Jack* writes: Trump has done much to confound his critics since election. Now that he is President Elect, it is more difficult for the main stream media to quote him out of context. Trump’s thank you tour rallies also provides him with a way to bypass the mainstream media and get his message transmitted unfiltered. Trump’s aides and spokespersons also know how to push back when questioned in a hostile way and Trump’s interview last week with Matt Lauer highlights Trump’s facility with the interview process.
For many years, the attitude of high ranking and aspiring politicians was to speak guardedly since anything they would say could and would be used against them. Trump can be criticized for speaking in platitudes but he is remarkably effective. It is a truism that even when insincere, flattery works, and Trump is a master at this. This is revealed by the fact that so many persons who opposed Trump who met with him have good things to say about him. Trump must be masterful in one-on-one conversations in terms of relating in a “winning” way.
Trump is also self aggrandizing in a way which is so at odds with the false humility politicians assume when speaking, yet it doesn’t come off as offensive. It seems more honest than “humble bragging.” Trump’s way of answering questions when interviewed show that he is every bit as good a listener as Obama but then one who answers in what appears to be an unscripted way and a genuine response. This cannot help but be appealing to Americans who have heard so much blather to this date.
What comes across from Trump is that he is either a pathological liar and con-man without principles or a patriot and an economic nationalist. I was not sure whether he was a genuine patriot or whether that was a public relations position, but I am now persuaded that he loves the United States (and in particular the pre Vietnam war United States) and wants to make sure that America, while continuing to trade in the world, is never dependent upon any foreign power whether for raw materials, finished goods or technology. I think much of his appeal to the persons who agreed to join his cabinet, or just meet with him including Kanye West, Jim Brown, and the technology sector heads, is based on making a pitch to their patriotism.
This in itself is refreshing. Obama may love the United States, but he doesn’t have the same sort of unquestioning patriotism inculcated in him that is the case for Trump. Obama spent his younger years in Indonesia and when he returned to high school in Hawaii, he spent his time with his maternal grandfather and with Frank Marshall, both either fellow travelers or members of the Communist Party. He didn’t grow up in culture that had been involved in the Civil War since Hawaii was annexed by the United States after that war had ended. The history he was probably taught concerned U.S. imperialism taking Hawaii away from its rightful native monarchy. He didn’t grow up as Trump did during the 1950’s when the U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world, the leading manufacturer and a place where most people went to church on Sundays and where many states enforced blue laws. Trump came of age before the war in Vietnam showed the limits of U.S. military power. (If anyone had looked closely Korea would have shown that, but it really wasn’t widely accepted at the time. Instead WWII was the model.) The
second wave of decolonialization began when Trump was in his teens. Obama grew up after Vietnam had defeated the United States and when there were virtually no colonies left in the world. This is not to say that Trump’s world view is more accurate than Obama’s, only that his
world view and America’s place in it, is a better one for an optimistic leader to hold. Obama wanted to manage what he perceived as the inevitable decline of American influence. Trump wants to reassert American power it to the greatest extent possible.
And Trump and Obama have differing views on what are the most important problems facing us. Trump is a global warming skeptic and Obama’s rhetoric (but not his personal actions) promotes it as the greatest and most immediate problem facing humanity.
Trump believes in taking care of American citizens first and Obama believes that American’s have a duty to assist and encourage persons who come here both legally and illegally from other countries. Obama believes in a bureaucratic state administered by lawyers, public policy
graduates, professors, and activists and organizers. Trump doesn’t have much faith in this managerial state and has selected cabinet officers from business, the military and elected and appointed government officials sometimes at odds with the agencies they are hired to run.
It is hard to believe that Trump is President Elect. Obama seems to have dropped off the screen, and Trump is in fact doing things that are changing policies even though it is over a month until he is inaugurated. I read something that John Boehner said that I thought about before which was that Trump reminded him of Theodore Roosevelt who upon assuming power with the assasination of William McKinley, brought with him a great gush of energy powered by both the progressive and populist movements. Trump has been rightly identified by many as an economic populist and that view is certainly aligned with the public statements of his advisor Steve Bannon. He is also a progressive in that he wants to institute many measures that will have us move toward good governance, including his restrictions on administration employees becoming lobbyists and especially lobbyists for foreign governments.
He still has a few cabinet and other positions to fill, but some of who he has elected give us a pretty good idea of how he plans to govern. The care to which is putting his selection, can lead to one of two conclusions: He will be a pretty hands off chief executive and rely on his competent cabinet appointments to shape their own policy, or he is selecting them and will work with them carefully to implement his intended policies.
Concerning immigration which was in my view, the main thing that distinguished him from the Republican pack and from Hillary Clinton, his appointment of Sessions strongly signaled that he would enforce (rather than as has been the case on a bipartisan level) ignore enforcing existing immigration laws. His selection of General Kelly, although not as good a choice from the immigration hawk’s perspective as Kris Kobach, was probably made because the director of Homeland Security is more concerned about terrorism than about illegal immigration. It is not clear if Kobach will be his chief deputy, but if he does serve in that capacity, there really is nothing more that immigration restrictionist could hope for. Trump has made noise about doing something to accommodate the dreamers. My suspicion is that for them the path to legalization and then citizenship will require some committment to public service, not necessarily military service. There is also a real issue as to the cut off age for dreamers. It is one thing if someone was brought to the country as an infant, another if brought as an older teenager. If Trump does give the dreamers a pass, then it rewards the illegal activity of their parents in bringing them
across. Trump has been lobbied by all the big city mayors, and in particular DeBlasio, Garcetti and Emmanuel, not to enforce the immigration laws.
I think this is all to no avail and that cities (and universities) that provide sanctuary status will see their federal funds shut off. Assuming that Trump does not back down to the political pressure,
the cities and universities will have to cave, since their own constituents will not pony up the additional revenues to allow the cities to break the law. I don’t know how long this will take, but
it will be dependent upon how quickly the money can be shut off. If it is in the pipeline and can’t be interrupted for six months that is one thing.
However, if the administration actually begins to construct a wall, and institutes e-verify, and begins to prosecute employers who hire illegal aliens, you will see a significant number of persons here illegally self deport. The ones that brought dreamers with them on the way in, may take them out as well.
Assuming Trump appoints a very conservative justice to the Supreme court, they may see a case testing citizenship of anchor babies.
Trump sees himself as a deal maker and in one sense he doesn’t really care whether the deal is all that favorable as long as he can paint himself the winner. So any deals involving illegal immigration should be carefully scrutinized to see if they deliver what there are claimed to deliver.
Trump’s main interest to this point appears to be business. The Obama administration apologists are trying to show that the Ford and Carrier deals didn’t really save any jobs and that the Carrier deal is an inappropriate interference in the free market. Obama spokerspersons have shown his state of the union address in which asked for legislation approving many of the policies Trump wants to pursue (although not a reduction in the corporate income tax.) This just
shows how inept Obama was. These policies should be the bedrock of the Democratic party policies, but Obama wasted his executive orders and actions on immigration, social justice and environmental issues, instead of using them to keep business in the United States. Even Trump’s taking on Boing, perhaps the preeminent aerospace firm for the cost overruns on Air Force One is a huge public relations win. Obama pointed out he nixed the Marine Helicopter deal for the presidential fleet on similar grounds but I don’t remember any P.R. around that one. This looks like Trump is looking out for the little guy against unreasonable government pork even if it benefits Trump personally. Trump has criticized the cost of the F-35 program. Progressives
should applaud him for this, but they have ignored him. It is not clear whether Trump can take credit for it, but Softbank now plans to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and both U.S. Steel and IBM are talking about opening new facilities employing thousands.
So many financial pundits have pointed out the U.S. economy is weak and both the Federal Government and States have huge unfunded liabilities, primarily for pensions. It came out that the official government figures on the economy have been cooked so there has been essentially no growth. Since some areas of the country are booming, you can imagine how badly the rest of the country must be doing for it to average out to zero. Trump’s getting foreign countries to invest in U.S. factories is a big plus. However, this weakness on a worldwide basis may lead to a crash and subsequent major recession and possible depression in the United States. If Trump can avoid this and keep the economy going he certainly puts himself in strong position to be reelected in 2020. If he can’t then it really doesn’t matter how good a job he does I don’t know whether this is a ploy on the part of the foreign manufacturers to curry favor while they continue to try to steal American business in other ways, or because there are advantages to manufacturing here. As long as the U.S. is the largest consumer market, manufacturing here,
with the exception of labor costs and environmental compliance, holds many advantages.
There are often existing facilities that can be repurposed at a minimal cost. Energy costs and raw materials (especially for petroleum based products including plastics) are cheap, and the cost of moving those materials to a manufacturing plant and the completed product from the
manufacturing plant to the consumers is much cheaper than when located overseas. It’s pretty clear that he intends to leverage this economic advantage with foreign companies to get them to relocate here.
Appointing Tillerson give us a good idea that Trump will not take the neo-con line, but will instead seek a raproachment with Russia.
There is incredible fear of a Trump presidency coming from the liberal/progressive/Democrat Hillary supporters who literally think Trump will destroy records kept by the department of energy and/.or the EPA, that he will stage a major false flag event within a few months of taking office in order to seize dictatorial powers, that he is a racist and/or tool of Putin, etc.
To these persons Trump is such a risk to be president that we cannot even allow him to become president in order to evaluate whether what he wants to do is good or bad. Both Republican and Democrats have very sound reasons to fear Trump. Trump stands to make inroads with African American voters. Those inroads don’t have to go very far since Democrats have counted on a monolithic Black vote. A stronger immigration policy will drive up wages and in areas with many illegal immigrants, drive down both consumer spending and the housing
market. Many teachers will face layoffs as funding for schools is based on average daily attendance. If 20% of your students are here illegally and are deported along with their families or self deport as work dries up, employment of teachers should drastically decline.
Trump’s infrastructure plan will encroach on Democrat’s traditional territory, spending money on infrastructure to prime the pump for more jobs. Trump also is the peace candidate, cautioning against foreign interventions, and cutting military spending.
This will leave the Democrats with two issues that will self marginalize them. Increasing emphasis on environmental issues and on social justice issues based on identity politics. The Republicans don’t like him because he rejects the chamber of commerce, business round
table and country club shibolliths that have become the Republican mantra: Lower taxes, socially conservative policies, fewer regulations, and cutting entitlements.
If Trump succeeds it will be because he has imposed a fairer tax structure, spent money on things that benefit the ordinary American rather than on expensive foreign interventions. Just as Obama assumed office with so many in the public fantasizing about what he could
accomplish and projecting clearly unattainable expectations, Trump has certainly encouraged the same sort of faith among his most fervent supporters. Unlike Obama, Trump will take office with a hard core of Democratic voters opposed to him and demanding that Democratic office
holders impose the same sort of obstructionist tactics against him as they perceive the Republicans as having used against Obama. Trump also takes office with the avowed hostility of any social justice groups and the Central Intelligence Agency. Some sophisticated observers
believe that the CIA is planning a coup to prevent Trump from ever being sworn in as President – hence the unverified rumors of Russian involvement in the election with the inference that somehow or other Trump is a “ Manchurian Candidate” under the control of Vladimir Putin. Of course this is seconded by the neo-cons who want nothing less than a President who will “stand up to Putin.”
If Trump is actually inaugurated, look for him to purge the CIA of its political elements allied with the Democrats. In particular William Brennan will be the first to be fired and those who were brought in by Brennan and Mike Morrell will likewise be removed from positions of power and influence. In this sense Trump’s choice of General Mattis and General Flynn may be a way to keep the military on Trump’s side in the event of a post inauguration show down with the CIA. The things to watch for with the EPA, Department of Education, Department of Labor,
Department of Energy and the Justice Department are whether the Trump appointees will seek to depoliticize the departments or whether they will actively try to repoliticize them. It is inevitable that as liberal/progressive/ Democratic, appointees are removed this will be played up in the mainstream media as politicizing the departments when in fact it is a depoliticizing them. However, the temptation may be too great to prevent these departments from being politicized in a way
favoring traditional republican base including business and religious groups, to name two.
There are those who want to continue to fight culture wars, something Trump does not appear to care about at all, and those who think those wars have been lost and there is no point in fighting them. We shall see how the more religious members of Trump’s cabinet, Ben Carson at HUD and Betsy DuVos at Education shape their departments.
Regarding the EPA and Energy and Interior, only the most fearful environmentalists really believe that a Trump administration would roll back clear air and water regulations. What will happen is that much of the authority asserted by these agencies, is without legal support in the legislation creating the department. However, “true believers” working within the department have greatly expanded their jurisdiction. Often courts slap them down, but under Trump these sorts of efforts to regulate beyond the explicit authority will not be done.
Trump clearly believes that there is an effect that greater environmental regulation has on industry. To the extent that Trump wants to increase the private sector and especially manufacturing and mineral extractive industries in the U.S. he will favor industry.
Trump understands something that most environmentalists do not. The key to a first world country is inexpensive energy. This is the reason that Trump supports more drilling for oil, clean coal, more fracking and more nuclear energy. Renewable energy is currently economically
unsustainable without large government subsidies. Storage of energy generated by solar and wind is necessary because both provide only intermittent supplies. The storage problem has not been solved and current methods carry with them their own negative impact on the environment.
