Trump is a Puppet
President Donald J. Trump (R-New York) is nothing but a puppet of the Pentagon and Congress. Strangely enough, Russia Gate is one of the reasons why the Donald has become a puppet and will remain a puppet.
The most bothersome; and poorly-reported, aspect of the Trump presidency has been the military takeover of the White House. The Pentagon took over the White House on July 21, 2017, when retired Marine General John Kelly was appointed Chief of Staff to the president; replacing former Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus.
Kelly moved quickly giving controversial communications director Anthony Scaramucci and white-nationalist pest and chief strategist Steve Bannon the boot. At the same time, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and Son-in-law Jared Kushner; who had major roles in the administration, quietly disappeared from view. The rest of Trump’s staff was purged and replaced with complacent political hacks.
The Admirals and Generals are running the White House
By December, Kelly was so entrenched in the Oval Office; that Trump friend and Apprentice costar Omarosa Manigault Newman, was not even able to get into the presidential residence after the chief of staff fired her.
When Omarosa objected to being fired; Kelly simply had her thrown out of the White House and Trump did nothing. It is now clear who the boss is, and it is not the Donald.
Trump’s meek acceptance of an aggressive neoconservative foreign policy demonstrates that the generals and admirals are firmly in charge at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. Not coincidently, the Secretary of Defense John “Mad Dog” Mattis is a retired general, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster is an active-duty general.
The next move will be to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with an admiral or somebody equally acceptable to the Pentagon. A strong possibility will be to bring back Condoleezza Rice – in order to add some color to the cabinet.
Why did the big brass take over the White House? The answer is simple; Trump and his team were so corrupt and incompetent that the joint chiefs had no choice but to step in and take over.
How did the admirals takeover the White House? My guess is that they have something on Trump, probably evidence of corrupt dealing or outrageous sexual harassment that can quickly be dispersed to Wikileaks; and The Washington Post, if Private Donald does not shut his mouth and only say yes sir and no sir whenever a general or an admiral is in the room.[1]
Getting such information would be easy; the National Security Agency; which is controlled by the Pentagon operates the most extensive electronic eavesdropping and computer surveillance operation the world. I imagine the NSA knows everything about Trump – including crooked deals and sex tapes he has forgotten about.
How Congressional Republicans are Pulling Trump’s Strings
It is not just the generals pulling the Donald’s strings; Congressional Republicans are doing the same thing. Since he took office, Trump has moved steadily to the right with policy positions, executive orders, and appointments that match the positions of Congressional Republicans.
Almost every Trump administration policy from the budget to regulatory cuts comes straight from the Heritage Foundation or U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin). Some of Trump’s most popular campaign promises including the border wall, a noninterventionist foreign policy, tough action on immigration, $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, and ending free trade have vanished from view. More recently, Trump loved the Republican tax bill, which gave Ryan everything he wanted.
The explanation for the about-face is simple. Congressional Republican leaders control Trump because they can launch investigations of him any time they want. Donald has to get with the program or face hearings about his taxes, business deals, Russia, and the antics of his children and their relatives.
At such hearings, yan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) can hand out copies of Donald’s tax return and The Apprentice tapes to reporters if they wanted to. All Congress would need to do to get the return; or the tapes, is issue a few subpoenas. Once subpoenaed the tapes and the returns would be public record and fair game for any reporter to publicize.
My guess is that copies of all of Donald’s tax returns for the past 30 years, and a “highlight reel” consisting of the worst of The Apprentice tapes are in Ryan’s laptop. Trump knowing that exposure of his filthy laundry would be the end of his career; shuts his mouth and follows orders – just as he does with the Pentagon brass.
Will Trump be the Democrats’ Puppet?
This raises an intriguing question, would Trump become the Democrats’ puppet if they took control of Congress. Will Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Chuck Schumer (D-New York); or U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), be pulling Donald’s strings next year?
Would Democrats listen to their base and destroy Trump? Or would they use threats of impeachment and investigation to force Donald to sign their agenda into law. A likely outcome of a Democratic takeover of Congress in November; would be Trump turning left and Tweeting his willingness to do whatever Democratic leaders’ want.
That brings us to a fascinating and troubling question, would Republicans move to impeach Trump; or at least expose his wrong doing with Congressional investigations, in November and December 2018. A probable Republican strategy might be to expose some of Trump’s worst behavior in order to force Democrats to impeach him.
We might see a bizarre situation with some Democrats trying to protect Trump, while Republicans are trying to destroy him in December 2018. This might occur, because a Trump that cannot deliver votes in midterm elections would be useless to Congressional Republicans.
Remember the next Congress will not take office until January 2019 – that gives the GOP plenty of time to dispose of Donald. Such a move is likely because Trump’s successor, would be squeaky clean Vice President Mike Pence (R-Indiana). Vice President Pence is a loyal party man who can be counted onto veto all Democratic legislation, unlike Trump.
Russia Gate is Nonsense
Trump’s status as a puppet also exposes the Russia Gate scandal as nonsense. I have ignored Russia Gate, and will continue to ignore it, for several good reasons including:
- There are several other far better explanations for Trump’s victory last year. The best-documented explanation for Hillary’s defeat was Republican voter suppression, which the Donald had nothing to do with. Another scenario was protest votes by Bernie Sanders supporters for Trump, which was the result of Democratic incompetence not a Russian conspiracy.
- Digital advertising simply does not work. In July 2017; in a move ignored by the mainstream media, one of America’s largest advertisers Proctor & Gamble (NYSE: PG) cut its digital advertising budget by $140 million. P&G did that and pulled out of YouTube completely because digital advertising was damaging its brands. For an eye-opening expose of the disgusting and dismal reality of digital advertising visit the Adbank Network and read their whitepaper.
- If digital advertising cannot sell soap, (P&G makes Tide) how was it supposed to have altered the outcome of a presidential election? For a good view of the problems with digital advertising take a look at the attacks that P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard has been making on digital advertising for some time.
Inquiring minds will ask; if Russia Gate is nonsense – what is Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating? My guess, Mueller thinks there are other illegal activities that he can nail Trump or those around him for.
Those activities probably have nothing to do with Russia, and Trump knows Mueller knows. I do not know what those activities are, are but my suspicion is that they involve another foreign government or its agents.
Russia Gate serves as a convenient smokescreen to distract the media from the real investigation, which might have no specific target. There is a strong possibility that the Mueller investigation is a fishing expedition. Mueller thinks Trump is so corrupt all he has to do is keep poking around and he’ll turn up something bad.
Predictions for 2018
The above scenarios lead to some interesting predictions for 2018. They are:
- Trump will stick around because as a puppet he is useful to a lot of people in Washington D.C. and beyond.
- Trump will not fire Mueller because the puppet masters will not let him.
- There will be a lot of quiet backroom pressure on Mueller to quietly wrap up the investigation.
- Much of this pressure will come from Democrats who are publicly chanting “impeach Trump” along with their base.
- Trump impeachment or resignation is unlikely, unless some sort of Black Swan event exposes truly outrageous wrongdoing.
- If such wrongdoing is exposed it will be by somebody totally outside the American political and media establishments. My guess is that it would be a foreign media outlet; or intelligence or law enforcement agency, that exposes Trump, and forces the American media and politicians to act.
- There will be no Watergate scenario involving a shadowy “Deep Throat” and heroic reporters in parking garages. Trump’s exposers and their agents will probably be negotiating their book and movie deals before the revelation.
- Foreign governments other than the Russians are blackmailing or manipulating Trump. If this were true it might constitute treason. I will not say who this is, but it is not Israel.
- When the truth comes out, the story might not be about the Donald himself. An interesting possibility here; and one the media is ignoring, is that what Trump is really afraid of his one of his sons, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, or all of them going to federal prison. The real dirt, as Steve Bannon recently pointed out might be on Trump’s family.
The most likely outcome for 2018 is that the puppet will remain in the Oval Office and keep putting on his show to embarrass the American people. He will probably remain there until January 2021.
[1] History buffs might recognize this as similar to The Silent Coup hypothesis, an alternate explanation for the Watergate scandal advanced by authors Len Colony and Robert Gettlin in a 1992 book. Their theory was that high-ranking military officers leaked the details of Watergate to reporters to punish Nixon for pulling out of Vietnam and opening relations with China.