“It is a curious thing that the greatest obstacle to an authentic populist and nationalist agenda is Trump himself and his coterie of hangers-on."…“Once elected [Trump] immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy.…When it comes to militarism and empire, Trump’s hypocrisy and bait and switch is one for the record books.…4/8/2019..."The America First Policy Institute is run and staffed by Kushner allies, and Trump’s inner circle is still dominated by Kushner allies. You get the package deal for as long as Ivanka is Trump’s daughter.” 8/22/21, Pedro Gonzalez, Emeriticus twitter
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July 30, 2021, “Just how America First is the America First Policy Institute?” Pedro L. Gonzalez, spectatorworld.com
“AFPI [America First Policy Institute] seems to actively seek out people who hold populism and nationalism in contempt."
“Two roads have diverged in the America First wood. On the one hand, the populist, grassroots, anti-establishment caravan; on the other, the establishment, grifter and, most importantly, official movement. The ironically named ‘America First Policy Institute’ and its dunces are leading the latter. Its newest ambassador, Daniel Di Martino, is illustrative of their type.
Di Martino is a Venezuelan immigrant and activist in the United States on a student visa, telling Americans that they’re racist for disagreeing with him about how to run their country.
After then-president Donald Trump issued an immigration ban amid the pandemic last year, the Daily Caller hosted a debate on its implications between populist author Ryan Girdusky and Di Martino. Shortly before that, Di Martino wrote in the Washington Times, ‘I’m afraid that Mr Trump’s immigration restrictions are transforming America from the welcoming, shining city on a hill I want to fight for into a dark, closed-off nation’. Unfortunately, Di Martino did not give up on the shining city and return to Venezuela or Spain, where he also holds citizenship.
Between his struggles to assemble points during the debate, Di Martino would assert that visa workers are simply more talented than Americans, dismissing all Girdusky’s evidence to the contrary. When Girdusky mentioned the human cost of the displacement of skilled American professionals by exploitable visa workers, Di Martino cracked a contemptuous smile. ‘These are real people with real families,’ said Girdusky. ‘That all sounds very good, Ryan, but it has no economic evidence behind it,’ replied the Venezuelan with a grin.
There’s no evidence, except for piles of data, the Disney workers replaced by foreign nationals who then-candidate Donald Trump campaigned alongside in 2016 and the corpses of American tech workers who killed themselves after humiliatingly training their incompetent foreign replacements for months before being handed a pink slip. Di Martino isn’t ignorant — he just looks down his nose at Americans, like most people at AFPI.
Leading up to his relationship with the official Trump think tank, Di Martino emerged on the scene as an interventionist and proponent of mass immigration — two of the main things against which Trump crusaded in 2016. He is dismissive of Americans who suspect the election may have been swayed by fraud and believes the only problem with pandemic lockdowns was that we didn’t do them hard enough. His byline in Bill Kristol’s latest failed publication, the Bulwark, proudly boasts his affiliation with the Koch-backed Young Voices organization and his Venezuelan citizenship. Indeed, in place of arguments, Di Martino likes to appeal to his nationality when calling for the deployment of US ‘military force’ to Venezuela or demanding America eradicate its borders — and if you disagree, he’ll likely call you a racist.
Nikki Haley’s populist critics? Racist.
Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar? Racist.
Tucker Carlson? Racist.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a think tank whose associates took up positions within the Trump administration? Racist.
Pro-Trump Twitter account the Columbia Bugle?‘Nativist’…can you guess what he means by that?
Former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller? ‘Disgusting’ and basically racist.
Trump himself? Well, Di Martino has complained that his criticisms of Mitch McConnell are ‘based on falsehoods about him and outright racist attacks because his wife is Asian’. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
Di Martino did not merely slip through the cracks. AFPI actively seeks out people who, like him, not only don’t care for populism and nationalism but hold those things in contempt. That’s no surprise, considering Brooke Rollins sits at the helm of the brain trust, such as it is, and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump advise it.
As a Kushner ally in the White House, Rollins was instrumental in pushing a soft-on-crime approach to deadly riots in 2020, the creation of the First Step Act— which released scores of dangerous criminals — reversing Trump’s ‘zero-tolerance‘ policy at the border, promoting amnesty and channeling corporate influence through the Office of American Innovation where she served before joining the Domestic Policy Council as acting director. Though Kushner is looking to open an office for his new investment firm in Israel to pursue regional investments, Rollins will keep up the good work of undermining an authentic America First agenda at home. She’s got plenty of help from people like Larry Kudlow, AFPI’s vice chair of the board.
Kudlow previously served as director of the National Economic Council. According to Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, he played an important role in turning Trump away from investigating the origins of COVID-19. The New York Post‘s Sharri Markson recently revealed that Dr Anthony Fauci was scheduled to be hauled before a commission to give evidence about funding the Wuhan laboratory suspected of leaking the contagion. There were even plans to draft a bill demanding reparations from China for damages. ‘But the presidential commission was killed off during a meeting in the Oval Office where Trump’s economic advisers argued fiercely against it,’ wrote Markson. Navarro was furious. ‘Kudlow is just stupid, dumb. You can quote me on that,’ he said. [Trump’s actions show he clearly didn’t see himself as president. By all appearances he only wanted the job so he could make Jared de facto president].
The divide between populist and nationalist Trump staffers, like Navarro, and establishmentarians in favor of more immigration, Big Business and soft-on-crime policies, like Rollins and Kudlow, runs through AFPI. If you were in the latter camp in the White House, your chances of ending up at AFPI increased. Javon Price is another example.
[Javon] Price was formerly co-chair of Georgetown University’s chapter of Students for Trump and then served as director of external affairs with gen z gop, a vehemently anti-Trump Republican youth organization. He calls the GOP to move in a more progressive direction on social and cultural issues. [Meaning further cementing the existing one party dictatorship]. White House staffers who worked with Price recall an antipathy toward social conservatives — a virtual precondition for a working relationship with AFPI. His interminable title—‘Policy Analyst, Center for Opportunity Now; Center for Second Chances; And Center for American Security’–raises the question: what do these people actually do?
The consensus from former Trump White House populist staffers is that when AFPI isn’t merely pushing the establishment line, it attaches itself to issues where others have already done the heavy lifting, then uses that to launder their grift without having a real product, diverting funds away from grassroots operations. Rollins’s AFPI lawsuit against tech companies is a typical example. [Trump knows there are millions to be made doing this, that national Tea Party groups, websites, and various PACs controlled and/or co-opted by GOP Establishment made millions upon millions by bleeding money from unsuspecting small donors while spending little or none of the cash supporting candidates….4/26/2014, “Tea Party PACs reap money for midterms, but spend little on candidates,” Washington Post…In 2012 cycle, TeaPartyLeadershipFund.net raised $1.1 million but spent only $52,000 on candidates... In 2010 election cycle, “The Tea Party Express, by far the largest of these PACs…pulled in more than $7.6 million since January 2009, donated $36,750 to federal candidates.”...Websites may ask for your cash to “Take on big tech dot com!” It can be a full time job following where websites lead].
(continuing): “Standing beside Trump at a press conference, Rollins announced that people could ‘join the lawsuit’ by visiting ‘take on big tech dot com’. The problem is that the fine print on the website explicitly said that entering a name would not make the signatory a plaintiff. Visitors were instead redirected to a page for the Constitutional Leadership Partnership, a fundraising apparatus of AFPI led by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, who serves as AFPI’s chairman for the Constitutional Litigation Partnership.
AFPI’s director of the Center for Election Integrity, Hogan Gidley, has made a name for himself arguing Trump’s election fraud claims in the media. However, according to a former Trump administration official with strong ties to the campaign, Gidley doesn’t believe them himself. ‘I’ve never met someone so bad at trying to be duplicitous,’ the former official said. Multiple former staffers said Gidley’s ultimate aspiration is to be press secretary in a future administration; Hogan loves the limelight. At any rate, AFPI can now claim to be the spearhead of election integrity measures, thus soaking up money and attention that would otherwise go to grassroots efforts to secure independent election audits.
It is a curious thing that the greatest obstacle to an authentic populist and nationalist agenda is Trump himself and his coterie of hangers-on. There is still a thriving grassroots movement that hopes Trump will course-correct after all this time and shed himself of Rollins, Kudlow and Kushner. But that hope is a distant dream, especially when you consider who has Trump’s ear.
After the Trump-endorsed candidate Susan Wright lost a House special election in Texas on Tuesday [July 27, 2021], Trump confessed to Axios in an interview he was pressured to endorse Wright by the anti-tax Club for Growth. That same organization was among the first groups to launch an aggressive ad campaign against Trump in 2015….
But money talks, Trump is listening and the AFPI is open for business.”
“Pedro L. Gonzalez is the associate editor at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and a contributing writer to The Spectator.”
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Added: “Once elected [Trump] immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy....When it comes to militarism and empire, Trump’s hypocrisy and bait and switch is one for the record books...It’s nevertheless extraordinary to watch Donald Trump publicly and shamelessly morph into a George W. Bush era neocon." 4/8/2019
4/8/2019, “Trump Cares About Two Things–Empire and the Stock Market," Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg
“Though not surprising, it’s nevertheless extraordinary to watch Donald Trump publicly and shamelessly morph into a George W. Bush era neocon when it comes to foreign policy, and a CNBC stock market cheerleader when it comes to the economy. Just like Barack Obama before him, Trump talked a good populist game on two issues of monumental importance (foreign policy and the rigged economy), but once elected immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy.
Trump doesn’t even give lip service to big picture populist topics anymore unless they’re somehow related to the culture war, which works out perfectly for the entrenched oligarchy since the culture war primarily serves as a useful distraction to keep the rabble squabbling while apex societal predators loot whatever’s left of this hollowed out neo-feudal economy.
The pivot toward status quo consensus when it comes to two of the most existential issues facing the nation should be deeply concerning to everyone, but particularly to those who thought Donald Trump would be different.
When it comes to militarism and empire, Trump’s hypocrisy and bait and switch is one for the record books. Just as it became clear Obama was a fraud once he hired Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner (we later found out his cabinet was apparently chosen by Citibank), Trump placing neocons Mike Pompeo and John Bolton into key positions was a clear sign you could take “Make America Great Again” and flush it down the toilet. This administration is now laser focused on maintaining and even expanding imperial reach.
Like Obama before him, Trump’s abandonment of every important thing he ran on was noticeable early on. Recall that while campaigning, Trump accurately called out the Saudis for their key role in the 9/11 attacks:
“Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi — take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents,” Trump told the gang at Fox & Friends Wednesday morning…
“It wasn’t the Iraqis that knocked down the World Trade Center,” Trump told a crowd in Bluffton, South Carolina. “It wasn’t the Iraqis. You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center, ‘cuz they have papers in there that are very secret. You may find it’s the Saudis, okay? But you will find out.”
Shortly after he made those comments, the infamous “28 Pages” were released showing how Saudi elites helped finance the whole operation. Did that stop Trump from making Saudi Arabia his very first state visit after being elected? Don’t be ridiculous.
(“I’ve stopped calling what our government has done a cover-up. Cover-up suggests a passive activity. What they’re doing now I call aggressive deception.” Former Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of Congress’s 9-11 Joint Inquiry”)
Donald Trump knows the score when it comes to Saudi Arabia. He knows about their role in 9/11 and he knows they’re the top global proliferators of terrorist ideology on the planet. Nevertheless, Trump is now enthusiastically tied to the hip with the Saudis, thus making him a defender and protector of the status quo. Defend him all you want, but
this isn’t the sort of thing he ran on
with regard to
America’s foreign policy.
Like other presidents who came before him, he campaigned on one foreign policy platform and then supports another once elected.
In fact, Trump’s now so far off the deep end he’s widely expected to veto a measure recently passed by both houses of Congress to stop aiding Saudi Arabia in its ongoing genocidal war in Yemen.
Trump knows better when it comes to foreign policy, but he’s doing this stuff anyway. A similar thing could be said for his economic policy. While on the campaign trail he accurately called what was going on in financial markets a “big, fat, ugly bubble,” but now that he’s in the Oval office, he can’t get enough of it — cheering on the stock market every chance he gets as if it means anything to the masses of people barely getting by….
QE led to massive asset price inflation and society-destabilizing wealth inequality which played a key role in Trump’s election, but he’s not concerned about that anymore. In fact, he’s now actively begging for more Federal Reserve money printing….
Many people naively believed Trump meant what he said on the campaign trail.
They thought because he was already wealthy and not a career politician he’d get in there and really shake up the status quo on hugely important issues like foreign policy and the rigged, monopoly dominated, surveillance focused, financialized crony-economy. Well it turns out Trump’s just like everybody else….
The important thing is to be honest about what’s really going on so you’re not completely caught off guard when the world changes faster and more dramatically than you could ever imagine in the years ahead.”
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