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Establishment GOP joins the Coup?

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A cluster of news items could be pointing at this. First, from The New York Times on Aug 5, Vice President Pence has been busy with the power brokers:

…Mike Pence’s schedule is so full of political events that Republicans joke that he is acting more like a second-term vice president…

…multiple advisers to Mr. Pence have already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. Trump [were out]…

Mr. Pence has been the pacesetter…creating an independent power base…promoting himself as the main conduit between the Republican donor class and the administration.

The vice president created his own political fund-raising committee, Great America Committee…The group, set up with help from Jack Oliver, a former fund-raiser for George W. Bush, has overshadowed Mr. Trump’s own primary outside political group, America First Action, even raising more in disclosed donations.

William Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard, said he had begun informal conversations about creating a “Committee Not to Renominate the President.”…

The story frames it as a matter for 2020 and talks about Kasich and others. What I wanted to highlight here, is that:

  • Pence, whose participation in any coup is essential, is no shrinking violet.
  • Interventionists – people who want more wars – like Bushworld and Kristol, continue to work actively against Trump.

Next, today we have the news that Bannon is out. Supposedly, he resigned Aug. 7 and they delayed announcing his departure, due to too much other news (North Korea, Charlottesville). I don’t think that Bannon leaving is a yuge deal, but it may be a piece in a larger pattern.

Next, Newsweek says that Trump is 6 Senate votes away from being impeachable. The rumor mill states it in a sharper form: that the RNC (! not DNC) has been counting votes to do an impeachment.

We know how impeachment would work: They would invent some excuse. Trumprussia is nonsense but it won’t matter to them. Mueller could find a ham sandwich that Trumpworld purchased in Russia and call it money laundering. And so on. If they want to do it, they’ll think of a way.

As if on cue, we have Mitt Romney demanding an apology from Trump over Charlottesville.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, wrote on Facebook. “State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville.”

Mitt is wrong, both on the facts (how the violence was distributed) and on the Constitution (the First Amendment excludes one group having a Heckler’s Veto on another group’s right of assembly). But, whatever. The point here is, reading the tea leaves. Again, the rumor mill states it more sharply, that VP Pence may have contacted Romney and had a hand in Romney’s attack.

If a coup comes to be, the losers will, of course, be the American people. For better or worse, whether it’s good or bad, 65 million Americans wanted “America First” and “Make America Great Again”. And NO Americans, not even Hillary supporters, voted to see “politics as usual” with the GOP and Democrat establishments uniting against the election result.

Trump is supposed to be at his best when his back is against the wall, so he may have a comeback in him. But he will have to remind the Establishment of why Americans voted for him. In other words, Trump will probably have to reactivate his base – re-fight 2016 – go “full barbarian”.

Assuming that he doesn’t have an assassination or suspiciously-timed heart attack first. The GOP and Democrat Establishments may be feeling pressure to move quickly, because Julian Assange has committed to blowing Trumprussia out of the water.

Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

Ruh-roh! (if you’re the Establishment or Deep State)

The effort to Overturn 2016 continues

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First, here’s Alan Dershowitz (a lifelong Democrat, and a law professor) on Special Counsel Mueller’s new grand jury:

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I do think that they’re looking to catch Moby Dick, the Big Whale, and that’s what the Special Counsel will be after…If he doesn’t get somebody, he will be regarded as a failure who spent a lot of money investigating and came up with nothing. So, I think there is very much an incentive to try to come up with something serious…

The fact that it’s empaneled in D.C., they already had a grand jury empaneled in Virginia, and I think one of the reasons they moved this to D.C. is that’s a completely Democratic district, as distinguished from Virginia which is a swing state, and it has an ethnic and racial composition that would be somewhat less favorable to Donald Trump. And any experienced lawyer understands that both prosecutors and defense attorneys look at factors like ethnicity, race, political affiliation, when they decide what venue is best for their case.

For such remarks made earlier, Maxine Waters called Dershowitz “racist.” (No, I’m not making this up. Her word.)

This is a witch hunt, plain and simple. They will find someone in Trumpworld who bought a ham sandwich in Russia. That ham sandwich will be said to break some law or other (Deep State has so many laws, for this very purpose of selectively punishing people who inconvenience them). They will indict that person and/or intimidate him into framing Trump, despite the fact that the American people already considered the possibility of all this in 2016 and gave Trump the nod anyway. They will do all this while ignoring Hillary’s destruction of smartphones and 30,000 emails intentionally to obstruct justice.

Hey lefties and Deep Staters: Any of you who may believe all this to be wonderful for your side, are morons. If your side should happen to succeed in overturning the 2016 election: you will only remind people of why you’re enemies of law and democracy who must be stripped of all political power. Call it the Obi Wan Effect. If you do knock out Trump, you will make him symbolically “more powerful than you can possibly imagine”.

Some more signs of lefties and/or Deep Staters up to no good:

  • Federal employees step up defiance of Trump. As NDT put it, “not only are these imbeciles demonstrating that they do not respect the will of the voters, they are openly bragging that they are out to sabotage and attack the will of the voters.”
  • At the end of July, Obama’s failed CIA Director Brennan called for government officials to disobey orders if Trump should put an end to the Mueller investigation.

    Let’s be clear: Trump has the constitutional authority to end Mueller’s investigation. Whether it’s politically wise, is another question. What Congress should or would do next, is another question. But he 100% has the authority, as the head of the Executive branch. As such, Brennan’s comments were a call to rebellion and irresponsibly wrong.

Friday night odds and ends

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It amazes me how many legit stories I have to skip over each day, for brevity or lack of time. As I made the following list, I skipped over many other worthwhile items.

  • 53 House Democrats told Defense Secretary Mattis to not comply with the transgender ban.

    “We write to not only express our strong opposition to President Trump’s recent tweets seeking to ban transgender individuals from the military, but to remind you not to comply with any unconstitutional directive which may ultimately be issued,” according to the letter, which was signed by Armed Services ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Judiciary ranking member Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.

  • Attorney General Sessions is finally going to look into all those leaks.

    Session said criminals who have leaked classified information are “being investigated and will be prosecuted.” He added that four people have already been charged with leaking classified material and related counts, and investigations have tripled.

    Sessions said he has directed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and new FBI Director Christopher Wray to oversee all classified leak investigations and actively monitor the progress.

    He said a new counterintelligence unit has been created to manage cases, and he has directed the National Security Division and U.S. attorneys to prioritize cases involving unauthorized disclosures.

    There’s some brouhaha over more aggressive subpoenas on reporters, but they’re still mainly going after the actual leakers. Which is right.

  • AG Sessions is finally going to look at Obama’s government slush fund for left-wing groups.

    …[The DOJ’s] “cy pres” payments were a long-standing policy of having mostly corporate defendants, for example in a civil rights suit, agree to pay into charities as part of their settlement with the government to avoid further prosecution.

    In recent years, especially during the Obama administration, the practice increasingly funneled funds to left-wing “community organizing” groups…

    …Sessions…put a stop to the payments unilaterally in June…The new memo, dated July 28, goes further, commanding DOJ attorneys to look back into the history of these settlements and report back every payment that would not meet the new standards laid down in June.

  • The rumors of NSA McMaster having a ‘purge list’ have made it into the White House staff, rattling them.
  • Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich got wild today with talk of the Deep State planning to outright-assassinate Trump, which could seem like irresponsible speculation, until you see stories like this one: Maxine Waters says ‘When We Finish With Trump, We Have to Go and Get’ Pence.

    A coup isn’t being planned, could never happen here, that’s ridiculous, don’t spread horrible rumors you liars…..Folks, should we go with that idea? Or: leading Democrats are telling the military to disobey President Trump (see first item, above) and already looking forward to phase 2 of the coup, ‘Get Pence’? Which is it?

I hope to do a post later on the week’s Awan Scandal news.

Let’s face it: Deep State is in full-on war against Trump

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For months, and with the exception of some judges, the Senate has held up President Trump’s appointees – resulting in a government that is (still) filled with Obama holdovers. It’s semi-traditional for Presidents to make appointments during the Senate’s recess (Obama sure did it). Today’s news is that Senate Republicans have conspired to block Trump from doing so.

Their excuse is Trump’s recent public humiliation of AG Sessions. That was rather strange (as I commented on here). They don’t want Trump to suddenly appoint a new AG. The problem is, Trump also can’t make other (justified) appointments. And it’s not an isolated matter; you can fit it into a larger pattern.

Jumping over to yesterday’s theme about McMaster, the news there is also still “War”.

  • Business Insider’s writer frames McMaster as the good guy, has some worthwhile details.

    “There is a split in the White House between the Bannon camp of ideologues and the McMaster-Mattis-Tillerson camp of more centrist intellectuals,” Pete Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who worked closely with McMaster, told Politico…

    John Kelly’s recent move from homeland security secretary to White House chief of staff should ensure McMaster’s independence and control over the NSC…

    But the nationalists may have a competitive advantage: Trump, who already thinks McMaster is a “pain” who talks too much and has complained to aides that he wants Flynn back at the White House, is reportedly considering sending McMaster to replace Gen. John Nicholson as the top commander of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

    “What the nationalists are saying about McMaster: ‘He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan, so we’re going to send him,'” Axios’ Mike Allen reported Thursday.

  • Politico also says that McMaster is in a “pitched battle”, re-making the NSC in his own image. And that General Kelly will be his ally; uh-oh!
  • The Daily Beast says McMaster has gone to war and “has to move fast”.

    “The president hasn’t liked the plans he’s been presented on Iran, Afghanistan, or ISIS,”…“The process hasn’t worked like it should,” to produce the innovative plans President Donald Trump tasked his team with crafting—plans that look different from what the Obama administration, or even the Bush administration, tried before.

    So McMaster has been removing anyone on his team who either obstructed his own vision or had trouble rallying the other agencies around particular policy…

  • The Daily Caller: “Everything The President Wants To Do, McMaster Opposes,’ Former NSC Officials Say”.

    “Trump wants to get us out of Afghanistan — McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to get us out of Syria — McMaster wants to go in. Trump wants to deal with the China issue — McMaster doesn’t. Trump wants to deal with the Islam issue — McMaster doesn’t. You know, across the board, we want to get rid of the Iran deal — McMaster doesn’t. It is incredible to watch it happening right in front of your face. Absolutely stunning.”

Jumping to the White House staffing issue: word from Jack Posobiec is that “If You Like Infowars or Milo You’re Fired”.

Jana Toner, a member of the Presidential Personnel Office, is regularly heard publicly insulting prominent pro-Trump media figures, including former Breitbart Technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos and Infowars founder Alex Jones. Mrs. Toner has even told White House interns that sharing content from Mr. Yiannopoulos or Mr. Jones’ Infowars on social media is grounds for dismissal.”

…a PPO employee who reports directly to Mrs. Toner declared: “We will search through your Facebook and we will find everything,” and “If you like Milo Yiannopolous or Alex Jones this isn’t the place for you”…

…Johnny DeStefano, who previously served as an aide to ousted House Speaker John Boehner, is currently the head of the PPO [Presidential Personnel Office], and has used his position to block Trump supporters from key positions…

Toner has established herself as a prominent anti-Trump presence within PPO…Toner was heard [saying] that students who took time off school to work for the Trump campaign are typically not “intellectually qualified” to work as White House interns.

Toner is a Bush family loyalist, having served the George W. Bush Administration in numerous capacities…

I have mentioned 3 elements of the Establishment’s (or Deep State’s) war on Trump:

  1. The Senate blocking Trump’s appointments.
  2. McMaster purging Trump loyalists, non-interventionists or “nationalists”.
  3. Who’s in charge of the White House staff? Former Speaker Boehner and the Bush family?

More elements that I didn’t even touch on, here:

  • The unprecedented levels of media bias (which were already bad, before Trump).
  • The cynically paid (Soros-funded) protests.
  • The giant nothing-burger of evidence-free innuendo that is Trumprussia.
  • And of course, the corrupted Mueller investigation (that is supposed to be restricted to Trumprussia, but isn’t).

The common theme is Trump not rewarding his own supporters, not paying attention to who’s installing the personnel, not pursuing saboteurs (or racketeers) under the law, letting the Republican Establishment cuck him, and in general, not being in charge of his own administration. We have to give him some of the fault. This isn’t what anyone voted for.

But the even larger point is: What happens if Trump loses this epic conflict?

  • Does America, under President Pence or whomever, go back to war-mongering and ruining entire countries like Obama did?
  • With the Deep State and Senate Republicans having colluded to destroy a populist President (however flawed he was): must we, the People, then turn to violent revolution to break Washington and finally get some decent policies?
  • And will it be too late?

Is McMaster a disaster?

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Mentions of National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, seem to be be boiling over. Time for a roundup.

  • A letter has leaked, saying that McMaster explicitly let Susan Rice keep her security clearance, despite her role in possibly-criminal actions in letting the Obama administration use the intelligence apparatus to spy on domestic political opponents (Trump campaign).
  • McMaster has purged key Trump aides. And defended Obama holdovers, which we call Deep State.

    An ongoing staffing purge being conducted by White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has thrown the West Wing into chaos, according to more than half a dozen Trump administration insiders who told the Washington Free Beacon that McMaster has been targeting long-time Trump loyalists who were clashing with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration…

    …sources… said that many of these actions against his supporters are being conducted without Trump’s knowledge…

    The Trump staffers fired by McMaster had repeatedly clashed with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration on issues as diverse as military strategies for Syria and Afghanistan, whether to tear up Obama’s landmark Iran deal, the controversial détente with Cuba, the U.S. role in confronting Islamic radicalism, and the Paris Climate Accord, according to these sources.

    More purges are said to be on the way…

    The article names people who have been fired, and continues:

    “McMaster’s agenda is different than the president’s,” said one administration source with knowledge of the situation…

    One of the central flashpoints in this internal battle has been Iran and the future of the nuclear accord, multiple sources independently confirmed to the Free Beacon.

    NSC officials such as Cohen-Watnick, Harvey, and others had been making the case that Trump should scrap the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal over increasingly aggressive Iranian ballistic missile activity and mounting evidence Tehran is breaching the accord. McMaster, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top Obama-era State Department officials who worked on the deal, have aggressively urged maintaining it.

  • One of the staffers forced out was Rich Higgins, who wrote a controversial memo charging “that globalists, Islamists, and other forces within and outside the government are subverting President Trump’s agenda.”.
  • Other staffers fired appear to be pretty much anyone who is pro-Trump, pro-Israel, or anti-Muslim Brotherhood.

    According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews…

    Finally, there is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara Lago for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.

    And who recommended McMaster? You won’t believe this.

    Senator John McCain.

These articles could all be part of someone’s campaign for forcing out McMaster. (Chief of Staff Kelly? Bannon? Jared/Ivanka?) I mean, if it gets to our level – visible to ordinary bloggers – then something’s up.

And – if the substance is correct – the “someone” could have good reason.

UPDATE: George Soros and David Brock are on McMaster’s side. That’s a bad sign for McMaster.

Also, more articles on McMaster at this later post.

Seymour Hersh on Seth Rich and Trumprussia

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Seymour Hersh, the famous left-leaning but hard-hitting investigative journalist, has apparently endorsed the theory that Seth Rich was the DNC leaker. Big League Politics has an audio recording. Assuming it’s real,

  • Hersh claims to know from an FBI report, that was made when D.C. police called in an FBI cyber unit to look at Rich’s laptop after his death.
  • Hersh is skeptical of the idea that Seth Rich was murdered for political reasons – although Rich did express concerns to friends that something might happen to him.
  • Hersh suggests that Rich’s brother put up obstacles to investigating any Rich-WikiLeaks connection.
  • Hersh suggests that the Trump-Russia conspiracy allegations were disinformation planted by Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan. And that NSA and CIA types (what we call Deep State) are against Trump because, in some unspecified way (I’d like to know more), Trump ends their hopes of getting lucrative private consulting contracts on leaving the government.

Needless to say, if these claims are real, they blow Trumprussia out of the water.

I found it worthwhile to read BLP’s whole article and listen to the recording. UPDATE: Transcript here.

While we’re at it: We know that the House Intelligence Committee started to look into the “unmasking” scandal (where the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign; zealously doing surveillance and over-zealously “unmasking” the names of Trump operatives who were swept up in it). A key aide to Susan Rice and Obama, Ben Rhodes, has emerged as a ‘person of interest’ in that investigation.

This adds Rhodes to the growing list of top Obama government officials who may have improperly unmasked Americans in communications intercepted overseas by the NSA, Circa has confirmed…

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, Rice and former CIA Director John Brennan have all been named in the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation…

…the committee has “found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.”

Finally, they’re looking!

U.S. to stop arming jihadists; Deep State hardest hit

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President Trump has decided that the CIA will stop arming the so-called “moderate” (but really jihadist) Syrian rebels.

With the end of the CIA program, U.S. involvement in Syria now consists of a vigorous air campaign against the Islamic State and a Pentagon-run train-and-equip program in support of the largely Kurdish rebel force that is advancing on Islamic State strongholds in Raqqa and along the Euphrates River valley.

More on the Kurds in a moment. Trump’s move should help to maintain the Syria cease-fire, defeat ISIS and defuse Mideast tensions. In my view, it is as sensible as Obama’s original decision to arm the jihadis was not. Naturally, the U.S. Deep State – which wanted tensions (or even a Syria ground war) – hates the move and besmirches it as pro-Putin, “Russia won”, etc.

In news that is not so good, we’ve also had a flurry of items about the growing rift between Turkey and the West. Turkey remains a NATO ally, but Erdogan is on bad terms with the European Community, and it doesn’t help that the U.S. (or NATO) organized a failed coup against Erdogan in 2016.

So, the Kurds would seem to be a major issue. Decades ago, Western powers drew the borders of Turkey, Syria and Iraq in such a way as to divide the Kurds. Ever since, they’ve dreamed of getting together in a new Kurdistan. That the U.S. would have armed the Syrian Kurds (starting under Obama), sets off alarm bells in Turkey.

UPDATE: Julian Assange on ISIS, key U.S. allies, and the Clintons. Here’s the idea.

  • Saudi Arabia and Qatar wanted Syria regime change and funded the jihadis.
  • Saudi Arabia and Qatar fund ISIS (who, I keep saying, are much the same people as the Syria jihadi-rebels). And, per her leaked emails, Hillary definitely knew it.
  • Saudi Arabia and Qatar fund the Clintons.
  • Could all this be why Hillary wanted to bomb Syria and do Syria regime change so much? And not-so-much to bomb ISIS?

Also, Julian Assange noting how the CIA paid ISIS salaries. He excerpts a Financial Times article, deep inside which is this: “One rebel commander, who asked not to be named, said U.S. support had been waning for months, but noted that the rebels had been given their salaries as normal last month.”

UPDATE: Just learned about SOFREP, a news service by Special Forces veterans. And they had a report in 2016 saying that, yes, Obama’s CIA was absolutely, positively making the Special Forces train jihadis in Syria and delivering advanced weapons to the jihadis, in violation of U.S. law against aiding terrorists.

No war with Russia; Deep State hardest hit

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You know by now that President Trump met with Vladimir Putin, spoke about many issues, established a Syria cease-fire and a working group to prevent either country hacking the other’s future elections.

Apparently, peace with Russia is bad if you’re in the U.S. Deep State because their representatives are squawking.

Note: To the extent that Russian election interference happens in the U.S. or elsewhere: I condemn it, and yes we should act to prevent it.

Now, what about Saudi interference in U.S. elections? Or China’s? And what about U.S. election interference in Russia, Germany, Japan, the UK (Obama threatening UK voters over Brexit) and elsewhere? Why are these people outraged so selectively?

Death of the “17 intelligence agencies” canard

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It’s worth noting officially. NYT Finally Retracts Russia-gate Canard.

The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking of Democratic emails – is false.

On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting…

…on Thursday, the Times…noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies…The assessment was not approved by all 17…

The Times’ grudging correction was vindication for some Russia-gate skeptics who had questioned the claim of a full-scale intelligence assessment, which would usually take the form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a product that seeks out the views of the entire Intelligence Community and includes dissents.

The reality of a more narrowly based Russia-gate assessment was admitted in May by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan in sworn congressional testimony.

Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts…

Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts…were “hand-picked” from [3 agencies,] the CIA, FBI and NSA. [ed: and DNI would count as four]

Emphasis added. Translation: It was politicized “intelligence”. Deep State wanted a pre-determined answer that would help them to dominate President Trump; as opposed to the real answer.

As to what those “hand-picked” analysts worked from: It’s worth remembering that, whereas Watergate began with a real burglary and police reports, Trumprussia began with the DNC actually blocking FBI investigators from the alleged crime scene and forcing everyone to operate off of a shoddy report from CrowdStrike. James “Leaker” Comey didn’t quite admit that in his testimony, but he came close:

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN RICHARD BURR: Did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?

COMEY: In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC [i.e. the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee], but I’m sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party…

Via ZH; the article goes on to explain in detail why CrowdStrike’s report was bogus.

Per Breitbart, the Associated Press joined the NYT in withdrawing the fake “17 intelligence agencies” claim.

Kabuki theater

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Figuring out what’s happening in Washington – under the surface, with the Deep State factions – is a guessing game. Highly uncertain. Of course I don’t “know anything”, in the sense of having sources. I read the tea leaves as best I can, and I guess.

When President Trump unexpectedly did a huge Saudi arms deal, I had a feeling that former FBI Director Comey’s testimony would then turn out as a net win for Trump. What’s the connection? Hard to explain. I’m going to say some stuff now which could easily be crap; feel free to shoot it down in the comments, or to add your own ideas.

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