Above, 9/11/18, Michael Tracey twitter
Added: We’re at almost $1 trillion US taxpayer dollars diverted to “Afghanistan” per one estimate FY2001-FY2013: $641.7 billion=$53 billion per year over 12 years. 17 years at $53 billion=$901 billion. This is about US taxpayers and that not a single person in the US political class has any respect for them.
Re: Mr. Tracey’s “adults in the room” refers to the 9/5/2018 NY Times anonymous op-ed from someone claiming to be a Trump administration appointee working secretly with others in the White House to “to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” The op-ed writer assures us: “It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room.” The writer sounds like a baby in a high chair throwing food around the room trying to get attention. He or she may be over age 21 and legally an “adult,” but sounds like a typical imperial GOP Establishment mass murdering neocon, many of whom Trump himself hired after his election in the mistaken belief that they’d support his agenda. It would've been better to leave the jobs empty. Unfortunately, neocons believe the exact opposite of Trump voters. These people are the GOP Establishment that Trump stunningly defeated. They need him to fail for many reasons not least to send a message to the world that under no circumstances are outsiders allowed to be US president. For them, "country" and "patriotism" mean nothing but enslavement of US taxpayers to Endless Unwinnable Foreign Wars and Regime Change. They have no intention of letting us be free. No free taxpayer cash=no wars=broke think tanks=broke lobbyists. The op-ed writer offers us “comfort,” they’re on the job in the White House nullifying the 2016 election and the votes of 63 million Americans. Now that’s “duty to country.” They close by tipping their cap to the most brutal mass murderer of the past 3 decades, neocon John McCain. To McCain and the op-ed writer “love of nation” consists of removing billions if not trillions of US taxpayer dollars for the purpose of causing death and mutilation all over the world, never once being right, never once leaving a place better than it was. In the case of Libya, an entire country and two continents were destroyed. I’ve come to believe it’s more about permanently enslaving US taxpayers than it is about foreign wars. The relentless war propaganda is aimed directly at US taxpayers. It will only end when some of the countries the US bombs start bombing the US mainland in return. The op-ed:
Opinion:” “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," NY Times, op-ed
“I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
“President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for [alleged] meddling [for which no evidence exists] and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the [alleged] poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain [for which no verifiable evidence has yet been provided nor even an assurance from UK science lab]. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he [correctly] expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its [alleged] malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.”
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Comment: Trump’s 63 million voters, half the nation’s electorate, still don’t have a political party behind them. Both major parties have the same agenda: open borders, Endless Unwinnable US taxpayer funded wars, America Last trade deals, extreme globalism, massive central government. Trump voters want the opposite of all those things.
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