativist’…can you guess what he means by that?
Former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller? ‘Disgusting’ and basically racist.
Trump himself? Well, Di Martino has complained that his criticisms of Mitch McConnell are ‘based on falsehoods about him and outright racist attacks because his wife is Asian’. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
Di Martino did not merely slip through the cracks. AFPI actively seeks out people who, like him, not only don’t care for populism and nationalism but hold those things in contempt. That’s no surprise, considering Brooke Rollins sits at the helm of the brain trust, such as it is, and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump advise it.
As a Kushner ally in the White House, Rollins was instrumental in pushing a soft-on-crime approach to deadly riots in 2020, the creation of the First Step Act— which released scores of dangerous criminals — reversing Trump’s ‘zero-tolerance‘ policy at the border, promoting amnesty and channeling corporate influence through the Office of American Innovation where she served before joining the Domestic Policy Council as acting director. Though Kushner is looking to open an office for his new investment firm in Israel to pursue regional investments, Rollins will keep up the good work of undermining an authentic America First agenda at home. She’s got plenty of help from people like Larry Kudlow, AFPI’s vice chair of the board.
Kudlow previously served as director of the National Economic Council. According to Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, he played an important role in turning Trump away from investigating the origins of COVID-19. The New York Post‘s Sharri Markson recently revealed that Dr Anthony Fauci was scheduled to be hauled before a commission to give evidence about funding the Wuhan laboratory suspected of leaking the contagion. There were even plans to draft a bill demanding reparations from China for damages. ‘But the presidential commission was killed off during a meeting in the Oval Office where Trump’s economic advisers argued fiercely against it,’ wrote Markson. Navarro was furious. ‘Kudlow is just stupid, dumb. You can quote me on that,’ he said. [Trump’s actions show he clearly didn’t see himself as president. By all appearances he only wanted the job so he could make Jared de facto president].
The divide between populist and nationalist Trump staffers, like Navarro, and establishmentarians in favor of more immigration, Big Business and soft-on-crime policies, like Rollins and Kudlow, runs through AFPI. If you were in the latter camp in the White House, your chances of ending up at AFPI increased. Javon Price is another example.
[Javon] Price was formerly co-chair of Georgetown University’s chapter of Students for Trump and then served as director of external affairs with gen z gop, a vehemently anti-Trump Republican youth organization. He calls the GOP to move in a more progressive direction on social and cultural issues. [Meaning further cementing the existing one party dictatorship]. White House staffers who worked with Price recall an antipathy toward social conservatives — a virtual precondition for a working relationship with AFPI. His interminable title—‘Policy Analyst, Center for Opportunity Now; Center for Second Chances; And Center for American Security’–raises the question: what do these people actually do?
The consensus from former Trump White House populist staffers is that when AFPI isn’t merely pushing the establishment line, it attaches itself to issues where others have already done the heavy lifting, then uses that to launder their grift without having a real product, diverting funds away from grassroots operations. Rollins’s AFPI lawsuit against tech companies is a typical example. [Trump knows there are millions to be made doing this, that national Tea Party groups, websites, and various PACs controlled and/or co-opted by GOP Establishment made millions upon millions by bleeding money from unsuspecting small donors while spending little or none of the cash supporting candidates….4/26/2014, “Tea Party PACs reap money for midterms, but spend little on candidates,” Washington Post…In 2012 cycle, TeaPartyLeadershipFund.net raised $1.1 million but spent only $52,000 on candidates... In 2010 election cycle, “The Tea Party Express, by far the largest of these PACs…pulled in more than $7.6 million since January 2009, donated $36,750 to federal candidates.”...Websites may ask for your cash to “Take on big tech dot com!” It can be a full time job following where websites lead].
(continuing): “Standing beside Trump at a press conference, Rollins announced that people could ‘join the lawsuit’ by visiting ‘take on big tech dot com’. The problem is that the fine print on the website explicitly said that entering a name would not make the signatory a plaintiff. Visitors were instead redirected to a page for the Constitutional Leadership Partnership, a fundraising apparatus of AFPI led by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who serves as AFPI’s chairman for the Constitutional Litigation Partnership.
AFPI’s director of the Center for Election Integrity, Hogan Gidley, has made a name for himself arguing Trump’s election fraud claims in the media. However, according to a former Trump administration official with strong ties to the campaign, Gidley doesn’t believe them himself. ‘I’ve never met someone so bad at trying to be duplicitous,’ the former official said. Multiple former staffers said Gidley’s ultimate aspiration is to be press secretary in a future administration; Hogan loves the limelight. At any rate, AFPI can now claim to be the spearhead of election integrity measures, thus soaking up money and attention that would otherwise go to grassroots efforts to secure independent election audits.
It is a curious thing that the greatest obstacle to an authentic populist and nationalist agenda is Trump himself and his coterie of hangers-on. There is still a thriving grassroots movement that hopes Trump will course-correct after all this time and shed himself of Rollins, Kudlow and Kushner. But that hope is a distant dream, especially when you consider who has Trump’s ear.
After the Trump-endorsed candidate Susan Wright lost a House special election in Texas on Tuesday [July 27, 2021], Trump confessed to Axios in an interview he was pressured to endorse Wright by the anti-tax Club for Growth. That same organization was among the first groups to launch an aggressive ad campaign against Trump in 2015….
But money talks, Trump is listening and the AFPI is open for business.”
“Pedro L. Gonzalez is the associate editor at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and a contributing writer to The Spectator.”
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Added: “Once elected [Trump] immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy....When it comes to militarism and empire, Trump’s hypocrisy and bait and switch is one for the record books...It’s nevertheless extraordinary to watch Donald Trump publicly and shamelessly morph into a George W. Bush era neocon." 4/8/2019
4/8/2019, “Trump Cares About Two Things–Empire and the Stock Market," Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg
“Though not surprising, it’s nevertheless extraordinary to watch Donald Trump publicly and shamelessly morph into a George W. Bush era neocon when it comes to foreign policy, and a CNBC stock market cheerleader when it comes to the economy. Just like Barack Obama before him, Trump talked a good populist game on two issues of monumental importance (foreign policy and the rigged economy), but once elected immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy.
Trump doesn’t even give lip service to big picture populist topics anymore unless they’re somehow related to the culture war, which works out perfectly for the entrenched oligarchy since the culture war primarily serves as a useful distraction to keep the rabble squabbling while apex societal predators loot whatever’s left of this hollowed out neo-feudal economy.
The pivot toward status quo consensus when it comes to two of the most existential issues facing the nation should be deeply concerning to everyone, but particularly to those who thought Donald Trump would be different.
When it comes to militarism and empire, Trump’s hypocrisy and bait and switch is one for the record books. Just as it became clear Obama was a fraud once he hired Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner (we later found out his cabinet was apparently chosen by Citibank), Trump placing neocons Mike Pompeo and John Bolton into key positions was a clear sign you could take “Make America Great Again” and flush it down the toilet. This administration is now laser focused on maintaining and even expanding imperial reach.
Like Obama before him, Trump’s abandonment of every important thing he ran on was noticeable early on. Recall that while campaigning, Trump accurately called out the Saudis for their key role in the 9/11 attacks:
“Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi — take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents,” Trump told the gang at Fox & Friends Wednesday morning…
“It wasn’t the Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center,” Trump told a crowd in Bluffton, South Carolina. “It wasn’t the Iraqis. You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center, ‘cuz they have papers in there that are very secret. You may find it’s the Saudis, okay? But you will find out.”
Shortly after he made those comments, the infamous “28 Pages” were released showing how Saudi elites helped finance the whole operation. Did that stop Trump from making Saudi Arabia his very first state visit after being elected? Don’t be ridiculous.
(“I’ve stopped calling what our government has done a cover-up. Cover-up suggests a passive activity. What they’re doing now I call aggressive deception.” Former Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of Congress’s 9-11 Joint Inquiry”)
Donald Trump knows the score when it comes to Saudi Arabia. He knows about their role in 9/11 and he knows they’re the top global proliferators of terrorist ideology on the planet. Nevertheless, Trump is now enthusiastically tied to the hip with the Saudis, thus making him a defender and protector of the status quo. Defend him all you want, but
this isn’t the sort of thing he ran on
with regard to
America’s foreign policy.
Like other presidents who came before him, he campaigned on one foreign policy platform and then supports another once elected.
In fact, Trump’s now so far off the deep end he’s widely expected to veto a measure recently passed by both houses of Congress to stop aiding Saudi Arabia in its ongoing genocidal war in Yemen.
Trump knows better when it comes to foreign policy, but he’s doing this stuff anyway. A similar thing could be said for his economic policy. While on the campaign trail he accurately called what was going on in financial markets a “big, fat, ugly bubble,” but now that he’s in the Oval office, he can’t get enough of it — cheering on the stock market every chance he gets as if it means anything to the masses of people barely getting by….
QE led to massive asset price inflation and society-destabilizing wealth inequality which played a key role in Trump’s election, but he’s not concerned about that anymore. In fact, he’s now actively begging for more Federal Reserve money printing….
Many people naively believed Trump meant what he said on the campaign trail.
They thought because he was already wealthy and not a career politician he’d get in there and really shake up the status quo on hugely important issues like foreign policy and the rigged, monopoly dominated, surveillance focused, financialized crony-economy. Well it turns out Trump’s just like everybody else….
The important thing is to be honest about what’s really going on so you’re not completely caught off guard when the world changes faster and more dramatically than you could ever imagine in the years ahead.”
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