Trump's Future; with Bits of his Past
Introduction: Trump has a new Communications Director, a man with no experience in directing political communications. Whether or not he is willing to and capable of learning how, that's neither here nor there. For he has a boss who has not the foggiest notion of what the Presidency is and shows neither willingness nor capability to learn. This column is about a few of problems that that has led to for Trump.
Scaramouche (Italian, Scaramucci) was originally a stock clown character in Italian Commedia dell'Arte. "The role combined characteristics of the zanni (servant) and the Capitano(masked henchman)." He was known for being totally loyal to his master. How appropriate then, for President Trump's new communications director, who has absolutely no experience in the role, to be named Anthony Scaramucci (as in “servant” and “(un)masked henchman.” Although several years back he filleted Trump in public, he now has pledged total loyalty to Trump, rather than to the reporting of Trump-related news and information. (Interesting fact: I'm not the only one who has referenced Scaramouche in the Scaramucci context. According to Wikipedia, his appointment sent Scaramouche searches up by 8185% [and that's before I did my search]). We will come back to the "loyalty" issue and Trump at the end of the column.
At any rate, as any readers of my columns know I have been addicted to "Trump-stuff" for some years now, beginning back in 2011 when, apparently actually thinking about running for President, Trump established his base theme, racism, by signing on very heavy-handedly to the "Birtherism-conspiracy" against Obama. (See my 2017 column, "A Trump Retrospective" for a review of my columns [and some tweets] up until then, and my OpEdNews "Author's Page" for the roster since then.)
(Image by Steven Jonas) Permission Details DMCA
As any reader of OpEdNews and just about any other political medium of the time knows, Trump is getting into more and trouble. Here's a random sampling, not in any particular order.
He is at war with his hand-picked Attorney General (full name) Jefferson Davis P.G.T Beauregard Sessions. (By the way, I just learned that P.G.T Beauregard was the Confederate General who organized the Confederate States of America's army at the First Battle of Bull Run. The Union side had so considered the coming battle to be a walk for the Union, with a subsequent march straight to Richmond, that pro-Union Washington Society members came out with picnic baskets to watch it. Beauregard and the CSA General who would become "Stonewall" Jackson, held off the poorly organized and poorly led Union troops that day. In the end, Union forces did not reach Richmond until four years later.)
Sessions, thus with an appropriate name for a far right-wing Republican with a record of racism, was the first U.S. Senator to support Trump in the primaries. Of course, former loyalty/support has never meant anything to Trump, so why start now? Many are asking why Sessions doesn't resign and/or why Trump doesn't just fire him. As to the former, Sessions represents a far-right segment of the U.S. ruling class, which has probably told him to remain just where he is, to have someone on site when and if the walls do come crashing down. Why won't Trump fire him? Likely because Sessions, who was in there very early, has just too much "stuff" on Trump and likely on his boys as well. (Of course, I could be wrong about this, and a Sessions firing/resignation could happen anyway.)
There is of course the ever-deepening Mueller probe. There are of course many on the Right who think that there is nothing to it, that it is a "witch-hunt," that it is a product of something called the "Deep State" to get rid of Trump. Certain people on the Left agree. (The "Deep State" is a useful concept for both Left and Right. But both miss the point that the components of what they call the "Deep Sate" do not operate independently. They operate, perhaps not in unison, and perhaps not with an always unifying purpose, but at the behest of the ruling class, directly and/or indirectly. Yes, "state" is the correct term, for the State is always under the control in one way or another, of the economically dominant sector of the ruling class. The point is that the "Deep State," in the Intelligence Community, is not an independent operator.)
Without getting into the ins-and-outs, and the arguments on both sides as to whether a) Russia interfered and b) the Trumpites colluded with such an effort, if there were nothing there why would Trump be fighting so hard to undermine the Mueller probe? Politically, he may or may not be able to fire Mueller. But he and his legal team are working night and day to undermine Mueller's credibility so that any negative findings (which, from what is known so far there is sure to be) can be attacked and discredited.
Then there is the fact that under Trump's leadership the Republicans have accomplished nothing legislatively. That of course could be turned around if Mitch McConnell, is able to apply enough pressure (of all kinds, from goodies to political threats) to the few wavering Repub. Senators to get the hypocritical, kick-the-can-down-road, Obama-care repeal passed. That would be a totally negative "achievement," but the Trumpites would laud it anyway. (By the way, did you know that under the leadership of its "business first-doctoring second" Secretary Tom Price, the Department of Health and Human Services is using funds that were intended to promote the Affordable Care Act instead to produce anti-ACA You Tube features?)
HOWEVER, Trump has had major achievements in deregulation and changing the whole nature of various government programs, from what's going on at the Environmental Protection Administration (which is fast becoming the Environmental Destruction Administration) to the Department of Education (which now has as its principal role the destruction of public education) to the Department of the Interior which is working hard on opening up public lands to private, for-profit exploitation of various kinds, to having the head of the Treasury Department task force looking at revising banking regulations being the former chief lobbyist for the large banks. The ruling class wanted Trump elected for two primary reasons: to destroy as many government regulations protecting the public as quickly as possible and to cut taxes on the wealthy and the large corporations. The former is going like gangbusters. The latter, well, if the Repubs. can accomplish repeal of the ACA, which is, as is well-known, really a huge tax cut for the wealthy managed at the expense of the poor, that will be going like gangbusters as well.
BUT, the pressure is building on Trump. The "Russia Thing," despite what his defenders on both the Left and the Right say, just won't go away. It is tightening, perhaps not a noose around his neck, but certainly a belt around his ever-expanding tum. Numbers of rats have already left the sinking ship. It is getting to the point where there are almost as many lawyers representing various persons and factions around the White House as there are White House staff. And by all accounts, many of those are at each other's throats.
For me, certainly a leftist-through-and-through, as noted the clincher that it is real is that Trump has been fighting the probes (not only Mueller's but the House and Senate committee ones as well) with increasing ferocity, from the beginning. If he had nothing to hide he should have wanted the probes to be done and over with. That's the giveaway. Plus of course, the whole “Pardons Thing." The long-time Christian-Rightist attorney Jay Sekulow may say that the subject hasn't been broached in the White House (for which statement he was taken apart by Chris Wallace on Fox"News" of all places), but of course it has. (Such anti-Trump sentiments from certain elements of Fox"News" plus some anti-Trump writings in The Wall Street Journal may well indicate that Rupert Murdoch has finally had enough of Trump. They certainly seem to think that there is "something there" on "Russia-gate," and they are hardly part of the "Deep State.")
So, what does this (and lots of other stuff of which readers of columns like this one will be well aware) all tell us? Well, some say “impeachment.” But that is going to be a tough one in the Repub.-controlled Congress. As I have previously noted, it tells me that Trump is going to resign. He will do it in a blaze of fire and brimstone. He is will do it in a blaze of "I'm being prevented at every turn, thwarted at every opportunity, from serving you the people who elected me." He will of course blame everyone but himself, probably casting stones equally at Republicans as well as Democrats. After all, in one of his tweets about the failure (so far, as of this writing) of the Senate to pass ACA-repeal, he complained about their lack of "loyalty." He implied that since he is the leader of the Party, Senators should do what he says.
Which brings us to a so far little-noticed point. To me, this emphasis on “loyalty” sounds like the "Fuehrerprinzip" of Nazi Germany. "The State has one leader, and it is I. It is to the ‘I’ that you owe your loyalty, and obedience." Combined with the previously discussed "Triumph of the Will," we would be moving onto very dangerous ground. "But he would no longer be President," you might say. Yes, but I then predict that with Steve Bannon more firmly glued to his side than ever, he would go on to establish a clearly fascist (although they wouldn't use that term yet) Far Right-Wing Party, bringing much of his present white supremacist/xenophobic/-Islamophobic/Christian-Rightist base along with him. (And he is courting the latter of the fearsome foursome evermore vigorously.) But more on that subject anon.