Team Trump Transmogrifies into the Swamp Thing

The establishment has eaten the White House, and yet I continue to read supporters of President Trump who desperately hold to the delusion that Trump  is playing a game of 4-D chess — a game so advanced that no one else on the face of the earth can understand that Trump is winning.

Trump’s masterful chess moves supposedly convince his opponents he is losing at every turn, but these apparent losses are mere decoys, intended to distract his opponents from his true accomplishments and, most of all, from seeing the great drubbing they are about to receive … though no one knows what that is. Even the removal of Steve Bannon is being touted by a few Trump supporters as a strategically brilliant covert play.

The establishment rules the game

I believe those writers as well as the people who continue dogmatically to cheer Trump on at his rallies when they should be raking him over the coals for turning away from them, are living in and maintaining a fantasy bubble as big as the stock-market bubble. Trump’s turning was underscored with the recent termination of Steve Bannon, which leaves the White House almost wholly remade into an establishment wonderland where many of the top offices are either run by Democrats or by military brass.

All of this comes amid a Democrat takeover of the West Wing, with Republicans being pushed out of the White House. National Security Adviser and three-star Army Gen. H.R. McMaster purged a number of Trump-backing Republicans from the National Security Council, while ex-Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman and now former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was replaced by retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, the old Secretary of Homeland Security. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and his wife Ivanka Trump—as well as National Economic Council director Gary Cohn—have all seen a rise in prominence in the West Wing. They—McMaster, Kelly, Ivanka Trump, Kushner, and Cohn—are all Democrats. (Breitbart)

Successfully seizing almost all of the reins of power in the White House does not mean the left has stopped fearing Trump or that the establishment feels it has won the game and can now relax. Trump’s campaign openly threatened both the left and the establishment by garnering huge public support. Candidate Trump overtly threatened the military-industrial complex with all of his arguments against further US policing of the world and against the United State’s imperial attempts at nation building in the Middle East.

However, the notion that the establishment is about to lose in a clever fourth-quarter reversal of the game by Trump this year is ludicrous. This predicted surprise has been talked about for months. Though it hasn’t happened, Trump’s supporters will say that is just because Trump is still building toward his final masterful play … and then you’ll see. That’s how denial works.

The left and its anarchists along with establishment Republican politicians continue to push the game hard against Trump because they are leaving nothing to chance. They will do a full-court press to the finish, but clearly the momentum of the game is in their direction. Trump’s Goldman advisors, for example, have convinced him that banks need to be freed up again to gamble with their depositors’ money.

Goldman Sachs reportedly is now pushing to kill pesky investment-banking legislation created in Obama-era battering after President Donald Trump has made two company alumni his point men on financial regulation…. “The new team in Washington could not have come at a more important time for Goldman. The bank that received a $10 billion bailout from U.S. taxpayers in 2008 is looking to the Trump administration for another helping hand, this time from what Goldman sees as overbearing regulation exacerbating its current trading funk,” the Financial Times explained. Goldman’s securities-trading division has fallen on hard financial times. “Post-crisis regulation has curtailed the operation. In 2007 the bank’s net trading revenue from bonds, currencies and commodities peaked at $16.2 billion. Last year, notwithstanding some reorganization, the rough equivalent was $7.6 billion,”  the FT reported, “The main culprit in Goldman’s eyes is the Volcker rule, a ban on banks placing market bets with their own money … a bulwark against future crises requiring public bailouts.” (NewsMax)

This month, Trump followed his GS buddies’ bidding and decided to bring the Volker rule under review. As far as I’m concerned the Volker rule did not go far enough. We should have gone back to Glass-Steagall. Stepping away from Glass-Steagall is where things really fell apart in the financial crisis that created the Great Recession. However, moving back in that direction is not where Trump’s review of the Volker rule is intended to go.

The establishment’s end game

Even though the establishment largely owns the White House now, they will still try to annihilate Trump politically. They want to take him out of the game so completely that neither he nor anything like him ever raises its squirrel-topped noggin again. It’s a two-pronged strategy: 1) win Trump over on everything they can to minimize damages and even use him to accomplish their bankster/military agenda, but 2) seek always to destroy him and his supporters anyway. The fact that they win a lot of what they want from Trump doesn’t mean they like him. He is still a loose canon, and his supporters are the greatest risk to their unfettered greed.

They will try to use Trump to demonstrate to all who support him that their cause is hopeless. They intend, if they possiblly can, to grind him and his cause into dust by every means possible in order to quell all future and similar attempts at rebellion, and they will use him as a scapegoat to show how badly things go when the masses don’t go the establishment’s way. Thus they want to destroy him into the dust in order to take his supporters down with him.

Bannon the Barbarian went bust

The recent termination of Steve Bannon by General Kelly is the clearest proof that the Goldman Sachs team and the military-industrial complex that Goldman loves to finance is winning. Bannon claimed he voluntarily stepped down, but I didn’t see Trump encouraging him to stay or ever speaking out favorably about him in recent months as supporters worried that Bannon was on his way out and as press leaks said the same thing.

Bannon is trying to shine up his image by presenting his move as empowerment:

“In the White House I had influence, at Breitbart, I had power,” Bannon reportedly said several times….  (Zero Hedge)

That’s true but only because Trump never did give Bannon a seat of power. Trump gave him a token position as Advisor in order to appear like he’s listening to Bannon’s  own anti-establishment supporters. Bannon never had leadership over any department of government. All he ever had was the right to argue in the room and try to influence things. Now, he doesn’t even have that.

Despite his departure—voluntarily, he insists, though his resignation is reported to have been demanded of him—Mr Bannon says he will never attack his former boss. Yet Breitbart will caution Mr Trump to stick to the populist nationalist course Mr Bannon charted. “We will never turn on him. But we are never going to let him take a decision that hurts him.” The [Breitbart] website offered an early taste of this in its disparaging coverage of Mr Trump’s “flip-flop” decision to send more American troops to Afghanistan, which was announced on August 21st and Mr Bannon strongly opposes…. The very fact that Trump has veered away from populist policies suggests that the former top aide to the president has been “plainly diminished….” There’s been no clearer sign of Bannon’s waning influence over the president than Trump’s decision earlier this week to commit more troops to Afghanistan, which Bannon vehemently opposed. The Afghan troop surge is perhaps the clearest sign yet that Trump is taking a more moderate path advocated by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his national-security adviser, HR McMaster. Breitbart, ostensibly at Bannon’s behest, has waged wars against both men, and it’s widely believed that its recent attacks on McMaster backfired, helping to hasten Bannon’s ouster.

Some Trump supporters are now writing that Bannon’s removal is just another 4-D chess move by which the maestro, Trump, has freed Bannon up to take an outside roll of greater power. I side with those who say it clearly is the last straw in shifting the White House to a pro-establishment staff where Stephen Miller looks like the only anti-establishment man left standing. If Trump truly wanted to make Bannon more powerful, he would have put him in General Kelly’s position. Instead, he chose to hire Kelly and follow Kelly’s lead in firing Bannon.

If Trump had placed Bannon in Kelly’s Chief-of-Staff position, Bannon could have torn through the White House’s embedded establishment like a white tornado, ripping the establishment from every corner of the magnificent national mansion. Trump could have empowered Bannon to toss out all the old Obama holdovers that Trump should have tossed, himself, as well as all the GS alumni that Trump should never have appointed in the first place. Instead, Trump put the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENT in charge of his staff and let Bannon walk (or kicked him out).

So, to those who are writing that Bannon’s dismissal makes him a more powerful Trump team member, I say, “Way to keep the denial alive!” It is that kind of denial that got us into this economic mess and that keeps us in it. It is denial that keeps the two-party system in power because the voters on each side routinely deny the failure of their own side and blame all failure on the other side in order to avoid admitting they voted for someone who isn’t doing the job. This kind of “yellow-dog” support has kept the Democrats and Republicans in power for decades, regardless of how poorly they perform.

Denial keeps trickle-down economics to the smallest trickle imaginable as people of average means choose to maintain the fantasy that someday the flood gates will open and wealth will pour down upon them, too. After all, they wouldn’t want the government taxing away their capital gains when their glorious day in the sun comes … which it never does and never will under this leaden economy. Based on that fantasy, they hand the wealthy the lowest tax rates by giving them a special reduced rate ( called “the capital gains tax”) on the one form of income that the wealthy most rely on and that least often benefits anyone else. They don’t seem to realize that a lower capital-gains tax means other things get tax increases to make up the deficiency — their things.

(That is Plan Trump. More of the same trickle-down baloney … only on steroids this time … coupled with a return to bankster deregulation because we all know that banks just aren’t making enough money anymore.)

To continue to support Trump when you see such blatant erosion of your goals is to cheer him on for joining the other side. He needs, instead, to hear the rebellion of his base loud and clear. Nothing would strike fear into Trump’s boastful heart so much as seeing his cheering base turn on him for turning away from them. He feeds on adulation, and seeing his only supporters turn strongly the other way would send a chill to his bones that just might stiffen his spine to actually support their cause.

But, for now, Trump is losing at almost every turn with his failed pledge on Obamacare being his greatest failure to lead. His own party in Congress is increasingly more and more against him. A true leader finds brilliant ways to get congressional members in his own party to join his agenda. I don’t see Trump succeeding at building any support within congress. A president ultimately has to inspire others toward his cause, sell the cause, encourage others to join the cause. Trump’s base and his support in congress is slowly fading. It would do far better if, instead of fade, it became outraged. The one advantage of a president who needs constant adulation is that you can move him by taking that adulation away. He craves it, and he’ll do what he needs to to get it.

For some reason, his base does not see that putting Goldman Sachs in charge of most of the government and the military in charge of the rest does not match up with anything Trump’s campaign promised. They prefer the 4-D chess explanation. Why should such such a huge positions of GS and GI in government be ignored or explained away as clever illusion on Trump’s part, as if Trump secretly scores against the banksters by putting them in charge of whole departments of government?

Seriously? Can you honestly believe a cabinet overrun by Goldman Sachs will ever have your best interest at heart? Ever?

Please show me Trump’s secret accomplishments against the banksters of Wall Street.

Trump’s fundamental failure is leadership

The very fact that Trump chose to put the establishment almost entirely in charge of his government from the outset — while stuffing Bannon into a non-authoritative role as advisor — proved beyond all doubt for me that the establishment rules. Trump was either a fool to put the alligators in charge of the swamp, or he was just a Trojan horse from the outset, raised like a lightning rod by the establishment so they could draw all anti-establishment rebels to him and destroy them all in one great flash. And now the alligators have moved Bannon out. I’m not saying Bannon won’t keep up the fight, but there are only a few people left in the White House who have any desire to thwart the establishment.

Trump’s bumbling management of his own government — his inability to control his own staff and keep them from leaking for half a year as well as his need to fire the people he hired one after another — reveal that he has hugely overstated his personal claims of great leadership ability.

Great leaders don’t install people who are worthless or who are liabilities against their own cause. Great leaders don’t have to constantly undo their own hiring mistakes because great leaders hire the right people to supervise departments, for doing so right out of the gate is the first and most important job of any leader (<I>building the team</I>). Until you’ve built your team, you haven’t even begun to lead, much less play in the game, and Trump’s team has been a series of self-admitted mistakes and even disasters. Some of his feistiest players have even quit on him.

Following Spicer’s resignation and now Bannon’s supposed resignation, the president’s Deputy Assistant Sebastian Gorka resigned on Friday, stating,

“Given recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House,” Gorka wrote in a letter addressed to the president. “As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House….” A source close to Dr. Gorka claimed that he made his decision following the president’s speech in which he indicated he would escalate America’s war in Afghanistan. “The anti-MAGAs” have control of Trump’s foreign policy, the source said…. Gorka wrote: “Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will ‘Make America Great Again,’ have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months. This was made patently obvious as I read the text of your speech on Afghanistan this week. … The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost. (Breitbart)

I cannot recall any president who has fired so many of the people he hired so quickly and who has ridiculed so many others that he appointed. Trump leads like an overgrown baby by throwing public tantrums about his own appointed team members in order to try to cajole them into doing what he wants, as if he is too inept to realize that attacking his own team publicly only reduces their potency in the highly public forum they must operate within and demoralizes the entire team.

Trump annoints powerful people into high places and then tweets them to death in order to diminish their power, as if he feels any prestige they gain threatens him. Strong, confident leaders are not that easily threatened by the successes of their own team members. A good leader empowers his team and exults in any praise that comes to the team as a result of any one player. Name me any great historic leader who routinely used public shame in order to rein his own appointees in the direction he wants them to head.

The presidents team is supposed to be a team of people who all, in their own right, are great leaders because they must lead all the departments of government. What great leaders would submit themselves to working for someone like Trump who chooses to publicly shame them as his approach to team communication?

Great leaders are confident, so they don’t worry about who gets the credit. What they care about is getting the job done. They are, in fact, proud of seeing their own team members get recognition because it proves they have chosen great people for the job. They don’t try to diminish them for getting all the press coverage.

Can you imagine a football coach or team owner who gets upset because some of his team members are becoming stars in their own right and getting all kinds of press for leading the team? That’s exactly what a good coach or team owner wants.

The defensive guard

Bannon says his new role is to rally the base:

“I can rally the base, have his back. The harder he pushes, the more we will be there for him.”

But I think the base is, first, going to have to rally its president and push him in order to get him do do the things they want.

To those who write in defense of Trump’s manifold failures and outright capitulations to the establishment, I say, “Dream on! Keep the denial alive! The establishment is counting on your ability to do so! It is what keeps them in power at every turn — your gullibility, your willingness to believe this time is different, your willingness to believe that wealth someday will trickle down to you if you give the wealthy all the breaks, and especially your willingness to believe in a false messiah or maybe just the establishment’s own Trojan Trump. It is not Trump who has the establishment fooled in a game of 4-D chess. It is the establishment who has YOU fooled.”

To the rest, of Trump’s supporters who are growing a little restless, it is time to start voicing your great displeasure to Trump, spelling out how much you hate the fact that he has put GS in charge of his government, stating clearly that you don’t like the dismissal of Bannon, and writing bluntly that you are angry that he is putting the military-industrial complex in charge of half of his government. You need to put him on notice! Demand more!

Remind President Trump that Candidate Trump repeatedly stated that the US needs to get less involved in the Middle East. While Candidate Trump said we need to get out of Afghanistan, President Trump has just decided to double down:

What happened to less involvement in Afghanistan and the Middle East? Was Candidate Trump just an airhead, spouting off vain ideas that Trump supporters are now going to excuse? Did he get schooled so that he knows we must now fully engage in Afghanistan in order to stabilize it? Is it going to turn out better this time than it did under Bush, who was also strongly pro military?

Look, I was never against chasing Al Qaeda across Afghanistan and deposing the Taliban who gave them safe harbor, but Trump is now threatening greater engagement in North Korea, deeper and more intensified engagement in Afghanistan, while still apparently aiming for regime change in Syria. Even with North Korea, I don’t know that there are any other options because another nuclear empowered tyrant does not make the world safer.

Nevertheless, all indications are that the US is moving toward greater military involvement around the world, not less. With top military brass in control of a number of departments and in charge of all top staff as the Chief of Staff, I don’t see any prospect that Trump is going to follow through on his campaign promises of reduced military involvement in the world.

At the same time, Trump seems to be backing away from building more peaceful relations with Russia, and he has put Goldman Sachs in charge of everything financial.

So, I ask, will there EVER be a point where enough is enough for Trump supporters and they start writing to the president to ask him whatever happened to Candidate Trump? When will Trump’s rallies start to turn around and quit stoking him with endless indulgences and praise? When will his rally attendees ball him out for giving away the farm?

Because Trump craves the applause of his supporters, they are the only ones who have power to steer him in the right direction. Rather than rallying the supporters behind Trump, I want to rally them to demand Trump become the president he said he was going to be. 

I don’t think we could possibly have a White House more wholly owned by the swamp than this present one. Even Obama didn’t have as many GS suits and military brass running the show. Is this what you voted for? It certainly isn’t anything like I thought an anti-establishment White House would look like … but then I never thought Trump would deliver an anti-establishment White House. I predicted he’d more than likely turn out to be a Trojan horse for the establishment or, in the very least, their scapegoat, and either of those look more and more likely with each passing month. Trump may stick a finger in the eyes in the press in order to stay in the spotlight, but the establishment now owns the White House.

Nevertheless, some of Trum’s biggest supporters show signs their denial is breaking

Ann Coulter, who sounded like she was verbally making love to Donald Trump throughout the campaign and during the first couple of months of his presidency with her book In Trump We Trust, now says she is felling depress since the firing of Banana and states that “it doesn’t matter — Republican, Democrat or even Donald Trump — Goldman Sachs is at the helm, so don’t worry Wall Street will be getting its tax cuts…. Don’t you want to have one guy in the White House on your side?” Apparently Trump does not; that or Trump’s side never really was the same as Bannon’s anyway, and he just used the anger on the right with Bannon’s support to get elected.

Even Alex Jones, who started the whole 3D/4D/8D chess argument (moving up the scale more and more to cover Trump’s ever-expanding moves toward the deep side of the state), is also showing signs that his own denial is finally starting to break:

Like Pieczenik in the video above, who is schooling Alex Jones, it’s time to make your disapproval heard loud and clear at Trump rallies. Trump goes to those rallies for his own personal refueling, so he’ll feel the heated change in the one forum he loves if his supporters stop cheering this turncoat. It’s time to make it known in letters. Speak up now if you are ever going to move your candidate in the direction you intended for him to go because, as it stands right now, Goldman Sachs and the military own the White House, lock, stock and smoking barrels.

But, when you call the White House, don’t be surprised when they answer, “Kushner, Cohn, Kelly and Munchkin” because those are the people in charge now while Trump is apparently sitting on the toilet and scribbling on the walls and giving teleprompter speeches about Afghan wars that he doesn’t appear to really want to give. Trump has been bitten by the zombies and is changing into one of them … IF he was ever anything other than Trojan Trump to begin with.

And here’s your Republican party, going up in its own smoke.

 

As a followup to this article, here is a list of all the articles, including this one, that laid out the entire swamp-infested plan, starting from just before Trump was elected to the days between the election and his inauguration and a followup partway through his first term:

 

 

Trump: Trojan Horse for the Establishment or Mighty Mouth for Mankind” (Forewarns of the moves)

 

Trump: Trojan, Traitor, or Tried and True?” (Pt. 1 of the main series)

 

Team Trump (Pt. 2): Top of the Crop is a Mixed Bag

 

Team Trump (Pt 3): Trunk Loads of Establishment Baggage

 

And the followup, half a year into his term: “Team Trump Transmogrifies into the Swamp Thing

40 Comments

  1. Ping from Don_in_Odessa:

    All good. Trump has clearly been compromised. Still better than Hillary though. Trump’s strong, some say bullying personality, is exactly what this country needs in foreign policy. If that means blowing up North Korea and or Iran so be it. Never mind the consequences, it takes the appearance of a bully to defeat a bully. No more tip toeing around the diplomacy table when these countries ignore their agreements anyhow. Lowering taxes for companies to make it cheaper, thus more competitive to locate within the continental US can only help the economy. Taxes collected from the increase in US produced sales as well as income taxes from the increased employment will balance if not superseded the tax loss from the lowering of taxes.

  2. Ping from Chris P:

    In Full: Dr. Sebastian Gorka’s Explosive White House Resignation Letter. Thought this might fit well with this article. Keep up the good work Dave

  3. Ping from Tim Meisner:

    How about your prrsonal visions stay between you and your partner or better yet dont let them out. Lets start off displaying factual information only. You know…. things you know not things you think! Sure he gets a little rammy, might say some off the wall crap, but he honestly is only trying to make America great again; doesnt want you guys dipping your noses into matters of the world that dont concern you (anf only concern you now because of media exploitation). Your just another country, not mom and dad. Start worrying about you guys…your freedoms and liberties. Thr path you were on was consistently removing them and replacing with elements of much less value. Be strong America, every legal one of you…

  4. Ping from Girish Khatwani:

    Compare with Obama and other Trump is transparent and straight forward. Just look how many times he is in public speech and Twitter
    Obama used to read written official speech which sounds good to media but when we show real picture to people , which Trump is doing, people aren’t digesting. Never before people were aware of nitty gritty of white house as today which shows more information and transparency and this. is actually democracy. He has nothing to loose, we can consider him nationalist only and not extreme , just because terrorism and other countries taking advantage of America. Flow of money back to America will not suit many, so they have all the right to cry.

  5. Ping from Marc Leif:

    Yep. Another fraud, like Obama, like Bush…

    • Ping from Archangel of High Heavens:

      I understand that as a president one cannot fulfill every thing as per requirements of all the citizens. It looks like our democracy has been outdated. It’s like using running Windows XP in new hardware. Most of the time doesn’t work.
      I wish I would have been in United States if I would not have done anything then at least I would patent new inventions and or method/system.

      • Ping from Bike Helmet Ride:

        Indians ruined Windows. Windows 10 is crap and looks like junk. Indians export billions in remittances annually out of USA. H1-B is outdated and no longer needed.

        • Ping from Archangel of High Heavens:

          I up voted your comment.
          I being Indian, I approve your message.
          I completely agree with you friend. Indians not just screw Windows they screw almost everything because India would not have been underdeveloped country if they were so great.
          But here is the thing just by removing H1-B does not remove their drama. It is closely related to the economy. If they don’t come to US they will go to Canada or Australia, New Zealand, etc., if you notice they are contributing to another country if not US.

  6. Ping from montana83:

    I drove 500 miles to listen to Ted Cruz in June 2016. Glad I did. Everyone there mistrusted Trump. They were right. He’s a swamp creature masquerading as a right winger,

  7. Ping from John:

    Goldman Sachs is a “founding sponsor” of the Rockefeller CFR, along with many of the MIC corporations. Several of their execs are CFR members, including Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman, Eric Schmidt of Google, and David Rubenstein, founder of the Carlyle Group, who is now the CFR chairman. Other CFR members include H.R. McMaster, Dina Powell, Robert Lighthizer, Janet Yellen, John McCain, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and George Soros. See lists in the CFR annual report.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      You don’t get a more unsavory list than that, and — now that Bannon and Gorka are out of the way — they now wholly own the White House. They and the military.

    • Ping from libadvsor:

      You just defined THE SWAMP. Mr. President I am hopeful with your knowledge of building u will do a great rebuilding job in Houston and other areas badly hit. But u r surrounded by the swamp – Keynesians, Democrats and Globalists. U need help.
      John Taylor of Stanford for Fed chief not Goldman Sachs’ Cohen

      • Ping from Knave_Dave:

        Aye, and it is he who surrounded himself entirely with the swamp entirely by his own executive choice! This White House is about as swampy as you can get with more GS executive power than we’ve ever seen.

  8. Ping from Elantoh:

    We are as doomed as Rome was. A nation, supposedly a Democratic Republic, that has been run on lies, cheating, greed, and obstructionist behavior does not give a sh*t about the “people.”

    The POTUS was either a liar or is hostage because “candidate” Trump never showed up. Perhaps given the “talk” in the basement of the WH and shown the real film of JFK’s murder, perhaps just told of the ease of taking out a plane load of his family, but SOMETHING happened.

    We allow 500 people in DC to control us like we are children who must obey our parents. Sad.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Indeed. Something went terribly wrong. I am certain this is not how any of Trump’s supporters envisioned his glorious America-saving first half year in office would look, even as they try to reorient themselves toward a hastily constructed 4-D picture of how this is huge success.

      • Ping from Elantoh:

        Excellent insight Dave. If this was only about partisan politics, the pretend Dem/Repug battles then we might be able to point a finger at one or the other, but this is all much bigger then that.

        The orientation towards a technocratic society, a take over of humanity’s autonomy and freedom is at hand and the obfuscation of the manipulation of governments and nations world wide is being done through an overwhelming amount of negative news on a daily basis.

        Try and think of what was the “big” thing last week or just a few days ago. Society has been manipulated through the use of conditioning and control using the work of Pavlov, Skinner, Bernays, etc. and they have locked down the citizens into reactive action rather then critical thinking behavior.

        77% of the citizens use SMART phones, these mini EMF stations that allows one to be recorded, tracked, traced, and databased. This is/will be the precursor to the technocratic state.

        President Trump, in my belief, really intended to run this country as a business but this country’s business has no similarity to his experience.

      • Ping from libadvsor:

        Well said. It might be too late as he is entrenched with those types he spoke badly about during his run for the top office. The free loving public has to speak out and tell the President to reverse course.

  9. Ping from paul faso:

    Welcome to New York where Donald Trump is currently channeling George Steinbrenner.
    This time the big win is not another World Series Championship for The Yankees, but taking the country back.
    Every tactic Steinbrenner used to win is now being deployed by Donald Trump, to include hiring and firing at will, while managing some pretty unsavory characters, but always winning. The “Deep State” asswipes won’t know what hit them, but I know it will be a baseball bat, a mighty 36 Louisville Slugger .

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Huh. Hadn’t noticed a lot of “winning.” But I have heard a hyuge amount of whining out of Trump — about how everyone is failing to get done what he wants done and about how his own hand-selected team members are leaking stuff he doesn’t want to leak and about how his own hand-selected appointees are failing to deliver the things he wants … like supposedly an investigation of Hillary. Such constant whining about how everyone is letting him down isn’t what I’d expect to hear from a winning coach.

      While leaders can hire and fire their team at will, I thought hiring good people was a hallmark of good leadership. Now that Spicey, Bannon and Gorka have resigned (or so they claim), the pool of unsavory characters is getting thicker — i.e., showing a higher ratio of Status-quo Banksters to American Changers.

      I guess “deep state” means the winning is in a deep state of being hidden. That and denial is a river that runs DEEP, and you’re in a deep state of denial. Thanks for being my demo.

      –David

      • Ping from paul faso:

        Hardy in denial, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. This guy’s been in the operating room only 8 months with a patient who has a totally corrupted body politic left festering for over 200 years. Not only does it take time to identify the multiple diseases, but cut it all out without killing the patient. Let the surgery continue, then make your pronouncements.

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          I’m pronouncing the patient dead.

          • Ping from paul faso:

            Great stuff for feeding your head with a belief in your own predictive hunches, hope it works out for you. By the way, the money men at Goldman Sachs ain’t going anywhere no mater who is driving the bus, so including them in the operating equation for any President is not even close to a call, just stating the inevitability of their place at the seat of power. Trump has united the nation by his victory and those dividing it are simply the evidence of what comes from the losers, who are falling to the ground in utter defeat.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              “Great stuff for feeding your head with a belief in your own predictive hunches, hope it works out for you.”

              It already has. It already looks exactly as I thought and said it would.

            • Ping from paul faso:

              I have already expressed many concerns relating to some of Trump’s policies. You may want to go to my profile here at my picture and click on the other comments and articles posted at breibert recently taking on Trump in his Syrian missile strike and by his adopting Bush’s and Obama’s failures in Afghanistan. As to the current financial condition every President must currently face, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 requires repeal by the Congress to advance any meaningful changes. You will please note the link to my proposal to form a class action lawsuit against the Federal Reserve Bank and their conspiring hedge fund partners which goes well beyond Glass Steagall with the enactment of R.I.C.O . While I await review of those items, let me assure you the very things you state, I have been on record to reconcile for many years, as you will read. Nonetheless, while those radical changes to our form of government are being embraced, the assumption that Trump can summarily remedy that situation without law and order prevailing will lead only to a total breakdown. While I am, at times, very critical of this President, I remain a supporter in the belief he knows well, the nation has reached a critical point in time and is about to cross the Rubicon.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              The nation is, indeed, at such a critical point in time, and sadly — from all I am seeing, President Trump is helping it move further into its downfall. With GS reining supreme throughout the halls of government and particularly the White House, and with the anti-establishment people fleeing the White House like it is a sinking ship, I don’t see that Trump is steering the nation away from the rocks.

              It is not that he is doing nothing good anywhere (such as his positive moves with immigration), but I see no sign that he has any intention of reforming the Fed, much less getting rid of it, nor any sign that he is going to reform the banking industry as all his efforts seem to be toward deregulation again, and no sign that we’re going to get anything economically other than a third dose of trickle-down economics that doesn’t ever trickle down IF he can even get congress to do that. No hope at all that anything good happens with Obamacare. No sign that he can even lead his own people! Or even hire the right people for the job!

              I also have seen no sign at all that he is going to build more positive relations with Russia or that he is going to get us into fewer useless wars, given that he is putting the military in charge of most of his government, including the position of staff gatekeeper.

            • Ping from paul faso:

              This was included to express, as I did in my critique of President Trump on the Syrian missile attack, my complete disagreement with Trump’s foreign policy blunders. It does provide, as with others who have supported the Trump Presidency, a way to sway his future actions by calling out his incompetence and unsound rationale. By this constant agitation, he is more inclined to think and act differently that Bush and Obama, who were both played by the same financial and military ghouls surrounding Trump now.
              No one knows exactly the next moves this President will make and no one reads the briefs his receives daily from all the intelligence agencies. On that score, I can only be hopeful they don’t contain the same kind of twisted information Bush used to invade Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction or that Obama was given to take out Libya using NATO.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              Exactly what I am doing in this article — urging Trump’s supporters to see Trump’s leadership incompetence as well as how far he has moved from most of his campaign promises so that his supporters will become his agitators because they are the only ones who MIGHT have the power to steer him a different way simply because he craves their admiration. If he loses them, he’s got no support outside of his family and maybe close friends. And right now, he’s not serving them, and I have no pity for him. He’s serving the military-industrial establishment. He made massive braggadocio claims, and he better live up to his own hype.

              This time, instead of wait and see and let’s give our elected politician a chance to win, we need to be FAR, FAR, FAR more proactive and DEMAND he do as he said he would do. Let him know that the rebellions he’s seeing around America can come from his own supporters, too, if he thinks he can flip-flop on so many of his major campaign promises, most of all if he thinks he can bring the establishment into ever seat of power in the White House. We need to be WAY past giving politicians a chance. If his supporters don’t start to press him extremely hard, Goldman Sach’s wins again. The military complex that did as you say with Bush … wins again.

            • Ping from paul faso:

              Agree with that, with the hope all this pressure will move the needle without the need for his supporters file into the streets, already packed with the opposition rabble.

              Keep banging the drum.

            • Ping from libadvsor:

              already the rumor is Cohen for the FED when there is a true economist from Stanford U. – John Taylor as a top candidate for the post We need not have GS at the helm of monetary policy. Come to think of it, we do not need the FED. US history shows we got rid of a central bank at least once.

    • Ping from libadvsor:

      Mr. Faso – The President is doing the opposite by building a NEW SWAMP superimposed by existing longterm employees of the Fed Govt.

      • Ping from paul faso:

        Suggest you continue with all of the items in this thread and those additional articles I have written addressing your point.
        By now it has become apparent Trump is surrounded by assassins, my hope is that he will draw his blade first, and not become another Caesar.

  10. Ping from Ale Ale:

    Trump saved America by Clintons/Liberal abomination. They wanted to put a man in the lady toilet while Trump want put Man on Mars. Liberals administration supported islam (a religion more dangerous than WW2 Nazims…) and destroyed american roots. Go TRUMP!

  11. Ping from Andrew Rothwell:

    Trump’s a bitch. Jews are never going to let MAGA happen. America is dead.

  12. Ping from GonzoTheBurner:

    Trump is easily swayed by flattery, his whiney kids and turns on people if they get any credit for doing anything. In business you get to be a dictator, “Do what I say or… Your Fired!”, not any experience for president to be honest. I liked candidate Trump, but wasn’t stupid enough to think he would fulfill his campaign promises. Politicians and those that inspire to be politicians are bottom feeders. With the base asleep, he will allow his “team” to kiss his ass while stabbing America in the back. Better than Hillary? Only by a razor thin margin. By 2018, the Deep State will be back at the helm steering us all to the rocky crags that are the consequences of our complacency. Trump may be one term, if the base leaves and the establishment doesn’t get what they want done (fast enough). Republicans/Conservatives only hope to keep Trump (not that that’s so great) is if Democrats continue to be as dysfunctional as they are currently, or more so. Voting no longer means anything for change, hard times are ahead.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      That looks to be the size of it, Gonzo. I’m going to hope to be a small part of stirring up enough anger to kick Trump good and hard in the butt with the slight chance that his egotistical need of adulation will drive him to appease his base; but I think the hardest part in that equation will be stirring the base to get vocally angry with him. In the end, I think your scenario is far more likely. Indeed, a razor-thin margin of difference and of hope that he will step up to the job.

      People who cannot share the credit never impress me as being strong, smart, or confident. The truly confident don’t need the praise of others to know who they are — not that they don’t appreciate it, but that they don’t NEED it. Great leaders build strong teams and empower their teams. They don’t rein by humiliation. When Trump tweets his own appointments to death, he fails to realize one of the most basic principles of leadership: the buck stops with him, as his predecessor, Truman, said. If the appointment is incompetent, that is a failure on his part for making a bad choice in his appointment.

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