Trump's Agenda is not America's Agenda
An essay I just wrote:
Trump’s Agenda is not America’s Agenda
In light of all the controversy and confusion around President Trump essentially ignoring the intelligence concluding that Russia has been paying bounties to the Taliban for the murder of American soldiers in Afghanistan, we really should not be surprised. Since the beginning of this presidency, it has become increasingly apparent that Trump’s agenda is not the same as what we would customarily expect from a president.
In normal times, our leader strives to promote the safety, security, and health of the population, making his choices in a way that will serve the public interest, albeit based on his political perspective. Under Trump, the presidency has devolved into a means to promote his personal interests. It is a means to have adoring crowds feed his insatiable narcissistic needs, even if those crowds will become a superspreader event for a dangerous pandemic. It is also a means to feast on the rush of dominance over those who disagree with him, oppose him, or speak a truth that counters his grandiose delusions. Thus, reputations are crushed, people are fired, tweets are pushed that impact the Stock Market, tariffs are imposed, soldiers are rearranged, never with a consideration of the consequences to the national interest, but instead in a fit of pique or as a heady rush of incontestable aggressive power.
But we should not forget the other agenda item of the Trump presidency that underlies a great deal of his otherwise unexplainable statements, policies, and pretended ignorance. Trump came into office wanting to end the sanctions on Russia. That is what the whole Flynn case was ultimately about. He and his minions lied repeatedly about their associations with Russia and worked assiduously to diminish and ultimately dismantle the work of the Mueller investigation. Trump precipitously pulled our troops out of Syria, essentially benefiting the Turkish and the Russian policy aims and abandoning our allies, the Kurds. He withheld financial and military aid to the Ukrainians, attempting to benefit himself politically but also weakening the Ukrainians in their war against Russia.
Moreover, Trump has pushed hard to get the Russians back into the G7 to make it once again a G8. He has deferred to Putin on matters of intelligence and ignored the US intelligence community findings on a number of occasions. And now we learn that the Putin government has been paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers, and Trump has not responded in any way to this egregious Russian scheme. What is incontrovertible is that all of these policy decisions are linked by a willingness to protect and promote the Putin agenda at the expense of US national security, American allies, the sanctity of the US election system, and now even the safety of American troops.
Given that Trump has literally worked miracles to keep his taxes and financial statements from public knowledge, and he has recently fired the US Attorney from the Southern District of New York who was sniffing around Trump’s finances, attempting to install a former lawyer for Deutche Bank in the process, we must strongly consider that it is the hidden truths underpinning Trump’s financial interests that are the key to his total submissiveness to Putin, the leader of an adversary nation.
Indeed, it seems more than likely that Putin is the ultimate puppeteer in the history of Trump’s money-laundering of Russian money through Trump’s real estate deals. Putin is the man behind the curtain in how Trump got loans, underwritten by a Russian-owned bank and filtered through a European bank, when no one else wanted to lend him anything. And more to the point, Putin is likely the key to Trump’s future financial security once he is out of office.
If we understand that the president’s agenda is not the agenda of the country, but often serves interests that often run counter to our national security, our health and our general welfare, then we can connect the dots between everything that otherwise makes no sense at all.
= new reply since forum marked as read
