The Progressive Left as Losers, Trump as Their Victim -- And Lessons from Bannon, Jefferson and Adams? (Part 2)

TODAY'S REAL NEWS IS ROGER STONE'S IGNORED INTERVIEW. The New American published on New Year's Day an article by Alex Newman titled "Deep State 'Plan C' Is to Kill Trump." Newman wrote : "Longtime Donald Trump advisor and confidante Roger Stone warned that the globalist establishment would do everything in its power to stop the President from draining the Swamp, even if it means taking him out John F. Kennedy style. With the 'mainstream' media's credibility gone, and the Deep State feeling threatened in an unprecedented way, the 'globalist cabal' is desperate and willing to do anything necessary to get rid of Trump." Roger Stone told The New America magazine that the Deep State's "Plan A” is the imploding “investigation” into alleged “Russian collusion” by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But, according to Stone : "If and when that fails, which Stone suggested was likely, the establishment would move to 'Plan B.' In essence, that plot would involve trying to get a majority of Trump's cabinet to declare him unfit for office. This would allow Trump to be removed under the US Constitution's 25th Amendment -- another scheme Stone said would probably flop. Last but not least, though, if all else fails, Stone warned of 'Plan C' : Killing the President." • Roger Stone is a legendary, if controversial, political consultant who, in addition to his longtime relationship with Trump, served as a senior campaign aide to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Senator Bob Dole, and others, is a lobbyist, strategist, and conspiracy theorist noted for his use of opposition research usually for candidates of the Republican Party. Stone has been referred to in media as a "political dirty trickster," a "renowned infighter," a "seasoned practitioner of hard-edged politics," and a "veteran Republican strategist." • Stone told the New American : "It's easy to forget that the shocking upset that Donald Trump pulled off has never been forgotten or acknowledged by the globalist cabal that has really infected both of our major parties. I say that as someone who is a sentimental Republican, but a Republican in the mold of Barry Goldwater who wanted government out of the bedroom, out of the boardroom, that believed in peace through strength, not, you know, neo-cons cruising the globe looking for expensive wars to profiteer and stick our nose in. So I reached the conclusion, with the nomination of Mitt Romney -- Council on Foreign Relations and a certified globalist in the Bush tradition -- that the old Republican Party was dead. Donald Trump's election represented the 'hostile takeover of the old Republican Party, which we now hope to remake in his image as a party that stands for economic nationalism, that stands for putting American interests ahead of globalist interests, and re-affirms our sovereign rights as Americans.” Stone called Donald Trump "a shock to the system.” • In his New American interview, Stone added to his legendary reputation as a contrarian political analyst with his take on what is happening now in American politics : “Now, I think the establishment, at this time, when the President has just passed his tax cut, has cut these regulations -- so you see a record stock market, you see unemployment at all time lows, you see a booming housing market -- it's easy to misread the deep enmity and hatred that the globalists and the Insiders have for this President, and to underestimate their resolve to remove him.” Stone, who has written a book on the Kennedy assassination ("The Man Who Killed Kennedy : The Case Against LBJ”) and on the attempted assassination of Reagan, said : "I think the establishment has Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Plan A is very clearly a take-down by the illegitimate Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed not by Jeff Sessions, not at the direction of the President, but by this fellow Rosenstein, who is a close associate of Mueller and Comey, and who is a globalist Bush insider, a liberal Republican, who somehow got the number two position in the Trump Justice Department...The establishment was now hoping Trump would fire Mueller to regain the upper hand. Unfortunately for the Deep State, Stone said, it looks less and less likely that Mueller will succeed in bringing down Trump." That is, at least in part, says Stone, because of the explosive revelations surrounding what Stone called the “naked partisanship and the bias of Mueller and his partisan hit squad. Indeed, the Mueller team is completely discredited already." Stone noted that a lawyer for Ben Rhodes, “one of the people involved in Obama's crimes of illegal surveillance against Donald Trump,” is a member of the Mueller task force. The other thing that is becoming more and more apparent, Stone said, is that “neither Mr. Mueller nor the House nor the Senate Intelligence committees nor the Judiciary committees in those bodies have been able to find any evidence of Russian collusion. Sorry, but Don Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer that provided nothing is perfectly legal and proper. There's nothing wrong with it. She produced no evidence, but what we did learn is that she was in the country thanks to the Obama FBI, without a visa, and she was popping up and being photographed at Hillary rallies and in John McCain's office....She's a spy....It's an attempt to entrap Donny Jr. in a meeting that's perfectly innocuous and perfectly legal.” • So, according to Stone, Mueller's “investigation” -- the establishment's “Plan A” -- is rapidly falling apart. And so, if and when Plan A fails, the establishment will move to “Plan B,” Stone said. “That's the 25th Amendment Plan.” Basically, under that scenario, a majority of the cabinet and the vice president would need to reach the decision that the President is unable to discharge his duties -- “that he was mentally incompetent, that he was crazy,” as Stone put it. If that happened, they could, theoretically, remove him from office, legally speaking. However, if that were to happen, the President could also appeal the decision to the US House of Representatives. • Nevertheless, Stone thinks Plan B is likely to happen. “If Mueller should fail in his illegitimate coup d'etat to take down the President in some phony baloney process indictment -- perjury in the matter of the firing of Comey, or obstruction of justice pertaining to the indictment of Flynn, both of which I think are bogus fabrications -- then I think you will see an uptick in the 'Trump-is-crazy' talk.” [We may certainly ask if we seeing it begin with the Wolff book that calls Trump's actions "stupid" and says he acts like a "child."] • Stone's most ominous warning is this : "“I can tell you, there are members of Trump's cabinet that would stick a dagger in his heart. There are globalist insiders who, for one reason or another got into this cabinet, who do not share the President's vision of reform, and are not loyal to him, as I am and so many Americans are.” Stone mentioned now-gone establishment GOP operative Reince Priebus as chief of staff and current National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, a member of the globalist-minded establishment. Stone sees Plan B as a real threat : “I do think they will try a 25th Amendment ploy. I also think it will fail because of a booming economy, and the fact that Donald Trump is a shrewd operator in his own right. My concern, in a nut shell, is that the President's lawyers -- at least in stage one -- are walking him into the blades. A legal strategy of turning over hundreds of thousands of White House documents to the special counsel, relying on his innate fairness and lack of bias to determine that there is no crime, waiving all executive privilege, probably without even reviewing these documents, to me, that is folly.” • • • ROGER STONE ON TRUMP FAMILY BACKGROUND. Putting aside Plan C, which many of us who support President Trump and his agenda worry about in an abstract way, let's consider what Roger Stone told the New American about President Trump's family background, much of it news to me and to many, I would imagine. Stone said : "The reason the Deep State is so serious about stopping Trump is because the President is, in fact, who he says he is." Stone emphasized repeatedly throughout the interview that Trump was the real deal : a true anti-establishment patriot determined to “Make America Great Again” and “Drain the Swamp.” And, according to Roger Stone : "Trump has a pedigree that suggests he is for real, too. People don't know it, but Trump comes from a long line of anti-communists. His father was a quiet funder of the John Birch Society, his father was a personal friend of Billy Graham, a personal friend of [Birch Society founder] Robert Welch, a supporter of Dr. Fred Schwarz's [Christian] Anti- Communism Crusade, and had been a major, major fundraiser and donor for Barry Goldwater. He kept his national politics quiet, because of course in Queens, all of the zoning and permitting for the Trump residential real-estate business was controlled by machine Democrats....Donald Trump and his father were proud members of the Ronald Reagan's 1980 finance committee. Donald Trump obviously gave, when he was in real-estate in Manhattan, to both Democrats and Republicans, but his political leanings have always been right of center and kind of populist oriented. So we saw eye to eye.” • Stone finished the interview with this : "Trump is a real American, a patriot, he's a real believer in Americana, and also in American superiority -- American exceptionalism, if you will -- and a believer in American sovereignty. He's always been deeply suspicious of the international types that he was happy to sell condominiums to at inflated prices, but he never shared their politics. This is a man so wealthy that he doesn't need George Soros, he doesn't need the Warburgs or the Rothschilds -- he has his independent wealth that he's made in real-estate, and therefore I always viewed him as unbought and unbossed. Anybody who has tried to boss Donald Trump around knows that that won't work. He's very much his own man.” And now, Trump threatens the status quo -- as well as the Deep State's power. • Concerning Americna politics, Stone states : “We've reached a point in American politics where the two-party duopoly that has run the country into the ground -- the Bushes and the Clintons working together in one essentially seamless crime family, where they have no real ideology, it's not that they're communists or socialists or liberals, they'll use all that, but it's really about power and money. And we have seen this two party duopoly, who violently opposed Donald Trump in the election and still violently oppose his presidency today, I view Trump as an antidote to that. I view Trump as an outsider who will challenge that two-party orthodoxy. That is why the President is in so much danger." • • • MAKING SENSE OF WOLFF vs BANNON. We know where Michael Wolff comes from -- East Coast / Hollywood gossip journalism that titillates by stretching facts to amuse and make money. • But, Steve Bannon is another type altogether. You can google his Wikipedia biography to read about his life and achievements, but for today's purpose his political positions are key -- Bannon has advocated reductions in immigration; restrictions on free trade, particularly with China and Mexico; raising federal income taxes to 44% for those earning incomes over $5 million a year as a way to pay for middle class tax cuts; significantly increasing spending on infrastructure, describing himself as "the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan." Bannon is opposed to government bailouts, describing them as "socialism for the very wealthy." He generally believes in reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy...the "deconstruction of the administrative state." He was a strong opponent of the Paris climate agreement, successfully persuading the President to withdraw from it. He is generally skeptical of military intervention abroad, opposing proposals for the expansion of US involvement in the War in Afghanistan, Syria, and the crisis in Venezuela. Bannon has described US allies in Europe, the Persian Gulf, the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, as well as South Korea and Japan, as "protectorates of the United States" that do not "make an effort to defend themselves," and he believes NATO members should pay a minimum of 2% of GDP on defense. He also supports repairing the US-Russia relations. He strongly favors US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. He has described Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a "terrorist." Bannon is supportive of several foreign populist-nationalist movements such as the French National Front, the Dutch Party for Freedom, Alternative for Germany, and the Freedom Party of Austria, as well as the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi in India, and Shinzo Abe's government in Japan. Bannon believes that these movements, along with Hungary's Viktor Orban, Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping, and similar political figures in Poland, Egypt, the Philippines, and South Korea are part of a global shift towards nationalism. • Bannon's political positions should remind you a lot of someone else -- President Donald Trump. He and Steve Bannon have very similar political views -- and they are the views shared by the people who voted for Trump and support his agenda to Drain the Swamp and Make America Great Again. It is easy to see how they became "strategy" partners in the Trump White House. And, it is very easy to see why Wolff, a journalist with left-leaning friends -- despite arguing that his Trump book was objective -- would write the Trump book and why it would be overwhelmingly touted by the mainstream media and the ProgDem Left. • • • THE MSM IS SKITTISH ABOUT WOLFF'S BOOK. That the book has been treated with some skepticism by MSM outlets and ProgDems, although they agree with its basic positions about Trump's "stupidity" -- should be a red flashing warning light to everyone on the American Left. Their game goes on, but the media may be beginning to try to separate itself from their duplicity and lies by innuendo, not because the MSM believes in the Trump agenda but because it may be afraid it will be the real loser in the ProgDem Deep State attempts to bring down a duly-elected US President. Only CNN and MSNBC remain totally anti-Trump and committed to destroying him before he destroys their own globalist vision for America's future -- a vision roundly rejected by American voters in almost every election since 2010, with the exception of that of Barack Obama, whose victories will undoubtedly be seen by historians as America's attempt to make peace with Black America. • • • THE MEDIA COVERS ITS ANTI-TRUMP BETS. America's mainstream leftist media wants to survive. If you think that is a pie-in-the-sky stretch -- consider this from Bloomberg Politics. It was published in October 2015 under the headline "Conservative in America : Steve Bannon runs the new vast right-wing conspiracy -- and he wants to take down both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush." It was written by Joshua Green for Bloomberg Businessweek, who described Steve Bannon as THE conservative : "Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, the crusading right-wing populist website that’s a lineal descendant of the Drudge Report (its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, spent years apprenticing with Matt Drudge) and a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and restrained....Bannon, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker, is the sort of character who would stand out anywhere, but especially in the drab environs of Washington." Bloomberg wrote in 2015 : "Bannon’s life is a succession of Gatsbyish reinventions that made him rich and landed him squarely in the middle of the 2016 presidential race : He’s been a naval officer, investment banker, minor Hollywood player, and political impresario....When Sarah Palin was at the height of her fame, Bannon was whispering in her ear. When Donald Trump decided to blow up the Republican presidential field, Bannon encouraged his circus-like visit to the US-Mexico border. John Boehner just quit as House Speaker because of the mutinous frenzy Bannon and his confederates whipped up among conservatives....he sits at the nexus of what Hillary Clinton once dubbed 'the vast right-wing conspiracy,' where he and his network have done more than anyone else to complicate her presidential ambitions -- and they plan to do more. But this 'conspiracy,' at least under Bannon, has mutated into something different from what Clinton described : It’s as eager to go after establishment Republicans such as Boehner or Jeb Bush as Democrats like Clinton....he’s devised a method to influence politics that marries the old-style attack journalism of Breitbart.com, which helped drive out Boehner, with a more sophisticated approach, conducted through the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute (GAI), that builds rigorous, fact-based indictments against major politicians, then partners with mainstream media outlets [that] conservatives typically despise to disseminate those findings to the broadest audience....The biggest product of this system is...the bestselling investigative book, written by Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash : The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich....the book dominated the political landscape for weeks and probably did more to shape public perception of Hillary Clinton than any of the barbs from her Republican detractors....While attacking the favored candidates in both parties at once may seem odd, Bannon says he’s motivated by the same populist disgust with Washington that’s animating candidates from Trump to Bernie Sanders. Like both, Bannon is having a bigger influence than anyone could have reasonably expected. But in the Year of the Outsider, it's perhaps fitting that a figure like Bannon, whom nobody saw coming, would roil the national political debate." • Bloomberg Businessweek said that in 2015 !! It was a remarkably prescient piece of journalism that stated : "What made Clinton Cash so unexpectedly influential is that mainstream news reporters picked up and often advanced Schweizer’s many examples of the Clintons’ apparent conflicts of interest in accepting money from large donors and foreign governments. ('Practically grotesque,' wrote Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination. 'On any fair reading, the pattern of behavior that Schweizer has charged is corruption.') Just before the book’s release, the New York Times ran a front-page story about a Canadian mining magnate, Frank Giustra, who gave tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and then flew Bill Clinton to Kazakhstan aboard his private jet to dine with the country’s autocratic president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Giustra subsequently won lucrative uranium-mining rights in the country. (Giustra denies that the Clinton dinner influenced his Kazakh mining decision.) The Times piece cited Schweizer’s then-still-unpublished book as a source of its reporting, puzzling many Times readers and prompting a reaction from the paper’s ombudswoman, Margaret Sullivan, who grudgingly concluded that, while no ethical standards were breached, 'I still don’t like the way it looked.' " Schweizer, shepherded by Bannon, made the big time of political airwaves with his breaking Foundation story that has become Uranium One, and his still-leading acconuts of the Bill-and-Hillary roadshow that scooped up vast amounts of money for themselves while posing as philanthropists. • Question : was the NYT even in 2015 concened that Schweizer's "Clinton Cash" uproar had the capacity to validate and strengthen conservatives in their anti-globalist anti-Progressive movement? If so, Bannon was the manager of the conservative anger. Bannon, said Bloomberg, seemed to have developed two related insights -- don’t be the first guy through the door because you’re going to get all the arrows, and reporters staffing the investigative units of major newspapers aren’t the liberal ideologues of conservative fever dreams but kindred souls who could be recruited into his larger enterprise. BUT, the larger question is whether this is still true in 2018, with Trump -- the nemesis of the MSM and their Progressive Fake news providers -- in the White House ripping apart every policy and regulation their fawned-upon President Obama stacked up so that the Globalists could win. Bannon said in 2015 when the Clinton Cash frenzy hit its peak : “We’ve got the 15 best investigative reporters at the 15 best newspapers in the country all chasing after Hillary Clinton.” There’s more coming, Bannon said, as the 2916 presidential primary voting got under way. • Bannon’s political awakening was also spurred by the 9/11 attacks, which led him, in 2004, to make a Reagan-venerating documentary, "In the Face of Evil" -- Rush Limbaugh called it “a brilliant effort...extremely well done.” The Reagan documentary introduced Bannon to Schweizer, a cold war scholar who started out at the Hoover Institution and whose book, "Reagan’s War," was the basis of the Bannon film. It also brought him into Andrew Breitbart’s orbit. “We screened the film at a festival in Beverly Hills,” Bannon told Bloomberg, “and out of the crowd comes this, like, bear who’s squeezing me like my head’s going to blow up and saying how we’ve gotta take back the culture.” • As the 2016 presidential race heated up, Bannon peppered Breitbart News with ongoing-chain stories about the persecution of ordinary Americans by the ProgDem Deep State -- immigration, ISIS, race riots, the collapse of traditional values, and above all Hillary Clinton. Breitbart championed Trump’s presidential candidacy, helping to coalesce conservatives irate over Fox News’ treatment of the Republican frontrunner. Bannon had become the face of the conservative grassroots. That was a feat few other non-candidate conservative leaders have been able to accomplish -- William F. Buckley, who was the father and theorist of the modern conservative movement, is the only one in recent times -- and it helped elect Donald Trump, even if indirectly. • But, all Steve Bannon's efforts to organize and energize the conservative movement in America -- to make it the coalition of Constitution-based supporters of a US Republic that functions as the Founders provided with a President Trump committted to MAking America Great Again -- may have come crashing to a halt with his participation in a dinner with Michael Wolff. • • • A LESSON FROM JEFFERSON AND ADAMS. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were at times great friends and at times great rivals, and of the Founding the Fathers, they were probably the most influential in deciding the course of the of the United States of America. In temperament, in politics and in faith these men were very different, but in important ways they were similar, notably both of them suffering the loss of family members, particularly wives and children. And, by understanding their friendship and rivalry we can better understand the founding of the United States. Jefferson and Adams' friendship began when they met at the Continental Congress as members of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. It was during this time the men wrote the first of their 380 letters to each other. When Jefferson’s wife Martha died in 1782, Jefferson became a frequent guest at the home of John and Abigail Adams. Abigail said of Jefferson that he was “the only person with whom my companion could associate with perfect freedom and reserve.” After the Revolution both men were sent to Europe (Jefferson to Paris and Adams to London) as diplomats, where their friendship continued. It was on their return to the United States that their friendship deteriorated. Adams, a Federalist suspicious of the French Revolution, and Jefferson, the Democratic Republican who did not want to leave France because of the French Revolution, competed for office for the first time in 1788 for the position of George Washington’s Vice President. Adams was victorious but the political differences of the two men, once noted in cordial letters, became pronounced and public. Very few letters were written during this period. During their successive terms as President, Adams and Jefferson’s relationship continued to deteriorate. In 1796, Adams narrowly defeated Jefferson as Washington’s presidential successor. Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans pressured Adams during this period, particularly over the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1799. Then, in 1800, Jefferson defeated Adams who, in an act that greatly annoyed Jefferson, appointed a number of Jefferson’s political opponents to high office just before leaving the presidency. It was during Jefferson’s two-term Presidency that relationships between the two men were at their lowest. Finally, in 1812, Dr Benjamin Rush convinced them to begin writing again. From here their friendship was rekindled, as they wrote movingly to one another about the death of loved ones, their advancing years, and the Revolution they both helped win. Fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, on 4 July 1826, John Adams, before he drew his last breath said, “Thomas Jefferson Lives.” What he could not have known is that Jefferson had died five hours earlier. The remarkable lives, and friendships, of Jefferson and Adams tell us much more than a warm-and-fuzzy story of political friendship and rivalry, they tell a story, and a history, of the birth a nation, and its struggles through disagreement and rivalry, war and peace, hope and despair, friendship and civility. It is a story for Donald Trump and Steve Bannon to carefully consider, because today we are at a crossroads in the Republic's history -- we will either turn to the Left and become a European-style socialist state or we will hold to the Right and remain a constitutional Republic. • • • DEAR READERS, Steve Bannon on Sunday expressed “regret” for unflattering comments attributed to him in the recently released Trump White House tell-all “Fire and Fury,” saying he should have responded sooner and that he continues to support the President. In a statement to Axios, Bannon said : "My support is also unwavering for the President and his agenda....I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr. has diverted attention from the President's historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency." • If Steve Bannon is cast into outer darkness, it will be the greatest victory possible for the Progressive Globalist cabal and the Deep State. Without Bannon, President Trump has only Twitter. He loses his legs, eyes and ears on the ground in grassroots America. He becomes "the Republican President." While many see that s a good thing, it will kill the enthusiasm of the Deplorables, who love Trump but get their political information and explanations from Bannon. Bannon without Trump has no power base. But, Trump without Bannon has no grassroots access. That is not an exaggeration. • Consider Roger Stones comments : "Trump's election represented the 'hostile takeover of the old Republican Party, which we now hope to remake in his image as a party that stands for economic nationalism, that stands for putting American interests ahead of globalist interests, and re-affirms our sovereign rights as Americans....Trump is a real American, a patriot, he's a real believer in Americana, and also in American superiority -- American exceptionalism, if you will -- and a believer in American sovereignty." Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity stand for Trump and these values. But, they do not roam the Republic seeking adherents and encouraging conservative action -- they speak from TV and radio studios. Steve Bannon is out there in the trenches. Trump cannot do that and run the country at the same time. Someone may come along and pick up Bannon's mantle, but it will be too late to save the Republic from the "Plans A, B, and C" described by Roger Stone. • Trump and Bannon need to take a case of Diet Coke into a very private room and iron out all their injuries, slights and differences. They need to come out united again and ready to win the fight they started. If President Trump believes he was nominated "without help from Steve Bannon," he is partially right -- every presidential winner has an indefinable spark that connects with Americans -- but why let his pride lead to a possible ruination of the Republic. If Steve Bannon thought he was the puppet master who got Trump elected, he is partially right -- every presidential winner has somebody behind him whispering the right advice at the right moment -- but why let his pride lead to a possible ruination of the Republic. Bannon has obviously met the 800-pound elephant and sees that he cannot beat the President, and so he apologized on Sunday. Trump should accept the apology and move on. The Republic deserves no less. As Abraham Lincoln put it : “We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.” Noblesse oblige.