Tag: deep state

Here Are 18 Ways Trump Did the Opposite of Drain the Swamp During His Presidency

On Tuesday, Donald Trump said farewell to America as he acknowledged “this week, we inaugurate a new administration.” Trump is yet to officially concede – a point which his most hardcore followers still believe indicates he will remain president – however, he finally spoke about handing over the reins of power to the Biden administration. “Now, as I prepare to hand power over to a new administration at noon on Wednesday, I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning,” Trump stated during his farewell address.

While he might not have mentioned Biden or Harris by name, it is clear that Joe Biden is going to be sworn in as the next President of the United States. Before America races to forget the Trump years we owe it to ourselves to pause and reflect on the facts of the Trump era. First, Donald Trump did not drain the swamp. As I illustrate below, Trump used his position of power to continue to empower the same industries and figures which have benefitted from every Democratic and Republican president before him. Indeed, I stand by my assessment of Trump made in November 2016: Donald Trump’s role was to be The Great Divider. He used his position to stoke the flames of division and chaos, all the while playing the role of the “anti-establishment” President (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

In 2018 I asked, “When Will Trump Supporters in The Freedom Movement Realize They Were Duped?”. I didn’t have much faith at the time, stating, “Now, of course, there are the diehards who will inevitably stick with Trump through his entire presidential career no matter what policy he takes, even when in contradiction with not only his own words, but with the principles previously espoused by these die hard followers.” Now, as Biden is about to wield the Presidential powers, Trump’s most diehard followers still claim Trump is going to stop Biden from being president.

My concern is that folks who previously supported many of the actions taken by Trump will not recover the principles they once held, and instead, further entrench themselves in the false left/right paradigm, convincing themselves that Trump represented the fight against the “Deep State” and Biden is the Swamp incarnate. The problem with this belief is that it reinforces the idea that one party is actually better than the other, when in reality they both play for the same masters. Most importantly, this belief that Trump was fighting the Deep State is not backed up by the facts. Allow me to present a partial list of the evidence showing Trump’s relationship with the swamp.

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The defense-industry swamp is eager to engulf the Biden administration

Just days after the presidential election, a new investment firm called Pine Island Acquisition Corporation quietly began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, with the prospect of becoming a notable player in the $2 trillion defense and aerospace industry. The company’s greatest asset was not its relatively modest bankroll goal of $200 million, but its connections — deep ties to policy establishment figures shaping the incoming Biden administration.

In describing itself to potential investors, Pine Island’s prospectus boasted a leadership team with “extensive access, insight, expertise and management skill” in the defense sector.

In the dawning Biden era, that might be an understatement.

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After the Deep State Sabotaged His Presidential Bid, Bernie Sanders Mocks Those Who Believe it

Since Eisenhower’s pointed warnings, and long before Trump’s election, the massive power and incomparable dangers of the U.S. Deep State have been widely and explicitly documented — from leftist foreign policy critics Mike Lofgren and Peter Dale Scott to the 2013 book by journalists Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady entitled “Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry.”

A three-part Washington Post exposé in 2010, by two-time-Pulitzer-winner Dana Priest and William Arkin, was entitled “Top Secret America.” It described the “hidden world, growing beyond control,” which “has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” This, said the Post, all “amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight.”

During the Trump years, the U.S. media alternated between vehemently denying the existence of this well-documented Deep State to celebrating the Deep State’s noble anti-Trump subversions. As I noted last week:

[Democrats and allied media outlets were] cheering reports that unelected security state officials were concealing information they did not want the elected President to have, and more recent reports that they misled him about troop positions in Syria to prevent his withdrawal efforts: classic Deep State coup behavior whereby unaccountable military and intelligence officials prevent the elected president from implementing polices they decide are misguided.

The more honest liberal pundits explicitly said they were grateful for the Deep State. Writing under the headline “God bless the ‘Deep State,’” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson — while dismissing right-wing claims of a “Deep State conspiracy” — nonetheless argued that the hidden intelligence officials who operate in the dark are performing a vital service in undermining Trump: “with a supine Congress unwilling to play the role it is assigned by the Constitution, the deep state stands between us and the abyss.”

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Trump’s reign has proved the US president is merely a figurehead. Does it really matter who wins the vote?

Four years of Trump slugging it out with the permanent political class he calls the “Deep State” has proven that president is at best a ceremonial post. Why are we still biting our nails over who won, when it changes so little?

Love him or hate him, President Donald Trump has done more than any other politician this century to pull up the curtain on the entrenched political interests that really run Washington, drawing them out of the shadows to defend what they believe is their turf against the spray-tanned barbarian at the gates. Between his uncouth mannerisms and his alarmingly sane policy promises, Trump in 2016 broke all the unwritten rules of being president, leaving his Deep State nemeses to pick up the pieces and try to put them back together.

Four years later, Trump has been largely neutered, his media crucifixion and lamentably orthodox term a cautionary tale to all future presidents who might try to buck the system. The powers that be no longer need to assassinate a troublesome president – it’s far easier (and less messy) to kill their spirit. Trump has not ended any wars (indeed, he’s dropped more bombs on more civilians than superhawks George W. Bush and Barack Obama), nor has he drained the Washington ‘swamp’ of lobbyists, career politicians and think tank goons (unless you count appointing them to his cabinet as ‘draining’).

Instead, he’s cut taxes for the rich, rolled back the regulations that kept Big Business from polluting America’s air and water, and given away the store to Israel, even assassinating one of its most powerful enemies, the Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. 

While some of his supporters no doubt love those latter policies, these are the kind of ‘wins’ any other president would secure to please his wealthy masters – hardly the actions of a maverick like Trump fans believe their hero to be. The square peg has been stuffed into the round hole. Trump has become a creature of the establishment that (ironically) still hates him, even as he blusters about locking some of them up.

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If Trump Really Wanted to Fight the Deep State, He’d Pardon These 5 Heroes Instead of Criminals

President Trump has recently used his power of pardon to absolve a number of high profile individuals from criminal charges because they may have been treated unfairly by the justice system. Last month, Trump posthumously pardoned the great African-American boxer Jack Johnson, who was falsely imprisoned for traveling with a white woman. While this was a nice symbolic gesture, it did not do much aside from creating a PR opportunity for the Trump administration.

Most recently Trump pardoned the controversial conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who was accused of and confessed to campaign finance violations. Trump has also suggested pardoning Martha Stewart, who was arrested years ago for insider trading but is not currently in jail, as well as Rod Blagojevich who was impeached and then charged for corruption and soliciting bribes.

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