An interesting flavor of Libertarianism in the USA is "Bannonism".
Bannon hismself proved to be a very weak ideolog and much better presentation can be be found in Tucker Carlson Jan 2, 2019 monolog on Fox news. Bannon
proved to be a very weak politician and he was pretty quickly pushed under the bus by necon faction of Trump
administration (with a considerable help from his own too long tongue and Wolff's book, see
Wolff revelations and
slander of Trump administration ;-)
Bannon also still can get rip of his neoliberal brainwashing. His bizarre dream of "Christian
capitalism" which simultaneously (and in best Ann Rand style) is "entrepreneurial capitalism" (which make it a
"bastard neoliberalism") is disconnected with reality./ We need a direct rejection of "market capitalism like Tucker
Carlson did and return to some forms of state regulation and state ownership. Finance should be treated as a flavor of
organized crime, with which it has alarming similarities and first on all in providing positive feedback loop creating
financial bubbles (behaviour not that different from distribution of drugs -- a typical function of organized crime) and
increasing inequality which destabilises the society. That's why it should be regulated severely with harsh jail terms for
violations (with confiscation of all property). The US people probably can find some money for renovation of Alcatraz for this
particular purpose :-)
Bannon views also include some ideas of primitive Libertarianism,
and national socialism (alt-right).
As a political behavior all flavors of fascism are distinguished by obsessive preoccupation with
militarism, community decline, humiliation,
or victim-hood (Nation under
attack meme) and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and
the idea of nationalrejuvenation (as reflected in "make America great
again" slogan, although it originated in
Paleoconservatism movement which is not connected to fascist ideology of any kind). After all, the concept of national
rejuvenation historically was one of the key reasons classic fascist regimes of the last
century came to power. First Mussolini and then Hitler espoused citizens’ duty to recover their respective
nations ancient strength and glory.
The key
question for particular country is:
"Do the country has an organized, committed nationalistic (please
note that "exceptionalism" is a form of nationalism) militants, in alliance with traditional elites,
who are ready to use violence without ethical or legal restraints for internal cleansing of the society
and external expansion?".
So all those signs without militants organized in military fashion as was the case in Ukraine are
not enough to classify a movement which adheres to those ideas and is ready to use extralegal means including violence as a fascist movement.
But it can
well be neofascist. It is the readiness to go to extra-legal means the is the key distinction between neofascism
and far right nationalism. Far roght nationalism still is adhering to the existing legal framework and fights for its
ideas on election booth. Neo-fascists despise traditional law and democracy.
Another important distinction is presence of elements of social
democratic requirements, requirements for social justice in their program: neofascists
movements typically are pro-middle class and, at least partially, pro working class. With the
exception of so called "neoliberal fascism" they typically despise financial oligarchy and
"unearned" income.
They are also anti-elite, anti multinational corporations and transnational
organizations like NAFTA or WTO. And especially against transnational financial oligarchy (in
Nazism that degenerated in into anti-Semitism, but it is is not necessary for a fascist movement to
be anti-Semitic per se). Again, like classic economics, a typical neofascist movement distinguished between
"earned" and "unearned" income and consider the later a sign of parasitism and decadence of the
society. NSDAP program of 1920 explicitly stated "Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery."
Just looks at NSDAP program of 1920 and you will clearly see the requisite elements.
Paradoxically those demands now position the US neofascists to the left of the current US Democratic
Party, which is ready to dump Social Security and Medicare to please its Wall Street sponsors.
The 25-point Program of the NSDAP … … … 7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and
way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then
the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich. 8. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans,
who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich. 9.All citizens must have equal rights and obligations. 10.The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity
of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within
the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently, we demand: 11.Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12.In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the
people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore,
we demand the total confiscation of all war profits. 13.We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14.We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries. 15.We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16.We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization
of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration
of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality. 17.We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of
land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation
in land. 18.We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general
interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death,
without consideration of confession or race. … … … 21.The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by
outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment
of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the
physical instruction of the young. 22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
A lot of things in Bannonism is self-contradictory. Breitbart was way too close to the tea party movement. So it is not
accidental that Bannon himself self-destruct (of self -immolated) by talking too much to Wolff for his book
(and Wolff being a Clinton neoliberal was only too happy to push Bannon under the bus). The only thing he got
right is that New Deal Capitalism required for its existence the existence of the USSR to keep US elite from engaging in
cannibalistic behaviour. After this countervailing force was removed the elite went on the path of self-destruction of the
country while enriching themselves at the expense of common people. So the current crisis of neoliberalism in the USA is an
indirect side effect (blowback) of the demise of the USSR. Now the neoliberal elite tired artificially recreate the situation that
existed during the cold war by fueling anti-russian hysteria. Whether that can stabilize the neoliberalism in the USA or not
remains to be seen.
""I believe we’ve come partly off-track in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we’re starting now in the 21st
century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of
capitalism."
This Is How
Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World
Fist of all its attack on globalization is incompatible with the support of Randism ("entrepreneurial capitalism"), neoliberalism
and deregulation at home. His Ideal the state would be weakened in order to allow entrepreneurial capitalism to flourish are
pretty unrealistic and dangerous dreams. Essentially that makes him a Trojan horse of neoliberals (despite preaching "bustard
neoliberalism" or neoliberalism without globalization)
This Is How Steve
Bannon Sees The Entire World
The central thing that binds that all together is a center-right populist movement of really the middle class, the
working men and women in the world who are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos. A
group of kind of — we're not conspiracy-theory guys, but there's certainly — and I could see this when I worked at
Goldman Sachs — there are people in New York that feel closer to people in London and in Berlin than they do to
people in Kansas and in Colorado, and they have more of this elite mentality that they're going to dictate to
everybody how the world's going to be run.
I will tell you that the working men and women of Europe and Asia and
the United States and Latin America don't believe that. They believe they know what's best for how they will
comport their lives. They think they know best about how to raise their families and how to educate their
families. So I think you're seeing a global reaction to centralized government, whether that government is in
Beijing or that government is in Washington, DC, or that government is in Brussels. So we are the platform for the
voice of that.
Harnwell: I think it’s important to understand the distinction that you’re
drawing here between what can be understood as authentic, free-market capitalism as a means of promoting wealth
that [unintelligible] involves everybody with a form of crony capitalism which simply benefits a certain
class. And we’ve watched over the course of our conference, we’ve watched two video segments produced by the Acton
Institute about how development aid is spent internationally and how that can be driven away from — it damages
people on the ground but it also perpetuates a governing class. And the point that you’re mentioning here, that I
think that you’re saying has driven almost a revolution movement in America, is the same phenomenon of what’s
going on in the developing world, which is a concept of government which is no longer doing what it is morally
bound to do but has become corrupt and self-serving. So it’s effectively the sa—
Bannon: It’s exactly the same. Currently, if you read The Economist, you read the Financial Times
this week, you’ll see there’s a relatively obscure agency in the federal government that is engaged in a huge
fight that may lead to a government shutdown. It’s called the Export-Import Bank. And for years, it was a bank
that helped finance things that other banks wouldn’t do. And what’s happening over time is that it’s metastasized
to be a cheap form of financing to General Electric and to Boeing and to other large corporations. You get this
financing from other places if they wanted to, but they’re putting this onto the middle-class taxpayers to support
this.
"I’m not an expert in this, but it seems that [right-wing parties] have had some aspects that may be
anti-Semitic or racial ... My point is that over time it all gets kind of washed out, right?"
And the tea party is using this as an example of the cronyism. General Electric and these major corporations
that are in bed with the federal government are not what we’d consider free-enterprise capitalists. We’re backers
of entrepreneurial capitalists. They’re not. They’re what we call corporatist. They want to have more and more
monopolistic power and they’re doing that kind of convergence with big government. And so the fight here — and
that’s why the media’s been very late to this party — but the fight you’re seeing is between entrepreneur
capitalism, and the Acton Institute is a tremendous supporter of, and the people like the corporatists that are
closer to the people like we think in Beijing and Moscow than they are to the entrepreneurial capitalist spirit of
the United States.
Also the notion of "Christian capitalism" (or "neoliberalism with human face") is just a dream. There is not and there will
be never be any "authentic, free-market capitalism as a means of promoting wealth that involves everybody. Forms that he calls
"crony capitalism" which simply benefits a certain class are the only one systainable. althouth NewDeal Capilism was probably the
most close to his dreams.
This Is How Steve
Bannon Sees The Entire World
Benjamin Harnwell, Human Dignity Institute: Thank you, Steve. That was a
fascinating, fascinating overview. I am particularly struck by your argument, then, that in fact, capitalism would
spread around the world based on the Judeo-Christian foundation is, in fact, something that can create peace
through peoples rather than antagonism, which is often a point not sufficiently appreciated. Before I turn behind
me to take a question —
Bannon: One thing I want to make sure of, if you look at the leaders of capitalism at
that time, when capitalism was I believe at its highest flower and spreading its benefits to most of mankind,
almost all of those capitalists were strong believers in the Judeo-Christian West. They were either active
participants in the Jewish faith, they were active participants in the Christians' faith, and they took their
beliefs, and the underpinnings of their beliefs was manifested in the work they did.
And I think that’s incredibly important and something that would really become unmoored. I can see this on Wall
Street today — I can see this with the securitization of everything is that, everything is looked at as a
securitization opportunity. People are looked at as commodities. I don’t believe that our forefathers had
that same belief.
He also does not understand that far right revolt is the reincarnation of national socialist ideas (neo-fascism), not
so much his Christian capitalism ideas
Bannon: For everybody in your audience, this is one of the most monumental —
first off, it’s the biggest election upset in the history of the American republic. Eric Cantor was the House
majority leader and raised $10 million. He spent, between himself and outside groups, $8 million to hold a
congressional district. He ran against a professor who was an evangelical Christian and a libertarian economist.
He ran against a professor who raised in total $175,000. In fact, the bills from Eric Cantor’s campaign at a elite
steak house in Washington, DC, was over $200,000. So they spent more than $200,000 over the course of the campaign
wining and dining fat cats at a steak house in Washington than the entire opposition had to run.
Now, Eric
Cantor, it was a
landslide. He lost 57–43, and not one — outside of Breitbart, we covered this for six months, day in and day
out — not one news site — not Fox News, not Politico, no sites picked this up. And the reason that this guy won is
quite simple: Middle-class people and working-class people are tired of people like Eric Cantor who say they’re
conservative selling out their interests every day to crony capitalists.
"That center-right revolt is really a global revolt. I think you’re going to see it in Latin America, I think
you’re going to see it in Asia, I think you’ve already seen it in India."
And you’re seeing that whether that was UKIP and Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom, whether it’s these groups
in the Low Countries in Europe, whether it’s in France, there’s a new tea party in Germany. The theme is all the
same. And the theme is middle-class and working-class people — they’re saying, “Hey, I’m working harder than I’ve
ever worked. I’m getting less benefits than I’m ever getting through this, I’m incurring less wealth myself, and
I’m seeing a system of fat cats who say they’re conservative and say they back capitalist principles, but all
they’re doing is binding with corporatists." Right? Corporatists, to garner all the benefits for themselves.
And that center-right revolt is really a global revolt. I think you’re going to see it in Latin America, I
think you’re going to see it in Asia, I think you’ve already seen it in India. Modi's great victory was very much
based on these Reaganesque principles, so I think this is a global revolt, and we are very fortunate and proud to
be the news site that is reporting that throughout the world.
The populist ethno-nationalists in the Trump White House do not believe in this order. Their critique — which is simultaneously
moral, religious, economic, political and racial — is nicely summarized in the remarks Steve Bannon made to a Vatican conference in
2014.
Once there was a collection of Judeo-Christian nation-states, Bannon argued, that practiced a humane form of biblical capitalism
and fostered culturally coherent communities. But in the past few decades, the party of Davos — with its globalism, relativism, pluralism
and diversity — has sapped away the moral foundations of this Judeo-Christian way of life.
Humane capitalism has been replaced by the savage capitalism that brought us the financial crisis. National democracy has been
replaced by a crony-capitalist network of global elites. Traditional virtue has been replaced by abortion and gay marriage. Sovereign
nation-states are being replaced by hapless multilateral organizations like the E.U.
Decadent and enervated, the West lies vulnerable in the face of a confident and convicted Islamofascism, which is the cosmic threat
of our time.
In this view, Putin is a valuable ally precisely because he also seeks to replace the multiracial, multilingual global order with
strong nation-states. Putin ardently defends traditional values. He knows how to take the fight to radical Islam.
It’s actually interesting to read Donald Trump’s ideologist, Bannon, next to Putin’s ideologist Alexander Dugin. It’s like going
back to the 20th century and reading two versions of Marxism.
One is American Christian and the other orthodox Russian, but both have grandiose, sweeping theories of world history, both believe
we’re in an apocalyptic clash of civilizations, both seamlessly combine economic, moral and political analysis. Both self-consciously
see themselves as part of a loosely affiliated international populist movement, including the National Front in France, Nigel Farage
in Britain and many others. Dugin
wrote positively about Trump last winter, and Bannon referred to Dugin in his Vatican remarks.
“We must create strategic alliances to overthrow the present order of things,” Dugin has written, “of which the core could be described
as human rights, anti-hierarchy and political correctness — everything that is the face of the Beast, the Antichrist.”
“We, the Judeo-Christian West, really have to look at what [Putin] is talking about as far as traditionalism goes,” Bannon said,
“particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.”
Last week’s intelligence report on Russian hacking brought the Republican regulars, like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, into direct
conflict with the ethno-nationalist populists. Trump planted himself firmly in the latter camp, and dragged Fox News and a surprising
number of congressional Republicans with him.
If Trump were as effective as Putin, we’d probably see a radical shift in American grand strategy, a shift away from the postwar
global consensus and toward an alliance with various right-wing populist movements simmering around the globe.
But Trump is no Putin. Putin is theological and cynical, disciplined and calculating, experienced and knowledgeable. When Bannon,
Michael Flynn and others try to make Trump into a revolutionary foreign policy president, they will be taking on the entire foreign
policy establishment under a leader who may sympathize with them, but is inattentive, unpredictable and basically uninterested in anything
but his own status at the moment.
I’m personally betting the foreign policy apparatus, including the secretaries of state and defense, will grind down the populists
around Trump. Frictions will explode within the insanely confusing lines of authority in the White House. Trump will find he likes hanging
around the global establishment the way he liked having the Clintons at his wedding. In office he won’t be able to fixate on ISIS but
will face a blizzard of problems, and thus be dependent on the established institutions.
Garrett Lin, Florida January 10, 2017
Taking Bannon at his word in interviews, his goal for the GOP is not to build a party of 'ethno-nationalism,' but one of 'economic
nationalism,' (read: globally competitive nationalism) rooted in robust economic growth for all Americans--a true populism inclusive
of Americans of all 'identities,' all of whom, in fact, have a vested interest that the US maintain geopolitical strength enough
to match the manufacturing base of China.
Bannon's "Judeo-Christian West," can be read separately from his 'American Nationalism,' but they are not entirely exclusive.
Bannon knows the US Constitution was a development of Enlightenment-era ideals of Protestant Western nations, and thus, all Americans
who live under this document do, indeed, share in the heritage of the US as a nation of Western society. That is the connection.
Ethnicity has nothing to do with it.
If Bannon intended to build some sort of (implicitly white) 'ethno-nationalism,' would his campaign have scheduled the 'Hindu-Americans
for Trump' event, which took place last October, as an example? I think not.
Bannon knows who his audience is. He knows how that provocative headlines raise the hair of moralist puritans. Of course he knows
to emphasize the 'Judeo-Christian' West when addressing the Vatican. And indeed he also knows that running the United States of America
is different than delivering a keynote to a few priests.
Nothing at all to do with petty value judgments, the relative morality of capitalism, etc.
The Trump administration denounced or threatened trade agreements and "jaw-boned" particular
manufacturers without tangible or lasting results for young workers. It continued drone warfare
and bombing runs, exacerbating refugee problems. Its ham-handed actions relating to visa and
green card holders with vested rights partially wasted its "trump card" on immigration. Its
deregulatory and tax proposals had little appeal to its three new constituencies, and in its
kindness to fund managers, it forgot Bernard De Jouvenel's maxim that "the wealth of merchants
is resented more than the pomp of rulers."
There are still available, either to a Republican Party cleansed of Trump or to the Biden
administration, my 11 proposals of a populist nature, none very expensive. Since the Trump
administration was a milder version of what Hermann Rauschning in the 1930s called "A
Revolution of Nihilism," any effort to enlarge its constituency of malcontents was forsworn.
Accordingly, these ideas are re-tendered:
1. Completely relieving workers under the age of 25 of payroll taxation, as in Germany and
Holland. Over the long term, this would render them the most employed, rather than the most
unemployed, age cohort. Because they make up at most 10 percent of the labor force, and
typically enjoy barely half of average earnings, relieving them of 12.4 percent payroll taxes
would require an increase in general payroll tax rates of, at most, 5 to 10 percent of one
percent.
2. A revived Civilian Conservation Corps, a cause promoted only by Senator Bernie Sanders,
with its focus on low-tech infrastructure projects and services, including such neglected
fields of activity as soil conservation, reforestation, disaster relief, reclamation of
abandoned mine sites, creation of new national parks in Appalachia, hydrology, desert
agriculture, creation of footpaths and youth hostels, and training as practical nurses and
nursing assistants.
3. Making the services of the United States Employment Service, a largely moribund adjunct
of the unemployment system, available to all workers under the age of 25.
4. Tax credits, like those in Germany, Finland, and Japan, to encourage the installation of
second kitchens in owner-occupied housing, thereby fostering the creation of low-cost housing
in the form of accessory apartments, duplex houses, and mother-in-law flats. This is a far more
economical method of generating new low-cost small units than subsidized housing, and
restrictions to owner-occupied homes would eliminate the fears and controversies accompanying
public housing proposals.
5. Limited incentives, in the form of handbooks and nominal tax credits, to foster the
creation of cooperative old-age clubs on the Japanese pattern to assist the elderly in
remaining in their own homes, removing pressures on Medicaid.
6. Promotion of model state and local legislation and tax incentives for the creation of
land readjustment and land assembly districts on the postwar Japanese, Korean, and German
pattern, to foster private redevelopment of blighted urban and inner-suburban areas.
7. Support for a revived TEAM Act providing for the organization of single-plant works
councils, with the authority to negotiate local pay and productivity deals, work rules, and
employee grievances. Legislation to this effect sponsored by the Dunlap Commission appointed by
Labor Secretary Robert Reich and including several former Democratic secretaries of labor was
vetoed by President Clinton at the behest of the United Auto Workers. Since private-sector
union membership has declined by 60 percent since Clinton's veto, even Democratic congressmen
might now support it, to the great benefit of the low-income work force in non-union chain
establishments.
8. An orderly de-criminalization of marijuana on the Canadian pattern, accompanied by an
educational campaign stressing its de-motivating characteristics and enlisting schools and
colleges in its discouragement through selective drug testing, as in the military and adult
work force. This will eliminate nearly a million arrests a year and defund much of the
underworld that is the youth employer of first resort in depressed areas.
9. An effort to revive depressed downtown areas in small towns and cities with incentives
for the creation of Business Improvement Districts, together with enhanced enforcement of
antitrust, predatory pricing, and bribery laws against offending large retailers.
10. Relief for credit unions and community banks from the more oppressive Sarbanes-Oxley and
Dodd-Frank regulations without holding them hostage to secure unjustified deregulation for
larger banks.
11. Grant of work permits to undocumented workers without criminal records and with long
records of American employment upon payment by them, their families, employers, or
philanthropies of large ($5,000) application fees, the proceeds to be dedicated to a fund for
law enforcement, housing, and nurse practitioner programs addressing migration in its Central
American and other source countries. As with women's suffrage prior to 1920, the question of
enfranchisement should be left to the States, pursuant to Article I, Sections 2 and 4 of the
Constitution.
It may be objected that measures to relieve the young are of limited political appeal, since
they do not vote in large numbers. They do not, but their mothers do. And many of the other
measures will provide citizens with a greater sense of control over their own lives.
While much of this agenda may not appeal to gradgrind Republicans who appreciate the price
of everything and the value of nothing, nor to those whose idea of an infrastructure program is
aid to a contracting class and its representatives on K Street, some might be led to follow a
vagrant thought of former speaker Paul Ryan. It will be recalled that he uttered the only
memorable words of the 2012 Republican Convention when he declared that "college graduates
should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at faded Obama
posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life."
George W. Liebmann, a Baltimore lawyer, is the author of various books on public policy and
history, including Solving Problems Without Large Government: Devolution, Fairness, and
Equality (Praeger, 1999), reprinted as Neighborhood Futures (Transaction Books, 2003).
I would modify Item#1 and Item#3 to not just encourage employment for those under 25 but I
would:
1) exclude all (legal, illegal or visa workers from programs to encourage their
employment.
2) such programs should also include the difficult to employ like the disabled
3) such programs should also include the difficult to employ over 50 job seeker.
I especially support Item 4 (small studio apartments or granny flats)
I oppose Item#7 It is much to dangerous for such worker councils to be usurped by our
leftist Marxist woke culture, political activist, social justice, cancel culture, diversity,
inclusivity, cross sectional race theorists, etc. which will translate into a hostile
anti-white, anti-male, anti-Christian, anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-chrildren,
anti-American corporate enforced ideology. If you thought the left's false accusations of
rape on campus and the lefts false accusations of race hatred on campus, it you thought false
accusations of Jesse Smollett in Chicago were an example of ruining an individuals life on
hearsay then wake until these work councils get taken over by leftist activists and watch
what they do to innocent working class employees who just want to do their job but don't
follow the leftist narrative.
I oppose Item#11. We lost 250,000 jobs due to COVID (the chinese bat flu stew). Our
unemployment rate is 6.7%. At the same time we are losing jobs our legal immigration rate is
steady at 1 million per year. No, I do not support illegal immigration, legal immigration,
refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, temporary work or education visas. No western
nation can continue to relieve the problems of over population by mass immigration. It is not
fair to the citizens of the US or any other western/westernized country.
I don't disagree with very much here though as a practical matter I will point out a
mistaken assumption that seems to underlie #5:
Re: Limited incentives, in the form of handbooks and nominal tax credits, to foster the
creation of cooperative old-age clubs on the Japanese pattern to assist the elderly in
remaining in their own homes, removing pressures on Medicaid.
I assume that is about nursing homes, but those are almost always a last resort when the
patient is so seriously disabled that they cannot possibly live independently and their
medical needs surpass the abilities of family members to care for them.
Also, I don't think that youth unemployment is the big bugaboo with deindustrialization.
Young people are a good deal more flexible, and have fewer financial commitments, than older
people after all. Rather the disemployment of middle aged (and older) blue collar workers is
the larger problem. These people expected to be in the same job (or type of job) for life and
they had the rug pulled out from under them and found themselves with few prospects. Some of
them ended up in low paying service jobs, some lived off a still-employed spouse, some went
on SSDI, and some few even ended up homeless.
Most of these barely sound conservative. One-company workers' councils violate NLRB rules,
for reasons probably having to do with Clinton's veto; these days they would vastly increase
the number of workers in organized setting.
The marijuana suggestion contains bits of the old War on Drugs: forced drug testing of
workers, and propaganda that focuses on marijuana rather than the dangers of any kind of
excess substance use/addiction. *Free employers to pursue a drug-free work place
rather than a drug-free work force. *Any govt-sponsored statements on drugs should be
based on facts and even-handed research, not the whoring that scientists have done for the
last 50 years, and should include the tonic effects of both a mild buzz and deep psychedelic
experience.
As a moderate Democrat, most of these ideas appeal to me. As someone who has paid
attention for decades, I see no chance in hell of any of these things happening [during Biden
administration], especially if proposed by a Democrat. As an optimist, I wish moderate
Republicans could join moderate Democrats in making such things a possibility. As a realist,
I don't think America is capable of solving any problems right now, especially tough ones. As
an American, it saddens me.
Most of the ideas are excellent. I would add much greater funding for vocational education
at the secondary and post-secondary level. Our public schools are far too focused on
preparing students for college with insufficient training for those ill suited for or
uninterested in seeking a university education.
The lack of affordable housing is a major obstacle for twenty somethings to get out of
their childhood home and begin the process of family formation. We need tax incentives to
build limited equity cooperative apartment buildings, resident-owned mobile/modular home
parks and small bungalow-style houses.
I like the proposal for worker councils but employee ownership is an even better idea.
Workers owning a share in their business should be strongly encouraged by public policy at
all levels.
Steve Bannon, Former Senior Trump Advisor, Arrested For Defrauding Trump VotersMark Thomason , Aug 20 2020 16:12 utc |
1
It is likely that U.S. President Donald Trump will soon says that he hardly knew his
former campaign manager and senior advisor Steve Bannon and that he had always suspected that
Bannon was a crook.
Today the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York
announced an indictment against Bannon and others:
Starting in approximately December 2018, BRIAN KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO,
and TIMOTHY SHEA, and others, orchestrated a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of
donors, including donors in the Southern District of New York, in connection with an online
crowdfunding campaign ultimately known as "We Build The Wall" that raised more than $25
million to build a wall along the southern border of the United States. In particular, to
induce donors to donate to the campaign, KOLFAGE repeatedly and falsely assured the public
that he would "not take a penny in salary or compensation" and that "100% of the funds
raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose" because, as BANNON
publicly stated, "we're a volunteer organization."
Those representations were false.
The four indicted persons who ran the "We Build The Wall" campaign funneled donations into
their own pockets:
[STEVE] BANNON, through a non-profit organization under his control ("Non-Profit-1"),
received over $1 million from We Build the Wall, at least some of which BANNON used to
cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in BANNON's personal expenses.
Bannon and the other three accused persons are now under arrest.
Interestingly the indictments come from the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern
District of New York which in June was involved in a
spat with Trump :
Geoffrey Berman, the powerful U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said
late Friday that he had not resigned after Attorney General William Barr said he would be
stepping down. Barr sent a letter to Berman on Saturday saying he had asked President Trump
to fire Berman, and the president had done so.
"I was surprised and quite disappointed by the press statement you released last night,"
Barr said in a statement. "Because you have declared that you have no intention of
resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so."
Berman's office had investigated some of President Trump's associates, including the
president's former personal attorney Michael Cohen.
There were at that time
several known cases in the Southern District that involved people somewhat associated
with Trump. But it still is not known why exactly Trump intervened in that office.
Could it have been because of the case against Bannon which was not publicly known at that
time?
Probably not. Bannon and the others defrauded people who want to build the wall and are
thereby on Trump's side. Trump is not probably not stupid enough to intervene in such a
case.
Then again ...
The advisory board of We
Build The Wall includes several other pro-Trump figures including mercenary salesman Erik
Prince.
CBS reports that Bannon was
taken into custody by US Postal Inspection Service agents. In the announcement of the
indictment Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New
York, explicitly praises the USPIS for its support. In light of the recent dust up over
alleged Trump moves against the Postal Service that deserves a chuckle.
Bannon had recently worked with the Chinese crook Guo Wengui to build up a media company.
As we noted a year
ago :
A non-profit that "did not pay him" actually paid for services that
benefited him. There was just a nominal cut out between him and the payment by his
non-profit.
Bannon said this was wrong when the Clinton's did it. That is how the money got from their
non-profit Foundation to them, and in much larger amounts than what Bannon took.
Bannon said it was wrong then when the Clinton's did it. Democrats say it is wrong now
when Bannon did it. They are both correct.
Economic self-sufficiency which is also a foundation of REAL national security starts
from industry. No industry--no American nation. Simple as that.
The very idea of an American nation has all but been destroyed. The very people who
built the US have been vilified and many within this group have gone along with it. The
problem is beyond material. America is suffering from a psycho-social ailment. It is at
least 2 or 3 different cultures within the borders of one country. Even if industries were
brought back what purpose would they serve? Hedonism, self-worship, and consumerism are the
new trinity of many within the elite and a great many in the so called middle class. I
doubt economic self-sufficiency is possible let alone long-suffering given the absence of
purpose and meaning in people's lives. The secular reigns supreme over the sacred.
cdvision • 19
hours ago It is practically impossible for the US to recover as a manufacturing nation.
The skills are gone, the education and training has gone, the culture will not accept it,
and anyway it would be massively more expensive than buying superior goods at a cheaper
price - think cars, for example. The US is massively behind the curve; I read recently that
China has more robots producing stuff than the rest of the world combined. And what robots
are working in the US have likely been put in by Daimler or BMW - and be Chinese made
robots.
The US may try and break its dependency on China - say to Vietnam or India - but have
any of those idiots suggesting this been to Vietnam or India. You see an awful lot of
Chinese companies there manufacturing stuff. So changing the Made in China label to Made in
Vietnam label changes nothing.
According to latest stats only 16% of Chinese exports go to the US. If this went to zero
it would be a short term problem for China, but a massive blow for the US. Its not just the
cheap shit that ends up in Walmart, there are few end products that don't have parts made
in China, and realistically changing that is impossible. I keep repeating that all China
has to do is stop exporting to the US and in a week of so the US would be on its knees. Oh,
and its a myth that China is ripping off US IP - maybe in the past, but now the future is
out east. Think 5G; its a given that the countries with the best infrastructure will
prosper.
Vasya Pypkin •
20
hours ago With this elite nothing good is going to happen. So, there must be elites
thinking along Andrei lines, but here comes the question of power. To push measures
necessary to industrialize those new elite must have power and not in a sense like Trump
has or rather not...
Smells like revolutionary coup is needed to safe USA. see more
Steve Bannon is an American Exceptionalist. He argues that USA-style capitalism and Chinese
communism are incompatible systems which cannot "compete" for influence because, to his
thinking, the Chinese model will always "win" (i.e. seem a better system, particularly in
Global south). He advocates first, strict de-coupling; and second, a WW2 level total war with
goal of destroying CCP.
I know people who have taken to Bannon's populist message, but seem to miss the "total
war" part. This is the danger of a USA lurch towards fascism, should such occur as the
coronavirus lockdown proceeds, as a messianic crusade against the Chinese would be a
centrepiece.
This Indian neocon forgets that it was the USA which brought destruction on Syria by unleashing the civil war in order to achieve goals of its Middle East policy.
Fueling money, weapons (from already destructed Libya), and jihadists (financed by Saudi and Golf monarchies.) There are apple
documents about this activities and the amount of foreign mercenaries in ISIS forces. It was
Obama and Hillary who created ISIS.
The fact that Haaretz republished such a weak article, originally published on Jan 24, 2019 on Oct 19, 2019 suggests that
Tulsi has few friends in Israel lobby, which is deepely interested in the USA interventionalist policies in the Middle East.
Notable quotes:
"... Though not of Indian origin, Gabbard has been warmly embraced by pro-Modi elements of the Hindu-American diaspora in the U.S., many of whom came forward and donated generously to her campaign. According to The Intercept , "Nearly one-third of Gabbard's overall donations - $1.24 million - came from more than 800 individual donors with names of Hindu origin, many of whom made repeat donations." ..."
"... Steve Bannon "loves Tulsi Gabbard." He thinks she "gets the foreign policy stuff, the Islamic terrorism stuff ." Tucker Carlson loves her Assad-as-genocidaire skepticism, David Duke loves how she's realigning U.S. politics, and Richard Spencer lauds her "bravery" in the diplomatic field. ..."
"... Bannon was so impressed with Gabbard as a potential ally that as he brokered a meeting between her and the newly-installed President Donald Trump . Tulsi jumped at the opportunity: in her own words , "I walked out thinking that there may be some opportunity to work with this administration to shift our foreign policy in a more positive, less destructive direction." ..."
This article was originally published on 24th January 2019
"For too long, the U.S. has turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against civilians in Yemen by the Saudi-U.S.
coalition [a] genocidal war that has killed tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians with bombs and mass starvation, creating the worst
humanitarian crisis in the world The time for crocodile tears and baseless platitudes is over. Enough is enough. The U.S must end
its support for Saudi Arabia and stop waging interventionist wars [unauthorized by Congress] that increase destruction, death and
suffering around the world "
You wouldn't be surprised if this was a speech given by
Vladimir Putin or
Bashar Assad . But this isn't a quote
from the Kremlin or Damascus. It part of a speech by a member of the U.S. Congress who's joined the running to be selected as the
Democratic Party's presidential nominee:
Tulsi Gabbard
.
U.S. politicians criticizing imperialist U.S. foreign policy interventions, this time in the Middle East, and helpfully excluding
other major world powers' own interventions, is exactly the message Russia seeks to amplify through its propaganda channels. On cue,
Russia's 24 hour English news channel, RT, serially
posted Gabbard's video clip on their YouTube
channel with the headline that read: "Speeches that still matter: Rep Gabbard on bringing an end to U.S. interventionism."
Was Gabbard's speech a genuinely passionate plea on humanitarian grounds, to the powers that be, to end the humanitarian crisis
in Yemen? Or was it carefully constructed political opportunism? One clear way to triangulate the authenticity of her call would
be to test how consistently Gabbard has called out state-led humanitarian crises and deaths around the world.
The death and destruction in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere is heartbreaking. It's difficult for any conscientious human being
to be insensitive to grotesque acts of war where civilians are bombed or gassed to death. But what is perplexing is Tulsi's selective
geographic umbrage on this issue.
Hey @realdonaldtrump : being Saudi Arabia's
bitch is not "America First."
On the one hand, she condemns the Saudi-U.S. led coalition as complicit in a genocidal war, but she welcomes India's Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, who has been called the "
man with a massacre on his hands " with open arms.
Some background: In 2002, Modi was chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat when fire broke out in a train full of Hindu
pilgrims. This is how The Guardian's Aditya Chakrabortty describes what followed:
"Within hours and without a shred of evidence, Modi declared that the Pakistani secret services had been to blame; he then had
the charred bodies paraded in the main city of Ahmedabad; and let his own party support a state-wide strike for three days.
"What followed was mass bloodshed: 1,000 dead on official estimates, more than 2,000 by independent tallies. The vast majority
of those who died were Muslim. Mobs of men dragged women and young girls out of their homes and raped them. One [of the ringleaders]
boasted of how he slit open the womb of a pregnant woman."
There were clear signs that the attackers benefitted from state-level support. The attackers, armed with swords, machetes or iron
bars, carried computer print-outs listing the addresses of Muslim families, shops and businesses,
according to a report in The Telegraph.
Across Gujarat, 180 mosques were destroyed or damaged along with thousands of Muslim-owned businesses and homes. Callers to police
stations were told: "We don't have orders to save you," and "We cannot help you, we have orders from above." Survivors called for
this to be recognized not by the over-used term of 'intercommunal riots' but rather a pogrom, or attempted genocide.
The U.S. government's belief in Modi's complicity was clear when it rejected his request for a U.S. visa in 2005, by which time
he had become leader of India's nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). He was
excluded under
a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that "makes any government official who was responsible for or directly carried
out at any time particularly severe violations of religious freedom ineligible for a visa."
President Obama overturned the visa ban in 2016. India's courts have exonerated Modi. He has, on numerous occasions, says he has
"moved on." But the ghosts of Gujarat haven't moved anywhere.
Tulsi Gabbard has an exceptional appreciation for Modi.
Hers is a very personal rapport. She presented him with her own copy of the Bhagavad-Gita, on which she took her Congressional
oath of office, when he visited the U.S. Modi sent her with "a beautiful message of Krishna" for her wedding. Gabbard then presented
him with a CD of music from her wedding.
Upon Mr Modi's invitation, she took a trip to India
where she was widely regarded as the "darling of the BJP and the RSS" – the RSS (a right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer
organization) being the BJP's ideological "parent." Both groups, which wield enormous power in India, take pride in a narrow, chauvinistic
view of India as a Hindu country where Muslims and other minorities should be considered second-class citizens.
Such was her affinity that Tulsi
opposed House
Resolution 417 - "Praising India's rich religious diversity and commitment to tolerance and equality, and reaffirming the need to
protect the rights and freedoms of religious minorities" - that was seen as a veiled criticism of Modi. She even tried to
brush away the Gujarat
pogrom by saying, "There was a lot of misinformation that surrounded the event in 2002."
When it comes to Modi, Gabbard seems to have no pangs of conscience about "destruction, death and suffering" and comfortably wipes
the blood off the hands of those complicit in murder.
Why would Tulsi Gabbard damn what she sees as America's complicity in Yemen but embrace an authoritarian foreign leader with blood
on his hands? Why does she openly support and endorse Modi's poor track record on human rights? What distinction does Gabbard draw
between the thousands of Muslims massacred in Gujarat and the thousands of Muslims who died in Yemen? Why isn't she making a similarly
passionate plea to Prime Minister Modi to stop the ongoing mob lynchings and rapes in India?
One obvious reason she won't do that is the financial and electoral benefits she accrues from openly supporting Modi. By displaying
her carefully cultivated public support for Modi, she has won the support of many Indian Americans - particularly those with links
to the RSS - by flaunting her 'loyal' Hindu identity.
Though not of Indian origin, Gabbard has been warmly embraced by pro-Modi elements of the Hindu-American diaspora in the U.S.,
many of whom came forward and donated generously to her campaign.
According to The Intercept
, "Nearly one-third of Gabbard's overall donations - $1.24 million - came from more than 800 individual donors with names of
Hindu origin, many of whom made repeat donations."
It's not just the Hindu right who love Gabbard. America's resurgent hard and far right agrees, not least because she was an outspoken
critic of the Obama administration's alleged reluctance to recognize that "Islamic extremists are our enemy."
Steve Bannon "loves Tulsi Gabbard." He thinks she "gets the foreign policy stuff,
the Islamic terrorism
stuff ." Tucker Carlson
loves her Assad-as-genocidaire skepticism, David Duke loves how she's realigning U.S. politics, and Richard Spencer lauds her
"bravery" in the diplomatic field.
Her own aunt, Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard, has noted her discomfort with this mixed bag of endorsements, in low-key language:
Gabbard "has a notably mixed voting record, and associations that veer from certain progressive causes to the apparent
courting of strongmen such as Narendra
Modi, Bashar al-Assad, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (not to mention Trump) - this zigzagging path through positions is vexing."
Bannon was so impressed with Gabbard as a potential ally that as he brokered a meeting between her and the newly-installed President
Donald Trump . Tulsi jumped at the opportunity:
in her own words , "I
walked out thinking that there may be some opportunity to work with this administration to shift our foreign policy in a more positive,
less destructive direction."
Amongst other obvious obstacles to a Democratic congresswomen freelancing coordination with the White House, her dream of a foreign
policy "shift" getting a presidential stamp burst when she went to Damascus,
met Bashar Assad , and claimed that she was "skeptical" of claims that Assad's government was to blame for Syria's genocide.
Those Assad apologetics are rightly one reason why Gabbard's once-rising-star among Democrats is stalling. But her pro-Modi apologetics,
far less examined and far more seldom interrogated in the U.S. media, should have been just as good a reason to repudiate her candidacy.
A fellow at the University of Oxford's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and a graduate of the London School
of Economics, Shrenik Rao is a digital entrepreneur and filmmaker. Rao revived the
Madras Courier , a 232-year-old newspaper, as a digital publication of which
he is the editor-in-chief.
Stephen K. Bannon served as chief strategist for President Trump from January 2017 to
August 2017.
Getting tough with China to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States was the
linchpin of President Trump's electoral march through the Rust Belt during his 2016 victory.
Today, the goal of the radical cadre running China -- the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) -- is
to be the global hegemonic power. The president's threatened
tariffs on Sunday demonstrate the severity of this threat. But as Washington and Beijing
wrap up months of negotiations on a trade deal this month, whatever emerges won't be a trade
deal. It will be a temporary truce in a years-long economic and strategic war with China.
These are six "understandings" that highlight why it is futile to compromise with this
regime.
The first understanding : The CCP has been waging economic war against industrial
democracies ever since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and now China
has emerged as the greatest economic and national security threat the United States has ever
faced.
As a framework for the current trade talks, China must agree to end forced technology
transfers; intellectual property theft; cyberintrusions into business networks; currency
manipulation; high tariff and nontariff barriers; and unfair subsidies to state-owned
enterprises. However, if the CCP agrees to the United States' demands in an enforceable manner,
it would amount to a legal and regulatory dismantling of Chinese state capitalism.
The second understanding : The trade deal under negotiation this month is not a deal between
two similar systems seeking closer ties, as its cheerleaders on Wall Street and in the media
and academia argue. Rather, this is a fundamental clash between two radically different
economic models.
The best U.S. result is a detailed document in which China renounces its predatory,
confiscatory and mercantilist practices while providing ample means to monitor and promptly
enforce the agreement.
The best CCP result is to get the tariffs lifted by filing reams of paper with false,
unenforceable promises that will allow it to run out the clock on the Trump administration and
hope for a less antagonistic Democratic alternative.
The third understanding : Chinese state capitalism is highly profitable for its owners --
the members of the CCP. Stagnant state-owned enterprises gain a competitive edge through
massive government subsidies and the cost savings won by stealing the intellectual property,
technology and innovations of foreigners.
If China halted such grand theft, its enterprises would be rapidly outcompeted by the
Germans, South Koreans, Japanese and especially the United States.
This fact explains much about internal Chinese politics today. President Xi Jinping faces a
palace sharply divided between reformers led by chief trade negotiator Liu He and a swarm of
hawks who have profited and gained power from the status quo. Within China itself, it is both
gallows humor and even money as to whether Liu He will be celebrated as the next Deng Xiaoping
or end up in a Chinese gulag.
The fourth understanding : Trump advisers inside and outside the White House are playing on
the president's well-earned pride in a rising stock market and a fear he might lose the Farm
Belt to try to box him into a weak deal. But it is a decidedly false narrative that any failure
to reach a deal will lead to a market meltdown and economic implosion.
In fact, there is no better argument for Trump keeping his bold tariffs on China than the
latest report that the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.2 percent
in the first quarter .
Anything less than a great deal will subject the president to relentless criticism from the
Charles E. Schumer and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic Party. In addition, Sens. Marco
Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) might use it to get to the right of Trump on China --
potentially setting up a later primary challenge. For these reasons, the president's best
political option is not to surrender, but rather, to double down on the tariffs -- they have
been highly effective in pressuring the Chinese without harming the U.S. economy.
The fifth understanding : Even the toughest agreement needs effective monitoring, which is
difficult even with accommodating partners and perhaps impossible with China. The danger is for
the president to sign what appears to be a reasonable deal and find out several years later
that the United States was hoodwinked.
The United States failed to adequately monitor China's entry into the WTO in 2001. Instead
of access to a billion Chinese consumers, the United States lost more than 5 million
manufacturing jobs since 2000.
The sixth understanding : The world now bears witness to a rapidly militarizing totalitarian
state imprisoning
millions in work camps; persecuting Uighurs, Christians and Buddhists; and spying on, and
enslaving, its own population.
This is history in real time; and the world is a house divided -- half slave, half free.
Trump and Xi are facing off to tip the scales in one direction or the other. One way leads to
the benefits of freedom, democracy and free-market capitalism. The other leads to a
totalitarian and mercantilist power run on state capitalism with Chinese characteristics.
The United States' fight is not with the Chinese people but with the CCP. The Chinese people
are the first and continuous victims of this barbarous regime.
The central issues that must be faced are China's intentions on the world stage and what
those ambitions mean for U.S. prosperity. With our country at a crossroads, it is more
important than ever that Trump follow his instincts and not soften his stance against the
greatest existential threat ever faced by the United States.
1. China must agree to end forced technology transfers; intellectual property theft;
cyberintrusions into business networks; currency manipulation; high tariff and nontariff
barriers; and unfair subsidies to state-owned enterprises.
In the good 'ol USA, we refer to this as "corporate welfare", direct federal subsidies (eg
farm subsidies), MIC and government 'no-bid defense' contract, oil depletion allowance, tax
credits and other tax incentives such as accelerated depreciation, dividend tax, Advanced
Technology Program, federal land giveways, local & state land & tax "incentive"
giveways, carried interest, welfare and food stamp costs paid to employees of companies like
Walmart and McDonalds (because employee wages for full time employment fall below poverty
level), the clunker auto subsidy program to bail out US auto companies, the mortgage interest
deduction, and more. The cherry on top is, of course, the trillions of dollars in TARP and QE
given to giant banks to bail out Wall Street.
For all the hot air, it appears that reciprocity is not really what Steve has in mind.
2. The best U.S. result is a detailed document in which China renounces its predatory,
confiscatory and mercantilist practices while providing ample means to monitor and promptly
enforce the agreement.
Steve? Steve?? Are you aware that the U.S. is currently trying to economically strangle
countries all over the world with economic sanctions? Venezuela. Cuba. Syria. Iran.
Russia.North Korea. Lebanon. Yemen. And if economic sanctions don't work, we bomb them. Iraq.
Afghanistan. Libya. Syria.
3. by stealing the intellectual property, technology and innovations of
foreigners.
Libya's gold "disappeared". As did much of Iraq's gold. And the Bank of England, citing
U.S. sanctions as its legal fig leaf, confiscated $1.2 billion of Venezuelan gold. As to
stealing technology, no one does it better than Uncle Same: Vault 7 and Stuxnet are prime
examples of US spying on foreign technology companies.
4. But it is a decidedly false narrative that any failure to reach a deal will lead to
a market meltdown and economic implosion.
I dunno. I'm hearing a lot of very unhappy muttering in the rural Midwest, where I live. I
think we're facing the very real possibility of a large-scale Trumpian economic disaster, due
to his trade war, negative trending macoeconomic indicators, the unbelievable Trumpian debt
(the biggest debt in the history of the galaxy, putting Obama and Bush Jr., and even WWII
debt to shame), and the looming loss of the dollar's world reserve currency status. Toss in a
global recession, to boot. This feels like "implosion" to me.
5. Instead of access to a billion Chinese consumers, the United States lost more than 5
million manufacturing jobs since 2000.
Typical capitalist hypocrisy. We demand free markets for other people. Never for
ourselves. Many American companies have been doing fine selling to "a billion Chinese
consumers". The problem is, Americans participating in the free market often choose Chinese
goods.
Not only are you full of hot air, Steve-- you and Bolton and the rest of Trump's
Israel-first neocon apologists are effectively destroying our economy and our country. When
the very likely "implosion" does occur, watch the rats (hate to use that metaphor, since the
lowest mangy flea-bitten rat is better than any neocon) scurry for the exits, blaming
everyone but themselves.
Who is Steve Bannon going to blame? Ocasio-Cortez, who else?
Understanding the core nature of China is important to comprehend the lack of flexibility
ingrained in their system. This comes in the ideology that directs its actions. China is
still very much a communist country, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls
everything. While it may appear both State-owned and private firms operate within China's
economic system. This is mostly an illusion following economic reforms in the 1980s.
In reality, the communist system does not allow for true private ownership and views all
"tech innovation" as essential to its national interests. Thus, private and state-owned
Chinese firms act in the interest of the Chinese regime when it comes to foreign investments
in the high-tech sectors. Below is the second part of a part-two series which explores why
China is on a one-track path and blind to other options going forward. This is a recipe for
conflict.
What pisses me off is the fact that pretty much every western company has decided to
manufacture in China.
My Mrs bought me a coat today. A nice snazzy Italian brand. Then looking at the label it
says made in China. So it's not an Italian coat at all. It's a Chinese coat with Italian
branding.
Burberry do the same thing. They can basically charge whatever they want for coats, and as
a consumer you buy into that British heritage . Low and behold their stuff is made in
China.
Perhaps we should slap the tariffs (I'm not a fan of tariffs BTW,) on the western
companies that continue to outsource to China .
The ceding of national interests, without the wilful, knowing consent of both political
parties, and citizens believing they could simply vote their way out of this or that brand of
swamp, could never have been accomplished ..
The story of the scorpion, and the frog, crossing the river ..
After much pleading by the scorpion, the frog did give the scorpion a lift to safely cross
the river, and after being bitten during the crossing, frog crys out "but you promised you
would not bite me!!"
Scorpion replys, " you knew what i was when you picked me up .. "
The story of the American body politic, on steroids the last 40 -50 years ..
That is exactly what happened. The murican and other corporations moved to the larger
consumer markets for their products, Asia. China has moar than 3 times the population of
murica. Labour is plenty, wages are low, no benefits or overtime. 12 hour days or moar is the
norm there. It's not China that people should be blaming for the transition to manufacture
there. The corporations are all about profits. They care less about you and yoar family or
jobs for you. The corporations are making money like never before. GM sells 3 times as many
cars in China than in murica. It costs money to ship over seas, cheaper to move manufacturing
to where the demand is.
China also has a growing middle class that will be big consumers of goods, whereas murica
has a decling middle class and retiring baby boomers. Murica is in decay. Neglected
infrastructure, dying cities, NY, Baltimore, Seattle, Detroit, Chicago, SanFran, farms are
over producing and need social welfare from tax payers, high consumer debts, low consumption
of goods. Car manufacturers will be back at the Fed window for free tax payers money to avert
total bankruptcy. We've seen this play before and here we are again.
Murica is bankrupt. This is why the banks around the world are buying gold reserves. All
currencies eventually become worthless paper for fire starting or heating in winter. There is
no currency that ever exceeded 100 yrs. as money. Gold has been money for thousands of
years.
Economies work best when currencies are stable in value. Once we know what the goal is, we
then look for a way to achieve it and the best way has always been to base a currency on
gold. Nobody has found a better way, even in the form of a proposal and nobody has ever
needed to find a better way, because gold has always worked very well.
The fight is actually with America's own politicians and corporations. They sold out
America long ago. The Chinese trade differently. They don't have to bomb. It's really too bad
what American democracy stands for today around the world. Nobody wants anything to do with
it and gradually they're dumping it.
British and Roman empires were not much different towards the end of their rein. They
become complacent and arrogant towards other countries. Eventually they run out of friends,
then start woars to rape and pillage gold, silver and resources. An attempt to sustain the
costs of maintaining their exuberant life style and military around the globe. Rome at first
started debasing their gold and silver money. Once trading partners realized their coins were
not pure, they called the empire a fraud and didn't want to trade with the crooks. Woar
ensued.
what a dumbass. bannon represents the wacko christian wing of the zionazi party.
usa oligarchy greed did this to the american people. the chinese happily cooperated likely
wondering how they were being screwed because the usa policy was so stupid. the usa made the
mistake of thinking the chinese would roll over like the japanese and koreans did, once the
spice started flowing.
the chinese don't have to give anything because the usa screwed itself so badly they need
china to keep producing crap for the usa because there is no competitive alternative either
by other countries to fill the gap and certainly not with a built from scratch usa
manufacturing sector. the usa is so stupid it has foreign countries make critical military
tech parts to maximize profit for mic.
does bannon really think the chinese people won't riot if they are unhappy with .gov? does
he remember tianemen square? it's american people who won't do anything about .gov and the
oligarchs screwing them.
according to bannon it is okay for the usa to kill millions of muslims and christians in
the mid east for jewland and the zionazis but wrong for china to control their influence in
china?
bannon's calling is a homeless alchy. he fits the part with lunatic rants and his
appearance.
The problem here isn't the WTO, it's the WTC. Bannon says China entered the WTO in 2001
and have been criminals ever since. Also in 2001 the Neocons started their insane wars after
blowing up the WTC and have been criminals ever since. Eighteen years of pissing away cash
and not minding the store - and these lunatics are back in the White House. Anybody hoping
for a happy ending with China is just as nuts.
You fat ******* zio-slob/slut troll. It may have been a good idea if it were just about
trade and you are willing to actually seek a mutually beneficial compromise, but when you are
also poking them militarily it changes the dynamics of the successful negotiations and
cooperation. Who wants to do a deal with someone who continually sends warships up and down
your coastline in engaging in provactive actions
Bannon has got some screws loose in the head. Getting tough with China isn't going to
bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States for ten reasons:
1. Those jobs have nowhere in the U.S. to come home to. Most of the factories have been
shut down and demolished years ago.
2. American workers have been out of the loop for so long, that they are basically
unskilled and untrained at this point...... all 95.5 million of them!
3. The fight isn't against China, as it is against corporate America. Corporate America
doesn't want to pay the higher wages or benefits here. That is why they went hunting for the
cheap labor in China in the first place. It's not China's fault!
4. America's entire tax system stinks and its predatory. There is nothing that is going to
make those businesses in China go to America , particularly when China is offering those same
companies tax incentives to stay.
5. China's transportation infrastructure is far better than America's. America's road
system is now a full 40 years behind China's, and America's rail system is 75 years behind
China's. Air transportation is about the same as the U.S., but China has the better airports
for handling large number of passengers and freight. Maritime shipping is first rate all the
way, the U.S. can't hardly touch them in moving freight overseas.
6. The United States routinely blocks the World Trade Organization's appointments of
judges who could rule on tariffs, because the U.S. wants to load the dice in their favor at
the WTO. Companies are often used as captive hostages by the U.S.,. Not the case with
China.
7. The U.S. has a notoriety for not honoring any treaty it signs. The WTO has cited the
U.S. as undisciplined, and the decision of whether to comply with international legal
obligations varies depending on which domestic political actors are engaged in the policy
process. Some American institutions are more likely to supply compliance than others. Why
would any company want to come to America without any assurances in governing trade rules or
a hostile political environment that turns on a dime?
8. China is the ideal place for emerging markets. It has access to lots of different
manufacturing for emerging businesses, something the U.S. lacks these days.
9. China has economic free zones, like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, etc.,. The U.S. has
nothing to compare.
10. China's main priority has been shifted from expansion to stability. By stability, what
is implied is demand that is internal, rather than external, and that requires a focus on the
consumer. This could represent an opportunity for businesses that invest in the opportunity
to sell goods in the country. As it stands now, there is really no reason for a company in
China to come to the U.S., because every American is maxed out on credit and doesn't have the
money to buy anything. Why set up a business in the U.S. when the U.S. economy is in imminent
danger of collapsing over night, and becoming a casualty???
This is another false (fraudulent non-existent choice) being presented by the global so
called but no longer existent elite. U.S. vs China. It doesn't make any difference whether it
is the corporations presenting the false choice or the so called deep state. Either way it
has no truth and therefore no value.
As I've provided extensive facts and evidence as details on both sides all governments are
full of traitors. Traitors both foreign, domestic and international. Any future global
attempt at government will never consist of any of these two places or any other since all
others continue to fail in their own right to take the appropriate actions in their own
governments or against those that are attempting to implement wholly criminal operations
internationally.
Very little of the Chinese technology was stolen by them. It was freely given by US
universities getting big bucks to fill seats and US corporations looking to boost executives
pay and perks, plus offloading the headaches they were getting paid big bucks to solve, by
offshoring to China. As evidenced by the recent tax cut for corporations and the funds they
brought back from overseas bringing back or creating jobs in the US is a pipe dream. Your
CEO's thought it was more important to feather their nests, and in many cases putting their
company into hock, to buy back their stock. Raises or funds for R&D? Fuggeddaboutit. With
China in the cross hairs the captains of industry are sailing to other shitholes for their
stuff rather than the US. Don't blame the Chinese for the "best and brightest" selling the US
down the drain to enrich themselves. One of the many reasons the US is circling drain due to
self inflicted hurt is the whole country from top to bottom wants **** and they want it now
no matter what it takes whether it be power, riches, or both.
What follows is a conversation between journalist Lacqueline
Luqman, Truthdig contributor Jeff Cohen and Marc Stiner of the Real News
Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the
post.
MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Marc Steiner. Great to have you
all with us. This is the third part of our conversation today about what's happening in this
week's news. We are going to look at Stephen Miller in the Trump administration and the power
of the white nationalist Right in that administration. What's happening is emblematic of what's
happening inside the Department of Homeland Security. We are joined here once again by Jeff
Cohen, who is founder of RootsAction.org and the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting, and author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in the Corporate Media, and
Jacqueline Luqman, who is Editor-in-chief of Luqman Nation and a regular contributor here at
The Real News. So let's jump right into this.
This is pretty stunning that Stephen Miller has got all this power in the White House,
one of Steve Bannon's proteges and Jeff Session's righthand for a long time, and he's a
survivor. Bannon was thrown out . Maybe he didn't know how to dress right. I'm not sure,
but he was thrown out and switched to Stephen Miller. He's there but he's changing the dynamic
of this administration. He seems to be moving them further to the right, pushing for these
changes first in the D.H.S., Homeland Security. So tell me what this portends for the two of
you. Jeff, let me start with you again.
JEFF COHEN: Well for saying the obvious truth, Miller is a white nationalist. He's
an immigrant basher. One of the weirdest schemes exposed by The Washington Post with really
good sourcing, is that they had a scheme. They were going to take detainees at the Mexico
border and transport them to places like San Francisco and put them in sanctuary cities. They
take people they've got under arrest in custody and bus them to these cities that are sanctuary
cities. It's utterly outrageous.
If the Democrats weren't so obsessed with Russiagate, they might talk about this kind of
craziness is impeachable. To me, the most interesting thing about Stephen Miller is his
wonderful uncle, Dr. David Glosser. I've read his columns. I've seen him on Democracy Now! He
points out that if it wasn't for restrictive immigration, dozens of Stephen Miller's ancestors
would not have been killed by the Holocaust that in 1924, was this restrictive immigration law
and then there were a bunch of anti-Semites in the State Department. Even with the rise of
fascism and the rise of Hitler, they wouldn't let these people in, and they died. So there's a
lot of sympathy for refugees in the Jewish community. Stephen Miller is an exception.
Voters around the world revolt against leaders who won't improve their lives.
Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in the Washington Post
that savaged Donald Trump's character and leadership. Romney's attack and Trump's response
Wednesday morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a longstanding personal feud between the
two men. It's even possible that Romney is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican
nomination in 2020. We'll see.
But for now, Romney's piece is fascinating on its own terms. It's well-worth reading. It's a
window into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.
Romney's main complaint in the piece is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and divisive
leader. That's true, of course. But beneath the personal slights, Romney has a policy critique
of Trump. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull American troops out of the Syrian
civil war. Romney doesn't explain how staying in Syria would benefit America. He doesn't appear
to consider that a relevant question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We
know that. Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.
Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is strongly on board with
those, too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump for cutting the corporate rate a year
ago.
That's not surprising. Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain
Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an
existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt,
extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions.
Romney became fantastically rich doing this.
Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the
private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It's how they run the
country.
Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist
foreign policy as the "mainstream Republican" view. And he's right about that. For generations,
Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while
simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those
goals enthusiastically.
There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In
countries around the world -- France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others
-- voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a
decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you're watching is entire populations revolting
against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.
Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode
a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political
revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are
destroying America? Those are open questions.
But they're less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest
of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How
do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.
The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning
cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones,
or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They
haven't so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide
are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be
summed up in GDP is an idiot.
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It's happiness.
There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence.
Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your
children. They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
But our leaders don't care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to
the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through.
They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can't solve our problems. They don't even
bother to understand our problems.
One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything
else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture,
meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.
Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party
who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words,
functionally libertarian. They don't care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the
markets function. Somehow, they don't see a connection between people's personal lives and the
health of our economy, or for that matter, the country's ability to pay its bills. As far as
they're concerned, these are two totally separate categories.
Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet
reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you'll hear them say, is that the
American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the
libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct.
The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They
refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.
Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined.
Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies
possible. You can't separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The
evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.
Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were
horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor
neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule.
Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.
What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn't even want to acknowledge the question. They were
benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready
explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of
badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives
called a "culture of poverty" that trapped people in generational decline.
There was truth in this. But it wasn't the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually
the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways,
rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.
This is striking because rural Americans wouldn't seem to have much in common with anyone
from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political
beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives,
mostly.
Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown
Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A
terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You'd
think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they're not. They
don't have to be interested. It's easier to import foreign labor to take the place of
native-born Americans who are slipping behind.
But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here's a big part
of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but
disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools
and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made
more than men.
Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after
study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.
Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don't. Over big populations, this causes a drop
in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably
follow -- more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the
next generation.
This isn't speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It's social science.
We know it's true. Rich people know it best of all. That's why they get married before they
have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in
America can afford.
And yet, and here's the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married
people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much
nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight
malaria in Congo. But working to raise men's wages in Dayton or Detroit? That's crazy.
This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our
mindless cultural leaders act like it's still 1961, and the biggest problem American families
face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or
Facebook executives.
For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it's more
virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own
kids.
Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our
first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is
one of America's biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.
We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.
They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in
this game, and it shows.
What's remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn't question why Sandberg was
saying this. We didn't laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media
celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: "Lean
In." As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans
should say so.
They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all
commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can't possibly repay? Or
charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect
400 percent annual interest.
We're OK with that? We shouldn't be. Libertarians tell us that's how markets work --
consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also
disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans,
whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it
would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our
kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new
technology has made it odorless. But it's everywhere.
And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana,
marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or
decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana
industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. "Oh, but it's better for you than
alcohol," they tell us.
Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who's
been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want
that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the
reason. Because they don't care about us.
When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don't even
try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities
based purely on how we look. There's nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes
close.
Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate
as someone who's living off inherited money and doesn't work at all. We tax capital at half of
what we tax labor. It's a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.
In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He
paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners,
the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But
for everyone else, it's infuriating.
Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on
the principles of the free market. Please. It's based on laws that the Congress passed, laws
that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for
those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a
big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids
don't hate you. They hate each other.
That happens in countries, too. It's happening in ours, probably by design. Divided
countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are
getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special
treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.
What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive
country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own
profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you're old.
A country that listens to young people who don't live in Brooklyn. A country where you can
make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as
important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting
outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And
above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place
special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that
actually cares about families, the building block of everything.
What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will
have to be Republicans. There's no option at this point.
But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a
religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool
to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do
not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys
families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.
Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They'll have to unlearn
decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They'll likely lose donors
in the process. They'll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market
fundamentalism a form of socialism.
That's a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn't work. It's what we should be working
desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a
group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that
protects normal people.
If you want to put America first, you've got to put its families first.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2,
2019.
"... America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." ..."
"... He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement." ..."
"... The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president. ..."
"... The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke ..."
"... Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people." ..."
"... "What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?" ..."
"... Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it." ..."
"... Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment. ..."
"... Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax. ..."
"... "I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not." ..."
"... Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed." ..."
"... But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left. ..."
"... Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin. ..."
"... Hillbilly Elegy ..."
"... Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature." ..."
"All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God."
Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged
monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.
America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking
marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families
is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate
the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement."
The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, "Republicans
have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." More
broadly, though, Carlson's position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative
politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand.
Moreover, in Carlson's words: "At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too. The country will remain.
What kind of country will be it be then?"
The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher
wrote of Carlson's monologue,
"A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would
be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president." Other conservative commentators scoffed. Ben Shapiro wrote in
National Review that Carlson's monologue sounded far more like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than, say, Ronald Reagan.
I spoke with Carlson by phone this week to discuss his monologue and its economic -- and cultural -- meaning. He agreed that his
monologue was reminiscent of Warren, referencing her 2003
bookThe Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke . "There were parts of the book that I disagree
with, of course," he told me. "But there are parts of it that are really important and true. And nobody wanted to have that conversation."
Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank
fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any
policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites
-- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people."
But whether or not he likes it, Carlson is an important voice in conservative politics. His show is among the
most-watched television programs in America. And his raising questions about market capitalism and the free market matters.
"What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put
these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?"
Populism on the right is gaining, again
Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald
Trump, whose populist-lite
presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless
you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it."
Populism is a rhetorical approach that separates "the people" from elites. In the
words of Cas
Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, it divides the country into "two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people
on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other." Populist rhetoric has a long history in American politics, serving as the focal
point of numerous presidential campaigns and powering William Jennings Bryan to the Democratic nomination for president in 1896.
Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative,
thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment.
When right-leaning pundit Ann Coulter
spoke with Breitbart Radio about Trump's Tuesday evening Oval Office address to the nation regarding border wall funding, she
said she wanted to hear him say something like, "You know, you say a lot of wild things on the campaign trail. I'm speaking to big
rallies. But I want to talk to America about a serious problem that is affecting the least among us, the working-class blue-collar
workers":
Coulter urged Trump to bring up overdose deaths from heroin in order to speak to the "working class" and to blame the fact
that working-class wages have stalled, if not fallen, in the last 20 years on immigration. She encouraged Trump to declare, "This
is a national emergency for the people who don't have lobbyists in Washington."
Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax.
These sentiments have even pitted popular Fox News hosts against each other.
Sean Hannity warned his audience that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's economic policies would mean that "the rich people
won't be buying boats that they like recreationally, they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore." But Carlson agreed
when I said his monologue was somewhat reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez's
past comments on the economy , and how even a strong economy was still leaving working-class Americans behind.
"I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home
an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not."
Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent
a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that
labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and
figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed."
"I think populism is potentially really disruptive. What I'm saying is that populism is a symptom of something being wrong," he
told me. "Again, populism is a smoke alarm; do not ignore it."
But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current
state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are
its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson
railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation
of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left.
Carlson's argument that "market capitalism is not a religion" is of course old hat on the left, but it's also been bubbling on
the right for years now. When National Review writer Kevin Williamson
wrote
a 2016 op-ed about how rural whites "failed themselves," he faced a massive backlash in the Trumpier quarters of the right. And
these sentiments are becoming increasingly potent at a time when Americans can see both a booming stock market and perhaps their
own family members struggling to get by.
Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense
of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin.
At the Federalist, writer Kirk Jing
wrote of Carlson's
monologue, and a
response
to it by National Review columnist David French:
Our society is less French's America, the idea, and more Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (involving a very different
French). The lowest are stripped of even social dignity and deemed
unworthy of life . In Real America, wages are stagnant, life expectancy is crashing, people are fleeing the workforce, families
are crumbling, and trust in the institutions on top are at all-time lows. To French, holding any leaders of those institutions
responsible for their errors is "victimhood populism" ... The Right must do better if it seeks to govern a real America that exists
outside of its fantasies.
J.D. Vance, author of
Hillbilly Elegy
, wrote that the [neoliberal] economy's victories -- and praise for those wins from conservatives -- were largely meaningless
to white working-class Americans living in Ohio and Kentucky: "Yes, they live in a country with a higher GDP than a generation ago,
and they're undoubtedly able to buy cheaper consumer goods, but to paraphrase Reagan: Are they better off than they were 20 years
ago? Many would say, unequivocally, 'no.'"
Carlson's populism holds, in his view, bipartisan possibilities. In a follow-up email, I asked him why his monologue was aimed
at Republicans when many Democrats had long espoused the same criticisms of free market economics. "Fair question," he responded.
"I hope it's not just Republicans. But any response to the country's systemic problems will have to give priority to the concerns
of American citizens over the concerns of everyone else, just as you'd protect your own kids before the neighbor's kids."
Who is "they"?
And that's the point where Carlson and a host of others on the right who have begun to challenge the conservative movement's orthodoxy
on free markets -- people ranging from occasionally mendacious bomb-throwers like Coulter to writers like
Michael Brendan Dougherty -- separate
themselves from many of those making those exact same arguments on the left.
When Carlson talks about the "normal people" he wants to save from nefarious elites, he is talking, usually, about a specific
group of "normal people" -- white working-class Americans who are the "real" victims of capitalism, or marijuana legalization, or
immigration policies.
In this telling, white working-class Americans who once relied on a manufacturing economy that doesn't look the way it did in
1955 are the unwilling pawns of elites. It's not their fault that, in Carlson's view, marriage is inaccessible to them, or that marijuana
legalization means more teens are smoking weed (
this probably isn't true ). Someone,
or something, did this to them. In Carlson's view, it's the responsibility of politicians: Our economic situation, and the plight
of the white working class, is "the product of a series of conscious decisions that the Congress made."
The criticism of Carlson's monologue has largely focused on how he deviates from the free market capitalism that conservatives
believe is the solution to poverty, not the creator of poverty. To orthodox conservatives, poverty is the result of poor decision
making or a
lack of virtue that can't be solved by government programs or an anti-elite political platform -- and they say Carlson's argument
that elites are in some way responsible for dwindling marriage rates
doesn't make sense .
But in French's response to Carlson, he goes deeper, writing that to embrace Carlson's brand of populism is to support "victimhood
populism," one that makes white working-class Americans into the victims of an undefined "they:
Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's
rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual
revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are
doing to you .
And that was my biggest question about Carlson's monologue, and the flurry of responses to it, and support for it: When other
groups (say, black Americans) have pointed to systemic inequities within the economic system that have resulted in poverty and family
dysfunction, the response from many on the right has been, shall we say,
less than
enthusiastic .
Really, it comes down to when black people have problems, it's personal responsibility, but when white people have the same
problems, the system is messed up. Funny how that works!!
Yet white working-class poverty receives, from Carlson and others, far more sympathy. And conservatives are far more likely to
identify with a criticism of "elites" when they believe those elites are responsible for the
expansion of trans
rights or creeping secularism
than the wealthy and powerful people who are investing in
private prisons or an expansion
of the
militarization of police . Carlson's network, Fox News, and Carlson himself have frequently blasted leftist critics of market
capitalism and efforts to
fight
inequality .
I asked Carlson about this, as his show is frequently centered on the turmoils caused by "
demographic change
." He said that for decades, "conservatives just wrote [black economic struggles] off as a culture of poverty," a line he
includes in his monologue .
He added that regarding black poverty, "it's pretty easy when you've got 12 percent of the population going through something
to feel like, 'Well, there must be ... there's something wrong with that culture.' Which is actually a tricky thing to say because
it's in part true, but what you're missing, what I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you're
living under affects your culture."
Carlson said that growing up in Washington, DC, and spending time in rural Maine, he didn't realize until recently that the same
poverty and decay he observed in the Washington of the 1980s was also taking place in rural (and majority-white) Maine. "I was thinking,
'Wait a second ... maybe when the jobs go away the culture changes,'" he told me, "And the reason I didn't think of it before was
because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn't get past my own assumptions about economics." (For
the record, libertarians have
critiqued Carlson's
monologue as well.)
Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an
economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a
function or raw nature."
And clearly, our market economy isn't driven by God or nature, as the stock market soars and unemployment dips and yet even those
on the right are noticing lengthy periods of wage stagnation and dying little towns across the country. But what to do about those
dying little towns, and which dying towns we care about and which we don't, and, most importantly, whose fault it is that those towns
are dying in the first place -- those are all questions Carlson leaves to the viewer to answer.
strip away the right of Corprati0ns to have the legal standing of a person in a Court of
Law .
when we could just abolish the institution of incorporation without remorse? This
would like treating a cause of widespread disease with an ounce of inexpensive
prevention.
Buh-bye limited liability parasitism. Buh-bye rootless, world-wandering capital with scant
interest in the hosts' long-term wellbeing.
I suppose that there would be a shrill outcry of protest from the many little fire teams,
squads, and platoons of mind rapists (e.g. A. Cockburn) who have a career interest in
complaining for a living. But so what? It would be fun to watch "social justice" factions
twist and squirm as a chorus of abolitionists asks why the "Resistance" never resisted
"corporatocracy" with abolitionism. The rapists will "spew" much sanctimonious b.s.
defensively between artful meals in nice restaurants, but the chorus will know a real
reason. Lefty humanist finds incorporation very useful for cultivating the intense
concentration of wealth and power which he pretends to oppose.
Eventually the chorus will get around to asking lefty internationalist about his
contemporary plans to merge every firm with government without looking like an old fashioned
commie expropriationist. The chorus might ask the mind rapists still more embarassing
questions:
Righteous Lefty, why would you establish incorporation now if it wasn't a feature of
commerce already? Because you would not then have a little handful of company shares to
trade in a stock exchange? Nor be planning to exploit a stock tip from an ally who is
married to a corporate go-getter with C-level knowledge of plans?
Traditional labor unions, TOO, have been involved with the racketeering of incorporation.
Take the UMWA, for example. Where in the eleven points of its constitution is there any hint
that labor organizers and their Blair Mountain warriors were thinking about abolishing a
pernicious institution which had done so much to slant market power in favor of neverlaboring
mine operators?
It's been obvious for some time that the allegedly right wing "ALT RIGHT" is another
faction with little interest in getting rid of the corporation. It is sympathetic,
however, to old fashioned communist schemes like "Social Security" and communist health care
finance. So what, um, pecuniary interest does its leading lights have in maintaining the
incorporated status quo? Explain, please.
As we await info on Kim-Trump, I think it wise to examine what Trump's outbursts at and
beyond the G6+1 are based upon--his understanding of Economic Nationalism. Fortunately,
we have
an excellent, recent, Valdai Club paper addressing the topic that's not too technical or
lengthy. The author references two important papers by Lavrov and Putin that ought to be read
afterwards. Lavrov's
is the elder and ought to be first. Putin's Belt & Road International Forum
Address, 2017 provides an excellent example of the methods outlined in the first paper.
I
could certainly add more, but IMO these provide an excellent basis for comprehending Trump's
motivations as he's clearly reacting to the Russian and Chinese initiatives. Furthermore, one
can discover why Russia now holds the EU at arms length while
Putin's "I told
you so" reminder had to sting just a bit.
Then to recap it all, I highly suggest reading Pepe Escobar's excellent article I linked to yesterday higher up in the thread.
Breitbart is a Zionist mouthpiece. Steve Bannon is a mouth.
Robert and Rebekah Mercer (not Jewish) decided to shift their
allegiance and money from Cruz to Trump. They met with Jared
and Ivanka to discuss. The Mercers threw Bannon into the
deal. Once Bannon had infiltrated the campaign, and later the
WH, maybe the Zionists were still pulling his strings. Bannon
was also colluding with Chinese nationals, so Mueller does have
the leverage to twist Bannon to his will.
"... On Thurdsay morning, in a rare example of the antipathy many journalists feels toward "Fire and Fire" author Michael Wolff, MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski abruptly cut off her interview with Wolff on Morning Joe, after the author of the scandalous, if largely fictional, "tell all" book of the Trump presidency, said he never suggested that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley had an affair with President Donald Trump. ..."
"... To that Brzezinski replied, " You might be having a fun time playing a little game dancing around this, but you're slurring a woman. It's disgraceful." ..."
"... Melania feelings dont seem to worry her ..."
"... "Hey...you cannot lie on our show...we're the only ones allowed to do that".. ..."
The anti-Trump "resistance" appears to be turning on itself.
On Thurdsay morning, in a rare example
of the antipathy many journalists feels toward "Fire and Fire" author Michael Wolff, MSNBC co-host
Mika Brzezinski abruptly cut off her interview with Wolff on Morning Joe, after the author of the
scandalous, if largely fictional, "tell all" book of the Trump presidency, said he never suggested
that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley had an affair with President Donald Trump.
To that Brzezinski replied, "
You might be having a fun time playing a little game dancing
around this, but you're slurring a woman. It's disgraceful."
"We're done"
the Morning Joe then cut off the interview after asking, with a
straight face, "
are you kidding? you're on the set of Morning Joe, we don't BS here."
The exchange comes after Wolff recently appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, where he said he was
"absolutely sure" the president was having an affair with someone, and alluded to who that person was
in one paragraph of his White House tell-all -- that person being Haley,
according to the Daily Beast
. In the following days, Haley - a former South Carolina governor -
has vehemently denied any relationship with Trump.
Minutes after Wolff was kicked off, he tweeted: "
My bad, the President is right about Mika
"...
Righteous indignation in all its glory. First you destroy the others, then you
destroy your own, then you destroy yourself. It is the inevitable conclusion to the
self reinforcing insanity of righteous indignation.
Mika and Joe never had terrible things to say about Trump until he
didn't let them into his little party and tweeted about her bloody
post-surgery face. It's such a personal vendetta with them at this point
that it isn't even legitimate news TV anymore. Has nothing to do with
him or his policies. They are just pissed that he dissed them. They have
lost all relevance. Sad.
This "Trump chicks theme" was definitely underutilized in fire and Fury" Wolff later tried to revive and capitalize of it as
the tool to support the declining book sales with "Triumph mistress" rumor.
Notable quotes:
"... Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who Trump blames for the bulk of the book, as he was one of Wolff's most prominent sources, reportedly told people that 'The daughter ... will bring down the father.' ..."
"... Me thinks Mr. Wolff has got bats in the belfry. ..."
"... ''I have included that which I believe to be true'' - a quote from Wolff himself. Also, The Author's Note to Wolff's book states the quotes in it are all "recreations". ..."
Hope Hicks is his real daughter and Ivanka is his real WIFE: How Trump can't say no to his
family and is totally reliant on his communications director
White House staff allegedly refers to the president's daughter Ivanka as his 'real wife,'
as Communications Director Hope Hicks has been calls his 'real daughter'
That's because Melania Trump keeps a low profile, while Hicks and Ivanka Trump continue
to play outsized roles in the West Wing, a new book reported
As President Trump has seen a string of resignations through his first year in office,
Hicks has become his 'most powerful White House advisor'
The forthcoming book, 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House' also suggests that
the president can't say no to his kids
That's how Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were able to become top White House
aides, against the advice of political veterans
With Melania Trump often keeping a low profile, White House staffers refer to first daughter
Ivanka Trump as her father's 'real wife' and Communications Director Hope Hicks as the
president's 'real daughter,' a new book alleged.
Author Michael Wolff, who wrote the forthcoming 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White
House' revealed these designations in the context of who is now closest to Trump, with many
high-level aides leaving within the president's first year.
That distinction goes to Hicks, the president's 29-year-old former campaign press secretary
who Wolff said is now Trump's 'most powerful White House advisor.'
'Hicks' primary function was to tend to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to
buffer him, to soothe him,' Wolff wrote in a story about the writing of his book, published
Thursday by the Hollywood Reporter.
'It was Hicks who, attentive to his lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview
that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season,' the author continued. 'Instead, the interview
went to Fox News' Sean Hannity who, White House insiders happily explained, was willing to
supply the questions beforehand.'
In a preview of the book published Thursday in the Hollywood Reporter, Wolff also explained
how Trump couldn't say no to his kids, casting this characteristic as 'foolishness.'
'It's a littleee, littleee complicated,' the president reportedly told his first Chief of
Staff Reince Priebus when explaining why he wanted to give Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared
Kushner official White House jobs.
They're now serving as senior advisers in the West Wing. However, Wolff did not describe
their tenure as a happy one. 'By July, Jared and Ivanka, who had, in less than six months,
traversed from socialite couple to royal family to the most powerful people in the world, were
now engaged in a desperate dance to save themselves, which mostly involved blaming Trump
himself,' Wolff wrote Thursday in the Hollywood Reporter.
'It was all his idea to fire Comey!' the couple nicknamed 'Javanka' reportedly said,
referring to Trump's ouster of the former FBI director that prompted the appointment of a
special counsel.
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who Trump blames for the bulk of the
book, as he was one of Wolff's most prominent sources, reportedly told people that 'The
daughter ... will bring down the father.'
Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at The New
York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things. Follow @ashleyrparker
EmmaJanesMommy , Jacksonville, United States, 2 weeks ago
Me thinks Mr. Wolff has got bats in the belfry.
Sen Dog, Everywhere, United Kingdom, 2 weeks ago
''I have included that which I believe to be true'' - a quote from Wolff himself. Also,
The Author's Note to Wolff's book states the quotes in it are all "recreations". Nice try
liberals .
This "Trump chicks theme" was definitely underutilized in fire and Fury" Wolff later tried to revive and capitalize of it as the
tool to support the declining book sales with "Triumph mistress" rumor.
Notable quotes:
"... Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House ..."
Hope Hicks is featured prominently in
Fire and
Fury: Inside the Trump White House
by Michael Wolff, as proven by book excerpts that have made it to
the public, as reported by the
Inquisitr
. The tome speaks of the 29-year-old Hicks' unlikely rise to
become one of President Donald Trump's closest confidantes, even relating Hope's preferred manner of dressing
to one that aligns with Trump's favorite look.
"Ten days before Donald Trump's inauguration as the forty-fifth president, a
group of young Trump staffers -- the men in regulation Trump suits and ties, the women in the Trump-favored
look of high boots, short skirts, and shoulder-length hair -- were watching President Barack Obama give his
farewell speech as it streamed on a laptop in the transition offices."
Wolff notes that Hope was a 26-year-old when she was hired onto the Trump campaign as the first official
hire. Hailing from Greenwich, Connecticut, Hicks worked as a model prior to getting into the PR business and
working for Ivanka Trump's fashion line. After Ivanka captured Hope for her dad's political campaign in 2015,
Hicks took the political ride of a lifetime to become the gatekeeper to President Trump.
Michael writes about Hope's family, who worried about Hicks "having been taken captive" into the Trump
world, with friends and loved ones joking that Hope would need therapy once her time in the White House was
done. Wolff describes Hicks as a young woman who was inexperienced but "famous among campaign reporters for her
hard-to-maneuver-in short skirts."
Book: Hope Hicks Famous For 'Hard-To-Maneuever-In' Short Skirts, Rumored Uniform Trump Liked In White House
Chip Somodevilla
/
Getty Images
The overall tenor of Hope's portrayal in the best-seller paints her as a "yes woman" who is way too
overeager to seek Trump's approval. Fearful of making errors, Hicks was protected by Trump from blame -- an act
that baffled others, claimed the author. Hope rose in the ranks to become Trump's most trusted aide, albeit one
who was assigned the difficult task of getting Trump positive press in the form of a winning
New York Times
article.
Hope always backed Trump's point-of-view, according to
Fire and Fury
, with Hicks often landing
firmly on Trump's side when the president complained of the media being out to get him with negativity. Hicks
even developed an instinct for the types of articles that would make Trump happy, with Hope presenting those
clips to the president, even as others brought Trump bad news.
Wolff even likened Hope to the classic robotic wives seen in
The Stepford Wives
, calling Hicks "a
kind of Stepford factotum, as absolutely dedicated to and tolerant of Mr. Trump as anyone who had ever worked
for him." According to the
Dallas Observer
, even crossing the line and allegedly calling Hicks a "
piece
of tail
" hasn't apparently dampened Hope's enthusiasm in working for Trump, in Wolff's estimation, with
Hicks failing to get the coveted and positive
New York Times
coverage.
"That, in the president's estimation, had yet failed to happen, 'but Hope
tries and tries,' the president said. On more than one occasion, after a day -- one of the countless days -- of
particularly bad notices, the president greeted her, affectionately, with 'You must be the world's worst PR
person.'"
Hicks was also the person who greeted Trump each morning, "quaking" to tell him what the latest
Morning
Joe
episode said about the president in the wake of Trump refusing to watch the show. Either way, Trump's
closeness with Hope was something that not only baffled White House insiders but caused concern and alarm.
Michael wrote that "the relationship of the president and Hope Hicks, long tolerated as a quaint bond
between the older man and a trustworthy young woman, began to be seen as anomalous and alarming." Existing as a
go-between in the middle of President Trump and the media, Hope's complete devotion to Trump and her
accommodating nature to him was being blamed as part of the reason for Trump's "unmediated behavior."
"His impulses and thoughts -- unedited, unreviewed, unchallenged -- not only passed
through him, but, via Hicks, traveled out into the world without any other White House arbitration. 'The
problem isn't Twitter, it's Hope,' observed one communication staffer."
This "Trump chicks theme" was definitely underutilized in fire and Fury" Wolff later tried to revive and capitalize of it as
the tool to support the declining book sales with "Triumph mistress" rumor.
Hope
Hicks can now add "being objectified by the president of the United States" to the narrow list
of accomplishments she's racked up as she's gone from SMU English major to White House
communications director .
According to Michael Wolff's new presidential tell-all Fire and Fury , Hicks, a former
model and
Gossip Girl novelization cover star who caught Trump's eye while modeling for Ivanka
Trump's clothing line, had on an on-again, off-again relationship with former Trump campaign
manager Corey Lewandowski. Hicks and Lewandowski's liaison culminated in a Page
Six-covered screaming match on 61st Street near Park Avenue and Manhattan in May 2016.
The next month, Trump fired Lewandowski. In a moment of compassion, Hicks, who'd by then
become one of Trump's closest, and tight-lipped, confidants, asked Trump how she could help
Lewandowski.
"Why?" Trump replied, Wolff writes. "You've already done enough for him. You're the best
piece of tail he'll ever have."
Hicks immediately fled the room after Trump's comments, according to Wolff, but it wasn't
enough to stop her rise through the campaign's ranks. When Trump dumped former communications
director Anthony Scaramucci last summer, Hicks, who did not return a request to comment on the
contents of the book, took over as his interim replacement. In November, she took over the job
full time.
Trump has disputed both the content of the book and Wolff's claim that he was
granted extensive access to the White House in 2017. "I authorized Zero access to White House
(actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book.
Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist," the president tweeted last
week.
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, called the book a "complete fantasy," during
a press conference Thursday, the day before Fire and Fury 's release.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon once told Ivanka Trump: "You're just
another staffer who doesn't know what you're doing," according to a new book.
Related: Ivanka Trump's "special place in hell" for child predators comment trolls Roy Moore
rally
Bannon, who has long critiqued and clashed with Ivanka's and her husband Jared Kushner's
roles in the White House, tried to put the president's daughter in her place in one instance
detailed in the book.
"My daughter loves me as a dad...You love your dad. I get that. But you're just another
staffer who doesn't know what you're doing," Bannon said, The Washington Post reported when it
published excerpts on Monday.
The revelation is part of the latest book about life inside the White House. Howard Kurtz, host
of the Fox News show Media Buzz, wrote the book Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The
War Over The Truth, set to be released on January 29.
The new book, though perhaps not as sensational as the explosive tell-all Fire and Fury:
Inside the Trump White House, contains several new alleged revelations about the
administration. Along with reports of the turbulent relationship between Ivanka Trump and
Bannon, are claims that the president himself leaked information to journalists, that his aides
referred to his behavior as "defiance disorder" and that his staff was "blindsided" when he
accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones.
"These people are the lowest form of life; vicious, ignorant, scheming, petty, savage, manipulative -- if given the opportunity
and the right incentive, he would stab any one of them, and not lose a minute's sleep... Again, what was his motivation -- something
is missing from this puzzle. Drugs or drink or mental illness? ... those rats in that sinking sack, they're fighting... He may be
the dictionary definition of a firestarter to some, to me he's a rancid piece of filth." Guardian comment
"If you think abandoning
your wife and cashing in on your "batty" mother-in-law's home is cruel, it turns out this is par for the course."
"And, really, sex with someone other than his wife
and the attention of other people is all Michael Wolff really wants,
at the end of the day."
"A clue to Wolff's character emerged in 2009, when the "bald,
trout-pouted" 55-year-old was caught sleeping with a 28-year-old intern at Vanity Fair. His wife kicked him out
of their Manhattan home, but not before joining him in
an attempt to evict her 85-year-old
mother because they wanted to sell the apartment she lived in. As you can tell, he's a charmer."
This is really sleazy interview... Typical project of Wolff own behavior as in
Wolff: "If this is a book that will bring down his President.." And the only topic he is capable to discuss is dirty
rumors about President infidelity. For Trump the book title "The great transition" ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Maher asked if it was about a woman, to which Wolff answered, "Yeah. I didn't have a blue dress." ..."
"... Without hesitation, Wolff said yes. "You just have to read between the lines," he said, adding that it's toward the end of the book. "Now that I've told you, when you hit that paragraph you're going to say bingo." ..."
Everybody has been talking about Michael Wolff's best seller "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" since it came out Jan.
5, but the author said there is one thing hinted at in its pages that he is surprised no has asked him about.
"Real Time With Bill Maher" kicked off its 16th season Friday night with Wolff, who hinted there was a tidbit near the end of
the book that he thought would get tongues wagging. At first cagey, he said it's something he is "absolutely sure of, but was so
incendiary that I just didn't have the ultimate proof."
Maher asked if it was about a woman, to which Wolff answered, "Yeah. I didn't have a blue dress."
Of course, the "blue dress" he's referring to is Monica Lewinsky's infamous outfit that was said to be stained with President
Bill Clinton's semen.
His curiosity piqued, Maher wondered if it was somebody Trump is "f -- ing now?"
Without hesitation, Wolff said yes. "You just have to read between the lines," he said, adding that it's toward the end of the
book. "Now that I've told you, when you hit that paragraph you're going to say bingo."
25 years ago it would be categorized as nothing more then a Kitty Kelly gossip rag.
He wouldn't answer Bill's question because he didn't want to get his butt sued into oblivion. He seems to be reveling in how
he BS'd his way into there.
IMAGINE -- in your wildest imaginings -- that this was President O.
The more sordid America becomes the more his hyperverbal "base", along with our traditional "enemies", celebrate.
And, it will only get more "interesting" over the next couple of weeks. I ordered the book on the first day I could. In fact,
I pre-ordered it. And, it was just shipped today. Give it a couple of weeks for the shipments from Amazon to be delivered, and
the book digested.
This is the real Wolff -- sleazy and unscrupulous gossip columnist
Notable quotes:
"... Wolff said Friday on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" that he was "absolutely sure" of such a tryst, but acknowledged that he lacked "ultimate proof." "I didn't have the blue dress," Wolff told Maher, referring to the key piece of evidence from Bill Clinton's notorious Oval Office dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. ..."
President Trump may be having an extramarital affair in the White House, according to the
latest bombshell claim from "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff.
Wolff said Friday on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" that he was "absolutely sure" of such
a tryst, but acknowledged that he lacked "ultimate proof." "I didn't have the blue dress," Wolff told Maher, referring to the key piece of evidence
from Bill Clinton's notorious Oval Office dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.
Yahoo tried to amplify the unsubstantiated and malicious rumor. Not the first time, not the last. So Yahoo bottom feeders
are happy to feast on Wolff's excrements...
Notable quotes:
"... By October, however, many on the president's staff took particular notice of one of the few remaining Trump opportunists: Nikki Haley, the UN ambassador. Haley -- 'as ambitious as Lucifer," in the characterization of one member of the senior staff -- had concluded that Trump's tenure would last, at best, a single term, and that she, with requisite submission, could be his heir apparent. Haley had courted and befriended Ivanka, and Ivanka had brought her into the family circle, where she had become a particular focus of Trump's attention, and he of hers. ..."
"... Bingo? Wolff adds that Trump "had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a political future." Wolff cited one "senior Trumper" who said the problem with Trump mentoring Haley "is that she is so much smarter than him." ..."
"... The White House, Haley and Wolff did not immediately respond to a request for comment. There are many problems with this theory, aside from Wolff going on national television to accuse people of having affairs. Among them: Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was one of Trump's early Republican critics. ..."
"... She campaigned for Marco Rubio and then supported Ted Cruz. When she gave the Republican response to President Obama's final State of the Union address, she seemed to criticize Trump when she said: "During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices." Trump responded by calling her "weak" on immigration . ..."
"Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff's accusation that President Trump is currently having
an affair set off online speculation Saturday about who the other party might be. Based on
Wolff's clues, it appears he's making insinuations about UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
A quick side note before we go further: This is gross on every level. We don't have any
evidence whatsoever to suggest that what Wolff is hinting at is true, so please consider this a
story about an author making an accusation he admits he can't prove.
That said, Wolff went on "Real Time With Bill Maher" Friday to provide some encouragement to
readers who may have given up halfway through "Fire and Fury" when he said a passage near the
end of his book hints at the affair.
"Now that I've told you, when you hit that paragraph you're going to say bingo," Wolff told
Maher.
We've read the book. While there are icky descriptions about Trump's behavior with his
spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, they come before the book's midway point. ("You're the best piece of
tail he'll ever have!" Trump is quoted as telling Hicks about an ex, which Wolff says sent
Hicks "running from the room.")
The only passage we've found near the end of the book that references a Trump relationship
with a woman who isn't his wife or daughter is this one:
By October, however, many on the president's staff took particular notice of one of
the few remaining Trump opportunists: Nikki Haley, the UN ambassador. Haley -- 'as ambitious
as Lucifer," in the characterization of one member of the senior staff -- had concluded that
Trump's tenure would last, at best, a single term, and that she, with requisite submission,
could be his heir apparent. Haley had courted and befriended Ivanka, and Ivanka had brought
her into the family circle, where she had become a particular focus of Trump's attention, and
he of hers.
Bingo? Wolff adds that Trump "had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley
on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a political future." Wolff cited one "senior Trumper" who said the problem with Trump mentoring Haley "is that
she is so much smarter than him."
The White House, Haley and Wolff did not immediately respond to a request for comment. There are many problems with this theory, aside from Wolff going on national television to
accuse people of having affairs. Among them: Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was
one of Trump's early Republican critics.
She campaigned for Marco Rubio and then supported Ted Cruz. When she gave the Republican
response to President Obama's final State of the Union address, she seemed to criticize Trump
when she said: "During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the
angriest voices." Trump responded by calling her
"weak" on immigration .
"... "No, it can really hurt" she replied. She went on to tell us how in one story the cover headline announced "Elizabeth Taylor is slowly killing her mother." As it turned out the story was about how her mom worried about her daughter's health and travels. Elizabeth went on to relate that in the United Kingdom you could not get away with such stories. She had sued successfully 15 times, winning each. "I did not need or want the money" she confided. "I just wanted a retraction. That is not possible in the United States." ..."
"... These kind of distortions about Elizabeth were not just prevalent in magazines. Books have done the same thing. There is a biography of Elizabeth Taylor by an author known for penning page turners about celebrities with as much dirt as possible. In one story she described an argument between Elizabeth and John during a political gathering locally here in the Roanoke Valley. One that had her storming off and not returning. We were there with other friends and no such thing happened. ..."
"... Now I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment and the idea of freedom of speech. I also know I do not have the right to go into a theater showing a film and shout "FIRE" if there is no fire. I could be rightfully arrested for that because of the possible danger to public safety. ..."
"... Today we see people in the liberal media distributing fake news with every opportunity they can find. They have done every thing they possibly can to see the presidency of Donald Trump fail. The Michael Wolff book makes a case that every one around the president, including family, think he is not competent and not smart. He is fair game for such fake news. ..."
The title may cause readers to think this is strictly about the half baked book by Michael
Wolff on the Trump Administration. That is already being debunked by even some liberal sources
like the Washington Post which has been finding errors on every page. The only criticism I
would make is that too much is being said about it and that makes sales of the book go up. The
old adage that "Get banned in Boston if you want a best seller" holds true.
The concern here is the interpretation by the courts of the First Amendment that people with
a public position are fair game for the spreading of information whether true or untrue. This
has been going on for some time and the first I became aware of it was with the entertainment
media.
Dr. Fred Eichelman and Elizabeth Taylor
Back in the late seventies my wife Carolyn and I were privileged to host Elizabeth Taylor
several times when her husband John Warner was running for the U.S. Senate here in Virginia. We
found Elizabeth a very open person and easy to talk with and there was one question I had to
ask.
I had seen a number of covers on Super Market magazines with stories hinting of scandals and
Elizabeth Taylor was a popular subject. I had heard that Hollywood stars did not mind that sort
of thing as bad publicity was still good publicity as long as it kept their name in the news. I
had to ask Elizabeth if this was true in her case.
"No, it can really hurt" she replied. She went on to tell us how in one story the cover
headline announced "Elizabeth Taylor is slowly killing her mother." As it turned out the story
was about how her mom worried about her daughter's health and travels. Elizabeth went on to
relate that in the United Kingdom you could not get away with such stories. She had sued
successfully 15 times, winning each. "I did not need or want the money" she confided. "I just
wanted a retraction. That is not possible in the United States."
These kind of distortions about Elizabeth were not just prevalent in magazines. Books
have done the same thing. There is a biography of Elizabeth Taylor by an author known for
penning page turners about celebrities with as much dirt as possible. In one story she
described an argument between Elizabeth and John during a political gathering locally here in
the Roanoke Valley. One that had her storming off and not returning. We were there with other
friends and no such thing happened.
Now I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment and the idea of freedom of speech. I
also know I do not have the right to go into a theater showing a film and shout "FIRE" if there
is no fire. I could be rightfully arrested for that because of the possible danger to public
safety.
Today we see people in the liberal media distributing fake news with every opportunity
they can find. They have done every thing they possibly can to see the presidency of Donald
Trump fail. The Michael Wolff book makes a case that every one around the president, including
family, think he is not competent and not smart. He is fair game for such fake news.
People with common sense know that a man who was an honor student in college, became a
billionaire, was a success on TV and able to get elected president is no small potatoes. The
success with our economy alone should erase such ideas.
Of course not being a born politician Donald Trump believes in fighting back and he makes
ample use of Twitter for this. This is also not news as when Ronald Reagan was president his
competence and ability to lead was often called into question. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil
labeled President Ragean as an "amiable dunce." Reagan made ample use of television to go over
the heads of congressional critics and the media. In this digital age Donald Trump is only
doing what many wish they could do to protect themselves.
While our president can protect himself, you have to wonder about so many others in
government, business. the entertainment world and elsewhere who have found untrue criticism in
the media too much to handle. The definition of what people are not exempt from untrue news
keeps broadening. This sort of thing is even happening on college campuses where conservative
teachers have found themselves under attack by student publications using the First Amendment
as their defense even when not telling the truth.
There is no easy answer here and we can only wish that someday common sense will find a
solution to protect us all from such attacks.
Dr. Fred Eichelman is a retired teacher and a director for Point North Outreach, a
Christian media organization. He recently had a book published, Faith, Family, Film-A Teacher's
Trek. Fred is a former local Republican Committee chairman and has attended hundreds of
conventions from political to science fiction. He sees the two as compatible. Fred also tells
us he values very much a title we gave him since he could not be a PolitiChick.
PolitiDude.
"... Endeavor Content -- the financing and sales arm formed in October between sister companies William Morris Endeavor and IMG -- has purchased film and television rights to the No. 1 best-selling book. The massive deal is said to be in the seven-figure range. ..."
Michael Wolff's controversial Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is coming to
television.
Endeavor Content -- the financing and sales arm formed in October between sister companies
William Morris Endeavor and IMG -- has purchased film and television rights to the No. 1
best-selling book. The massive deal is said to be in the seven-figure range. Endeavor Content
plans to adapt the book as a TV series. A network is not yet attached, as Endeavor will now
begin shopping the project.
Wolff will executive produce the series, with veteran Channel 4 and BBC executive Michael
Jackson -- now CEO of indie producer Two Cities Television -- also on board to produce.
"... According to Bloomberg , Wolff didn't even initiate this project. It fell into his lap when Trump dialed him up out of the blue to compliment him on a CNN appearance in which Wolff bashed the media's coverage of the president. So susceptible is POTUS to flattery and so eager is he to satisfy his eternal grudge with the press that a little bit of cheerleading from Wolff was all it took for him to place his trust, essentially blindly, in a far more devious reporter than the ones he's always complaining about. ..."
"... CNN drives him nuts so he turned to Michael farking Wolff, of all people, to try to balance the scales. The irony is as thick and dense as the brain matter of White House deputies who went along. ..."
"... In fact, for the first six months of Trump's presidency no one in his White House -- including then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer -- stopped Wolff from repeatedly scheduling appointments in the West Wing. He visited about 17 times, according to a person familiar with the matter. Nor did they monitor what Trump's aides were telling the controversial author ..."
"... [An] Obama aide said his communications team kept strict tabs on authors' work -- micromanaging access to the White House, assigning press aides to mind the authors during interviews or asking staff for summaries afterward, closely tracking lines of questioning and making sure writers were escorted off the grounds after their appointments. ..."
"... Some of Bloomberg's sources claim that Kellyanne Conway gave him access more than once and appears to have spoken with him at some length. Conway's a longtime political player. What's her excuse for not knowing Wolff's reputation and intervening to protect Trump from him? ..."
"... Dubke left the job in late May but Trump's fateful phone call to Wolff allegedly happened in early February 2017, with Wolff conducting interviews at the White House not long afterward. Dubke's a right-wing media-relations pro of longstanding. He didn't speak up about Wolff either? ..."
"... In the end, though, it all falls on Hope Hicks, who was Trump's informal communications director before being formally appointed to the job in September at the tender age of 29 after Dubke quit. Although she had no leadership role in the West Wing until the fall, she's an old-school Trump deputy who was with him before the campaign. She's either the unofficial head of the Praetorian Guard or she's a very high-ranking member. Where the hell was she when Wolff came knocking? Did she do any due diligence as to whether he could be trusted to write the sort of book he was proposing to write? If so, how did she miss the high-profile critiques of his methods in magazines like Brill's Content and The New Republic ? It's tempting to accuse Hicks of being too young or simply out of her depth to do her job effectively for Trump -- but then how do you explain the apparent negligence on Conway's and Dubke's parts, too? ..."
"... Wolff's going to end up filthy rich from all this, and not just from book royalties. "Fire & Fury" will soon be a TV show (although, more likely, a TV miniseries) with Wolff himself as executive producer. And given the propensity of Trump staffers to leak, he's probably already hard at work on "Fire & Fury 2: More Fiery, More Furious." Congrats to Hope and everyone else for sharpening a knife and handing it to Wolff before allowing him to stab their boss repeatedly with it. Exit question via a million different people: Isn't there already a "Fire & Fury" TV show on cable news every day? ..."
... According to
Bloomberg , Wolff didn't even initiate this project. It fell into his lap when Trump dialed
him up out of the blue to compliment him on a CNN appearance in which Wolff bashed the media's
coverage of the president. So susceptible is POTUS to flattery and so eager is he to satisfy
his eternal grudge with the press that a little bit of cheerleading from Wolff was all it
took for him to place his trust, essentially blindly, in a far more devious reporter than the
ones he's always complaining about.
British interviewer is heads above US MSM interviewers. He also approach Wolff with kid
gloves, but he pins a couple of time his ego ;-)
Of cause BBC is a neoliberal swap and they interviewed Wolff half-dozen times :-)
In his BBC interview and this interview Wolff clearly state that Trump is not fit for the
office "mentally unfit for office" ;-). Here Wolff also claims is Trump is like a child.
Also on the question of allegation of "collision with Russia" Wolff state that "emperor has
no clothes" while in reality it is Wolff who has no cloth doing this hatcet job without
verification of even basic facts. He also pushed Bannon under the bas.
When confronted with that fact that Bannon challenged of Wolff claims, he just start
blabbing.
The interviewer suggested that this book is a fascinating gossip taken at the heat of the
moment, that this is one dimensional book.
Michael Wolff discusses his book Fire and Fury, about US President Donald Trump's first nine
months in office, with Nick Robinson. Mr Trump has accused the author of making up stories and
has called him a "total loser".
Nice exposure of duplicitous character Wolff "I certainly said whatever necessary to get the story"
Key question: Did you misrepresent yourself trying to get access to Trump. "I like the person" "I want to humanize the
president" "You know that I like him" "Nobody is doing it" "I might be able to change perceptions"
Another interesting question: "Where all those pledges accurate when you made them? " Why you present yourself as a beacon
to combat bias against the President.
Mainstream media turned into political party! Mainstream media professional liars are political assassins for the worst people
on this planet. Mainstream media is a political apparatus which is bought and paid off by champagne-socialists, thieves set-up-entirely
to serves rich and powerful to extract from small and weak. Mainstream media professional liars will continue to support political
scum and their style of cronyism and rampant corruption that is stunting the country's development.
Mainstream media will make
sure to siphon off large chunks of targeted electoral subsidies and Lobbying cash which will enable them to preserve their fancy
cars, apartments and privileged status as American people suffer!
The media is totally ignorant of real issues that matter to the American people they are so involved in defending their own
opinions that they have forgotten their purpose of keeping the public informed of what's happening they have taken it upon
them self to defend the Democrats and their corrupt world order agenda
Pot
meet kettle. I now believe Wolff knew exactly what he was doing with the fake book. He knew the media would eat it up and
he could ride off into the sunset with one last big payday.
CNN
is just very fake news. Brian Stelter is a ridiculous figure and so if Wolfe. Like Uncle Fester and Mini-Me two pitiful
idiots on stage together..
A more interesting question is how those testimonies might affect Bannon -- he is in a very hot water now. If he thought that the
meeting was so incriminating why he did not contact FBI and just decided to feed juicy gossip to Wolff?
Also he was not present at the meeting and was not a member of Trump team until two months later. From who he got all this information
? Was is just a slander by disgruntled employee?
Notable quotes:
"... To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr. ..."
"... Bannon has denied that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the election ..."
"... Wolff also quotes the former White House strategist as saying, "This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It's as plain as a hair on your face." ..."
"... Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that "[i]t goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me." ..."
"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the
conference room on the 25th floor -- with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers," Bannon is quoted as saying in Fire and Fury.
"Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should
have called the F.B.I. immediately." Bannon reportedly speculated that the chance the eldest Trump son did not involve his father
in the meeting "is zero."
When Bannon's comments became public, Trump excoriated his former strategist, whom
he accused of having "lost his mind."
But while Bannon has since apologized for the remarks and sought to walk back a number of the quotes, he's stopped short of denying
that he viewed the Trump Tower meeting as treasonous. Instead, he's merely shifted the blame away from Trump Jr. and onto Manafort.
"My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate.
He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning, and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr.
," Bannon said in
a statement to Axios. ( Bannon has denied that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the election
.)
... ... ...
Though the Trump Tower meeting took place before Bannon joined the Trump campaign, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House
panel, told
CNN last week that he plans to question Bannon about "why this meeting at Trump Tower represented his treason and certainly unpatriotic
at a minimum."
Jared Kushner's "greasy shit"
Wolff also quotes the former White House strategist as saying, "This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose
[senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul
Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It's as plain as a hair on your face." (Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort have all
denied wrongdoing.) Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that "[i]t goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner
shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say play me
or trade me."
He and Trump's son-in-law have never seen eye to eye; their White House feuds were a poorly kept secret, and following his ouster,
Bannon has given numerous interviews knocking Kushner, including one to my colleague Gabriel Sherman in which he
questioned Kushner's
maturity level. If Bannon has dirt on Kushner, he will likely get his chance to reveal it; Schiff also
declared
his intent to question Bannon on "the basis of his concern over money laundering."
Badly written. It's like no one edited this book. Really makes me question the author's credibility and journalistic
integrity. Doesn't cite sources, even when providing direct quotes. That's not okay.
I'm glad someone had the courage to write about the imbecile in our White House, but this kind of crappy writing that borders
on tabloid-level makes our side look just as bad as "the other side".
Wolff is lucky that the Bannon controversy happened, otherwise this book wouldn't have sold more than a handful of copies.
Save money, watch the news, Trump nuts in either case
Kind of a waste of money. Just watch the news and read the tweets, you'll figure it out
for free.
It would be more interesting if it had some notes on sources, but there is no way to
determine 1st hand info, 2nd hand info, and third hand in a mirror info.
There was not much here that you didn't already know. But the writing is so terrible that
it was difficult to make it to the end of a rather short piece. He repeatedly writes long
paragraphs consisting of single sentences. He compulsively inserts long parenthetical
expressions everywhere which breaks up the flow and requires reading and reading to try to
figure out what he's saying. I would expect a best selling author to be able to construct a
comprehensible sentence but he mostly fails.
As much as I wanted to like this book, because I detest Trump, the only thing I can say
about this book is it stinks. It's repetitive, poorly written and he could use a proofreader.
There's nothing in it that we haven't all read on the internet.
They would be definitely able to hook him for lying to FBI. That's really easy with Bannon.
Notable quotes:
"... He is expected to cooperate with the special counsel, the sources said. ..."
"... Bannon's attorney told the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that Bannon would answer questions when he goes to the special counsel because executive privilege would not apply, according to one of the sources. ..."
"... Last week, the FBI attempted to serve Bannon with a subpoena to appear before the grand jury in the Russia probe. He referred agents to his attorney ..."
Steve Bannon has struck a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's team and will be interviewed by prosecutors instead of testifying
before the grand jury, two people familiar with the process told CNN. He is expected to cooperate with the special counsel, the sources
said.
The sources did not say when the interview will take place or if the subpoena would be withdrawn.
Bannon, the former White House chief strategist for President Donald Trump, is expected to talk openly to Mueller's team.
Bannon's
attorney told the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that Bannon would answer questions when he goes to the special counsel
because executive privilege would not apply, according to one of the sources.
A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment.
Last week, the FBI attempted to serve Bannon with a subpoena to appear before the grand jury in the Russia probe. He referred
agents to his attorney, multiple sources said.
"... The media has done everything to discredit him and are always found to be false. Sure, he is obnoxious but enough already. ..."
"... Fire and fury seemed to be a compilation of the news stories about Trump that had already been worked and reworked in the written media. Other than a little embellishment it was like reruns on cable TV. You had heard the story so many times you could almost say the lines with the characters. ..."
Interesting in a voyeuristic sense but stylistically and factually flawed.
The inaccuracies are off-putting. How credible is the rest of this book if he calls Stephen Miller Jason? I am far from being
a Trump fan, but I am also far from being a Bannon fan. Wolff clearly likes Bannon and admires the daily chaos and "war footing"
tactics he engendered. I would love to read a book like this but one that is edited and vetted before going to print.
This chronicle of life in the White House is more about Steve Bannon and his buddies versus Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's
more liberal views. Highlights of President Trump's first nine months provide material for the book's chapters.
There are almost no good words for Trump. The reader gets tired of hearing he's confused, stupid or uninformed. The writing
is tedious and relies on Yiddish and journalistic jargon to add gravitas. If you want to know more about Trump, this is not the
book.
One reads about White House chaos and the book explains the political infighting that contributes to it. The communications
professionals' comings and goings are explained. The chief of staff gyrations and Air Force One trip insights provide interest.
If you keep up with the news you won't learn much about Trump, but as a partial biography of Bannon this is worth reading.
The hype on this book got my attention but it was a book "I could put down". Fire and fury seemed to be a compilation of
the news stories about Trump that had already been worked and reworked in the written media. Other than a little embellishment
it was like reruns on cable TV. You had heard the story so many times you could almost say the lines with the characters.
"... "a portraitist who has mastered the art of the suck-up putdown." ..."
"... "And by repeatedly reminding the reader of what a dishonest, scheming little s -- he is, he seeks to inflate his credibility." ..."
"... "hit piece (plural hit pieces) (idiomatic) a published article or post aiming to sway public opinion by presenting false or biased information in a way that appears objective and truthful." ..."
"... I've seen Wolff on television several times and he comes across very badly. He is pretty full of himself. ..."
Wolff had taken shots in a recent Newsweek column at the media's "apoplexy" over the 45th
president, specifically calling out Stelter for delivering on his show each week, in the
writer's words, a "pious sermon about Trump's perfidiousness."
"I hope I pronounced that right," Stelter joked for a gawky transition. "Do you feel my
style is wrong or my substance is wrong, trying to fact check the president?"
Wolff, snazzy in a dandy banker's navy suit, pocket square, and trademark thick framed
glasses, didn't flinch. "I mean this with truly no disrespect, but I think you can border on
being quite a ridiculous figure," he told the host. "It's not a good look to repeatedly and
self-righteously defend your own self-interest. The media should not be the story."
The television moment -- an acerbic jab at a media heavyweight on his own show -- was
classic Wolff. But it was also a bit of foreshadowing. Nearly a year later, Michael Wolff
himself is very much the story this week.
...He has also, as The Washington Post's Paul Farhi wrote on Wednesday, been accused by
critics of "pushing the facts as far as they'll go, and sometimes further than they can
tolerate."
...Critics have blasted the writer in the past for filling his column inches with insight
and imaginative recreation rather than actual reporting.
..."His great gift is the appearance of intimate access," an editor told Cottle in 2004. "He
is adroit at making the reader think that he has spent hours and days with his subject, when in
fact he may have spent no time at all." Another former colleague said: "He did get a lot of
things majorly wrong, but he never was just pedestrian . . . You have to admire his
balls."
Chicken and tuna sandwich 1 week ago Why would you even mention Jones? He is
in no way a legitimate source for anything, not even the entertainment he has admitted in court
he engages in. That's like referencing Manson for midwifery.
"a portraitist who has mastered the art of the suck-up putdown.""And by
repeatedly reminding the reader of what a dishonest, scheming little s -- he is, he seeks to
inflate his credibility."
Two of the best lines I've read in a while. I haven't read his books but I like what I'm
hearing about this one. Now the real question is not whether or not it is true, it's how will
Trump spin this into a whirlwind he can reap unearned profits from?
the cavalier, 1 week ago
Sounds like the perfect supercilious self absorbed twit to cover a supercilious self
absorbed twit.
crown scientist, 1 week ago
Based on what I've as yet read in the excerpts published by NewYork Magazine I would
suggest Michael Wolff has introduced our distressed democracy to alt-journalism, the Access
Hollywoodification of presenedtial history. What drips with irony is that the Stupid Orange
Clown essentially fathered this freak of literature.
b everdene 1 week ago
You can see what happened here. Wolff set the stage for gaining Trump's trust (and access)
by publically criticizing Trump critics, but then he turned the tables on Trump and wrote an
unflattering profile. How fun.
Call it Presidential Pornology.
scchan.2009, 1 week ago
So if I understood what Wolff does: if you - assuming you are famous enough - give Wolff a
chance or a hole to write BS about you, he will do it.
The thing about many similar "journalism", the tall tales are not even remotely
unbelievable. It is totally consistent with the character even if it is false. It is playing
the anti-hero of the Daily Mail or NY Post. People enjoy reading gossip, be that be rubbish
on Fox News or BS come out from Wolff's or Stephen Colbert's mouth.
For now, have a good laugh without suspension of belief!
Greatful Deadline , 1 week ago
"hit piece (plural hit pieces) (idiomatic) a published article or post aiming to sway
public opinion by presenting false or biased information in a way that appears objective and
truthful."https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hit_piece
In other words, if it's true (as in "he has tapes"), then it's NOT a "hit piece."
jim380691910 , 1 week ago
I've seen Wolff on television several times and he comes across very badly. He is
pretty full of himself. Trump and Wolff, two unlikeable people, truly deserve each
other. I'm so disgusted with Trump that I'm fine with anyone flushing him down the
toilet.
mr.natural, 1 week ago
"But Wolff has also been taken to task for blurring the lines between hot take and hatchet job.
"Wolff exploits the human tendency to confuse frankness and cruelty with truth-telling," media
critic Jack Shafer wrote in Slate in 1998. "And by repeatedly reminding the reader of what a
dishonest, scheming little s -- he is, he seeks to inflate his credibility.""
This book will be a must read for all those who need to have their biases reinforced, to be
reminded that they are better than the rest, that anyone not agreeing with them is indeed a
knuckle dragging Troglodyte.
"... A journalist friend recently observed that good journalism leaves you understanding something you never even thought you cared about. This book did the opposite - left me pretty much not caring about something I was really curious about. I found the transcript of Glenn Simpson's testimony at the Senate hearings on the Steele dossier more riveting ..."
"... Wolff had an opportunity to put this disaster in writing -- a writing that any serious observer would want to add to their "reference" library. Wolff failed -- poor editing, overuse of a thesaurus, convoluted sentence structure and frequently leaving the reader wondering if statements made are Wolff's opinions or simply his ideas of what were thoughts of a person or group he has written about. There are some interesting bits in this book but it took work getting through Wolff's poor writing to get to the bits. ..."
"... unless you've been reclusive over the past several weeks, you know about most of the juicy bits. ..."
"... If you're thinking of reading a book, why not try something about a president of accomplishment Lincoln, (there's an entire that lists books about Lincoln)Teddy Roosevelt ( David McCullough's "Morning on Horseback is fantastic and Edmund Morris' trilogy about Roosevelt is not to be missed), Franklin Roosevelt? (Again there's a shelf full of books: I'm partial to Doris Kearns Goodwin's "No Ordinary Time" and Geoffrey C Ward's "Before the Trumpets" and "A First Class Temperament." If you want to read about a shady president try John Farrell's "Richard Nixon: A Life." Nixon is a whole lot more interesting than Trump. ..."
"... Disappointed. Full of innuendo and gossip. Editors should be flogged for all the errors they let by. Also someone needs to tell the author that he doesn't need to use ten dollar words to try and make the book seem credible. ..."
"... After the best parts were revealed in the media, the rest of the book reads as a dry attempt at juicy gossip. ..."
"... I'd like to read a more straight forward plain speaking account with sources to set the record straight. Guess we'll get this from Bannon's testimony quite soon! ..."
To begin with, I was very irritated
by all the editing mistakes that appeared in the Kindle edition. Writers lose some credibility when
their "finished" product is riddled with grammatical errors. This book is just not well-written. At
first the account was galvanizing, especially seeing in print one of Trump's speeches--which I
would assign a D-minus at best. Incoherent, highly repetitive writing (or in this case Trump's
speaking) indicates incoherent thinking; the president does not argue, he asserts. He has anecdotes
but no evidence. Facts are clearly anathema to him; logic escapes him. But all this is really no
surprise because he has shown himself over and over to be a vain, emotionally needy idiot, who is a
compulsive liar being propped up by immoral toadies (in his staff and in congress). That said,
after the first 90 or so pages, I became really bored. And why not? Trump (the subject of the book,
after all) has nothing to say. He has no plans to solve the country's many problems and seems
dangerously susceptible to repeating what the last person he talked to said.
See the subject line. This book is
TMZ material. If you like it, go for it. It is going for s laugh. However, you would be better off
reading the summaries online.
I pre-ordered this book primarily
because Trump was opposed vehemently to its publication. (The same reason, years ago, that I saw
"The Last Temptation of Christ." Local religious extremists were picketing the theater.)
I cannot say that reading the book was enjoyable. It reflects the troubling times we are in now and
the likelihood of difficult times ahead. And I am asked to trust this author regarding the details.
It would be easier for me if Wolff had been a journalist with the discipline imposed by a news
editor. As it is, the quotes and attributions stand as gossip (though I am inclined to believe most
or all of them, since they appear to fit logically with information already public).
The broad brush (e.g., "All of the senior staff...") may be true, but could a careful investigator
not find a true believer among them? I am certain that I could not work in this administration, but
there must be one who is as devoted to Trump as I have been to other elected officials for whom I
have worked.
Did I learn anything? Some details, perhaps, but not the big picture. I had known that this
president is a dangerously ignorant narcissist from his public statements. Is his public persona (a
childish, insecure man who holds grudges, lashes out at real or perceived opposition, and evidences
no maturity) likely to be similar to his behavior in the White House? It seems probable.
This is a poorly sourced, hearsay
laden book that would get ripped to shreds and given a C- if presented as a final project in any
top 500 journalism graduate school in the country. However, I very much doubt the author intended
it to adhere to The Rulebook of Journalistic Ethics and Integrity. In short, it revels in being a
salacious story about gossip and innuendo -- fitting quite well in our age of social media, aggregated
and questionable sources, and our own attention span lacking president. In effect, it reads like an
extremely long, multi-part post in Reddit's /r/bestof section.
Regarding the "truthiness" and authenticity of the facts that lies within: yeah, I generally
believe most of it is probably true. There is not much secrecy in the bumbling ineptitude of the
Trump administration and the in-fighting that is hidden in plain sight. Rake stepping seems a
constant favorite past time of our Dear Leader and his cohorts. Bear in mind, 'Fire and Fury' seems
clearly on the side of Bannon, so I would certainly take any of his character
opinions -- particularly, of those he clearly despises (Jarvanka) -- with a boulder sized grain of salt.
Also, there are some factual errors that are troubling to say the least. For example, Wolff
suggests that Trump's father was definitely a member of the KKK. From my cursory research on the
topic, this claim seems circumstantial at best. There are also errors in poll numbers sprinkled
throughout the text.
Should you read it? Perhaps, but don't expect anything terribly enlightening. If you're like me: a
mainstream liberal who reads the failing New York Times and the Bezos Washington Post, I doubt any
of this will be much of a surprise to you. What the book mainly does is sum up the top 50 forehead
slapping headlines of this disastrous presidency in the past year, so if you've been paying
attention, you've already read a version of this. I suppose it is useful to have a story arc within
a single book that covers the first year of the Trump presidency. Had it been better written,
properly sourced, and factually correct, it might have really been something.
This work to me seemed like more than
a timeline of events covering the period within which Wolff had been given West Wing access. That
the timeline was extruded with often sourceless hearsay makes it a bedfellow with a 14 year old's
diary. I learned little that was new, except for the seedier alleged "conversations" with the major
and minor players. Reading it made me depressed with the realization that the majority party and
its henchmen in DC right now wouldn't know the truth or respect it if it pushed them down the
stairs.
I am mad that I rushed to buy this
book because of the hype and my intense dislike of Trump.
A journalist friend recently observed
that good journalism leaves you understanding something you never even thought you cared about.
This book did the opposite - left me pretty much not caring about something I was really curious
about. I found the transcript of Glenn Simpson's testimony at the Senate hearings on the Steele
dossier more riveting
.
Do yourselves and favor and read
that, or read the March 2017 New Yorker piece on Robert Mercer, or any of the many excellent pieces
on Trump and his administration in the New York Times or Washington Post. I gave the book 3 stars
anyway because - well - it is a only book about the dysfunctional Trump White House.
The history of Trump's first year in
office has been followed by most Americans who have any level of interest in politics. Wolff had an
opportunity to put this disaster in writing -- a writing that any serious observer would want to add
to their "reference" library. Wolff failed -- poor editing, overuse of a thesaurus, convoluted
sentence structure and frequently leaving the reader wondering if statements made are Wolff's
opinions or simply his ideas of what were thoughts of a person or group he has written about. There
are some interesting bits in this book but it took work getting through Wolff's poor writing to get
to the bits.
This book is very readable though unless you've been reclusive over the past several weeks, you
know about most of the juicy bits.
On Sunday, the historian Niall Ferguson, was the interviewee in the "By the Book" feature in the
New York Times Book Review. He was asked the standard question for this interview: "If you could
require the American president to read one book, what would it be? And the prime minister? His
answer was priceless: "I agree with you that it would be wonderful if both Mr. Trump and Mrs May
read one book. I don't much mind which one it is."
If you're thinking of reading a book,
why not try something about a president of accomplishment Lincoln, (there's an entire that lists
books about Lincoln)Teddy Roosevelt ( David McCullough's "Morning on Horseback is fantastic and
Edmund Morris' trilogy about Roosevelt is not to be missed), Franklin Roosevelt? (Again there's a
shelf full of books: I'm partial to Doris Kearns Goodwin's "No Ordinary Time" and Geoffrey C Ward's
"Before the Trumpets" and "A First Class Temperament." If you want to read about a shady president
try John Farrell's "Richard Nixon: A Life." Nixon is a whole lot more interesting than Trump.
You already know more about Trump
than he knows or realizes about himself. Skip this and read about a real president.
Disappointed. Full of innuendo and
gossip. Editors should be flogged for all the errors they let by. Also someone needs to tell the
author that he doesn't need to use ten dollar words to try and make the book seem credible.
I teetered between 2 and 3 stars,
which means I'm somewhere between "don't like the book" and "it's okay. Here's why. The book was
poorly written. Mechanically, there were way too many breaks (commas everywhere) throughout the
flow of reading. Combine this with there were too many sophisticated words throughout the whole
book, and there were typos and grammatical errors along with that. All these things distracted my
attention away from what Mr. Wolff was trying to convey. I ultimately lose interest thus stopped
reading the book.
To Mr. Wolff: If a reader is spending more time looking up the meaning of words or is constantly
re-orientating because there are so many parenthetical notations, they will probably lose interest.
I'm sure the material that surrounds the disaster our country is in right now is quite complicated.
The task of explaining all this should not involve additional layers of confusion and arcane
language.
Illuminating reading but a bit pompously worded for a wide audience
I learnt a lot about the nuttiness
with the staff and the family, but I was glad I got the Kindle edition to look up some fairly
obscure wording with the built in dictionary. I'd like to read a more straight forward plain
speaking account with sources to set the record straight. Guess we'll get this from Bannon's
testimony quite soon!
Fourteen months ago, in the
first flush of power, Steve Bannon gave
an interview
to Michael Wolff -- beginning a relationship that would prove his undoing -- in which he boasted about
his plan to realign our politics. His nationalist-populist movement, he argued, would transform the G.O.P. into
something truly new: a right-wing worker's party that spent freely, "jacked up" infrastructure all over the country,
and won "60 percent of the white vote" and "40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote" on its way to a 50-year
majority.
"We're just going to throw it
up against the wall and see if it sticks," Bannon said. "It will be as exciting as the 1930s."
As exciting as the 1930s
is not a line you hear every day, but rather than an alt-right dog whistle, what I heard in Bannon's formulation was
the idea that in the Trump era, as in the crisis years that gave us both F.D.R. and Hitler, everything might be up
for grabs: not just electoral coalitions, but the nature and destiny of the liberal order. Which would be a
terrifying prospect but also an exciting one, since it would mean that the long "end of history" that followed the
Cold War had irrevocably ended, and that it was time to imagine radical revisions to a stagnant-seeming liberal West.
Flash forward a year and a
couple months, though, and Bannon's vision seems pretty much dead: its rumpled leader sacked and ritually denounced,
its bold populism subsumed into the same old, same old Republican agenda. Trump remains temperamentally authoritarian
and personally vile, but the idea of Trump_vs_deep_state as an ideological revolution, whether akin to Roosevelt's or
Mussolini's, has mostly evaporated.
Recent Comments
Candlewick
2 days ago
No. There isn't *life* after liberalism; just a bunch of dead men (GOP) wondering the
earth with black hooded robes and scythes.
SP
2 days ago
It does not matter what we call these philosophies, whether Liberalism, Capitalism,
Libertarianism etc. Good, ethical moral, wise,...
Michael Kubara
2 days ago
This suffers from the journalist disease-- "ism-ism": castigating "liberalism" without
defining it." the crisis years that gave us both F.D...
Initial article about Trump by Michael Wolff which allowed him to put a feet into WH door
later, in February 2017 when he decided to milk the Trump administration.
That's was probably the only major interaction of Wolff with Trump. Wolff claimed that Trump liked it ("for some
reason"), but I do not see what can be liked in this article. It is very mediocre.
It is alarming to see that Trump did not understand whom he is dealing with: "This isn't an interview or a conversation.
It's a hit piece by a nobody, Michael Wolff, opinionated and inflaming, punctuated with short hand picked Trump quotes. Trump is
correct about the dishonesty of the media."
You see all Wolff's typical tricks, innuendo, and his infatuation with the celebrities here "a pint of
vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream"... "a 5,395-square-foot Colonial mansion" ...""There had to be
over a thousand policeman. They had a neighborhood roped off, four or five blocks away from this
beautiful house. Machine guns all over the place.". Nothing of substance. You will never guess from the article whom
Trump represents and how he channels the anger of ordinary Americans against neoliberalism and globalization.
You can also can see Wolff's flattery in action (just in case; he decided to write the book much later, in Feb of 2017). Later
Woff did the same trick with Bannon and actually got the access to WH via him.
It looks like among readers of Hollywood reporter there here some Trump supporters. Comments to this article are really
interesting to read now, two years later and they are more informative that Wolff's article by leap and bounds.
Notable quotes:
"... One thing to understand about Trump is that, rather unexpectedly, he's neither angry nor combative. He may be the most threatening and frightening and menacing presidential candidate in modern life, and yet, in person he's almost soothing. His extreme self-satisfaction rubs off. He's a New Yorker who actually might be more at home in California (in fact, he says he usually comes to his home here -- two buildings on Rodeo Drive -- only once a year). Life is sunny. Trump is an optimist -- at least about himself. He's in easy and relaxed form campaigning here in these final days before the June 7 California primary, even with Hillary Clinton's biggest backers and a city that is about half Latino surrounding him. ..."
"... If onstage he calls people names, more privately he has only good, embracing things to say about almost everybody. (For most public people I know, it is the opposite.) He loves everybody. Genuinely seems to love everybody - at least everybody who's rich and successful (he doesn't really talk about anyone who isn't). Expressing love for everybody, for most of us, would clearly seem to be an act. But with Trump, it's the name-calling and bluster that might be the act. ..."
"... What a self serving article once again, can't you fools write without trying to demean your next president, in every paragraph? ..."
"... Another sleeze. Nuff said. ..."
"... This wasn't an "interview", Mr. Wolff. It read like a terribly biased libturd desperately attempting to 'bait' a Presidential candidate with childish, unimportant questions. We get it...you don't approve of Trump. Now go home and cry in your pillow. ..."
"... Let's get this straight, Trump exists because the leadership of both parties declared an undeclared war on the American people. Their disdain towards ordinary Americans makes them willing to lie to get theirs and screw everybody else. The Republican leadership? Losers. That's why he exists. ..."
"... Totally biased flake article, the author is clearly a Clinton shill. The give away is labeling Clinton Cash a "hatchet job", considering a huge portion of the MSM on the left have validated the book as 100% accurate and true. ..."
"... Surprised Trump bothered giving the antagonistic Michael Wolff the interview, but it does show Trump is fearless. Hillary won't go within 5 miles of Fox News. ..."
"... The arrogance of the writer, Michael Wolff is breathtaking. We get it Mr. Wolff. Your story included the small talk and you articulated YOUR pre-conceived opinions and impressions of Mr. Trump. ..."
"... Like or hate 'em there is one thing that Trump and Sanders have both accomplished: They have thoroughly exposed the corruption and the contempt for the American People that is "mainstream" politics for both sides. ..."
"... For that reason alone, it's been great to have these guys in the race. ..."
"... This isn't an interview or a conversation. It's a hit piece by a nobody, Michael Wolff, opinionated and inflaming, punctuated with short hand picked Trump quotes. Trump is correct about the dishonesty of the media. ..."
"... Here in "liberal" Boston the Trump signs are everywhere. Bad sign for Madame Mao. Trump may not take Massachusetts but he is closing the gap with that hideous woman. ..."
"... Like Trump said: "The press are very, very dishonest. Some of them are downright sleazy".Thank God for the internet, otherwise the MSM would have us believe Madame Mao is the Virgin Mary. ..."
"... I wouldn't be surprised to see the 'Hollywood Reporter' shut off comments early. ..."
"... They delete all non-liberal comments, usually later in the morning... the millennial lib's arrive late to work in the morning because they're out partying all night... ..."
The long day is ending for Donald Trump with a pint of vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream. We're settling in for a late-night chat
at his Beverly Hills house, a 5,395-square-foot Colonial mansion directly across from the Beverly Hills Hotel. He's here for
the final presidential primary, a California coronation of sorts, after rallies in Orange County (where violence broke out and
seven people were arrested). He is, as he has been for much of our conversation - and perhaps much of the last year -
marveling at his own campaign. "You looked outside before, you see what's going on," he boasts about the police surrounding
his house, and the Secret Service detail cramming his garage and snaking around the pool at the center of the front drive. And
he's just returned from a big donor fundraiser in Brentwood for the Republican Party at the home of Tom Barrack, the investor
and former Miramax co-owner. "There had to be over a thousand policeman. They had a neighborhood roped off, four or five
blocks away from this beautiful house. Machine guns all over the place."
One thing to understand about Trump is that, rather unexpectedly, he's neither angry nor
combative. He may be the most threatening and frightening and menacing presidential candidate
in modern life, and yet, in person he's almost soothing. His extreme self-satisfaction rubs
off. He's a New Yorker who actually might be more at home in California (in fact, he says he
usually comes to his home here -- two buildings on Rodeo Drive -- only once a year). Life is
sunny. Trump is an optimist -- at least about himself. He's in easy and relaxed form
campaigning here in these final days before the June 7 California primary, even with Hillary
Clinton's biggest backers and a city that is about half Latino surrounding him.
... ... ...
If onstage he calls people names, more privately he has only good, embracing things to say about almost everybody. (For
most public people I know, it is the opposite.) He loves everybody. Genuinely seems to love everybody - at least everybody who's
rich and successful (he doesn't really talk about anyone who isn't). Expressing love for everybody, for most of us, would
clearly seem to be an act. But with Trump, it's the name-calling and bluster that might be the act.
... ... ...
Trump will turn 70 on June 14, but he shows no sign of fatigue even as our conversation drifts toward 11 p.m. He's been at
this since either 4 a.m. or 6 a.m. (he offers different times at different moments).
...Then I came back and did more meetings, then I did a fundraiser tonight, then I did Kimmel. And now you. You're not a
two-minute interview guy."
V. M. Varga > HelloTommy • 2 years ago
Bernie has no chance and Hillary is a neocon. What war next.
Ranger_Ric > Political Hostage • 2 years ago
Neocon or neoliberal, they are the same animals and there is no difference between George Bush and Hillary Clinton. They
all answer to the same NWO masters.
There is a difference in Hillary's case... She is a habitual liar, a fake, a criminal and a lesbian. Other than that, there
is one uniparty, the Washington Criminal Mafia.
Penny • 2 years ago
I love the smell of radical establishment media's hysteria this early in the morning. Naturally, the media elite who have
not gone after Obama for not having a press conference since 2009 and Clinton, who has not had one in over a year, doesn't
make a bean's hill of difference. ROT is the name of the "mainstream" media, especially when they see their D.C. lifestyle of
corruption and cover-ups threatened by a straight-shooting, take-no-prisoners man like Trump.
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN--TRUMP/SESSIONS 2016
YesMeansNOMeansYES • 2 years ago
What a self serving article once again, can't you fools write without trying to demean your next president, in every
paragraph?
Walter White > YesMeansNOMeansYES • 2 years ago
Another sleeze. Nuff said.
mredward > Political Hostage • 2 years ago
As you read the anti Trump posts, remember the Hillary pacs have purchased over a million dollars worth of bogus posters
here.
SmartDoctor • 2 years ago
Hmm. The real news is NOT that the competition is in a statistical dead heat during the first week of June. The real news
is that Hillary's polls have been steadily plummeting, and with her level of charisma, charm, and message, it is totally
illogical to assume that they are going to improve anytime soon. They won't. And Trump, the "clown", the totally undetectable
candidate, the spoiler, the guy with no Republican backing what so ever, keeps going up and up and up. Of course the left
never, ever shows the size of the crowds he attracts to his rallies. The left is completely out of touch with the American
mainstream (you know, the folks Mr. Nixon once called "the silent majority".) Trump has the momentum nationwide, and no one
except Southern black ladies likes Hillary. There is your story! Next paragraph, "how did this happen?" And keep in mind, the
FBI hasn't spoken yet, Bernie ain't through yet, the left wing, Soros financed riots haven't begun yet, 2 weeks in politics
is a lifetime, and we haven't gotten to the convention boost yet. Yeah, I'm biased. In America's favor, sorry if that offends
anyone. TRUMP 2016
Political Hostage > SmartDoctor • 2 years ago
I live in the South, with a ton of black folks, and have yet to see any HRC bumper stickers on their cars. It's mostly
Coopers, Beetles, and Cubes that have the HRC swag on them. Not many though.
Our building has about 6,000 people working in it and there maybe a handful of Bernie stickers too. Most working people
aren't looking in the direction of democrats.
Bill Strang • 2 years ago
And you don't think the media is too easy on Hillary? Every time she opens her mouth, she lies and the media just ignores
it. But lets just hold Trump to a much higher standard then a standard democrat.
Penny > Bill Strang • 2 years ago
That is the job description of the elitists (a/k/a "mainstream" media). A recent survey revealed that 85 percent-plus
media are demRATS
Wilkins Micawber • 2 years ago
A vote for Clinton is a vote for the leftist, moonbat, felon, gay, generational welfare leech, gov union, drug addicted,
pervert, lgtqxyz, pedophile, academic, stupid college kid, white guilt ridden, illiterate third world invading trash, in
other words the Democrat base, that supports her.
Angry black woman > Wilkins Micawber • 2 years ago
10000 up votes
TroyGale • 2 years ago
I like confident people who are confident because they have struggled and won in the arena. Trump is no different, he
wins...Why?
Here is a quote from General George Patton, I think it explains it perfectly....
"All men are timid on entering any fight. Whether it is the first or the last fight, all of us are timid. Cowards are those
who let their timidity get the better
of their manhood."
Trump doesn't let his timidity get involved, AT ALL.
Brian washere • 2 years ago
Here's an inconvenient truth liberals (media) don't want to face. All those blue collar dems that have always been
brainwashed into thinking the Bolsheviks (D) were for the "working man" are finally opening their dim eyes and realizing they
have been sold down the river.
The regulations puked out by government that chases their workplaces out of the country and the illegals they have to
compete with for replacement jobs, all trademarks of the progressives, have f--ked them hard. They are going to go Trump in
huge numbers.
All the dems voter fraud and manipulation won't save Shrillary from that fact. This is going to be so lopsided it will
make Reagan/Carter look like a nail-biter.
Bill Thompson • 2 years ago
I'll vote for him because I want to control our border, enforce our immigration laws, cut the H-1B visas, keep our troops
home, eliminate free trade, protect the 2nd amendment.
phosgene • 2 years ago
is trump ever going to have to answer a single challenging question about how he is full of sheet? this is an "interview"
where he eats ice cream and talks about himself. we already know he can do that. the only policy or current events based
questions i saw he was completely oblivious. there is no room for anything in trump's world but trump.
hillary volunteered for the goldwater campaign when she was younger. her credentials as a republican and a conservative are
stronger than trump's. the guy has conned millions into completely selling out their party and beliefs. sad.
nonuser > phosgene • 2 years ago
Congratulations, you've made Michael Wolff very happy.
dudefromdixie • 2 years ago
Trump is going to unite the right like none before him. He is also going to conquer the left, like none before him.
HelloTommy • 2 years ago
Donald Trump's new finance guru: once a Clinton donor, Soros employee. Steven Mnuchin also contributed to Obama, Kerry and
Gore. You Trumpets are so gullible. He is also an ex-Goldman-Sachs employee and PAC donor. We're suppose to hate that right?
Tell me how that is okay?
MICHAELNLA > HelloTommy • 2 years ago
"gullible?"
You Liberals voted for a guy who you thought was Black, not once but twice...guess you forgot to ask him who his mother was.
Meanwhile, Hussein has DOUBLED the National Debt in 8 years!
We have 95 MILLION Americans out of the work force.
50 MILLION Americans on Food Stamps.
Half of college grads unemployed.
And you expect Americans to give the "D" party another
four years in the White House...KEEP DREAMING, LEFTY!
OWilson • 2 years ago
The arrogant left, and their pals in the Media, are not used to being questioned. Hillary hasn't had a press conference in
2016. She lets CNN do all the Trump bashing, all the time. They see a change coming, and it scares the hell out of them all.
jj333 • 2 years ago
This wasn't an "interview", Mr. Wolff. It read like a terribly biased libturd desperately attempting to 'bait' a
Presidential candidate with childish, unimportant questions. We get it...you don't approve of Trump. Now go home and cry in
your pillow.
SamVaughn • 2 years ago
Let's get this straight, Trump exists because the leadership of both parties declared an undeclared war on the
American people. Their disdain towards ordinary Americans makes them willing to lie to get theirs and screw everybody else.
The Republican leadership? Losers. That's why he exists.
ObiterDictum • 2 years ago
Menacing who? If he financially runs the country like his campaign, expect some of those non-essential government
employees to be out on the street. For years our Government has not been afraid of the governed, but now they fear our proxy.
Bluto Redneck ✓Shithole Appr. > ObiterDictum • 2 years ago
Exactly. I predict a 15-20% real cut in our federal bureaucracy. And God help any of those fools that go out on strike.
Air traffic controllers anyone?
phosgene > ObiterDictum • 2 years ago
he's not going to cut a damn thing. do you even listen to what he says? build a wall, kick out 11 million people, massive
military increases, massive increase for veterans, massive infrastructure rebuilding, replacing obamacare with something
"better".
none of this is small government stuff, kids. he hasn't mentioned cutting a single thing on the stump. oh yeah, and the age
old republican idea of reforming entitlements? OUT THE WINDOW!
well, that only costs a few TRILLION.
Reaganite✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ • 2 years ago
One of the more obvious reasons Trump has been viewed by so many as the GOP´s best hope of defeating Our Empress of the
Seven Genders is precisely because he - and he alone among the candidates - doesn´t give a flying flip about the "civility"
speech code Democrats impose upon Republicans (or the New Tone muzzle Republicans impose upon themselves) that prohibit the
Left from ever having to face the mocking, the insults, the scathing satire, and the verbal abuse they themselves vomit upon
the Right on a daily basis. The establishment still doesn´t seem to understand just how refreshing this is.
Reaganite✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ • 2 years ago
Donald Trump and his people are upending the Political Media/Progressive Establishment industrial complex narrative. These
" media cretins of PC conformity" are staring into the abyss of their own personal irrelevancy. Trump's celebrity and
unapologetic surrogates allow his campaign to fight them with devastating effect. The professionally offended are blinded to
their own hypocrisy.
Weezy -Stable Genius • 2 years ago
Totally biased flake article, the author is clearly a Clinton shill. The give away is labeling Clinton Cash a "hatchet
job", considering a huge portion of the MSM on the left have validated the book as 100% accurate and true.
What kills many is these reporters really believe the public is incapable of discerning their real intentions when producing
articles like this.
In the meantime, Trump continues to roll on and gain further momentum.
notimportant > phosgene • 2 years ago
Completely different situation. Make the media responsible for what they tout! They can say what they want, but they
better make sure it's correct. Of course, liberals don't believe in personal responsibility. By the way, Putin has an 80%
approval rating in his country and many people respect the man outside the country. That's because he's a man and stands up
for what he believes. He doesn't allow bullying or ugliness by those who disagree with him to effect him. Time we had that in
our country and we will when Trump is president. Neither Putin nor Trump are one world order supporters. Neither am I
ScottPM • 2 years ago
Nothing would be worse than having a President that has shown that they are utterly reckless, arrogant, and shows a total
disregard for American lives by INTENTIONALLY mishandling classified information. Information is classified because people
die if it gets out. hillary has shown she can NOT be trusted as President.
phosgene > ScottPM • 2 years ago
you are completely ignorant. half the paperwork the government generates is classified. they completely misuse it ON
PURPOSE. it is meant to control information. lives have nothing to do with it. it is about protecting their butts
strongisland • 2 years ago
Amazing how a mere journalist for the Hollyweird Reporter repeatedly attempts to elevate himself intellectually above a
man who is light years more successful than himself. The mocking doesn't work here. In fact, it belies what the author is all
about. The typical Gen Y, millennial liberal snark that is never to be taken seriously...because, well, these fools think no
issues are actually serious. As long as the progressive playbook is being fulfilled...these fools are happy in their rapidly
deteriorating paradise.
For someone who is seemingly so in tune with the important issues...he sure skirted them as conveniently as possible when it
came to this interview. Sometimes...a worthy opponent brings out the best in an individual. Sadly, for Donald Trump...he was
tangling with a total lightweight here.
cageysea • 2 years ago
"... He loves everybody. Genuinely seems to love everybody - at least everybody who's rich and successful (he doesn't
really talk about anyone who isn't)..."
Uh.... Yeah, I got nothin'.
Mitch Alan > Bad Will Hunting • 2 years ago
...Surprised Trump bothered giving the antagonistic Michael Wolff the interview, but it does show Trump is fearless.
Hillary won't go within 5 miles of Fox News.
Deplorable- jean Lee • 2 years ago
The arrogance of the writer, Michael Wolff is breathtaking. We get it Mr. Wolff. Your story included the small talk
and you articulated YOUR pre-conceived opinions and impressions of Mr. Trump. You are the one with the black
heart! Trump 2016
Stormrdr • 2 years ago
Like or hate 'em there is one thing that Trump and Sanders have both accomplished: They have thoroughly exposed the
corruption and the contempt for the American People that is "mainstream" politics for both sides. The mechanizations and
back-room dealings have been fully revealed with each attempt to derail these "outsiders". For that reason alone, it's
been great to have these guys in the race.
I can't say I'm a big fan of either one of them, but I do admire what they've accomplished for America's political future
(whether or not it was intentional).
Rocky • 2 years ago
This isn't an interview or a conversation. It's a hit piece by a nobody, Michael Wolff, opinionated and inflaming,
punctuated with short hand picked Trump quotes. Trump is correct about the dishonesty of the media.
jack4949 • 2 years ago
Here in "liberal" Boston the Trump signs are everywhere. Bad sign for Madame Mao. Trump may not take Massachusetts but
he is closing the gap with that hideous woman.
jack4949 • 2 years ago
Like Trump said: "The press are very, very dishonest. Some of them are downright sleazy".Thank God for the internet,
otherwise the MSM would have us believe Madame Mao is the Virgin Mary.
Yip Yap • 2 years ago
I wouldn't be surprised to see the 'Hollywood Reporter' shut off comments early. It has been doing that lately
when comments don't go it's way. THAT WALL'S GOIN' TA BE HUUUGE!!!
barney59 > Yip Yap • 2 years ago
They delete all non-liberal comments, usually later in the morning... the millennial lib's arrive late to work in the
morning because they're out partying all night...
Fourteen months ago, in the
first flush of power, Steve Bannon gave
an interview
to Michael Wolff -- beginning a relationship that would prove his undoing -- in which he boasted about
his plan to realign our politics. His nationalist-populist movement, he argued, would transform the G.O.P. into
something truly new: a right-wing worker's party that spent freely, "jacked up" infrastructure all over the country,
and won "60 percent of the white vote" and "40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote" on its way to a 50-year
majority.
"We're just going to throw it
up against the wall and see if it sticks," Bannon said. "It will be as exciting as the 1930s."
As exciting as the 1930s
is not a line you hear every day, but rather than an alt-right dog whistle, what I heard in Bannon's formulation was
the idea that in the Trump era, as in the crisis years that gave us both F.D.R. and Hitler, everything might be up
for grabs: not just electoral coalitions, but the nature and destiny of the liberal order. Which would be a
terrifying prospect but also an exciting one, since it would mean that the long "end of history" that followed the
Cold War had irrevocably ended, and that it was time to imagine radical revisions to a stagnant-seeming liberal West.
Flash forward a year and a
couple months, though, and Bannon's vision seems pretty much dead: its rumpled leader sacked and ritually denounced,
its bold populism subsumed into the same old, same old Republican agenda. Trump remains temperamentally authoritarian
and personally vile, but the idea of Trump_vs_deep_state as an ideological revolution, whether akin to Roosevelt's or
Mussolini's, has mostly evaporated.
