After he was acquitted in the Senate on two charges, Trump
removed the Lt. Colonels Vindman – yes, there were two, twins in fact – from
the National Security Council. He also relieved Ambassador Sondland of his
position.
Was it retribution? An act of vengeance? Flushing the pipes,
as someone said?
I sure hope so. And I
hope it’s just the beginning.
Now the impeachment farce, at least the first
iteration, has ended, Trump should move quickly to purge who sits in on
briefings, who has access to internal memos, and who is suspected of leaking to
the media. He needs to cut down the number of people surrounding him. There
should be no more “automatic” inclusions to confidential meetings or
discussion. In essence, he needs to lock down access to information within the
Executive Branch to a select few.
Better late than never.
And it is very late in the game. He
should have done this on his very first day as President. Why he didn’t is a
mystery. He should have known better.
Trump’s made a lot of mistakes because he was a first-time
politician.
But his biggest was not doing what many past Presidents did
immediately upon taking office: they cleaned house. They removed or reassigned
as many political appointees from the predecessor administration as they could as
soon as possible to put in their own people.
Obama recalled every Bush-era politically appointed ambassador,
asked for the resignations of all the Federal prosecutors, and replaced as many
as he could with his own people. He wasn’t the first. It was standard procedure
among both incoming Republican and Democrat Presidents.
Trump didn’t do this.
Perhaps nobody expected him to win – maybe even him – so when he did he
and his advisors were unprepared to take out Obama’s leftovers. That was a
grave error. It left him with a lot of
players with little if any loyalty to him, and many who privately plotted
against him. Few of them took him seriously, especially on his promise to drain
the swamp.
He was surrounded by career politicians, hacks and
backstabbing weasels who didn’t care what his agenda was, or what he wanted.
They had their own agenda.
Which was, bluntly, to make sure nothing really
changed. A goal shared by both
Republican and Democrat party leaders, and the bloated government
bureaucracy.
He might have been elected President, but to them he was an
inexperienced bumpkin. A rube. A naïf.
And it wasn’t just his Executive Branch members from previous
administrations who felt this way, it was also the consensus among establishment
politicians on both sides of the aisle, heads of our intelligence and
law-enforcement agencies, top U.S. military officials, career bureaucrats
throughout the government, as well as most foreign leaders.
Our political establishment’s plan was to control him as
they had so many other Presidents. They’d encourage the bureaucracy to use delay, dissent, and endless
challenges to grind him down. They’d
co-opt his appointees as soon as possible to protect their interests, and if
that failed they’d move to discredit them and drive them from their positions.
They’d keep him from doing things they didn’t like by
ignoring or tabling his orders. Because they knew better. They’d been running things their way long
before he got there and they’d run things their way long after he was out of
office – which, they hoped, wouldn’t be too long.
Whenever they could they’d give him a gentle push out the
door by leaking to the media, embarrassing him, and if that failed actively
working behind the scenes to overthrow him.
The establishment didn’t like what Trump was selling one bit.
He threatened their plans to keep us
in wars to support the military-industrial complex. He threatened to cut
foreign aid to the same countries that employed the sons and daughters of our
political establishment. He threatened
to reduce dependence on government assistance for millions of able-bodied
people who didn’t really need it. He
threatened to stop or at least reduce access to cheap illegal immigrant
labor. He threatened to stop trade deals
that encouraged U.S. companies to move our jobs offshore for bigger
profits. He threatened to force big
pharma to cut prices, and big healthcare providers to reduce their costs to
consumers.
Worst of all, he threatened the myth that think-tank wonks,
beltway consultants, and career bureaucrats actually knew what they were
doing. He kept proving that they
didn’t.
He had to be destroyed. So for the past 3+ years they did
everything they could to bring him down. They leaked to the press. They
used hacks from previous administrations to point out how wrong – and
dangerous, he was. They used our own intelligence agencies to discredit
him. They sued him. They found other
people to sue him. They launched nonstop
investigations of him, his past business dealings, and his friends and former
advisors, sending some of them to prison.
They attacked his family as well.
And Democrats in the House impeached him, to the cheers of
their pals in the media and their increasingly lunatic base. Making him only
the third President ever to be impeached.
Most others in Trump’s position would have quit. It’s not like he needed the job. He had plenty of money, a hot wife, and a
good family for the most part. It wouldn’t have been surprising to have him
come on TV one night and say: “This is bullshit. I don’t have to take this crap. And I’m not
going to anymore. I’m outta here. “
But he hasn’t. I
don’t think he will. Maybe he’s just
ornery enough, pig-headed enough, or feels he has nothing to lose, but he’s
hanging in there. Perhaps it’s just for
spite.
Maybe so, but his base still loves him. Despite all the attacks on him, and
impeachment, his numbers are up. Every
time there’s a new attack on him he gets more popular.
As it stands now, I suspect he’ll probably be reelected. If he does he might even retain control of the
Senate and regain control of the House.
I hope he’ll be better prepared to clean house the
next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment