Note: This is the five year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, peace be upon him, so I will be part of a Twitter space discussing the life and legacy of one of our nation’s greatest heroes. You can listen here.
The general assessment of Trump 2.0 so far, by those inclined to support him, is that his domestic operation is doing great, but his foreign policy operations is a work in progress, to be generous. It is still early, and the primary focus should be on domestic policy, but foreign policy is not unimportant. Thirty years of horrific domestic policy has often been justified on foreign policy grounds, so they are not entirely divorced from one another.
The reason the Trump foreign policy operation is struggling can be understood by looking at the team assigned to implement his policy. The top foreign policy job was given to Marco Rubio, a guy with zero experience in this area, other than sitting on Senate committees. A pawn of the Israel lobby, he also sided with the neocons for his entire career in the Senate. During the transition, this nomination was counted as the worst of Trump’s cabinet picks.
Rubio seems to have had some sort of epiphany when it comes to politics that went unnoticed as he no longer sounds like a neocon. In fact, he sounds like a critic who has been reading dissident websites. His commentary on South Africa, for example, is the sort of stuff that used to get your bank account closed. Even so, Rubio is without experience, so he is learning on the job, a job that traditionally sets the tone for the administration’s foreign policy approach.
Things get more unconventional with the national security team. Mike Waltz was the National Security Advisor until it was revealed that he was playing footsy with far-left radicals in the media. Then there are Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka as Deputy National Security Advisors. Both are best described as media personalities with close ties to the neocons. Eli Lake loves Anton and Lake is firmly in the paranoid anti-Russia social network of neocon media activists.
Then you have Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, two people with no experience in their areas of responsibility and zero experience running big, complicated organizations. Gabbard’s claim to fame is breaking with Washington on Syria and her party on social issues. Hegseth was a popular Fox News star with unconventional opinions on the military. These are Trump’s most out of left field foreign policy picks.
The two defining features of Trump’s foreign policy team is a general lack of experience on foreign policy issues, and they have earned the trust of Donald Trump. That last part gets attacked by the media, but it is important if you are looking to redefine and revitalize the foreign policy community. Trump needs spear catchers who will do what must be done to implement policy. What sunk Trump’s first term were all the people thinking they could use Trump to boost their career.
The main problem is the experience. This is not always a bad thing as fresh eyes are certainly needed in all of these areas. Old hands would never think to ask why things are done the way they are done, especially in how information is selected and filtered before it is presented to the President. The intelligence people in Trump’s first term gave him the mushroom treatment. Most of the time, he was left with choices he did not want but was forced to pick from them.
The real issue here is these people are not just tasked with implementing Trump’s vision of a new foreign policy, but they have to figure out what that is and then figure out if they agree with it. It is not all that clear if Trump’s vision is merely dovish within the context of the standard Wilsonian model that has dominated America since Wilson or if it is a rejection of that framework entirely, in favor of the 19th century conservative approach embodied by the famous quote from John Quincy Adams.
Added to this is the fact that it is not all that clear if most of the people have thought much about this until this point. Seb Gorka is mostly known for being rude to people on Twitter and being a guest on conservative chat shows. Michael Anton is best known for one essay in 2016 and his love of fashion. Tulsi Gababrd is the only member of the team that has offered original thoughts on foreign policy. For the most part, Trump’s team is a blank slate when it comes to foreign policy.
This may be a good thing, as at least he has a team that is open to questioning the status quo, even if they have not formulated an alternative. The foreign policy community is stuffed to the gills with people who have been carefully vetted by the Israel lobby and the neocons. Trump had little choice but to reach outside of that world for people he could trust and who would try to think for themselves. The result is an odd squad of neophytes and eccentrics.
It remains to be seen if this works but it explains why foreign policy is so uneven at the start of this term. It also explains why Trump has been so reliant on Steven Witkoff, as his personal emissary. He may be the one guy who understands what Trump is thinking with regards to foreign policy. There again, we see a man with zero experience in foreign affairs, outside of business dealings. Like everyone else in the Trump foreign policy team, he is learning on the job.
This may explain why the Russians are willing to talk to the Trump people. They see the effort to break from old patterns. It may also be why the Iranians have agreed to talks with Trump people, despite Trump breaking their deal in the first term. People who spend a lot of time studying American politics sense an opportunity to break from the past with regards to dealing with the Americans. It also explains why the Russians are so patient with the Trump team.
Again, it is too soon to know how this ends. It is an odd collection of people held together by a desire to head in a new direction, even if they have no clue as to which direction they will be heading. Perhaps for now a desire to break from the past is enough to get the ball rolling. If they managed to avoid being outflanked by the Europeans and subverted by the Washington establishment, they might finally create a plausible alternative to Wilsonian democracy.
If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!
The advisers to Hegseth who told the truth about the likely outcome of attacking Iran were fired because Israel was unhappy with them. Tulsi Gabbard was not able to hire her preferred assistant, Col. Daniel Davis, because Davis tells the truth about Israel’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza.
This tells me everything I need to know about who runs Trump’s foreign policy apparatus.
Taking the long view, this is making more and more enemies and clarifying for the victims of these firings whose interests are at heart. These are short term, Pyrrhic victories.
Israel likely knows there is no long run. Polls indicate outright opposition to the Zionist project in every generation below the Boomers. They are gettin’ while the gettin’ is good, and not even making feints at being subtle as the window closes.
I’m actually a bit surprised there hasn’t been a bigger push to roll out more WW2 movies to go along with the suddenly lily-white DoD recruiting ads. Memorial Day was also surpringly restrained, but I put that down to the crappy weather here in the Great Lakes region.
I vaguely recall a 20-something Fox News hawt blonde “writing” a book glorifying some aspect of WW2–more narrative reinforcement for Boomers. The agitprop is so dumb and blatant as to be comical (almost).
McCallum is a long, long way from 20something. Or was there another fox news blonde who “wrote” a WW2 book?
Lately, Martha is looking a lot like John Tesh.
It’s not just Boomer agitprop we have to deal with. Just threw down my kindle in disgust; thought I’d read Marine versus Zombie fiction (written by a Marine). Except every other Marine is black or mestizo (with a Korean thrown in for good measure) and the azzhole fedgov ‘suits’ are all White guys, including a contractor specifically described as a blond-haired, blue-eyed notsee. So it seems plenty of Whites from AINO’s more recent military adventures see themselves as “the few, the proud, the diverse.” F**k them all.
The absence of whites, even in fiction, among Marine Corps cannon fodder is to be celebrated.
It boils down to supply > demand. We aren’t the only ones who notice the only prong who benefits from dinosaur organizations like The Fellowship of Christian and Jews, for example. Noticing is out of the bottle and in every sphere now. It was hilarious a few months back to see vids from European youth declaring they would go to prison before submitting to a draft. Yeah, some of it is LARPing but since many Euro countries now will put you under investigation if not arrest you for such things, much of it is quite sincere. Domestically is no better.… Read more »
That’s it exactly. They are running out of road. As you say, the Boomers and older Gen X folk who unconditionally supported Israel (such was I until a few years back) are dying out and being replaced by a younger generation who see Israel for what it is. Meanwhile, there are signs that the Arabs are getting their act together, and that Russia, China and the other BRICS are not going to let the Zionists take down Iran. The clock is ticking for the maniacs in Tel Aviv.
Well, the Palestinian Protests didn’t work. Nobody is gushing with sympathy for the World’s Greatest Victims except for paid advertisers.
Instead, to their shock, it backfired on them- even the Irish, under massive assault themselves by the Victim activists in their government, joined the other side!
Those advertisers aren’t paying attention to the comments on mainstream sites like YouTube, which now regularly feature pretty epic levels of noticing.
The Zionists have a complete chokehold on the Trump administration.
Not quite, but close. Things are rapidly evolving as we watch.
The Zionists have a complete chokehold on the Trump administration.
Yes. But Trump and Bibi are not close, and Trump put the brakes on Bibi’s plan to attack Iran.
Trump remains unpredictable.
Netanyahu is especially dangerous for the same reasons that Zelensky is: the only way they save their necks is by continuing the war. And continuing the war includes false flags and black ops of the craziest kind. It’s not completely off the table that the Israelis could go it alone against Iran, knowing that Trump will be unable to resist the pressure to back them up.
Talk about murdering Whites and it’s totally OK. Talk about j00s in an unacceptable way and we need to have press conferences, laws written up, all sorts of hoopla happens. I’m so fucking exhausted from it. My hate meter is at an unprecedented level.
Israel believes (not without reason), that the Gulf Arabs, and perhaps even the Turks, will ultimately be grateful for ending the Shiite theocracy in Iran. Their price, of course, is ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, and a chunk of southern Syria and Lebanon. Then everyone can get down to making money. It may not work out that way, but it’s not irrational.
Ukraine, however, is batshit crazy.
The Turks are probably thinking exactly that. The Saudis might have a lot to lose if a conflict between the U.S./Israel and Iran kicks off.
Maybe they are willing to chance it.
I always say: CLinton was first black prez, Obama first gay prez, and Trump first Jewish prez.
There were rumors about W. The gay former mayor of Knoxville was his roommate in college, not to mention that he married kind of late.
W wasn’t ghey, just Methodist.
Didn’t know there was a difference.
Isn’t that the same thing these days? 🙂
As Mr.T said in Rocky III: “My prediction? Pain!” We will get domestic economic reform when we have a financial crisis after there are no more suckers to buy our Treasury Bonds. DOGE shows that the Congresscritters (GOP and Dem) simply will not cut anything even when confronted with obvious waste/fraud/abuse. Trump can tinker away at the margin, but the Blob staggers forward. Outsiders can only do so much. There’s no broad institutional support for reform. FedGov spending is 40% above pre-Covid levels and these jokers still can’t muster the will to cut anything. Today farce, tomorrow tragedy.
Nothing changes until the environment changes, so no real reform until collapse makes action unavoidable. The Fed will print more trillions, the fiat will continue its dilution, the fake economy will stagger and then stumble. Only then will normie get off the couch. The Elites want a hard and violent collapse that pits the bottom of the social pyramid against each other and keeps them out of the crosshairs. We don’t have to play that game. Drones.
“Drones.”
Heh. Battlefield war may not be the only war that’s evolving.
New possibilities open up all the time- it seems reintroducing an element of risk to certain criminal endeavors might be rather handy.
The recent Iberian power outage, followed a week later by the total mobile phone outage of the same area, well, you’ll have a hard time convincing me those were coincidences
Especially when you look at Trump’s hired. Gabbard is out of her depth, and what happened to Patel and Bongino? Weren’t they going to tear the FBI apart and throw all the traitors in jail? They turned into swamp poodles.
The Epstein files were too hot to handle. We know it. And they know we know it. But they no longer care that we know. And that is somewhat ominous, akin to the victim suddenly discovering the identity of his kidnapper.
Epstein was a Mossad sting operation to blackmail Congress critters. Hence, no revelations allowed.
They got the call.
They didn’t “turn into” anything. They’re not blackmailed, threatened, thwarted—nothing.
They’re cops.
Those are the bad guys.
Bongino was in DC for so long it’s hard to believe they don’t have some form of kompromat on him.
Bongino is one of those Instagram influencer types whose rise to prominence was too sudden and big to be organic. He’s like Shapiro and others who have nothing to distinguish themselves from hundreds maybe thousands of others. Hell, truth be told Z ought to be bigger than Bongino because he brings much more to the table as a spokesman for the right,
It is obvious that Trump is being gas lighted all the time by people around him. He gave a speech at one of the military academies where he said that the Russians had stolen hypersonic missile technology from us. Trump is too uncurious to question stuff like this. The dangerous thing is he is now outright threatening Russia for having the audacity to press on and win the Ukraine War. We started the war and Trump is mad because the Russians are fighting back and winning. No wonder he is mad, it is his war now. He could have walked… Read more »
“We started the war and Trump is mad because the Russians are fighting back and winning.”
The Russians have been winning consistently on the battlefield for quite some time now. What infuriates Trump is that they’re not accepting his “offer” — which is no offer at all. Anglin has a good piece on this at the Unz site, and probably also on his Daily Stormer site. Diplomacy is about giving something to get something. You can’t act like a spoilt three-year-old with an outsized id and throw a tantrum because you’re not getting everything you wanted.
I wonder if age isn’t catching up to Trump now, he seems more erratic and prone to rages now than he has in the past. The presser about Putin and the missiles was humiliating for him or should have been. He showed his ignorance of the true story and didn’t have the grace to back off even a little,
Trust the plan folks! At this point it is questionable whether anyone in the Trump administration knows what they are doing, foreign or domestic. Elon Musk officially stepping out of the Trump administration is a very bad sign, as he was almost certainly the driving force behind a lot of the great activity early on in Trump2.0. Getting things done instead of bloviating had a much more Musk feel to it than a Trump feel, and if he’s abandoning ship already it may signal that Trump is about to let the GOP rickroll him again like he did with Paul… Read more »
I don’t read Musk as abandoning ship. I read Musk as seeing the hopeless corruption and that reinforcing his strong preference to focus on his enterprises. In addition, he is under massive pressure to focus on them.
Also, he’s used to getting his way. He can’t just bust into Washington and demand people do shit. It’s a corrupt and preening Democratic blob.
Musk was always scheduled to leave the team at the end of May. His contract was done in order to avoid having to go through a confirmation process, but the trade-off was he left in May.
If you told voters last fall who were excited about DOGE’s potential that it would be wrapped up by May 2025 and very little would be accomplished, I have a feeling they would’ve been rather pissed off about it. I didn’t hear anyone say “by the way, this will only last for four months, we’ll have to send more weapons to Ukraine and Israel after that and expel students who criticize Israel from US universities.” Maybe I missed it?
Promises kept! as Trump likes to tweet. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
There were a few scattered MSM mentions that Musk was a special government employee who’s term would end in April.
That was not relayed to Trump’s voters and I’m sorry, all of us expected DOGE to be a four-year program. Sounds to me like it was deliberately downplayed for votes. Trump himself and Musk in their early days in January and February holding press conferences around the resolute desk weren’t talking about May as the end of DOGE. C’mon. They were talking about what it would accomplish, which will turn out to be absolutely nothing.
Dunno. He hired the Muskovites once, he can always hire them again. Maybe this first time was a probe, just to see how far they could get before the donors got nervous.
Or, it was a data-scalping operation. That says the Technocrats are preparing their assault on or capture of the Neocons and their superweapon, the Intelligence syndicate.
We went through this from 2017-2021 with Trump. No, he is not hiring them again. The program has been wrapped up. Jim on Jim’s Blog claimed that there was a “Thermidor faction” in USGOV that put Trump back into office to do what you are suggesting. You have to basically ignore all the evidence of your senses to believe such a thing at this point. But Trump seems to have that effect upon people: even when he fails, there will be a chorus of “4D chess” to pipe up and inject poisonous Hopium back into the electorate. I don’t think… Read more »
Agreed. Trump seems unable to sustain any initiative or action over time. It starts off well and then fizzles out. He has to realise that if he doesn’t take down the Deep State, it will destroy him.
My understanding is that DOGE will continue after Musk’s departure. Am I wrong about that?
Once Trump capitulated to that “clean” funding bill that committed to Biden levels of spending, then DOGE was over. Because all the cuts were by definition superficial, exposed to court challenge (since the funding was approved by Congress), and temporary. The BBB likely will enshrine all that funding and there might even be anti-DOGE language in there that the media most definitely will not talk about.
There’s a bill sitting in the GOP Speaker’s office that was scuttled by Matt Gaetz last year, but will soon make a comeback, which carries penalties of up to ten years for boycotting anything produced in Israel and sold in the US. The whole DOGE thing was a PR scam and Musk will eventually spill the beans on it. We can’t ask Vivek, because he’s reverted to speaking Hindi most of the time and working on getting more Indians into the US.
I was always aware that Musk only had 3 months. The real question to me is whether Doge will continue doing its thing. I don’t know the answer to that. It wasn’t supposed to just be the “Elon Musk Variety Hour”. I would hope they have a plan to keep going after Musk leaves. Do they have a successor picked out? Or is he being replaced by some kind of committee? Again, I don’t follow this stuff closely enough to know.
There will be no “progress” (re immigration front)or any other front. The Deep State courts and the feckless GOP will see to it. The question in my view is that when Trump finally loses it(and he will)does he risk it all and fight to the finish – or simply give up in frustration.
By Summer’s end we will know.
The choice facing the US (and the West in general) is between a final attempt at reform or a total collapse due to institutional inertia, stupidity and corruption. The problem for the first option is that, as Z wrote a while back, the reformer needs to be a person of the utmost ruthlessness and singularity of purpose. Trump just doesn’t have the mental discipline or critical thinking skills to be that person. By the midterms even many of his biggest fans will be sick of him and stay home on voting day. The system cannot be reformed from within.
Any order Trump gives will be ignored. The only thing he can do is give a rage speech from the Oval Office on national TV, say “fuck it,” and resign.
He is tired. I think he’s already given up. The only hope is that normie realizes there is no political solution. Electing your guy won’t do a damned thing. The system fights to defend itself and gives “the people” a big middle finger.
deleted
dupe of the Zman’s point
And yes, Musk was mightily miffed at the Big Beautiful Bill wasting all his recommended gains. Still, that further highlights our problem, so at least there’s that. Further impetus for the Technocrats to bring the Neocons to heel.
Perhaps the radioactive ruins of Bonn will be what it takes to get our Neocon problem under control. Tell them that’s their bloody reparations, now shut up.
Yep. Who cares if you save 150 million bucks if Trump and Congress are blowing a trillion on pork barrel defence projects?
It isn’t just that he is leaving in May. It is that for the past 6-8 weeks he has been basically silent. He realized he can’t get anything done in that stinking city and the system was moving to destroy everything else he built in his life.
I don’t think you can take anything from the DOGE thing other than the federal beast chewed Musk up and spit out his bones. Yea he might have been slated to leave anyway but he’s not leaving as a victor.
Looking at Trump’s Back-To-1985 budget bill, Musk must be realizing that he actually did very little of import after the USAID raid — and what he did do has produced a Bud Light moment for his Tesla brand.
Musk has mostly been a spear catcher shielding Russ Vought, who appears to be the driving force behind what is being done to the federal bureaucracy.
Trump’s foreign policy is inherently conflicted. On the one hand he talks trash about having a kickass military and offers a bellicose posture, on the other hand he seems to want to stay out of foreign wars. His “diplomacy” seems to be outrageously egocentric bullshit — i.e. saying that Canada should be the 51st state, that he alone could end the Ukraine war in a day, and that he should turn Gaza into a resort. I would guess that foreigners are some combination of either bemused or outraged. He seems to be a latter-day Teddy Roosevelt, also an egotistical, self… Read more »
(You mention the Nobel Prize. I found out there is no authentic Nobel Prize for Economics- that was tacked on much later by an outside party with a large bribe from bankers in Switzerland. “21 Nobel Prizes!” my ass.)
“Authentic” or not, for decades its been no different from the NYT awarding itself Pulitzers for made up stories
Speaking of made up stories, anyone else notice the, “…Austrian intelligence report…” that just dropped claiming Iran is weeks away from nukes.
It’s all so tiresome…
They’ve been “weeks away” for over 20 years now.
Meanwhile… Israel has been in violation of the NPT for what… 60 years?
In fairness Israel never signed the NPT.
You’re right.
U.S. law forbids giving them aid, then.
you are correct. JFK was demanding that they sign it, and……
Three weeks? That is plenty of time.
It only took two weeks to flatten the curve.
When you talk of Nobel prizes, leave out the “Peace” prize. It’s a different animal and fraught with all sorts of woke nonsense—like it being awarded to Obama before he took office. I’ll leave investigation to those curious enough to look it up.
“there doesn’t seem to be any method to the madness.”
There isn’t. For that you need a stable worldview, which forms the basis for a strategic plan. With regard to the rest of what you’re saying, d’accord. Orlov was recently interviewed, where he argued that Trump will essentially do nothing, but do it with a lot of noise and fanfare.
Right now I feel like the little girl who pointed out the emperor was naked, while the adults were trying with all their might and main to imagine the king was gorgeously attired.
Hey, you left out invading Greenland! Make Eskimo nookie great again!
Trump’s new team are not incapable of learning, and with any new hire, they have the basic skills needed to get the job done even if they don’t have the experience. Now they just need to understand the scope of the job and make sure they’re doing what their boss wants them to do. This isn’t going to happen in 100-days, especially when there’s plenty of non-team players they have to deal with who will do whatever they can to throw obstacles in their way and make them look bad. Trump’s biggest problem isn’t his new staff, or even the… Read more »
I choose to find a pearl in that, Herr Horst.
Even though what was done and is being done to Germany and to Europe is a crime of such scale it can never be recompensed, still…
Our brothers and sisters stopped killing each other on the Continent. Although it cost them the maintainence and honing of their martial traditions, here’s to praying the ancient flame will kindle once more.
After all, these are the people who fought for 700 years to scourge the Islamic beast from their lands. Now, we have no choice left but to unite.
Germans have been brainwashed for 80 years to hate themselves and to commit cultural and ethnic suicide upon themselves. There’s far more to it than just a desire to keep the Germans in line. Idiots in the US think Germany was the bad guy in WW1 as well. As if other nations never started wars. Watch out for the Hun!
Germans hating themselves after such indoctrination I can understand, but how does that explain the others? France and Great Britain are well along in such cultural and racial suicide—yet they “won” the war. Seems the German brainwashing is epidemic to Western Europe.
Unfortunately this is why Karl’s commentary is so poignant—while their elites retain unwarranted power, the people get weaken/replaced by the brown hoards.
It doesn’t explain anything except an irrational hatred of Germans. As you point out, they’re hardly the bloodiest people in Europe. But as far as most people are concerned, they’re Satan incarnate, for starting all dem wars dat our boiz had to go and fight for freedom and stuff.
Such a good question- “…how does that explain the others?”
Listening to the younger guys, I think even the centre-left 70% understands that we were all of us the target. By “70% understands” I mean the old tropes, guilt-tripping, and brainwashing are wearing off.
Remember, they’ll be taking the reins next. We need them to understand this, even if it means they scold and reject the Boomers before them. Better, even, if the manufactured values we were taught repulse them.
“Shut up, Boomer,” is another way of saying, “Shut up, Jew.”
The GAE is in deep trouble. High leverage is great when it is working for you, but when it turns on you it is a tidalwave. That may be the situation Trump finds himself in. He may be the bag holder of an empire of vampires leveraging the supply to feast. He should focus on mass deportation, de-cartelization and ending the anti-White legal regime. He must do so with an eye on building a HAN set of castles who rally to focus on those issues and lead the fight. That is probably the most fixable problem and without doing so,… Read more »
to be a success, all hegseth has to do is be better than austin was. a very low bar indeed
Miller has the dumb Republican habit of talking about “Marxism” and “socialism” and the “far left” as if they exist in the world as they existed in ’80s social studies lessons, but his instincts and attitudes are much stronger than that. He’s the one, if there is a one. Like Trump, and unlike everyone else, he’s always said the same kinds of things. He has no conversion story. He is who he is. That’s the criterion. Unfortunately he looks like a vampire mobster, and not for no reason. If he’s to be elevated, it couldn’t be by vote. The fantasy… Read more »
As Z notes, Trump had little choice but to choose inexperienced cabinet members. The only people with experience are members of the Blob. This is why Vance is the guy to watch. Trump is shaking up the system, but he’s facing an entrenched enemy with green troops. It will take time to wear down the enemy and gain experience. The Blob is hoping to wait him out. They’re probably right. If a Dem or RINO wins in 2028, the Blob likely can re-establish itself – assuming no economic turmoil. If Vance wins, he’ll faced a weakened enemy with experienced troops,… Read more »
ironically, vance is what trump thinks *he* is.
Putin is what Trump thinks he is: a tough hombre who dragged his nation back from the abyss and made it great again.
Best comment of the day.
Putin’s accomplishments make him the greatest leader of any nation in recent history. Possible equals: Napoleon, George Washington, Elizabeth 1. We should have been so fortunate to have a man like Putin given the Herculean task required to undo the damage of progressives and liberals.
Yes, you stated the “bullish” case very well. The bearish case: we have multiple, out-of-control crises (Ukraine, Iran and US Bond Market) that implode everything before the 2028 election, maybe even before the midterms. Arguably, this is preferable, since Trump would be given more latitude to address festering problems. Or, maybe they would blame him for everything thus screwing Vance’s chances. If you’re a tinfoil hat guy (aren’t we all sometimes?), you’d think the Elites would use Trump as a hammer to make necessary reforms while restraining him where they want and of course letting Bibi do what he wants.… Read more »
Debt rollover July 1st, USA credit downgrade, all I can do is hope those end up as only headlines for the financials crowd.
As I mentioned below, reconstituting the Blob will not be an easy task since it took decades to construct. Dismantling USAID, burrowing wreckers into the system, and firing as much of the cancer as possible is exactly the route to go. In fact, it is the only route. It is Cloward-Piven at its best. I have absolutely no clue who thought of the strategy–I highly doubt it was Trump–but kudos to them. Reform is impossible. Destruction is.
Hobble it more.
I would remind all of those bashing Trump,often with well thought out reasons,that he is essentially our last chance at the Ballot box at present and perhaps forever.we all know there is but one other box in the pantry, so I hope we will support and work for his success.
You have about 2.5 years before the curtain comes down on his administration, and you watch what happens after the 2026 elections as half of his cabinet moves on, like Gabbard. Trump had the most political capital he’d ever have in his life after January 20th, and it’s now all gone as he yells at Putin to get off his lawn and is insulted by reporters calling him “Taco” to his face in the Oval Office. As for working for his success: how? What can the average person do? We’ve already voted into office Republicans who sit on the Hill… Read more »
Perhaps the problem is the system, not the man.
Of course it is! But it’s our system. It was there before Trump came down the escalator, and it’ll be there once he’s gone. Why? Because we fail to do anything about it, and continually return to the same pile of vomit every two and four years hoping it has turned into filet mignon.
Two sides of the same coin. Trump was allowed back because he was willing to not go beyond a certain threshold.He will not and cannot take on the deep state, which has a life of its own. The big and beautiful bill provides evidence of this, were any needed. So, what’s left? Bloviating, posturing, preening, gesticulating, threatening. A lot of noise signifying nothing.
That’s exactly why we “bash” him. He IS our very last chance via the ballot box – and he is betraying those who voted for him. 90% of his efforts and energy are going to maintaining and extending the very conflicts people voted him in to stop. He was voted in to sort out the DOMESTIC front, not to make the foreign front even more complex and intractable. As MTG says, he is betraying his voter base.
As far as I can tell, there are more and more people supporting team Trump. He has not turned anyone off except knee-jerk leftists and boomers and anti-Semites, which except for the anti-Semites has been the case since 2015. The white pill is that he’s won 3 elections in a row (2020 was fraudulent) and his support is growing; he has not faded into irrelevancy and has not become a joke. Plus he’s got a much more robust intellectual movement behind him, plus plus all the under-40 Conservatives are Trumpish, not National Reviewish. As imperfect as Trump is, the future… Read more »
Huzzah. That’s true. “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it…”, and this time, we ain’t talking antisemite.
I mean, look at the UK. Look at Europe. It’s becoming readily evident that government has become the people’s mortal enemy.
There’s another thing that can stop it. Demographic trends. If mass deportations don’t come soon and hard.
A rather naive take on Team Trump where foreign policy is concerned. The Russians and Iranians are perfectly willing to talk to Trump – but have absolutely zero trust in anything he or anyone else in the West says. They flatter his ego and tell him what he wants to hear while quietly and determinedly carrying on with their long term goals. As Colonel Doug Macgregor says, there is no strategy behind Team Trump. Trump himself changes course each day.
am i the only one here who thinks trump’s domestic and foreign policy efforts are a dumpster fire?! he sounds biden like in the erratic way he swings from one position to its opposite, on a daily basis? absolutely no follow through on any of his key goals. physically he looks terrible; bloated and inflamed. and that has a substantial impact on his cognitive abilities. will be surprised if he finishes his term in office alive.
“Biden’s” FP was more coherent
His policies, both domestic and foreign, are typically Trumpian: incoherent, sporadic and half-assed.
By not having a plan and sticking to it, Trump invites attack and flippancy from his enemies. He thinks he’s avoiding their fire by ducking and weaving and saying “it’s Thursday” on Wednesday and “it’s Saturday” on Thursday. All he’s doing is inviting indifference, because he does not follow through on his threats to do anything.
Trump is a champion shit-talker. Works in some fields of life. Not at the top. He cannot commit to anything for more than 24 hours.
One thing he accomplishes is controlling the news cycle, thus neutralizing intended narratives. They can’t help themselves but to be the cat to his laser pointer. This makes it hard for them to control messaging. Smear campaigns have to get results immediately or be forgotten in the deluge (Hegseth). Everyone, MSM included, has the goldfish attention span.
He wasn’t voted in to “control the news cycle”; he was voted in to actually do things. And now his whole team is at it: Patel, Bongino and the blonde moron spend more time bloviating on Fox than on actually doing their job and arresting the traitors.
Exactly. The one retort I constantly run into with Trump diehards and tryhards is that he himself keeps “winning” — whether it’s his defamation lawsuit against CBS, or something else pertaining to his own personal interest and brand, like “controlling the news cycle.” I mean, my goodness — what a victory! Trump controls the news cycle! He forces people to pay attention to the crazy shit coming out of his mouth or on Truth Social IN GRANDPA CAPS, and we are supposed to reckon this as helping the US or us in some fashion. But I have no relationship with… Read more »
He’s the best for our side of any viable candidate I can think of. I’ll take what I can get which, at this time, is Trump.
DC is more a sewer than a swamp, and Trump probably had no choice other than go unconventional – which is fine by me. There have to be people who can think outside the political box to which everyone in Washington seems to be plugged into. However, it seems the big thing they need to do is figure out a way to deal with (or ignore) these damed judges, who are a cancer on everything he’s trying to get done.
‘Again, it is too soon to know how this ends. It is an odd collection of people held together by a desire to head in a new direction, even if they have no clue as to which direction they will be heading’ Certainly I am no expert, but ‘foreign policy’ for many decades seems to be regime persuasion/change to fly the Homo Flag outside official buildings, liberate females to become empowered monsters and destroy the family, and promote one-world race diversity. Apparently, the Orange Administration continues this as consensus policy. Before you move players on the chessboard, you have to… Read more »
The Pride flags have come down, the Executive has banned Woke in federal hiring and documentation, and no judge has declared he must put it back.
DEI hires are losing their jobs by the thousands: Liberation was just Jewish daycare to keep white women from making families.
Listen to the young guys. They mock and scorn that muck as Karen Logic.
The harridans have had their day; the ditzes can push the naggery, but they can’t get anyone to listen anymore. Much of this war talk may be the boys starting to feel their oats again.
To be fair, that is DEFINITELY an achievement of Trump 2.0. Sure, the Woke crap will drag on a bit longer, but since Jan 2025 it’s suddenly seemed as tedious and “yesterday” as flared trousers and 80s synth pop. And you are right about the youngsters: they are turning right. It wasn’t ageing Gen Xers like me who invented the phrase “fake and gay” but millenials.
So, we’re back in 2012 or so? No gay flags, and hiring is based on merit now in the federal government (c’mon, you really believe that?). And women can swim in pools or something again? Anything else? Man that’s a 4-course meal.
I’m aware of the young guys, and some needed cosmetic changes have occurred, but this idea that Woke (really, Feminism plus the homos and locos) is going to disappear because D.T. said so is naive. Feminism and Woke are still deeply ingrained in every part of American life, and it is those harridans who still call the shots in fed and state offices, corporations, schools, colleges, the courts, and so on. A few stabs at the beest with a letter opener is not defeat of the enemy. Better a letter opener than nada, say I. But we have not arrived… Read more »
Do the posters here remember Billy Mitchell?
“His outspoken criticism of military leadership led to his court-martial in 1925 for insubordination after he accused Army and Navy officials of mismanaging national defense. He was found guilty and resigned from the service shortly afterward.”
His reputation was restored after his death, but there you have it.
“Found guilty.”
Mike Waltz should have been destroyed and sent packing to civilian life to serve as a warning to others. While Trump was trying to begin a process of normalization with Iran, this fink was plotting with Netanyahu to start a war with Iran. This kind of thing cannot be tolerated. You either want to implement Trump’s policies or you got to go. You’d think he would have learned this lesson from his first term.
Just not said is that while inexperienced, Hegseth certainly assumed the SecDef role and realized how woefully unprepared we are to conduct a two-front, hell even a one front war with the current military we have.
Col. Douglas MacGregor refers to it as a “boutique” military. It is not capable of winning a war against a powerful opponent. In which case, we should avoid such wars.
Deep down Trump seems to want peace. Last time we had a president who went against the CIA, rest of the MIC and Israel, he (JFK) was killed. Last time we had a major candidate who was a real threat to do the same thing (RFK), he was killed. Next time we had a president who was not loved by the Deep State and Big Jew, he (Nixon) was driven from office. When Trump disappointed the MIC, FBI and CIA by not starting a war with Syria and Russia and angered Big Jew by disrupting their white replacement plans (even… Read more »
Sorry, my friend, but I’m getting sick and tired of people saying “Trump seems to want peace”. A guy who continues to fund the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Israel even though he could stop both with the flick of a pen is NOT someone who wants peace. He had a giant mandate from the US people to stop these stupid wars and shows no sign of wanting to.
Two days in February: the “Epstein binder release,” followed the next day by the Hollywood production in the Oval Office with Zelensky. Nothing but a stage. “This will make great television,” Trump said. Sure did.
Worse. Trump’s public commentary on the war contains great misinformation wrt Russia’s position—both militarily and economically—vis a vis Ukraine. This would seem to indicate he is enthrall to the Neocon position—regardless of who *his* appointees are. The only positive thing I perceive is Trump does not seem demonize Putin publicly as most all “conservative” pundits do. The continued “funding” of the war can be temporarily accepted—as it does not stop the Russian advance. The unacceptable thing is providing the Ukrainian military with the intelligence to pursue military attacks within Russia itself. This provocation can only worsen the war and the… Read more »
Here is how I see this play out long-term. Neocon Jews took over the US foreign policy since the 1990s, and they passionately hate Russians as Zman often points out. They also happen to hate the Scots-Irish working class but do not mind them joining military as cannon fodders. In a way, it is not different from Zelensky and his jewish masters (e.g. Kolomoisky) using Ukrainians as cannon fodders and dragging them from streets to fight Russians. Those two sides mentioned above will get into a much bigger confrontation over the next decade. Only one of them can survive if… Read more »
Trump’s staff in his first term was mostly swamp people that were hired by scumbag Reince Priebus and we saw how that went. They all actively undermined him from day one and he was totally boxed in. All things considered, it’s better he has younger loyalists who need to learn the lay of the land. Not just because of those people in and of themselves, but because those people will hire other young loyalists who will come away with experience and work in the imperial capital.
“They all actively undermined him from day one and he was totally boxed in. “
Definitely swamp people, but I sense the undermining was caused by failure to gain influence as they wanted over Trump—it’s a swamp thang. The “woman scorned” scenario. I can’t fault Trump for now choosing loyalty over experience. Experience is something to be learned, loyalty…something else.
“People who spend a lot of time studying American politics sense an opportunity to break from the past…” This is precisely why the dirt people put him into office (once again). What is/was the alternative? Another lifetime or so ago in the university, I sat on many committees—even heading some. University is great for forming committees so people employed feel they are doing useful “work”. Most such committees kill time, jaw bone, then fail to accomplish anything except to keep faculty and staff occupied. Prime DOGE material! One reason such committees failed to accomplish anything was that they seek not… Read more »
“A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done.” Fred Allen
When there was optimism to break from the past in Trump’s first term all of the world leaders that tried to work with Trump and had the same vision ended up getting assassinated or they went after them hard trying to jail them as soon as they had the chance to. Things have changed again now, though, so I guess we will see what happens. But everyone knows now that this isn’t something where everyone wants what is best for their citizens and for the world. No, many powerful people don’t want that at all. As a tiny example we… Read more »
Fewer and fewer people are unaware of the Burning Tire Caucus. I don’t think that qualifies as a win necessarily but it is a good thing.
Trump’s most important foreign initiative is a completely domestic one: slashing USAID, firing as much of the Blob as possible, embedding wreckers into it, etc. Yes, it can be undone in the future, but that will take time and effort since it took generations to construct this monstrosity. I don’t know and rather doubt Trump even has heard the term
“Cloward-Piven”, but someone in his circle has, and they fully understand that is the best and perhaps only option in an otherwise unreformable system, which is the case here.
The destruction, or at least damage, is to be embraced.
Another way to look at it is that USAID’s propaganda is no longer necessary, in the same way that “Radio Free Europe” would be useless today in a world of screens every 15 feet in waking life. Don’t need to fly planes over hostile lands dropping leaflets any longer, or funding “dissident” publications in Communist-occupied countries.
We have repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act now and a nonstop stream of fake news and propaganda covering every moment of our day, which has turned most people around us into one or two-sentence-uttering highly emotional zombies.
Very fair point but bear in mind the hostile lands USAID primarily targeted in recent years were the United States and other Western nations. The ostensible foreign purpose was to hide the actual domestic one. To your last point, the most important development of recent years has been the relative diminution in value of the propaganda resources. I fully agree they still need to be dismantled in full.
The core function of USAID et al. isn’t propaganda products but employment. The real business of lies and repression—from generals on the phone with Zuck to antifa punching MAGA grannies—is a military, intelligence, and law enforcement project. The world quango complex is people. “UBI for feminists,” etc. Whenever right-wingers make money doing right-wing things, Democrats call it “wingnut welfare.” That’s their understanding of the politics business, because for them that’s how it works. That’s how it works for most conservatives too, but lying about merit and the market is very important to their image. An acquaintance whose budget line got… Read more »
It is both propaganda products and employees. I would argue the former is far more important long term. In the here and now, yes, the edge goes to the foot soldiers, or reserve, if you will. It is preferable to drain the foundation you referenced of at least one salary rather than have it go to agitprop and/or rental violence.
OFF TOPIC 1: Can someone explain to me this Hailey Bieber broad? This unsmiling and contemptuous ghoul, of the Baldwin brood, “founded” some dopey makeup company and now sold it for a cool billion. Is she that smart and valuable? Or is this some organized grift that is done at top levels of the “cool kids”? I admit, I’m ignorant of social media and perhaps indeed these wenches garner so much infuence that it’s wroth a billion dollars. All the more reasons to banish “muh free markets” if this is who it enriches into nobility. No different than pornographers who… Read more »
The Bieber thing could be a money laundering front for some sort of trafficking operation.
Yes. The American economy is increasingly fake.
Billionaires are yesterday’s millionaires who are yesterday’s blue-collar workers. The first trillionaire has been born.
Mark Cuban, like so many in his Tribe, pulled in his first really big bucks with softcore porn and T&A ventures such as GIRLS GONE WILD, not that you would learn that from Wikipedia and other intelligence propaganda outlets, so even a soft-core goy cam whore like Hailey Bieber can do it now. Social media influencers are yesterday’s cam whores who are yesterday’s softcore porn producers.
US mercs hired by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are stun grenading Gazans:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-american-contractors-throw-stun-grenades-gazans-outside-aid-site
Unsurprisingly, the GHF appears to be a front for Our Greatest Ally.
They can’t do any worse than the professionals who have been making a hash of American foreign policy since the Wall came down.
Everyone knows how hard it is to break old habits on a personal level. That difficulty seems to prevail in government policies also. Trump 𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘭 need more time to work out this difficulty. I hope they get it.
Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd.
Smiling.
Flipping through the TV channels, they’ve got the National Spelling Bee on all of the Scripps TV stations, a holdover, I guess, from when it was sponsored by the Scripps newspapers, which are now part of some other chain.
I guess we are down to the last six finalists. Not a single white person there. From what I can tell, three Indians, one Oriental. I couldn’t tell what the other two were, but I’m also guessing Asian.
“Trump had little choice but to reach outside of that world for people he could trust and who would try to think for themselves.” All these people you name are essentially gofers, glorified errand boys (and girls). They have no real agency of their own. The only one with agency is Trump himself. He hired these people for their supposed loyalty but also because they’re yes-men, sycophants. Let us not forget Rex Tillerson, who left after a few months in Trump’s first term, calling him an “unstable moron.” Trump does not want people to think for themselves. He distrusts people… Read more »
Not sure why people are down voting you. Trump can hire the most intelligent people on the planet, but it won’t make a bit of difference because he will change his mind every 24 hours and listen to neocon and zionist idiots.
I’m not trying to win a popularity contest and I’m not much into groupthink anyway. It seems like Trump is influenced by the last person he’s spoken to. His worldview apparently lurches and careens from one pole to another as a consequence.
“You’re being way too generous to Trump.”
And you’re exhibiting classic Trump derangement syndrome. Neither extreme is reasonable, nor a productive analysis of the man.
*Shrug* — I voted for him three times. If you want to call it TDS, go ahead. If the truth is painful, I can’t help it. The first time I gave him the benefit of the doubt — too many people were working against him, including his own appointees. The same excuse doesn’t hold this time around.
TDS that you exhibit is categorized via unsupported assertions and ad hominem attack. I couldn’t care less that you voted for him. Your postings are just shit talk when they center upon Trump. Nothing new to be learned. You don’t like the guy, got it. If you voted for him, then I can understand, you’re disappointed. Deal with it. If you have constructive criticism or previously uncommented insight, share it, but I’ve not read any—just invective. It’s boring to the extreme.
Try reading the above comments. Plenty of constructive criticism there. If you need a refresher, try this: Trump is betraying his base because he is expending all his energy on pushing the very neocon Deep state foreign policy initiatives that he was voted in to end. He is also betraying his base because he picking ineffective talking heads who are not prepared to carry out the brutal clean up job of the DS that Americans voted for. If he doesn’t change course, he will end up losing the midterms and leaving office as a blow hard warmonger who blew the… Read more »
But “yes-men” are exactly what is needed right now to carve out a trail through the thicket. Their expiry date is pretty well known, they’ll also be on the target list along with 3/4ths of the country should the pathologicals come back. This isn’t the time for a bunch of grandees plotting their own advancement.
Strategic plan? We still have to get past first base. Of course, Trump could simply tell MAGA to pick up when he drops off.
I suspect that Trump acts like a middle schooler on TV but behind closed doors is different. I don’t think he’s Marcus Aurelius but his cabinet choices suggest that he wants something shook up. He could have easily put forth faux-Trump establishment types and yes-men but he wanted non-conformists. What the OP is describing is the first Trump term. The second one is a lot different, and Trump is a lot different. I think on his direction his people are constantly poking the Bear in the middle of the road to see what reaction they get…if the bear is about… Read more »
You mean like Ronald Reagan, domineering mastermind behind closed doors and crinkly grandpa jellybean-eater in public? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wfPlgKFh8
I hope you’re right. I hope I’m wrong. But I doubt it.
That’s better than my weak defense. Still, I have to hand it to Arshad, “instinct, reaction, visceral response, shoot from the hip, abrupt U-turns, complete lack of consistency, no real strategic planning” is sure what it looks like.
Much of this is true but he is all we’ve got.
No arguing with that.
“instinct, reaction, visceral response, shoot from the hip, abrupt U-turns, complete lack of consistency, no real strategic planning”. Helluva recipe to become a billionaire, don’t you think?
AA gets it. If I came across a character like Trump in real life I would despise him and do everything possible to avoid him. He’s a self-absorbed, erratic showman. He’s telling the people what they want to hear, but the follow-through is optional. I have to imagine after the past two weeks of utter incoherence (“Putin is CrAzY”, “Playing with fire”, “REALLY BAD”) people are getting exasperated with the circus, I know I am.
Something that is not commonly known is that Woodrow Wilson was a university president. He came from a background of dominating the organizations he was with, so it was a natural fit for him to push for maximal presidential powers. Also with Wilson he failed to get Congress on board with his League of Nations plan. It is equivalent to if FDR had failed to base the United Nations in New York and instead saw it located in Haiti. Wilson had a view that Americans should be more engaged with their politics, like he was. He didn’t understand that Americans… Read more »
WW was a national disaster!