One of the early features of Trump 2.0 is that it is nothing like the first version of Trump and nothing like what his adversaries imagined. Despite the evidence that this version of Trump would be different, his antagonists inside and outside the regime were certain he was the guy they imagined. Therefore, his victory was a shock, but they were sure what worked the first time around would work again. The weird silence from regime outposts is due to having been wrong yet again.
This version of Trump is a very different thing from the original version. We are seeing this in the realm of foreign policy where Trump 2.0 has been executing a plan rather than doing battle with the hydra that is the foreign policy community. It turns out that his refusal to have any dealings with the foreign policy community as a candidate, and his decision not to use government resources for the transition, has provided him with the element of surprise upon taking office.
You see that with his initial appointments. Marco Rubio was an out of the blue pick for the State Department. It seems to have been a shock to Rubio as well. Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon is another bolt from the blue. In the case of Rubio, he is an easily controlled lieutenant running an agency in need of radical reform. Hegseth comes to the job with his own radical ideas about reforming the Pentagon. The semi-permanent staff at the top of both agencies are now in a crisis.
Then you have Trump’s peculiar moves regarding the Ukraine war. He appoints Keith Kellogg as his personal envoy on the issue, but Kellogg is in no big hurry to get the ball rolling on Project Ukraine. He initially set up a tour of Europe and meetings with Kiev but then cancelled all of it. Trump has answered some questions about the Ukraine war but has not had any discussions with Europe about it. In fact, no one in the Trump administration has talked to the Europeans about the war.
At the same time, there is a purge underway of certain parts of the foreign policy establishment with some novel tools. For starters, Trump is cleaning house of neocons by assigning them to new positions intended to encourage their departure. This is an old corporate trick. He has frozen spending on just about everything, pending a review of how the money is being spent. Since all of government exists to spend money, it has thrown the usual suspects into a panic.
What this move is aimed at is the shadow foreign policy community that exists outside of government but is funded by government. These are the think tanks and research shops that live off government grants. They are full of former government officials and future government officials. Their job is to prevent whoever is in the White House from changing the direction of foreign policy. It is in the offices of these places that his first impeachment was organized.
These covens of mischief that were prepared to do their old tricks now find themselves in a crisis as their income is frozen and under scrutiny, while at the same time their friends and collaborators are being forced out of government. It is hard to plot the next regime change operation against Trump when you are struggling to make payroll, which is the point of this funding freeze. It is also a clear signal that Trump 2.0 is prepared to deal with these people.
This extends to the thicket of NGO’s, charities and think tanks that operate internationally, in coordination with the shadow government. Trump had Rubio freeze all work at these operations by freezing their money. The people who make regime change possible through their color revolution schemes are now starved of cash. If they cannot pay “independent media” and “opposition leaders” then those entities cannot organize “spontaneous” rallies against the government.
What Trump 2.0 is doing is attacking the vast shadow government that has evolved to be resistant to electoral politics. The Kagan family, for example, have plied their trade regardless of who is in the White House. They were able to do this because so much of what ends up as a foreign policy item on the president’s agenda is created by entities operating outside of government. Victoria did not retire when she quit the State Department. She continues her work in the shadow government.
Foreign policy is just one example. The chaos of immigration is due in large part to the vast network of not-for-profit entities that make millions facilitating the wholesale abrogation of immigration laws. These entities survive on grants from the government, much in the same way we see with foreign policy. The freeze and review of these programs is part of bringing them to heel. When J.D. Vance mentioned Catholic Charities role in immigration, it was a deliberate warning.
This is why the media response to Trump 2.0 has been so weird. Much of what they produce is handed to them by this thicket of extra-government entities who shape the media narratives around public policy. That extra government ecosystem now finds itself under direct assault by a new administration that did its homework and is now executing a plan of attack on that ecosystem. Compounding it is the fact that the donor class seems to be backing the Trump plan.
What has happened over the last several decades is that the official government of the United States was enveloped by this vast collection of extra-government entities that produce good jobs at good wages for the managerial elite. Since the number of government posts is small, relative to the number of credentialed people who think they deserve them, this network of entities has grown to serve an ever-growing collection of people who cycle in and out of government.
Since these people not only think they deserve the plumb assignments, but they think they know better than the voters and their politicians, the result has been a slow shifting of policy outside of official government into this shadow government. Foreign policy is most obvious, but this process has happened everywhere. No one can say who banned normal light bulbs, for example, because the policy bubbled up from the network of extra-government entities of environmentalism.
It remains to be seen if the Trump effort to defang this shadow government will succeed, but it helps that he has support from economic elites. The shadow government does not live only on government handouts. It also thrives by selling indulgences to powerful people and business sectors. Having friends in the shadow government is better than having friends in politics, because politicians come and go, but the shadow government is permanent.
One reason for the swing to the side of Trump by the economic elites could be that they have grown frustrated with this arrangement. People who think they are smarter than the voters are going to think they are smarter than the donors. Like a business run into the ground by management, the large shareholders are now stepping in with the support of the small shareholders, to clear out old management. Trump is like the old greenmailers; except this time the target is Washington.
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Trump’s 2nd major pitch to his base (his first is that he is Donald Trump and everyone else is not) was that he understood how DC worked after his first term and had a plan to fix the problem. None of his enemies really believed that, because they think he is stupid and just wanted to be President to “enrich himself” or something (which makes no sense, because he’s already rich and the feds would have been happy to let him slink away in silence to Mar-a-Lago after the 2020 color revolution). Obviously they were clearly wrong as this as… Read more »
I’ve never understood where the, “Trump is stupid,” meme came from.
Certainly, he does often speak in a brusque, salt-of-the-earth manner.
However, one doesn’t become a billionaire, international real estate mogul, and international celebrity for over four decades without a high level of intelligence.
On the flip side, I’ve said for years that all these liberal arts degrees are based on nothing more than four years of worthless word salad in the communist indoctrination camps called, “universities.”
“I’ve never understood where the, “Trump is stupid,” meme came from.”
Dunning-Kruger.
I’d be surprised if Trump’s IQ is below 150.
There are people who rate him that high via questionable logic and analysis, but I doubt it. He is however, not a dullard. I’d say he was, at his prime and given his Wharton School experience, around 130 give or take 5 points. However, that was then, this is now. As you enter into your 60’s and 70’s (Trump is late 70’s) your IQ declines. “Fluid” as early as late 20’s and “concrete” into the late 60’s. Fluid intelligence can crudely be interpreted as putting together facts and ideas into new forms to create discovery. Concrete intelligence the accumulation of… Read more »
The subjects of his IQ or personal morality don’t interest me in the slightest. What I find fascinating are his drive and resilience. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have literal nation states pulling all the stops to destroy me and pick me apart. I find myself needing naps after a hard day of yard work… and I’m a quarter century younger. Is he just “built that way”? Does narcissism make him immune to the tidal waves of attacks? Ego? Beyond my ken.
Some people just seem to be born with more energy than the rest of us. I’ve observed this all my life. And it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the outward appearance of physical fitness.
‘As you enter into your 60’s and 70’s (Trump is late 70’s) your IQ declines’
Hey. Hey! Hey!
I don’t know if it declines, I just think you don’t have tolerance for stupidities. Who’s going to sit and focus on some IQ test at my age? I have better things to do.
Exactly! (clicks away from online IQ test)
You and Ray may be the exceptions via the reasons cited, but there are many studies which confirm this in different ways. As always, the comments are made to reflect the average person or normative exemplar. There are exceptions or outliers to most any finding such as this. You get old, your thinking skills as measured by most IQ tests diminish. If for nothing else, they are usually timed scores on tests. Hence the comment of “sleeping on it” for a better decision making process. Then of course, there is the aspect of wisdom, which comes from age and experience.… Read more »
I’m not following you.
Methodical decision-making isn’t a function of cognitive decline, it’s a result of sobriety.
The rapidity with which Trump responds to new information reminds me a lot of my dad. Though not the impulsiveness. I’d bump your estimate 10 points. 150? Hard to know. The smartest guy I ever knew told me he saw how little reasoning ability most people would have to have to match him. He just could not accept that it was an unbridgeable gap. It just looked to easy to him.
3 points each decade after hitting 40. That likely refers to the “fluid” while the “concrete” intelligence remains the same (until doddering time). You know what you know and struggle to learn what you don’t.
There’s no chance it is. It’s out of fashion now, but nerds on the internet used to point out, over and over again, that to a genius (in IQ terms), the typical midwit—a respectably credentialed professional or Job Creator™—is likely to seem literally retarded. “To the physicist, the chemist appears to have Down syndrome.” Stuff like that. It’s not quite true. Actual idiots have outbursts of insight and some difficultly learned wisdom about everyday life. The above-average never do. When they think they do, they’re repeating something they don’t understand. They’re truly stupid. Trump is one of very few present-day… Read more »
“I remember the good students at school complaining that it was too hard to read.” Today’s students find a restaurant menu too hard to read. That’s because no one reads any more. When I was in HS, we had to read Shakespeare’s plays. Reading—difficult reading—requires not only IQ, but practice. In the modern era of electronic devices and ubiquitous media, no one reads. Most likely because it takes too long and we only have 15 minute concentration intervals—but also we have a huge influx of non English speakers as well. It’s been shown that multilingualism in the home is an obstacle to… Read more »
“Certainly, he does often speak in a brusque, salt-of-the-earth manner.” Here’s the thing. I am a [Big City Hard Accent-ville], not from [Uptown part of said City]. I can slip into the ‘tongue’ of my youth easily, when I want to. Based on the audience. I can also step out of it, just as easily. So, dealing with some weakling neu-male, say, no accent. Or maybe, to make them release urine into their Depends, hard accent. On an everyday basis, nice soft tones. Who is to say Trump is not at least as verbally equipped as nobody little old me?… Read more »
Who was the last GOP president whom the left didn’t denounce as dumb? Nixon? He seems to be the exception, because before him they said Ike was dumb.
Concomitantly, JFK made Copernicus look like a moron, and Carter could have whupped Hegel in a battle of wits with his parietal lobe tied behind his back.
Folks, this is called subtle wit…for those voting down.
I upvooted. Do I win?
Same thing with Musk. I’ve seen him called an “idiot” who has “failed upwards,” but the people saying that don’t seem to be producing best-selling cars or reusable rockets.
This is just “spoiled grapes” talking. There are variations of Musk hate throughout the Internet. Seems all successful people attract haters. Musk’s history in the tech field belies such idiocy. He was a genius when he arrived in the US and has been successful in any number of tech endeavors, which illustrates his abilities. He is however a dreamer and often out of touch with reality (MHO) with some of his outlandish ideas. That’s fine. We need those people as well. As long as he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is…
Z has talked about this before. It’s about whether or not you adhere to the official state religion of liberal democracy and progressivism. There is a whole set of beliefs and speech that comes with it, and it is constantly evolving. It is why say the entire liberal establishment got on board with transgenderism at the same time, or all of the sudden became ardent defenders of “our sacred democracy.” They believe anyone who doesn’t go along with this is stupid, quite frankly. Well, stupid or a con man, because that’s the only possible way someone could not believe in… Read more »
nothing more insufferable than the verbiage used in a college syllabus
I work for a big company, where a kweer social worker gave a poof Power Point, get us all in line I suppose. This was 4-5 years ago. I was not alone in disliking the kweer, but thought it good politics to thank him specifically for the gay rights glossary. My thanking the kweer for the glossary offended him.
Probably behind the scenes that woman what’s her name has a great deal to do with this.
My impression is that she has been around the block, knows how DC functions, and where the bodies are buried.
Susie Wiles? Yea. She’s been around for a long time. Much better than that RNC turd Reince Priebus who was his CoS in his first term.
The Floridian Wiles apparently being so effective is causing me to get a little bit optimistic about the Floridian Bondi, a longtime associate of Wiles, who I hear was pushed by Wiles for the AG job. So far we’ve heard very little from Bondi, but perhaps when we do, it will be significant. I really should know better than to get my hopes up.
Women politicians, no matter how ‘conservative’, are still women.
While that’s certainly true, Reince Preibus, Jeff Sessions, and John Kelly are men. I could keep going.
This is so. All the more reason not to make the situation even worse.
I wonder if Reince Preibus’ middle name is Reify?
True, but I’d vote today for Jeane Kirkpatrick for president.
Long rant incoming, buckle up— Those type of people you describe as the “international development” Reddit cry baby are absolutely legion in the DC area and its surrounding swampy suburbs. Armies of paper pushers, NGO do nothings, feckless bureaucrats, all of it. Being that I am sadly ‘from’ the swamp though certainly not OF the swamp I know at least 4 Nice White Ladies (NWLs) who fall squarely in this camp. All highly educated middle aged women. The kind that proudly put their “no human is illegal, hate has no home here, and BLM” signs in their yard. The all… Read more »
‘He came first as the Lamb, he comes now as the Lion. Better late than never…’ Yeah baby! Make a straight road for the Lord! ‘Basically, groups of young and middle aged liberal white women who have never known a day of hardship in their lives whose feet have never touched the ground in some cases turning their natural mothering instincts and altruism outwards to black and brown aliens who care nothing about them in return’ This right here runs your nation, and the DNC. This is what you must jettison, the fetid heart of the Swampbeest. Yes, it will… Read more »
Apex Predator on a rant…it just doesn’t get any better than this!
I saw that 400 contract workers were laid off from USAID today.
It really was always this simple, huh? Conservacucks spent years talking about shrinking the government with complicated tax plans, entitlement reforms, and things like this and never getting it done… While the right answer was always “just freeze the money lmao”
Spot on analysis. What Trump is doing, or trying to do, at the Federal level needs to be done at every level of government, education and private business. Making the country work again – where we will lead tech, our planes fly without falling apart and fires are successfully fraught – will require major overhaul not just saner hiring practices. Most organizations of any type are no longer about what they were originally designed to do, they are just jobs programs and an opportunity for useless people to push pet agendas. The mess in LA with the fire is a… Read more »
‘In China they still get smart men together to tackle an issue. We used to do that but seldom do so anymore’
The country has tanked since the strong independent women took everything over. The nation not only fails to use its most potent resource boys and men — it disenfranchises and demeans them, then crows about its morality and righteousness, and far-seeing wisdom.
The solution is obvious, but unpopular. For now.
MXGA = GWOOX. Make X great again means “get women out of X”. That’s the brutal truth no one wants to admit. As long as it’s getting done it’s not so important to say it out loud but doing so would encourage and empower those who’ve tried everything else.
Women have proven to be far more adept at destroying than building. It used to be that the greatest source of untapped talent were working class and poor white males. Now middle class males have joined them.
Alas, white men are obsessed with making women happy more so than any other group of men on the planet. Women despise men who try hard to please them thus the destruction of white countries.
This is all music to my ears. This is a major chunk of what some of us call “the deep state” — the part that is under water and is not as easy to discern as the visible part of the iceberg. Let me sing hosanas in praise of Trump.
On a side note, let me also comment that this time around Trump seems to be a quieter, more subdued, and more deliberate man. This is not the Trump of eight years ago.
Trump-45 is vastly better than Trump-47. He seeks revenge. No more Mister Nice Guy.
Well, they *did* shoot the guy.
Trump seems keenly aware that every moment of 47 is precious.
The current joke is that God rested on the 7th day. Trump is on the 10th day and hasn’t stopped.
Reprisals, not reconciliation.
Perhaps, but I’m charitable wrt Trump. He’s learned that there are *no* friends in the swamp call Washington DC so he brought along his own friends. Once he assembled his team, he was freed from 90% of the BS he attempted to navigate (make deals with) first term. No more “mister nice guy” doe not equate (to me) as vindictive. He simply has no need for what we term as “the swamp”. He’s not a politician and suffering fools was never his claim to fame. Quite the opposite.
I’m not saying that is his policy; I’m saying I hope it is.
Just for clarity, 47 is vastly better than 45, which is your clearly point.
Of course. I got it backwards. Thanks for the correction.
I meant to say, “Trump-47 is vastly better than Trump-45.”
The Academy, especially the Ivy League and the Eastern government-prep private institutions, are another hyrda-head Trump must attack.
That’ll be a chore because much of intel and finance derive from there. The venerable money, the Atlantic secret cliques, dug in as deep as the country is old.
I agree, but as we saw with their response to the pro-Palestine protests, the threat of loss of funds has a huge impact on Ivies. No one is more aware of the deadweight there than the admins.
FedGov could pretty much starve academia–including putatively private institutions–if it chose to. Disbanding federally subsidized student loan programs, alone, would be a torpedo amidships the USS Indoctrination.
Agreed. But to put a finer point on it, the torpedo is not that students would no longer be subsidized, but that tuition inflation would no longer increase at twice the rate of inflation. The subsidies do not help the student, but flow directly through to the college administrations.
Those subsidized tuitions mean a gated enclave on one side, indentured servitude on the other. That is, they serve the ruling class.
Meh. So long as I can fire his butt, why should I care whether he’s the product of a gated enclave? If he can do the job I hired him for, so what? Why is that any more than his and my business?
I’d have advised him to take a compromise position—between bootstrap crap and “leftist” demands for free loans (welfare for bankers)—of outlawing all tuition and student fees.
Get your money from graduates, not from victims—and from all that important “research” you’re doing.
Or spend the endowment.
Sorry, invest it.
This is the best way to attack the University Leftist monolith, starve it of students. This will be difficult. The loan system is interpreted as promoting higher education and its “golden ticket” to success in our economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Somehow that fact has to be accepted before radical change to the program will be accepted. It’s not just the national budget that’s at stake, it’s the very essence of the advanced educational system that’s at stake. As standards decline to allow students of “average” intellect admission, the graduation of worthless, mediocre degree holders increases. This… Read more »
Average students get into the Ivies, Chicago, Berkeley and Stanford. Drooling cretins make up the student body everywhere else. (-;
When my parents dropped me off for my first year of college i was going on about how it was a paper aristocracy, that was at 18 and my mind hasn’t changed one bit. 90% of people who go to college do not belong in college.
I’m not understanding. If you were so opposed, why bother turning in applications? Why waste a few years where there are people who simply do not belong there?
From an overproduction of elites to an overproduction of fops and macaroons.
Excellent and concise summary of the problem.
The WSJ is worried that reading scores in grade schools are declining. My guess is the graph they use to illustrate the decline would correlate perfectly with the decreasing percent of white students.
There’s a part of me that hopes President Trump steps back from the Ukrainian conflict and says “F-that. It’s not an American problem so let the Europeans deal with it.” To which I would say “Bravo!” No US funding to Ukraine. No US weapons. Nothing. Our Eurocrats are the dumbest bunch of know nothings that have only mismanaged Europe to make it’s citizens poorer for decades. Always expecting America to provide ‘free’ security and solve all their military conflicts (Bosnia). But happily spending billions of tax payers Euros on failed social programs, exporting billions to various 3rd world countries while… Read more »
The US caused the conflict in Ukraine, so it would be nice if it ended it too. But stopping the flow of money and weapons to Ukraine would be better than nothing.
Ukraine has been trying to join NATO since @2004. The Midget leader said he never intended to abide by the “Minsk Agreement”. My thought was, you need to learn to speak Russian. NATO in Ukraine has always been a hard red line for Russia, rightly so IMO. This war is on Ukraine. They stupidly allowed themselves to be used as a way for the MIC to make a little profit and launder some money. If the US said; “If NATO allows Ukraine to join, the United States will immediately withdraw from NATO” there would not likely be a war now.… Read more »
“The Midget leader said he never intended to abide by the ‘Minsk Agreement’.”
Angela Merkel has publicly said this too
Macron said the same as Merkel.
But the Blackberry Fruitcake Empire has long wanted the Ukraine in NATO. It’s part of the general strategy to subjugate and engulf Russia.
“But the Blackberry Fruitcake Empire has long wanted the Ukraine in NATO.”
Parts of the BFE, yes.
Ukraine does not have the ability to act independently. To say that “this war is on Ukraine” is like blaming a child. Europe in general has very limited abilities to act independently, because all countries there are vassals of the US, though not as pathetic as the Ukraine.
US is a vassal of somebody else (Zelensky’s tribe), but we all know that.
Nonsense. Zelensky chose, of his own free will, to have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed. That’s on him, no matter how much you might like to lay the blame elsewhere.
He accepted the houses, the villas, the cars, the bank accounts, etc., in exchange for setting all those people up to get killed. Don’t ignore his culpability. All he had to do is say, “No.” Vicky would have probably have had him killed, yes, but at least he would have died without having betrayed his countrymen.
The European political class is in far worse shape than the American political class. The main reason is politics in Europe has evolved to reward those who are best at currying favor with Washington, especially through the various extranational entities. I suspect one reason the Trump admin has frozen out the EU ladies is to encourage national politicians to take the initiative. As far as Ukraine, the key to making a deal is the willingness to walk away from the deal entirely. This is fundamental. If there is no deal you want, then do not waste your time. Right now,… Read more »
It sounds like the Russians want a complete overhaul to the security framework in Europe, not just a band aid for Ukraine. I doubt Trump and the EU are up for that.
Maybe not the EU. Trump however is on record repeatedly as seeing Europe as freeloaders when it comes to military spending. He’s not wrong either.
He’s right about that, but I doubt Trump would be willing to change the entire security structure of Europe.
Depends on what he knows and thinks and, unfortunately, we can only guess at that b/c he publicly trolls everybody all the time, and one never knows what he might mean. AND he is not the same Trump now that he was in 2017, as ZMan has pointed out.
If anything, Europe would improve if it had it’s present security stucture stripped away along with the EU
The only insecurity Europe faces is its ongoing mass migrant invasions. Nothing else matters anymore.
Trump’s envoy General Kellogg canceled a trip to the EU and Ukraine in the last few days. I wonder if Trump is planning to abandon a problem in Ukraine, by resolving larger issues engulfing the world?
Yeah, he just wants out of that mess.
If Trump is not funding Ukraine at all, or as seems certain far less than Biden numbers, that is a stategy all it’s own to bring results allowing Trump to step in and essentially end the war.
“Russia is not an expansionist empire”. at the moment. but they very much were, within living memory.
The US is an expansionist Empire right now, hence the “GAE” moniker.
“First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (H/T Jesus Christ) And all that innit??
Don’t kid yourself. They still are.
Not long ago I lived 30 kilometers from the Nicaraguan border. In recent years Russia has settled a significant military presence there.
Russia sleeps with some very evil dogs.
so are the down votes because you are ignorant of history? do you think what i commented is inaccurate? this kind of doctrinaire behavior is so limiting to the individual exhibiting it. guess there are (at least) seven imbeciles commenting here…
“American neocons”
(((American Neocons))) are not American in any sense other than paperwork. They shouldn’t be here at all, let alone in government making their ancient ethnic enemies our enemies. Russia ain’t the Soviet Union. I have nothing against them. No American has any reason to hate or fear Russia. Granted, they ain’t my people either, but not being my people is not a reason to hate them. We should be closely allied with them along with the rest of Europe.
Agreed. They are not looking for a handout, that puts them in the better as friends camp.
I had a roommate during college years, a jewish female raised in SoCal. Like many at that age she was exploring her “roots”. We were chatting one day talking about our class loads. I mentioned one of my better courses was a Ancient Rome class and she lost her ever-lovin mind. Scree in Valley Girl accent. Damned the whole thing from formation to collapse with no recognition of nuance. 2000 year-old beef. These people are built different.
They have these ancient grievances drilled into them nonstop from a very early age by their parents, extended families, their rabbis and yeshiva schools.
If NATO is nothing more than an appendage of the GAE and Russia’s goal is to keep Ukraine out of NATO and non-aligned/neutral, the how does the USA stay out of this conflict wrt any peace negotiations? Would any negotiations short of terms of surrender by Ukraine be possible?
Russia *requires* (1) a demilitarized Ukraine; (2) a permanently neutral Ukraine (meaning permanently neutral *and* not in NATO); (3) a de-Nazified Ukraine; (4) a settlement of “the Odessa question” (and they *might* be willing to let that remain in the Ukraine…or maybe not; that might be negotiable, but I am only guessing; and (5) the *total* withdrawal of *all* NATO forces from Russia’s frontiers, *esp.* Finland and the three Baltic States but also Moldova/Moldavia; and this ignores the fact that Norway has a frontier with Russia. None of these requirements is negotiable. And sooner now rather than later, Russia will… Read more »
WillS’s “If NATO allows Ukraine to join, the United States will immediately withdraw from NATO” is unilateral action, that is undoubtedly the best place for a Commander-in-Chief to start. Let the EU fund NATO.
What to do with the soldiers? Posse Commitatus means no military action against Americans citizens on American soil; but then, they won’t be acting against American citizens, but on foreign interlopers.
Federal aid to state and local LEOs working in conjunction with military providing the extra muscle for ICE. Kristi Noem has said her job is a complete reversal of Mayorkas’ subversion.
Anything that can dent the corruption that IS the US government is a damned welcome event. It’s hard not to be at least cautiously optimistic. Best of luck, Trumpinator.
I hope that right now Trump administration people are pouring over and finding tangible records of egregious misdeeds. I thought that the top thing a Trump administration could do if it were dead serious would be to run its own media campaign from the White House that makes FDR’s old Fireside Chats seem small and disorganized. Imagine a White House podcast/webcast every night or every other night that detailed how this shadow government works. On the immigration bit you have the receipts of HIAS, Catholic and Lutheran charities and every ridiculous NGO on the payroll to fund and carry out… Read more »
He already launched that effort. Check later part of this video, where he mentions about trump giving press passes to blogs, podcasts and so on –
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=woO66rQMo5I
I’m pretty sure that initiative was prompted by Barron, who seems to have brought his father’s excellent instincts to the age of modern alt-media.
I don’t think this is it. It is a great thing to build a new castle or to bring it in and give it succor.
I am talking about distributing these from the White House. The breadth of reach would be beyond the echo chambers. The guy who senses something out there is really wrong needs to be shown exactly what it is.
But who will think of the poor, poor cartels?
Or of the impoverished politicians they pay?
*insert Selena Gomez sobbing here*
Brilliant post. Great ideas. The fireside chat idea is perfect!
Two rallies in the first week, several press conferences, impromptu press questions, gaggles with the press in AF1. I am liking the high level of communication and openness.
He is Presiding like a Boss.
Make them once a week, not daily. Use the energy of public anticipation to heighten impact.
Even his enemies would tune in.
Better that the Trump admin do the real work of transforming the federal government, and leave the podcasts to outsiders.
“Were he to do that, post-America might have a chance at becoming New America.”
New America will be a non-white country unless there are mass deportations of American citizens. I don’t see how you do this without breaking the constitution but then maybe that’s the final threshold. I don’t think Trump has the inclination to do this,or the time, so then the question is who will?
Baby steps. Cancelling Affirmative Action and DIE are the first of many steps in recovering freedom of association. People had to be conditioned to abandon FoA, they will have to be conditioned to re-assert it.
Going full mustache man right out the gate will spook them and you will never get there.
Indeed. Foolish to mimic the Left’s hubris and impulsive recklessness.
“Going full mustache man right out the gate will spook them.”
Exactly, so it’s going to take more than 4 years and you start to think about post-Trump. I mean, enjoy the present iconoclastic Trump and his adventures but…
I don’t think JD Vance is the man to take things to the next level. He operates within the boundaries established by better men.
He also has an H1b wife. And what will the midterms bring? Trump is not very likely to deliver on his economic promises because that area is fraught with “land mines.” The Executive Branch does not hold the purse strings. And the Congress is *not* going to stop spending, and the President does not have a line-item veto, although Trump, I believe, would not hesitate at this stage of the game to veto entire budgets since he is a lame duck now. And if he is truly serious about these tariffs, that will blow up in his face. The carrot… Read more »
You are right, he cannot keep all his economic promises because they are contradictory. Booming stock market requires low interest rates, but that also causes more generalized inflation. And inflation will get worse that much faster the more they try to hold down rates.
The Fed just got too greedy. Had they contented themselves with being deca-millionaires, they could have done so without noticeable consumer inflation. But then Congress said, “Hold my beer.”
Agreed on tariff. Hope they are foreign policy sticks.
Yes. He also cannot keep his mass deportation slow/stop immigration promises. He wants a booming economy which means more jobs and with data centers and energy that means construction and heavy industry. He’ll have to induce professionals to change careers to blue collar or he will have to force it through mass cuts to welfare and castle burning of the Dem patronage networks. That would be great. Will he do it? Will NGO attorneys and “journalists” go build data centers and operate LNG industry jobs? If they have no other choice yes. That would be ideal. I wouldn’t count on… Read more »
Worrying about inflation rates? The stock market? GDP?
Jeez, people, what is the price we are willing to pay? I mean, we’re going to be sh*t-canned either way, so let’s accept the conditions we have and keep moving.
We don’t have to be willing to pay anything other than enough fuel to run the wood chippers. I’d suggest chaining multiple barges together, then point multiple chippers port and starboard to optimize the path through the north Atlantic.
I did not downvote, largely because I think most people also believe that it will require hordes of basic workers to improve “the economy”. Trump might even be among them, though I doubt it.
It does not. But until a sufficient number of us understand that, the “only” answer is migrants.
True, but one thing that must happen is that steps must be taken to make sure whatever is done, cannot be undone by the left when they get back in. Otherwise, this is all academic.
I’m surprised he moved against the Kagan cult, seeing as how his campaign was underwritten by Adelsons widow.
“…cannot be undone by the left…”
Which means what, precisely,? The left does not care one whit about laws. It doesn’t care about the Constitution. Short of wood chippers, I don’t think there is anything you can do to stop the left from undoing things.
The correct answer is “the people themselves/ourselves,” because you are right in what you say.
And this *must* happen–shall happen–most likely surrounding the 2032 election cycle, if only b/c so many normies still believe in voting. The way things are going, I’d not be surprised if it turned out to be the “blue” states that seceded.
Expatriating/repatriating the non-American population (post-1965 arrivals) will be done locally wherever it is done.
One bridge at a time, bunions. The f**ktards have handed us messes we can’t fix, but remember, White Man does one thing best…the impossible.
No more Mister Nice Guy. Trump-45 was too nice, too trusting – always willing to compromise. He was rewarded with insults, slander, massive disrespect, Special Prosecutors, two impeachments, bogus law-fare, and two close assassination attempts. They even called him another Hitler, not just once, but a million times. And yet by some miracle, he survived and returned to office.
Now Trump-47 gets his revenge. I hope it continues and accelerates for the next 4 years. The commies deserve it.
“But Vance, but Usha,” they cry, as if all our fortunes depended on one minor actor and what might happen.
Nah. Nah. What happens is what you make happen. This is a goshdamn movement, not a person.
Right. Almost everyone thinks themselves just flotsam, going wherever the currents will. Just man up. Most of us won’t make a difference at the national level, but all of us can make a difference locally.
Whine or work to fix it. Whatever floats your boat.
The best indicator that Trump is well and truly pissed is to be found in Melania’s facial expressions. She looks like a Red Sparrow hiding 3 shivs and a mace under her skirt. Trump is taking personal now and DC is scared shitless. Yes, Trump is trying to save the country, but that is his second priority.
I noticed Melania too. Also the flat-hat from before, the one that hid her eyes. She’s a WH tea-leaf.
“No one can say who banned normal light bulbs, for example, because the policy bubbled up from the network of extra-government entities of environmentalism.”
I thought this last night while listening to the new press secretary (who is a real pistol by the way) pointing out we were about to send $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza. Who came up with this idea, and who approved it? We will never know.
She made my day when she answered the birthright citizenship question by confidently asserting that if an illegal immigrant gets into the country and has a baby here, that doesn’t subject the baby to U.S. jurisdiction. She’d have done better had she included *legal* immigrants as well, but, “baby steps,” no pun intended.
Trump should consider Riley Gaines to replace her in the event something or other causes her to resign before his term is up.
It made my day when she said every illegal is a criminal. That is a big shift to the Overton Window.
The laser-like focus on *illegal* immigrants when it comes to “birthright citizenship” is a huge mistake! Illegal immigrants are of course criminals, by definition, but we’re talking about “birthright citizenship” here, not the criminality of foreign and/or alien parents of American-born children belonging thereto. When Senator Howard (R MI) explained how section I of the fourteenth amendment would work and be applied going forward, when he introduced Section I to the full (39th) Congress, he explicitly *excluded* legal and illegal immigrant children alike, from qualification. …
Funny how speaking the bloody obvious became such a taboo in AINO. Of course they’re criminals!
She’s Boss (Ref: American Graffiti)
The official story Republican shills have been given is that the condom supply was an arms deal between Hamas and institutional American antisemitism. You see, the Palestinians use the goat-skin condoms we send them—you’d think for standard lefty NGO population control and buttsex-facilitation reasons, but no!—to float bombs into Israel. Surely you remember this happening. It is alarming that American Zionism and its conspiracy theories are becoming so strongly sex-themed. That’s how “antifascism,” now the state religion of the West, got its first real emotional foothold—in pornography. The fantasy of exploding pagers blowing off Arab testicles may have been a… Read more »
Curiouser and curiouser.
May Trump’s war on these bloodsuckers continue for 4 years!…but I am concerned about Trump’s seemingly half hearted promotion of the RFK nomination…If RFK loses this battle, it will be a sign that the old and highly corrupt DC establishment is winning….
And Big Pharma. And Ag. And….
Bobby Jr & the V@xxpocalypse are all that matter anymore.
Everything else is just window dressing.
Keep your family Pureblooded.
Stay the hell away from the Pediatricians & the Providers.
Eat organic.
Drink well water.
Bust your ass to find neighbors with Pureblooded children whom your own Pureblooded children can marry and thereby produce Pureblooded grandchildren for you.
Nothing else matters.
Your family is either Pureblooded, or else your family has already joined The Walking Dead.
When I lived in Arlington, Virginia, two of my neighbors were grant writers. We didn’t talk shop much, but they noted that it was part skill in writing the grant requests and part networking. One worked for an environmental NGO, the other for some political NGO. Both did well.
I remember being a bit surprised to learn that the grants were from both the govt and private individuals/corporations/organizations. I just thought that these organizations were funded privately.
What is the difference between a grant writer and the guy who begs for money at red lights? The latter seems like a more honest and honorable profession. Arlington, Virginia is a really nice place to live. The idea that somebody can live in a place like that solely because they are good at begging for money should be mind-blowing. The amount of grant requests the vast majority of people in the private sector have written in their lives is zero. It’s not a real skill. But if you say the right things and support the GAE regime, you too… Read more »
Related to this, it is only in recent decades (say post-1970) that the DC area has become the highest income metropolitan area in the US. I recall looking at this post-2010 census, and the DC area boasted 13 of the 20 highest income counties in the US, and I suspect this has advanced further in the 2020 census. This concentration of wealth around the Imperial Capital is a recent phenomenon, shifting wealth away from places that used to produce things (e.g., Detroit). Most of these wealth-siphoners around DC richly deserve to be re-educated through hard labor. Deep down they know… Read more »
The fact that the wealth can be plotted geographically tells us all we need to know. Little cancers thriving around a noxious queen. Poison satellites. Wormtongues beside the throne.
Wealth has always congregated. What’s new is its congregatation around Nineveh-on-Potomac.
Regardlass, I upvoted you for the poetic imagery.
I agree. I’m simply pointing out an anecdote showing how big an industry it is. I mean, two people out maybe ten neighbors in the grant writing business. That’s insane.
However, I would disagree that it’s not a real skill. There are good and bad grants writers – and those good grant writers brought in millions to their organizations. You and I can hate that all of it exists, but it was a skill – a skill used for evil but still a skill.
Hence the old saw “more people live off cancer than die from it”
Beggers have skillsets, too, and there is a hierarchy based on who knows the best way to capitalize on pity and fear. Grant applicants have a similar skillset, which in large part is knowing (a) what The Current Thing is and (b) how various agencies want to respond to The Current Thing. Academia led the way here, and note that even in the provinces the digs around colleges and universities are quite nice.
The Indians who work at scam call centers in New Delhi have a skill too. The question is if the juice is worth the squeeze. The federal beast extracts money from the rest of the country to give its adherents a comfortable and luxurious life that is virtually unattainable for those who aren’t part of it. It gets even worse too, now they take the community they just finished hollowing out and decided to fill it with Haitian migrants who eat your dog.
To be clear, that wasn’t praise from me. Serial killers also have skillsets. I do see the grant scam more as a symptom than as the disease, though.
Similar to the smart kids who went to the financial industry and gutted the country for a nice little return. Skilled and smart, not praise worthy by any decent knowledgeable person.
“The Indians who work at scam call centers in New Delhi have a skill too.”
Ain’t it the truth! It’s uncanny how they know exactly when I sit down to dinner!
I’ve take to lying (Forgive me father for I have sinned) Como? Como? Mi siento, no hablo ingles. Click
I know it will be an unpopular thought, but has anyone considered how these (and others) might be turned to our advantage? A force is bad only if it is focused in a direction you do not want.
I met a couple in their mid 30s in L.A., their business was setting people up in NGOs. They did dozens every year, since a nonprofit by law only need spend 3% of its money received on whatever cause or project it headlined.
They worked from home, from their $2.5 million dollar home
(2007 prices)
The hybrid public/private grant was the direct result of the Con, Inc.-ballyhooed “return to federalism” that began as far back as Nixon. It predictably became a way to avoid political scrutiny. The skillset basically is legalized fraud. Grant writing is the middleman writ large. The public funds, which always become the bulk, are syphoned off in the most creative ways imaginable.
Sure, it was insane. But once it got started, it became a self-perpetuating machine. Politicians and bureaucrats authorized the funding and then went to work for those NGOs. Rinse and repeat.
The template was perfected in colleges and universities. Identification of (a) The Current Thing and (b) how government agencies and corporations wish to respond to The Current Thing can make it rain. My best mate currently is winding down a project to examine the impact of DEI on X Ivy and has been floating AI-related grant proposals for several years. He’s shameless and very successful and privately ridicules those who pony up the funding. Cynicism is quite helpful.
Yeah, you’d actually be more effective if you were cynical. Both the people I knew were true believers. Btw, one of them was a conservative, though, admittedly, in the Con Inc sense.
Indeed, grant writing is now a profession, mostly occupied by fringe academics…We had one living around here for a while writing grant applications for the University of Arizona…What does that say about our highly bureaucratized society?
Yep. Both grant writers had at least a master’s degree. Neither started as a grant writer. They got jobs out of college with an NGO doing whatever they studied but started to help out writing grants for their area. As those grants succeeded, the NGO started having them write more until it was a full-time job. Btw, neither worked for their original NGO. They were hired guns at that point, a valuable commodity. Also, it wasn’t just writing grants. They’d need to go to conferences or to various other organizations to suck up to donors or govt agencies, so they… Read more »
U of A is a top 20 research institution. Basically that means that faculty are charged to produce grants rather than teach students—especially in the sciences. The third leg of the triad is community service, but that is often an after thought or left to others who don’t write grants in the “soft” sciences. If you are a faculty member in the sciences, the goodies used in your research are obtained via government/private grants. That includes your tenure if you are lucky enough to secure one of those slots. The aspect of government grants as a source of university funding… Read more »
Those two former acquaintances for yours are social parasites. They are deadwood. They need to be cleared out.
I don’t disagree. I’m simply telling what it looks like on the ground. For those of us in the DC area, we see the day to day life of the managerial class. Z writes about it all the time. These are people with kids, mortgages and holiday parties.
If you’re going to defeat an enemy, you should understand them.
Yes. The two you described, as is my bestie, are symptoms and not the disease.
Agreed. But the fact that they have that life of relative comfort and normalcy is a weakness. They can’t really fight a guy like Trump who comes in and uses his authority to shut down their gravy train. He’s already put them on the clock. They can’t wait until President Kamala comes in 2029 (lol). They can only go so long without being forced to do something else, and that time frame is a lot shorter than it may seem. Even if the gravy train gets set back up again, they have learned their position is far more precarious than… Read more »
“If you’re going to defeat an enemy, you should understand them.”
It’s ok to use “him” instead of the pretend-common-gender pronoun “them.” OK not just here; you should do it everywhere and always. We must reclaim our language and her proper grammar from the semi-literate Commie mobs.
Probably better to use “her.”
One was a female and one was a male.
This ties into the green door post on AI. Thanks to technology, the oligarchs can now envision a world where they are not dependent on the managerial class to work their will, and thus do not have to share power with them. Bureaucrats will become as unnecessary as H1b coders or migrant farm workers.
The problem is, so will everybody else.
Nah, it’s not that bad. AI is mostly going to take out the paper pushers and the middle managers. And, of course, grunt level coding. If you are one of those people who makes a difference, whether you are pulling wires or producing vision, you are good. If you make a living at a keyboard, you need to take a step back and honestly answer whether your position is safe.
I’ve been reading about AI since I was a teenager in the 80s. Great AI was always just around the corner. We have a bunch of examples of AI “hallucinating” and just making shit up. ChatGPT routinely just makes stuff up whole-cloth. It has invented fake citations in court cases. Like “See Grimms V Smith” and the case simply does not exist anywhere. Keith Ellison, the AG of Minnesota just filed a suit about how ChatGPT does this and irony of all ironies, parts of the suit was generated using ChatGPT (blacks never cease to amaze)! They’ve all been programmed… Read more »
Sure, but how is that any different than 80% of the chair warmers in middle management? AI can do the same thing for a song.
AI is a tool, not a crutch. My greatest fear at this time is that those people it replaces will be replaced with people of less understanding of the job and greater reliance on the AI provided them. This may work wonderfully —until it fails spectacularly!
I’ve noticed two new bits of conventional business wisdom emerge lately: White men are too “emotional” to trust with employment, and no one is less valuable than an “ideas guy,” i.e., a saboteur. Maybe these facts have been invented to harden the present arrangement against reform. That story is easy to make up. The case for “AI” refutes the case for infinite jeets, but they’re still needed to replace white workers, who are this dual hazard of entitlement, etc. But I think it’s worse than that. Boiled to its essence, the emerging job of “AI” is to take the place… Read more »
“…no one is less valuable than an “ideas guy,” i.e., a saboteur.” The first is true, but definitely not the latter. Apple would probably have died out without Steve Jobs. And the corporate culture, supporting Steve, prevented saboteurs from dominating the direction of Apple. “Boiled to its essence, the emerging job of “AI” is to take the place of human judgment.” Yeah, well not in my lifetime. Likely not in my kids’ lifetime. AI can’t do anything more than respond with what it’s programmed to say. Which is why entry level coding and middle managers and bureaucrats are easy to… Read more »
What is needed is a universal and *unfailing* supply of electricity, which we don’t have and ain’t gonna have. The cart is before the horse here.
Agreed. Still, I’d like to see most of those middle managers get a real jon.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukrainian-media-outlets-start-asking-donations-after-us-funding-paused
”Ukrainian media channels are asking for donation after trump stopped payment”
Question for Amanda, how do you translate “listener enthusiasm is not accepted at the bank” in Ukrainian?
Damn spellchecker, turned zman to Amanda
Damn! Now spellchecking is taking over gender-affirming medical care, too?
slukhatsʹkyy entuziazm v banku ne spryymayutʹ
But it’s from the web. We could be telling Ukrainians to do nasty things to their mothers.
Are we going to see commercials for poor jewish elderly in Ukraine?
Brilliant analysis. Thank you!
“These covens of mischief . . .”
This kind of delicious writing is only one of the reasons that ZMan is a National Treasure.
The most surprising aspect of all this has been the revelation that the oppressive state apparatus is not nearly as securely entrenched as thought, and relatively few individuals have been responsible for most of the severe corruption. Apparently this made it far easier to identify the sources of the cancer and where to apply radiation first. Yes, there has been a tremendous, nay, shocking amount of planning and thought put into what needs to be done, but it also is obvious that Oz had a glass jaw visible to those who counted. Closely related, elected officials have retained much more… Read more »
You are way too premature with the assumption of success.
“Tempered optimism.”
Please, and I mean no disrespect, but folks, quit crying before you’ve spilled the milk.
Z, your writing just keep getting better. My concern in your latest piece is not that Trump is on the right track, he is, but that the work in front of him is vast. It has taken decades for this sprawling octopus of agencies to embed, and it will take years to weaken and dismantle it. He only has four. But this is not enough, doing the job right requires a systemic change that makes its regrowth less likely. Perhaps Vance can continue the good work. Let’s hope so.
Yessir, to get the ball rolling down the hill, you need somebody to push it first.
I am beginning to wonder if there is any presidential act that can’t be delayed or countermanded by some random judge. From whence came this power? Why is it recognized? I remember approving of the last Trump admin’s actions at the outset, before it was brought to heel within a few weeks or months. By about May 2017 it no longer was the Trump administration, for practical purposes. I recognize that it’s a better start this time, I’m not all negativity. At the rate we’re going, it will only take another month, tops, before the opposition’s heads just explode, or… Read more »
“I am beginning to wonder if there is any presidential act that can’t be delayed or countermanded by some random judge. From whence came this power? Why is it recognized?”
Trump just needs to take a page from Bidet’s playbook. Basically ignore the court by issuing the same proclamation, but with a few different words. There’s a real task for AI — prepare 100 different variations on the same deportation order, then have his staff review them and issue them as fast as the previous one is enjoined.
That is inspired! I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it myself.
Trump will have to Andy Jackson these judges (“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”)
In this case, the president lacks the power to defy the court. If the apparatchiks choose to obey the court rather than him, there’s little he can do about it. Other than offer them severance pay.
It looks like he can de-fund them.
He could point out that their enforcement power extends to the limit of their district, not the entire nation.
In this particular case that doesn’t help. Because it’s the grant writers who have the choice of obeying the president or obeying the court, and if they choose to follow the court, the president has no recourse. Unless he comes up with a new, never before seen way to fire bureaucrats.
Nah. The gov’t has scads of cash. They could hire you to write grants, and even if they suck, so long as they point in the right direction, and Trump et al. selects them, we’re golden.
“From whence came this power?”
From the Marbury v. Madison decision of 1803.
“Why is it recognized?”
B/c our legal system is based on precedent. Why the staunchly anti-federalist President Jefferson acquiesced in that ruling I do.not.know.
Again, these are district judges, not SCOTUS. Some hatchetman in Hawaii is not the Federal government nor the unitary power.
The entire concept of an impartial judiciary is broken.
People are not stoic meat-bots. The Vulcan race is a Star Trek fantasy.
The only humans even close to that ideal are benevolent male despots with so much money, power, and women that they are essentially impossible to influence via those vectors.
Cogent assessment.
The Hydra’s moolah freeze gives the Trump admin breathing space to analyze the enemy from an adjacent position, prior to the next strike. Get them worried and skeered, bleating to one another on the phone, then signal the artillery.
Chief difference from 2017 is aggressiveness. He is attacking this time. Last time he was a metal duck at one of those carnival booths.
The courts have already stayed at least some of his freeze on funding. The question now is will Trump do as the Democrats always do? They always say, ok we will obey the court but then they continue on as they did before and ignore the courts.
That is what he needs to do.
The grants don’t get written from the oval office. If the grant writers obey the court ruling, then it matters not what the president does about it.
except trump can fire the check writers
Can he though? If that were true, it seems like we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all
No funding, no checks, no check writers.
This freeze- on funding, regulations, hiring- it’s an atomic bomb. Why didn’t somebody do this before?
How do we pay for wars?
With an income tax.
No income tax, no foreign adventures. Nor NGOs, for that matter.
Taxes only pay a fraction of the expenditures of the federal government. For the rest we rely on deficits and the reserve currency status of the dollar. The U.S. will only have to stop bombing them once they have stopped using the dollar in trade. We will then revert to being the Third World country that our current and future population entitles us to be.
Income tax is the steady income stream the federal government uses as an asset to justify the creation and financing of infinite debt.
In industry, you see something similar on a smaller scale when a private equity firm buys up say, utility companies as their form of steady income to justify their ridiculous debt issuances.
Exactly, exactly, and many thanks, Geese.
What is missed is, I think the term is Net Present Value– that is the anticipated yield used to price the asset today.
That steady anchor is used as collateral for debt, which is how bonds work. That, and, as Micheal Hudson points out, income tax was invented specifically to cover war loans.
War loans used to be a bet on a king winning; if he died or lost, the bet was lost. Once repayment was pinned on the citizenry, it didn’t matter…in fact, it incentivized war loans to both sides.
“She continues her work in the shadow government.”
What is so ironic about the shadow government is how brazenly upfront both parties are about turning over their authority. Here is an “About Us” snippet from Victoria’s NGO:
Bipartisan and TransparentFrom its beginning, NED has remained steadfastly bipartisan. Created jointly by Republicans and Democrats, NED is governed by a board balanced between both parties and enjoys Congressional support across the political spectrum. NED operates with a high degree of transparency and accountability reflecting our founders’ belief that democracy promotion overseas should be conducted openly.
Regards Ukraine that appears, at least to me, a very dangerous situation for Trump. He needs to stay as far away from that as he can but that may become impossible. The Russians are never going to accept what has been put on the table by NATO and the U.S. The art of the deal won’t work when you have no bluffs left and the other side is winning spectacularly. However the neocons and Zelensky are always capable of mounting a huge false flag event. Trump likes to win. However Ukraine is a no win situation for the U.S. He… Read more »
the wild card here is what the russians know about how ukraine helped hinder trump in his first term. or how recalcitrant senators – and their children – have fed from the trough of corruption. something made kellog cancel his big trip, and for all funds to ukraine on hold until an audit is performed.
I don’t understand why Trump hasn’t indefinitely detained the Vindman twins, who are repeatedly on record as insubordinate and seditious.
Not to mention the bio-weapons labs there, of which the Russians have the records.
You bet. When Putin learned of the extent of those labs on his border, he launched the SMO. This was right at the end of the Plandemic, which brought them into the highlight.
p.s.- the target ACE2 receptors in the cell are present most highly in Caucasian and Asian populations, so yer darn tootin’ the Slavs and Chinese freaked right out (while developing their own non-mRNA ‘vaccines’ against an undefined threat. It’s like trying to pin down next year’s flu vaccine.)
I have no idea whether Trump is savvy enough, but certainly some of his people are. The US has no interest in Europe. If he is really interested in America First, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with letting Putin take the bio-weapons bit in his teeth and give him free rein. Worst case, it comes back to bite the neocons, globalists and CIA.
Sounds like a win to me.
Just think about that. The possibility of extraditing Vicky and the Vindmans and the rest of that group over to Putin.
Talk about premature ejaculation…
“Trump likes to win. However…”
Maybe trot out old Obama the Lightbringer and have him start talking up his “leading from behind” then a rout, a-la Bidenspeak in Afghanistan, can become a “victory for the ages” and we can all make a omelette, even if it takes ‘cracking a few eggs’ being sure to note them thar orbs do not come cheap these days.
“Trump has answered some questions about the Ukraine war…” Not sure if others have picked this up while listening to Trump’s comments on the Russian-Ukraine conflict, but Trumps knowledge is 180 degrees off base. Whatever Trump claims to know, he is being misinformed—profoundly. His musings are little better than what we heard from the Biden folk since 2022. The commentators we often cite here, Ritter, McGregor, Johnson, etc have even commented upon the misinformation Trump spouts in interviews. There is no way one can begin peace talks with such a misimpression to the ground situation and Russia’s ability and intent… Read more »
Perhaps his Trump’s comments are for public consumption. One can hope his true view of things is closer to the pundits you mentioned
Trump has said some positively wacky things. My hunch is he is doing a version of shit poasting to see what sort of reaction he gets from the various players. Right now, there are no good options for him in Ukraine, so stir the pot and see if something interesting rises to the top.
I also suspect Trump would like to put off talks with Putin. There is little to be gained from a meeting right now, so put it off until when there is something to be gained. A little crazy talk buys some time.
“Right now, there are no good options for him in Ukraine…”
The best option IMO is cut off all funding. Then monitor, forget this promise of ‘ending the war’ in five minutes. In fact, all foreign wars can be conducted minus our funding. The MIC can focus on their new AI-enabled machine-gun armed drone dogs to patrol the US borders like a junkyard dog inside the chain link fence keeps the parts ON the stacked cars within.
Trump needs to somehow determine what the minimum Putin will accept is. This is difficult with all of the neocons telling him lies. I would imagine it is something along the lines of: Guaranteed no NATO in Ukraine ever. Not sure how to get that done. Russian occupation to the Dnieper (buffer zone) and formal recognition of the four new Russian Regions. It will probably also require Russian military inspections of all shipping into Ukraine at land ports and sea ports. This if Ukraine wants to keep their Odessa Port. Maybe some sanctions relief and the return of the Russian… Read more »
Or, Trump goes to Putin and agrees to pretty much all his demands, but insists that “G” not be a part of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Everyone wins, and Zelensky becomes a cockroach.
it seems like trump doesn’t do any research of his own totally depends on other people to tell him what to think
Indeed. That makes it all the more important to select people who are on your side in these endeavors.
I also noticed that the TDS crowd is unusually mellow this time. This group gets its talking points from the media, which is fed by the “think tanks”. Those tanks not getting fuel (salary) keeps the society sober.
Trump White House reverses course, rescinds freeze on federal grants
Ugh.
As we like to say on this side of the divide.
Shut. It. Down.
Not welcome news.
Trump will go nowhere fast if he allows federal judges to block his initiatives.
It looks like his lieutenants are picking up the slack instead:
I just saw a Fox News headline that “Kristi Noem freezes grants to NGO groups–‘won’t spend another dime’ to help ‘destruction’ of US”
That’s all that matters. For a frikkin’ change, let the commies be on defense, spending their resources fighting against America First. Someday they will run out of cash. It’s just a matter of how many times they have to hire lawyers.
I’ve been calling for – and predicting this – for months. Years, really. The name I gave it in 2017 was Operation: Decapitation. You can’t run a #resistance without Generals and without Money. Fire (or reassign) the Generals and target the money. I think I even wrote here a month or two ago that Trump would need to target the money flowing into the illegal immigration NGOs and then subject them to legal scrutiny (audits). When they lawyer up and start filing lawsuits…start targeting their lawyers…and then bleed them dry of cash filing expense lawsuits. It is absolutely correct that… Read more »
I heard from Col Douglas McGregor that Speaker Johnson can put the House in recess (on the President’s request) and that Trump can then order the Senate into recess and make recess appointments. It will probably be necessary.
Whatever it takes. We only have 1,452 days left to break the system down.
Shadow government…. aka the Deep State.
[…] ZMan explains it all to you. […]