So I'm doing this short myTake just as an update to the other two that i made previously. If you haven't read them, i encourage you to. Part I was about the five main reasons why Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, and Part II was about why I today am still firmly anti Trump....and this update is going to reinforce exactly why I feel that electing Trump was a mistake. I'm also doing this update to give people an opportunity to comment on Part I and II, as i didn't allow comments previously.
Now onto business. What has changed in a matter of days? A lot actually. We are now starting to get word on the kinds of people Donald Trump is considering to add to his administration. I'm going to focus on two in particular and show those who care to listen, the level of destruction already being flirted with before he has even taken power. This take is not for people who support Trump, because I know that no matter what i post here, you will likely stand by whatever he does...and so im not looking to change your mind even in the slightest. This take isn't even so much for Hillary supporters either, as I kind of know where you stand already. This update is primarily for observers who are still sort of teetering back and forth on the fence, trying to figure out how they should feel about a Trump presidency. Allow me to...help you out with that.
Who may potentially be the next Treasury Secretary of the USA?
Now this one for me was probably the most surprising. It was surprising because even though I give Trump a lot of shit, I really didn't think he was this clueless. But lets dive in. So a few people, particularly Trump supporters, who read Part I of this series stated that they pretty much agreed with the reasons i stated as to why Trump won. One of those reasons in particular was due to how close Hillary Clinton was to wall street, and the fact that Trump didn't cater to these people like she did. I want to focus on a paragraph from that myTake in particular, and I want you to take special note of the names bolded/italicized:
Since the 21st century began, America has been under the control of Wall Street candidates. Bush was a puppet of wall street, Obama was a puppet of wall street, and undoubtedly, Hillary Clinton was a puppet of Wall Street. When you work for wall street, you basically give up on caring about issues that affect Americans, because these issues aren't aligned with what Wall Street wants. People like Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and the now disgraced CEO of Wells Fargo (thanks to Elizabeth Warren), John Stumpf don't give two shits about the average American.
So, I mentioned these names in particular because anyone who knows anything about anything knows who at least two of these three people are. These names fly off the tongue because they are so often in the news for some new corruption scandal concerning themselves or the banks they oversee. They are the most well known names in wall street because they are the most well known crooks who screw over thousands of people for a living and NEVER get prosecuted for it.
Think of it this way: Hillary Clinton is to corruption on main street as Jamie Dimon is to corruption on Wall Street. So given how much Trump railed against wall street, it would make sense that he would want to keep wall street as far away from controlling the direction of the whole country's money as possible right? Sure, that makes sense. So who is one of the individuals being considered as treasury secretary of the U.S.?
Jamie Dimon.
I shit you not.
Literally one day after I wrote that mytake, I see news articles concerning one of the individuals Trumps administration is thinking about adding to the team. See for yourself here.
From the article:
In the wake of Donald Trump's upset victory, advisors have floated the idea of naming Jamie Dimon as treasury secretary, according to two people familiar with the matter, but one of them added that the JPMorgan chief has said he would not be interested in the role.
It was unclear who within Trump's circle of advisors raised the idea or who else might be under consideration for treasury secretary. Trump campaign finance chief Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs official, is reportedly considered to be the front runner.
I lol'd. So even if Dimon doesn't get the job, the frontrunner for the job is a Goldman Sachs operative, and the only reason why Dimon may not get the job is because he apparently has better things to do. Remember what the secretary of the treasury is responsible for. They basically write all of the laws that banks and other institutions/individuals have to follow:
The Secretary of the Treasury is responsible for formulating and recommending domestic and international financial, economic, and tax policy, participating in the formulation of broad fiscal policies that have general significance for the economy, and managing the public debt.
So by putting Wall street in Direct control of the treasury, you're basically giving them free reign to rewrite the rules of the game for their benefit.
You want to know one of the reasons why i supported Hillary? Because despite how in bed she was with wall street, she would never have been so brazen, so bold, to put such an infamous, well known corrupt banker to control the damn Treasury of the United States. At the very least, she would've picked a lesser known, more obscure wall streeter in there, similar to Obama's pick of Timothy Geithner when he won in 2008. But Jamie fucking Dimon? You've got to be kidding me.
Who may potentially be the next Secretary of State for the USA?
So most of us are aware that Hillary Clinton was the previous secretary of state, and she caused a great deal of damage pushing for the overturning of Gadaffi in Libya, and later the destruction of Syria. So we all know the woman is a war monger, and this was another one of the reasons i pointed out in Part I of this series why Trump beat her. Allow me to quote part of what I said, and again, take note of what I've bolded/italicized:
Hillary's incessant need to flip governments that are opposed to America is well known, and all it has caused is chaos and destruction in these regions. Libya was a total failure. The country is now several times worse than it was when Gaddafi was alive. Now Syria is under threat, and Hillary was willing to throw up a no fly zone over all of Syria which would have undoubtedly started a war with Russia. But don't take my word for it.
As i stated before, one of the main reasons Hillary lost (and rightfully so), was because she was a war monger. She's linked to a lot of upheaval in the middle east, and was on the verge of potentially starting a war with Russia itself. She would even come to blame the DNC hacks on the Russians, threatening economic and even military consequences as a result, despite having no tangible proof that the Russians were even responsible. Trump pushed back against this, and promised that he wasn't going to start conflict with Russia. Thats great. Even though I supported Hillary, I liked the fact that Trump didn't appear to be quite as hungry to start shit with Russia as Hillary was...even though i was skeptical over whether Trump actually meant it.
So, given his stance on war with Russia and conflict within the middle east in general, it would make sense for the Trump administration to consider the new Secretary of State to be someone who's basically the opposite of who Hillary Clinton was. Someone who isn't a neocon, and had a cool, level head on Russia, Syria and the potential threats in the middle east...right? Sure, of coarse...of coarse. So who's one of the major candidates being considered for Secretary of State under Trump?
John Bolton. (Source)
Sounds like he came right out of Game of Thrones right? Well given his views on foreign policy, he may as well have. Surely his stance on Syria and Russia differ from Hillary Clintons though, right? Here's his view which he published back in 2012 when was part of Mitt Romney's campaign against Obama:
Significantly, U.S. intervention could not be confined to Syria and would inevitably entail confronting Iran and possibly Russia. This the Obama administration is unwilling to do, although it should. In the case of Russia, such a confrontation would likely break the famous “reset” button beyond repair. As a president waiting for reelection so he can be more “flexible” toward Moscow, Obama is simply incapable of contemplating this step.
Of coarse he was incapable of contemplating this step. You would have to be a complete lunatic like Hillary Clinton was, to contemplate taking on Russia AND Iran militarily for the sake of Syria...
But hey, that was way back in 2012. Surely his views have changed right? Well sort of. He's moved on from Syria. He wants to focus on Iran now:
The former Bush State Department official, U.N. ambassador and champion of the Iraq war is exceptionally good at his hobby. At the moment, the Obama administration is trying to nail down a nuclear agreement with Iran, and hawks in Congress are pushing instead for tougher sanctions. But Bolton, now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is leading the charge for a third alternative: immediate bombing.
For the mustachioed man of war, force is the option of first resort. The military option isn’t just on the table — it’s the only thing on the menu.
“The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program,” Bolton wrote last week in a New York Times op-ed. “Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure. The inconvenient truth is that only military action” like Israel’s previous strikes on reactors in Iraq and Syria “can accomplish what is required.”
On Wednesday, I went over to AEI to hear Bolton expand on his views at a forum asking “Is Iran the new North Korea?” The answer, from Bolton’s perspective, was obvious: Iran should be the next Iraq — a war Bolton evidently is still fighting.
Do you want Iran to be the next Iraq?
Yeah, me neither.
What do these early considerations mean?
I'll make this quick. What's important to focus on here is not the individuals themselves per se, because there are many people being considered for many positions...some of which are even worse than the two people i mentioned here. What's important to think about here is the mindset of Trump administration, towards the kinds of people they want in charge of things. Do you think if Donald Trump was as anti wall street as he claimed, that a person like Jamie Dimon would even be considered for Treasury Secretary?
Do you think if Trump was so anti-war, a Bush era neocon like John Bolton would even be considered as Secretary of State? I didn't even bother going into all of the people being considered right now for Secretary of Defense, because they're literally all neocons who make Clinton look like a pacifist. What these early considerations tell me is that America is planning on going the direction of not only a total wall street takeover, but a foreign policy agenda that will make the trillions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan look like a rounding error.
For the next four years, Americans have my sympathies.
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