https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png00Kevin MacDonaldhttps://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.pngKevin MacDonald2024-11-16 05:46:102024-11-16 05:46:10How did this get on air?
There should be a national mandate for photo id to vote.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png00Kevin MacDonaldhttps://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.pngKevin MacDonald2024-11-15 09:43:182024-11-15 09:43:18Red-Blue Map for Voting ID
The choices of Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence in the past few days shocked a capital that perhaps should not have been all that surprised. Anyone who listened to Mr. Trump’s promises and grievances on the campaign trail over the past couple of years could have easily anticipated that he would elevate compatriots willing to execute his hostile takeover of government.
If confirmed, Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Gabbard would constitute the lead shock troops in Mr. Trump’s self-declared war on what he calls the “deep state.” All three have echoed his conviction that government is seeded with career public servants who actively thwarted his priorities while he was in office and targeted him after he left. None of them has the kind of experience relevant to these jobs comparable to predecessors of either party, but they can all be expected to take “a blowtorch” to the status quo, to use Stephen K. Bannon’s term for Mr. Gaetz.
“You tried to destroy Trump; you tried to imprison Trump; you tried to break Trump,” Mr. Bannon, a onetime White House strategist for Mr. Trump, said on his podcast on Wednesday after Mr. Gaetz’s nomination was announced. “He’s not breakable. You couldn’t destroy him. And now he has turned on you.”
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Mr. Trump’s promises and grievances on the campaign trail indicated that he would elevate compatriots willing to execute his hostile takeover of government.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Mr. Bannon singled out hosts, producers and guests on MSNBC as well as former investigators and F.B.I. officials as an example of targets Mr. Gaetz would come after if given the power to prosecute. “I understood they feared us,” he went on. “And why do they fear us? Because we were coming to take down the globalists and the deep state.”
The choice of Mr. Gaetz especially was so astonishing to many in Washington that even Republicans had a hard time at first grasping whether Mr. Trump was serious. He seemed to almost relish the metaphorical heads exploding across Capitol Hill. “He’s just trolling America at this point,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House aide who broke with him, wrote on social media.
Mr. Trump’s willingness to pick nominees who once would have been unimaginable has also extended beyond the national security agencies. On Thursday, Mr. Trump chose Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former presidential candidate who made a name leading an anti-vaccine movement, to be the secretary of health and human services. For secretary of homeland security, Mr. Trump has tapped Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, whose prospects for vice president vanished with her admission that she shot her own 14-month-old dog because it was “untrainable” and bit people.
But the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies were the three areas of government that proved to be the most stubborn obstacles to Mr. Trump’s previous efforts to legitimize his presidency and overturn his defeat in 2020 to hold on to power.
The intelligence agencies stood by their assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Mr. Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, despite a fierce backlash from the newly elected president who publicly declared that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin’s denials instead.
The Justice Department refused Mr. Trump’s demands to prosecute many of his adversaries, including Mrs. Clinton, former President Barack Obama and his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., though it did investigate others who had angered the president. More critically, the department rebuffed pressure to publicly declare that there were substantial irregularities in the 2020 election to justify reversing Mr. Biden’s victory.
The Pentagon, for its part, made clear that it would not cooperate with an illegal effort to use troops against domestic opponents or help Mr. Trump stay in office. Michael T. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and Trump ally, tried to persuade the president in December 2020 to declare a form of martial law and order the military to seize voting equipment and rerun the election in states that he lost. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had signaled for months that he would not allow the military to be turned into a political weapon.
“He wanted to use them as his lever, and they were the ones that were the guardrails,” said Olivia Troye, who served as a national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence during the Trump administration and has become a vocal critic of the president-elect. “And so I think this all stems from that.”
By contrast, it is harder to envision Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Hegseth or Ms. Gabbard defying Mr. Trump after he is inaugurated again on Jan. 20. Mr. Gaetz, a Florida Republican who just resigned his seat in the House, has been a fierce critic of the department he may take over — a department that investigated him for sex trafficking before dropping the matter.
Just this week, Mr. Gaetz suggested abolishing the F.B.I. and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which would report to him as attorney general. As it is, Mr. Trump after the inauguration is widely expected to fire Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director he installed in 2017, for being too independent [and having the FBI involved in fomenting the J6 protests].
Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News weekend host who came to Mr. Trump’s attention defending a convicted military war criminal, served as a major in the Army National Guard and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, but has no experience running a large organization, much less an armed force of two million troops. He too has been a ferocious defender of Mr. Trump and has assailed what he calls the modern “woke” military.
Ms. Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who quit her party and backed Mr. Trump, spent two decades in the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, rising to lieutenant colonel, but has no experience in the intelligence agencies she would oversee. She has often echoed Russia’s positions on Ukraine and NATO, to the point that a Russian state television host famously called her “our girlfriend.” [Gabbard’s presence is a reason to be hopeful on Ukraine.]’
Compare those three to the appointees Mr. Trump installed in those same posts when he first came to office in 2017: Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator and former judge, as attorney general; Jim Mattis, a retired Marine four-star general, as defense secretary; and Dan Coats, a longtime Republican senator from Indiana and ambassador to Germany, as director of national intelligence.
All three proved too independent for Mr. Trump. Mr. Sessions angered the president by recusing himself from the Russia investigation and refusing to help oust the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III [at the behest of Rod Rosenstein who obviously hated Trump and wanted to use the 25th Amendment to get rid of him.] He was eventually fired. Mr. Mattis resisted many ideas by Mr. Trump that he deemed dangerous for national security. He eventually resigned to protest a decision to abandon Kurdish allies in Syria. Mr. Coats defended his intelligence analysts over their Russia conclusions and was so stunned by Mr. Trump’s deference to Mr. Putin that he privately wondered what the Russians had on the new president. He too eventually resigned.
Mr. Trump learned from those experiences. When he first arrived at the White House, he had not spent a single day in public office and therefore often relied on people he did not know well. He returns eight years later with a much better understanding of how power works in the White House and a better sense of whom to trust.
In the process, according to Ms. Troye, he is citing the supposed weaponization of government by the Democrats [who could possibly think otherwise given the continual prosecutions since 2020, all by Democrats?] to turn it around on his adversaries. “It’s almost projection because he does exactly what he accuses these people of doing,” she said. “It’s the politicization of these communities.”
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png00Kevin MacDonaldhttps://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.pngKevin MacDonald2024-11-15 08:25:402024-11-15 08:25:40NYTimes: Trump Learned from His Mistaken Appointments in His First Term
As my assiduous readers know, I’ve been down on Donald Trump for abandoning the central promises of his 2016 campaign — a campaign so spectacular that I wrote an homage to it, “In Trump We Trust.” In gratitude for the “Mexican rapists” line alone, I was speaking at his rallies a few weeks after he came down the escalator — or about eight months before Fox News abandoned its “Never Trump” campaign and took away Megyn Kelly’s parking spot.
I will not rehash the horror of what happened after Trump got elected, ditched his immigration plans, and hired his nimrod son-in-law Jared Kushner.
His defenders, most of whom never cared about immigration in the first place, always told me, He tried! The people around him sabotaged him!
Yes, but he hired the people around him, including the nimrod. Anyone could see Trump was packing his administration with people who openly opposed his agenda, e.g. Nikki Haley, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, half of Goldman Sachs and every kiss-ass, phony “four-star general” (meaning they promoted enough girls and transgenders to impress Senate Democrats).
I was so sure he’d do it again, I tried to formulate a bet this year. The general idea would have been something like: I bet he’ll hire Nikki Haley, but not Kris Kobach.
Luckily, I never made the bet, because boy, was I wrong!* Apparently, the left’s maniacal pursuit of Trump over the past four years has had an energizing effect on the man. What MSNBC is calling Trump’s plan for “revenge,” his supporters call “keeping his promises.”
[*I wrote that before Trump announced his plan to make dog-killer and Afghan refugee-lover Kristi Noem head of the Department of Homeland Security. Please God, don’t let him blow this second chance of a lifetime! We’re not getting a third.
[Obviously, I also didn’t know about Matt Gaetz, yet, either, but I assume that’s just a gag.]
In a post on Truth Social this past Saturday, Trump announced that he will not be hiring open-borders neocons Haley or Pompeo. But he will be hiring Tom Homan, his acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to serve as border czar (even though there’s no such title in the U.S. Code, so who the hell knows what that even means).
Specifically, Trump wrote: “Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.” (Kamala, you might want to jot that down.)
To give you an idea of what an upgrade this is, Trump’s first head of Homeland Security was Gen. John “Trump Is Hitler” Kelly, who started off on the wrong foot, shall we say, when he announced at his Senate confirmation hearing that walls don’t work. (We’re still waiting for his position on roofs, floors and chimneys.)
Instead, Kelly’s suggestion was to go after the root cause of illegal immigration — because that always works! Between Kelly and Kamala, perhaps someday we’ll get to the bottom of why wretched people from dirt-poor countries want to move to the world’s wealthiest, most generous welfare state. It’s a real baffler.
Obviously, Zippy the Chimp would be an improvement over that. But Homan is actually terrific, by which I mean the idea of deporting illegals is not an impenetrable mystery to him. Ditto with Trump’s proposed deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller.
Now, Trump just needs to put Kobach at DHS — or at least not Kristi “Welcome Afghan Refugees!” Noem. What’s next? “Trump names noted Haitian farm-to-table chef to Cabinet”?
(Incidentally, one of the smart politicos on Mark Halperin’s “2Way” podcast recently described how people vying for the same position in a new administration knife the competition: claim the other guy is “unconfirmable.” Yes, that’s as bitchy as it sounds. Guess how Kobach was kept out of the last Trump administration?)
Naturally, the media are already imposing conditions on Trump’s immigration plans. How cute is that? They’ve been bleating about our beloved illegals for nine solid years and the result was: a landslide victory for the guy who promised mass deportations and a wall.
Please tell us more, oh wise media! Say, how do you journalists feel about seeing penises in women’s locker rooms?
This is their moronic demand: Only criminals may be deported! That was the Obama plan: Don’t let ICE do its job because we’re going to be very picky about which illegals have to be deported “first.”
The media and I have very different ideas about immigration priorities. I say deport Dreamers first. No one would call me a softie on murder, but at least when we catch illegal alien felons, they say, OK, you got me. Dreamers break into our country, then storm congressional offices and television studios, stamping their feet and demanding amnesty NOW. The Karens get deported first.
I’ll have more on Trump’s immigration plans in another column, but for now, I just want to say muchas gracias to Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, Fani Willis and the whole crew at The New York Times and other legacy media for getting Trump so mad that he might actually keep his campaign promises.
Lots of people saying Matt Gaetz won’t be confirmed for a variety of reasons, including this which should rattle the cages of some of the pro-Israel fanatics in the new adimistration. Note that Gaetz agrees with the Great Replacement Theory, considered by the activists as racist and anti-Semitic.
The Republican firebrand has attacked George Soros and tangled with Jewish groups.
Rep. Matt Gaetz at the Republican National Convention, July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz as his nominee for attorney general, putting forward a firebrand who has tussled with Jewish groups, embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory and associated with a Holocaust denier.
As attorney general, Gaetz would head the government department responsible for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes, including antisemitism.
Gaetz, 42, was elected to Congress in 2016, where he has represented a district in the Florida Panhandle and has gained a reputation as one of Trump’s most vocal supporters. Senators from both parties appeared surprised by the nomination, potentially imperiling Gaetz’s chances of securing the job. If he is confirmed to the role by the Senate, he would succeed Merrick Garland, a former federal judge who is Jewish.
Since taking office, Gaetz has made headlines for sparring with Jews and Jewish organizations. He has also been investigated for sex trafficking.
In 2018, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Anti-Defamation League both criticized Gaetz, then in his first term, for inviting a Holocaust denier as his guest at the State of the Union address. The guest, Charles Johnson, had publicly doubted that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and suggested falsely that only 250,000 had died of illness.
“This organization is deeply troubled by the comments from Charles C. Johnson, and it is incredibly important for the congressman to acknowledge he is a Holocaust denier and has extensive writings that attest to that and that it was wrong to bring him to the State of the Union,” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks told BuzzFeed at the time.
Gaetz denied that Johnson was a Holocaust denier. He told BuzzFeed that Johnson “is not a Holocaust denier and he’s not an anti-Semite. He’s a provoker, I should’ve vetted him better before inviting him to the State of the Union, I regret that I didn’t. That’s my fault. I take responsibility for it. But he is not a Holocaust denier.”
Greenberg was a friend of Gaetz who had been indicted for stalking, sex trafficking and other charges. Greenberg had served as tax collector for Seminole County from 2017 until 2020 and resigned because of the indictments.
Later that year, in an unrelated incident, Gaetz called the ADL “racist” after it demanded that Fox News fire host Tucker Carlson over his promotion of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
Gaetz wrote that Carlson was “CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America,” adding, “The ADL is a racist organization.”
Soros’ Open Society Foundations responded to Gaetz at the time, writing in a statement that, “We would encourage Rep. Gaetz to get his facts straight and try not to fuel the climate of fear and hatred that is emboldening extremists and stoking threats of violence.” Three days after the statement, a man who was preoccupied by the caravan murdered 11 Jews in their Pittsburgh synagogue.
“The Gospel itself would meet the definition of antisemitism under the terms of this bill!” Gaetz wrote on X, adding, “The Bible is clear. There is no myth or controversy on this.”
Trump has indicated that he sees the attorney general position as crucial to his agenda. “Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media network, when he announced his pick of Gaetz. “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”
Several Jewish groups quickly denounced Trump’s pick of Gaetz.
“Rep. Matt Gaetz has a long history of trafficking in antisemitism — from explaining his vote against the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act by invoking the centuries-old trope that Jews killed Jesus to defending the Great Replacement Theory and inviting a Holocaust denier as his 2018 State of the Union guest,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “He should not be appointed to any high office, much less one overseeing the impartial execution of our nation’s laws.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition, which has congratulated several Trump nominees on social media and had applauded both of Trump’s attorney general nominations in his first term, did not issue a statement about Gaetz.
Some Republicans are openly opposing his nomination. Sen. Max Miller of Ohio told CNN’s Haley Talbot that Gaetz is “literally worse than the gum on the bottom of my shoe” and said he did not think Gaetz particularly cared about whether he ultimately assumed the attorney general role. Miller is Jewish and a former Trump aide.
“Everybody’s talking about him and that’s what he likes the most,” Miller said, according to Talbot.
Whatever happens with the nomination process, Gaetz won’t be returning to Congress. In a surprising move, he submitted his resignation shortly after getting the attorney general nod, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Wednesday. The nod and resignation reportedly came days before the House Ethics Committee was due to decide whether to release a report from its own probe into the allegations against Gaetz.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png00Kevin MacDonaldhttps://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.pngKevin MacDonald2024-11-14 09:58:082024-11-14 10:00:12JYA: Trump picks Matt Gaetz, who called ADL ‘racist’ and invited Holocaust denier to SOTU, for attorney general
[We always knew that a Trump administration would be very pro-Israel—and little different from a Democrat administration. But if these war hawks listed by Whitney indeed expand the war in Ukraine [Mike Waltz is quoted as wanting troops on the ground operating weapons systems and allowing strikes deep inside Russia], it would go against everything Trump Tulsi Gabbard, and especially JD Vance have been saying. Utter betrayal. I can only hope he is wrong. The last thing we should want is an all out war with Russia.]
Trump’s hawkish lineup is starting to look like a reunion for the worst of US interventionists. The man who said ‘no wars’ hired a cabinet that’s clearly thirsting for the next one. @ghida_fakhry
Awww fuck! It’s over before it even started! Nick@NickJ132388
If George W. Bush was elected to a third term in office, this is what his cabinet would look like. Rubio, Waltz, Stefanik, Hegseth. Not a peacenik among them. Not an antiwar candidate among them. Not even a non-interventionist among them. Every single pick is a hard-boiled, right-wing war-hawk that is committed to marching in lockstep with the world’s most notorious pariah-state, Israel.
Let’s start with Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, the man whose job it is to oversee the War Department and act as the principal defense policymaker and adviser. Trump chose Fox television host Pete Hegseth, “a decorated Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo Bay.” Hegseth has no administrative skills or experience, but he is a Trump loyalist who shares the president’s views on “woke” policies in the military. More importantly, Hegseth is dyed-in-the-wool Israel aficionado who thinks the interests of the Jewish state are inextricably linked to those of the United States. Check out this short excerpt from Pete Hegseth’s book, “American Crusade, Our Fight to Stay Free” (2020) that was posted on Michael Tracey Twitter site:
“Simply put: if you don’t understand why Israel matters and why it is so central to the story of Western civilization—with America being its greatest manifestation—then you don’t live in history. America’s story is inextricably linked to Judeo-Christian history and the modern state of Israel. You can love America without loving Israel—but that tells me your knowledge of the Bible and Western civilization is woefully incomplete…..
If you love America, you should love Israel. We share history, we share faith, and we share freedom. We love free people, free expression, and free markets. And whereas America is blessed with two big, beautiful oceans to protect it, Israel is surrounded on all sides by countries that either used to seek, or still seek, to wipe the nation off the map.
The battle wages on Israeli soil as well. With each trip I take to Israel for FOX Nation, and on my personal time, I discover a new way in which Islamists and their leftist enablers seek to deny Jewish history and heritage. Today, Islamists in Jerusalem are attempting to claim that the Holy Temple built by King Solomon and rebuilt by Herod never existed. Apparently, they want us all to believe that Jews—from Abraham to Jesus—never sacrificed, built, or worshipped on that particular piece of real estate. “Temple denial” is yet another tool by which they seek to erase the Jews and the Jewish state. If that isn’t delusional enough, on a recent trip to Bethlehem—the birthplace of Jesus—I discovered that Palestinians now claim that Jesus was not in fact Jewish but instead a Palestinian. Try that one on for size—or watch my two FOX Nation documentaries on the subject: Battle in the Holy City and Battle in Bethlehem.” Michael Tracey@mtracey
A Secretary of Defense doesn’t have to be impartial to fulfil his responsibilities to the president and the American people, but it does make one wonder how Hegseth’s pro-Israel zealotry will impact the way he implements US policy. If, for example, Hegseth was ordered to stop the delivery of all bombs and lethal weaponry to Israel while ceasefire negotiations with Hamas took place, would a Christian Zionist like Hegseth obey such an order or act according to his own deeply-felt religious convictions?
I can’t answer that, but the obvious conflict of interest should have been a red flag for Trump if his goal was actually “America First”.
Oh, and did we mention that Hegseth is also an Iran hawk, which appears to be a basic requirement for any position on the Trump team. This is from Axios:
Alongside his strong support for Israel, Hegseth has also expressed strong positions regarding Iran… He had called the Iranian revolutionary government an “evil regime”, and in 2020 said that if Iran wanted “to come back to the table for talks on their nuclear capabilities” it should do so “limping and begging.”…
“Sometimes we have moments, and I happen to believe we can’t kick the can down the road any longer in trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb,” Hegseth said in an appearance on Fox & Friends.
“What better time than now to say ‘we’re starting the clock, you’ve got a week, you’ve got X amount of time before we start taking out your energy production facilities. We take out key infrastructure, we take out your missile sites, we take out nuclear developments, we take out port capabilities.’” Trump appoints pro-Israel, Iran hawk Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense,Axios
Does that sound like a reasonable approach to you or the fast-track to a regional war?
And how does this fit with all the non-interventionist gobbledygook that Trump was spewing before the election? Was it all for show? And, please, don’t tell me that Hegseth wasn’t fully vetted or that Trump was unaware of his political views before he picked him. That’s nonsense. Hegseth is a hard-nosed, prowar jingoist who recently dismissed public demands for a ceasefire as “extortion on behalf of Hamas” (say what??) and who thinks the only problem with Biden’s Middle East policy was that it wasn’t tough enough.’ And so it is with all Trump’s picks. They’re all ferociously devoted to Israel and they’re all gung-ho for a war with Iran.
Here’s how the typically temperate Daniel McAdams summed up Hegseth:
President-elect Donald Trump’s designated Secretary of Defense is a certifiable lunatic. A cultist in the manner of Manson. Literally someone who needs to be in a mental hospital. Who craves an apocalyptic war to end all of mankind so that his twisted understanding of God will come down and slaughter all (including Jews) who do not convert to his cult’s beliefs. This is a truly dangerous person. This is the person running our military machine. The madmen have taken the asylum. Daniel McAdams @DanielLMcAdams
Yikes. Looks like Don Rumsfeld won’t be our worst Sec-Def after all.
Then there’s Marco Rubio or “Little Marco” as Trump used to affectionately call him during the 2016 campaign. Rubio—who Trump picked as Secretary of State—is another shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later warhawk whose views veer only slightly from those of John Bolton and Lindsay Graham. In a recent video by peace activist Medea Benjamin, Benjamin—who is shown standing outside Rubio’s senate office next to a giant flag of Israel—says the following:
We are here outside Marco Rubio’s office. You have probably heard that he has been picked by Trump to be the next Secretary of State. We have been to his office before, and we were always curious that there was an Israeli flag outside. And I thought maybe he would take the flag down to show his allegiance is 100% to the US government and not to the Israeli government. But, no, lo and behold, the flag is still here, which gives you a pretty good indication of where his allegiance is going to be as Secretary of State. Medea Benjamin@medeabenjamin
Imagine if Rubio placed a Russian flag outside his office, or a Palestinian flag? What do you think the reaction would be? Is it really appropriate for a US senator to display the banner of a foreign power in front of his taxpayer-provided office? Here’s more background on Rubio from Michael Tracey:
Marco Rubio would arguably be the most hardcore interventionist Secretary of State for an incoming administration in decades, perhaps rivaling Hillary Clinton. Definitely outpaces Colin Powell, who was in the relatively more “realist” faction of the G. W. Bush Administration
And here’s more on Rubio from the horse’s mouth, The Jewish Telegraphic Agency:
President-elect Donald Trump is filling out his national security team with pro-Israel hawks who favor maximum pressure on Iran… Reports Monday said Trump planned to name two Floridian allies to top jobs: Sen. Marco Rubio will be tapped to be secretary of state, and Rep. Michael Waltz will be his national security adviser.
Both men have said Israel should not be prevented from staging a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. That stance echoes Trump who, before the election, urged Israel to “Do what you have to do.” Trump had criticized President Joe Biden for confining Israel to only hitting military sites, but not nuclear ones, in a retaliatory strike….
Trump has yet to formally name Rubio, but his pending appointments has been widely reported and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which has a longstanding relationship with Rubio, congratulated him.
“President Trump’s choice of Senator Rubio for this critical role sends a message loudly and clearly: The days of weakness and appeasement are over,” the RJC said in a statement on Monday night. “We know that with Senator Rubio leading the State Department, America will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and confront our enemies.”
Rubio came up in Florida politics in part because of the backing of billionaire auto dealership magnate Norman Braman, a past president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. He is known to be close to Miriam Adelson, the pro-Israel casino magnate who funneled $100 million into Trump’s campaign this year.….
In October, after Iran barraged Israel with missiles, and as Israel’s conflict with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah was escalating, he tweeted, “Israel should respond to Iran the way the U.S. would respond if some country launched 180 missiles at us. And they should do in Lebanon what we would be demanding our leaders do if terrorists were launching anti-tank rockets at us from a neighboring country, forcing 60000 Americans to evacuate their homes and farms for almost a year.”
In the 2016 election, she and her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, were close to deciding whether they would back Rubio or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as the Republican nominee. Then Trump pulled ahead of the pack and Sheldon Adelson decided to endorse the reality TV star.
Funny how much influence people like Adelson have when it comes to selecting who is going to lead the country. And, it doesn’t stop there either because—as we can see—a hundred million bucks not only buys you a president but everyone in the president’s cabinet as well. Sounds like a bargain to me, although seriously corrupt too. It is convenient, however, when publications, like the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, explain exactly how the system works and then boast about how it serves their overall interests. What’s that saying about “the tail wagging the dog”?
Then there’s Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor who is—surprise, surprise—another warmongering neocon who, in Trump’s words, will be “a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!”
Peace?? Not bloody likely!
In a nutshell: Waltz opposed leaving Afghanistan, he thinks we haven’t been supportive enough of Ukraine, and he also thinks that Iran needs a good “punch in the nose”; which I would interpret as tacit support for military action. Here’s Michael Tracey’s take:
At the “America First” summit in DC, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) says he just returned from Ukraine and is now calling for the deployment of US military “advisors” directly into the war to operate US weapons systems alongside Ukrainian forces. “Let’s win this damn war!” he proclaims Michael Tracey @mtracey
Troops on the ground?? Is that what Waltz wants?
Sure sounds like it, but how does that fit with Trump’s elusive peace agenda? Here’s more from Tracey:
Mike Waltz, the incoming National Security Advisor, worked for Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Remember like a week ago when everybody was absolutely convinced there was some giant ideological chasm between Trump and the Cheneys? Michael Tracey @mtracey
Waltz says “punch Iran in the nose”
Here’s more from Caitlin Johnstone:
Like (John) Bolton, Waltz is a warmongering freak. Journalist Michael Tracey has been filling up his Twitter page since the announcement with examples of Waltz’s insane hawkishness, including his support for letting Ukraine use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, criticizing Biden for not escalating aggressively enough in Ukraine, advocating bombing Iran, opposing the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and naming Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela as “on the march” against the United States toward global conflict. The mainstream press are calling Waltz a “China hawk”, but from the look of things he’s a war-horny hawk toward all the official enemies of the United States. The Incoming Trump Administration Is Already Filling Up With War Sluts, Caitlin Johnstone@caitoz
And here’s more from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:
Waltz has been among Israel’s most robust backers in the U.S. House of Representatives and has also said Israel should not hesitate to hit Iran’s nuclear sites and oil fields. Biden had discouraged such actions, fearing such attacks would trigger a full-scale regional war which would draw in the United States.
“So far…it’s important to note what hasn’t been hit in Iran,” Walz said in an Oct. 25 tweet, listing an Iranian oil facility and a nuclear facility. “This might be Israel’s last best chance to diminish Iran’s nuclear program and shut down their cash. Did Biden/Harris pressure Israel once again to do less than it should? Jewish Telegraphic Agency
What this excerpt shows, is that Trump’s picks are looking for an opportunity to attack Iran. The prevailing view seems to be that Biden was “soft” on Iran and that now is the time to take more assertive “muscular” action to ensure Israel’s security. As we noted earlier, all of Trump’s picks appear to share this view.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png00Kevin MacDonaldhttps://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.pngKevin MacDonald2024-11-14 06:17:582024-11-14 09:40:49Mike Whitney at Unz: Trump’s Picks Are All Neocon Warhawks Ferociously Devoted to Israel
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