Five ways Trump is just another establishment hack upholding the twisted Bush-Obama legacy
Trump has said on numerous occasions that he isn't a "career politician" - yet he didn't need more than a year in office to become one.
Few saw it coming - and yet, here we are.
Donald Trump is the new president of the United States, undoubtedly cementing any doubts that this country is terminally doomed.
No, Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been better. Yes, the country would have still been just as screwed if she had won instead of Trump. But there remains one major distinction between the two outcomes that makes his victory infinitely more insidious: Trump, unlike Clinton but like George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him, was successful at duping a significant number of Americans into believing he would be a departure from the status quo and that he would take the country in a new direction.
From the beginning, Hillary had an establishment problem and was largely depicted by both the media and even her reluctant supporters as a relic of the past, a cog in the old order of things. Trump on the other hand was seen as the exact opposite and, from the start of his candidacy until its victorious conclusion, he was routinely portrayed as an outsider to the status quo and some sort of rebel infiltrator to a broken system. Trump, his supporters claimed, was a businessman, not a politician - though the distinction between these two professions isn't exactly clear.
During his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to make America great again. He vowed to fight the interests of lobbyists, re-examine US foreign policy, and throw corrupt politicians - such as "crooked Hillary" - in jail. Like Obama, Trump inspired hope in an increasingly shrinking percentage of the American public still willing to take part in a rigged electoral process that was long ago proven to favor the interests of corporations over US voters.
And yet, less than a year into his presidency, Trump has worked diligently to follow in the footsteps of every politician coming before him and preserve the status quo at all costs. His promises, similar to Obama's promises of sweeping "change we can believe in" and George W. Bush's long-forgotten promises of a "humble foreign policy" disappeared almost immediately after becoming president. In their place, Trump has displayed an unquestionable loyalty to the establishment, evident by his devotion to five general entities that I would argue encompass it: the military-industrial complex (defense companies, their wars, and the US empire's worst allies), beneficiaries of drug prohibition (prisons, law enforcement unions, pharmaceutical companies), the national security state (CIA, NSA, and the protection of their activities), oil and gas companies, and Wall Street banks.
1. The military-industrial complex and US imperialism
"I am the most militaristic person you will ever meet."
― Donald Trump, August 2015
During his first week in office, Trump's administration launched airstrikes inside Iraq and Syria and oversaw a US commando raid in Yemen which was responsible for ending the life of an 8-year-old American citizen (pictured below) in a hail of bullets, letting her slowly bleed to death over the course of two hours. (In what we're supposed to believe is a massive coincidence, the girl's 16-year-old brother, Abdulrahman, was blown to pieces in an Obama administration-ordered drone strike back in 2011, along with the boy's father just a few weeks prior.)
Elsewhere, Trump injected the Bush-Obama foreign policy with a lethal dose of steroids. In mineral-rich Afghanistan, he reportedly promised to look into extending the occupation of US troops in what has become America's longest military occupation. In nearby Pakistan, he continued Obama's drone strikes. Trump's plan to defeat ISIS are eerily similar to that of Barack Obama's, a plan which includes very few deviations beyond bombing campaigns, troop deployments, and financial warfare. Trump "put Iran on notice" and slapped them with economic sanctions - sanctions that were applied by both Obama and George W. Bush - and which have historically acted as a prelude to war.
And in the midst of writing this in early April of 2017, Trump took a chilling historic step and launched airstrikes not against ISIS in Syria, but against the Syrian government, echoing claims from the Obama years that the Syrian government was responsible for using chemical weapons against its own people. There are two quick points to note on this: first, when George W. Bush was completing his second term in office, US General Wesley Clark pointed out that after 9/11, he crossed paths with a memo containing a "hit list" of countries that would be subjected to regime change in the post-9/11 world by the US government. These countries included Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. With Trump continuing the Obama legacy of stated regime change in Syria, Iran now remains the only country on the list that hasn't been violently subverted by the US and its allies. And secondly, back in 2013 when the Obama administration originally accused the Syrian government of using sarin gas against its own people, two primary factors successfully prevented US military action: widespread opposition from the US public and US military, and independent journalism which revealed it was not the Syrian government that was responsible for using sarin, but US-backed "rebel" groups.
Trump's airstrikes against the Syrian government reportedly added an "instantaneous" $5 billion to the stocks of Raytheon, the producer of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
In another tip-off display of Trump's allegiance to the status quo, two of America's most brutal allies - Saudi Arabia and Israel - have also continued to receive support under the Trump administration.
In September 2016, Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and discussed a wide range of topics, including Trump seeking Netanyahu's expert advice on building border walls. The official statement from the Trump campaign said that he "agreed with Prime Minister Netanyahu that the Israeli people want a just and lasting peace with their neighbors, but that peace will only come when the Palestinians renounce hatred and violence and accept Israel as a Jewish State." After Trump's November 2016 victory, Martin S. Indyk, who served as a special envoy to the Middle East during the Obama administration, said that it appears President Trump "is prepared to go a long way to help Prime Minister Netanyahu with his domestic difficulties and that Netanyahu, in return, is willing to provide a kosher seal of approval for a president who was slow to condemn anti-Semitism." In other words, the US will continue to fully support Israel's horrifying activities in Palestine under the new president.
As for Saudi Arabia, Trump has continued to prop up the homophobic, sexist dictatorship by continuing a decades-long trend of supplying the regime with weapons and financial support. In February 2017, it was reported that Trump planned to approve a $300 million precision-guided weapons package for the Saudis. Trump said he thinks it "wouldn't be so bad" if Saudi Arabia had nuclear weapons. He is expected to scrap a lawsuit brought about by 9/11 victims' families attempting to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for their well-established links to the attacks. Trump "hit the reset button" on US-Saudi relations, with the Washington Post reporting that the two countries are seeking ways to elevate "the political, military, security, economic, cultural and social fronts" - specifically referring to the "economic, commercial, investment and energy fields" which would "potentially" be worth more than $200 billion in direct and indirect investments over the next four years. And, unsurprisingly, Trump's history with the Saudis dates back to the 1990s, when they helped bail him out after one of his many business ventures tanked.
Still, most telling of his loyalty to the status quo is Trump's close ties with the infamous military-industrial complex, which encompasses an immensely influential revolving door between defense companies that directly benefit from perpetual war and politicians eager to promote those wars in exchange for financial contributions. The defense establishment has been a heavy hitter in the shady world of politics for decades, and any genuine outlier to the status quo would almost certainly reject their influence. Yet Trump, like Bush and Obama before him, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from these companies during his presidential campaign and, in keeping with decades of political tradition in Washington, has since worked to repay them.
For instance, Trump plans to continue the Obama-era policy of modernizing America's vast nuclear weapons supply, a policy that would obviously benefit the corporations involved in the process. As reported by Forbes in November 2016, "the biggest winners would be General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries, which make subs, Lockheed Martin which makes sub-launched missiles, Northrop Grumman which is building a new bomber, and Boeing which builds tankers and airborne command posts to support the nuclear force. One of these companies will also be tapped to replace land-based Minuteman missiles."
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that American forces are "weak" and need to be rebuilt, a wholly deluded statement given the fact that the US outpaces every nation on earth combined when it comes to military spending. Trump wants to increase the size of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, which benefits weapons and technology manufacturers General Dynamics and Raytheon, as well as aircraft producers Boeing and Lockheed.
Given all of this, it should come as no shock whatsoever that the stocks of these companies surged in orgasmic bliss upon news of Trump's presidential victory in 2016:
"Following Trump's win, Lockheed Martin shares gained 6 percent, Raytheon added 7.5 percent, and Northrop Grumman advanced 5.4 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls led the charge with a rise of 11.4 percent."
2. The War on Drugs
The second most blatant sign that Trump's administration is eager to preserve the status quo is its close ties to police unions, private prisons, and pharmaceutical companies that directly benefit from the continuation of the decades-long failure known as the "War on Drugs".
Police-affiliated lobbying organizations and unions, which have a long history of opposing marijuana legalization in states like California, nearly all threw their support behind Trump's bid for president. In fact, the largest police union in the US, the The Fraternal Order of Police, endorsed Trump in 2016, saying that he "supports their priorities" and would uphold them if elected. Additionally, as reported by The Intercept, Trump also won the support of the New England Police Benevolent Association and the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association. These organizations backed Trump not only because of his promises to continue militarizing them, but also because he pledged to keep marijuana illegal at the federal level, allowing states to continue ruining lives for the crime of possessing the wrong kind of plant, despite a majority wanting it legalized.
These archaic policies benefit police quotas, and they also benefit private prisons, which heavily contributed to Trump's rise to power. Fredreka Schouten, writing for USA Today, points out that CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America - one of the largest private prison management companies in the US, and GEO Group, another one of the nation's largest for-profit prison operators, each donated $250,000 to support Trump's inaugural festivities, which is on top of the $225,000 that a company subsidiary of GEO donated to a super PAC that spent around $22 million to help with Trump's bid for president. Not only will these companies profit from outdated, unpopular drug laws, but they also stand to directly benefit from Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, which is currently on track to match or exceed arrests and deportations under the Obama administration.
"Handing control of prisons over to for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse and neglect," David Fathi, head of the ACLU's National Prison Project, told The Daily Beast. "The memo from Attorney General Sessions ignores this fact. Additionally, this memo is a further sign that under President Trump and Attorney General Sessions, the US may be headed for a new federal prison boom, fueled in part by criminal prosecutions of immigrants for entering the country."
Sessions, Trump's pick for Attorney General, received vast contributions not only from defense companies, but also from alcohol and pharmaceutical companies directly benefiting from the continuation of anti-marijuana laws.
When asked about the Trump administration's policy on pot, former Bush-era Easter Bunny and current Trump press secretary Sean Spicer said bluntly: "I do believe you will see greater enforcement of it." He then went on to justify continuing prohibition by falsely linking cannabis use to opiate addiction - which is ironic considering the Trump administration's ties to the same pharmaceutical companies responsible for the nationwide surge in opiate abuse.
Trump's choice for FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb - a relic of the Bush administration - has since served as a board member or adviser to at least nine pharmaceutical or medical technology companies, according to his LinkedIn profile. Gottlieb, according to Newsday, is a consultant to GlaxoSmithKline's product investment board and a managing director at T.R. Winston merchant bank, which specializes in healthcare.
No wonder stocks in major pharmaceutical companies saw a boost following news of Trump's presidential victory in November 2016. And it's no surprise that less than a month after being sworn in, Trump met with drug company executives behind closed doors for what PhRMA - a trade group representing the collective interests of American drug companies - later referred to as a "positive, productive meeting" with the new president. That meeting, as Business Insider reported, consisted of Trump promising to "slash regulations, get new treatments to market faster at the Food and Drug Administration, and increase international competition."
3. The national security state
So far, we've established that Trump has deep ties to the two main entities responsible for maintaining two of America's longest, miserably failed, and widely opposed wars: the War on Terror - supported by the military-industrial complex - and the War on Drugs - supported by police unions, private prisons, and drug manufacturers. This on its own would be incriminating enough to stick Trump right next to George W. Bush and Barack Obama in the "Establishment Hack" category - if this evidence was all that existed. However, Trump's vast ties to another group - and perhaps one of the most powerful - is even more telling: the national security state, which consists primarily of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other secret government entities given free rein to operate with total impunity, evidence be damned of their routine misuse of American tax dollars. Yet without the support of this shady sector of the US political establishment, no candidate would ever truly be considered for such a position of immense power.
In what has become a presidential tradition, Trump - like Obama after he was elected - made one of his first speeches as president to the CIA for a shameless session of ass-kissing to an agency famous for funding terrorist groups, overthrowing governments, drone strikes, assassinations, brutal (and still, as of this article's publication date, unpunished) acts of torture, among other activities. As reported by The New Yorker, during his speech to the CIA, "Trump vowed greater support for America's sixteen intelligence agencies than they had received from any other President." In typical Trumpspeak, he told the small crowd that they would receive "so much backing". He continued: "Maybe you're going to say, 'Please don't give us so much backing. Mr. President, please, we don't need that much backing.'" Trump didn't end the speech before reassuring the CIA that his administration and the covert organization are "on the same wavelength" - a scary notion given their record.
Also in line with the Bush and Obama years is Trump's stance on the NSA and government whistleblowers who have exposed various internal abuses. As reported by The Intercept, the White House is looking to reauthorize two of the NSA's largest surveillance programs before they expire at the end of the year, one of which scans through all internet traffic going in and out of the US and routinely ends up catching a vast number of American communications in the process. Trump is so adamant about maintaining invasive surveillance programs that he has even referred to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a "traitor" while fantasizing about the good ol' days when "traitors" like him were executed. This wet dream is also shared by Trump's pick for CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, who said during an interview that the "proper outcome" to Snowden's fate would be a trial leading to a "death sentence".
Similarly, while Trump routinely used Wikileaks as a source of information during his presidential campaign, he also called Chelsea Manning - who leaked a trove of documents regarding US activities in Iraq to Wikileaks - an "ungrateful traitor" who "should never have been released from prison".
4. The oil and gas sector
With a campaign operating at a cost of $3 million per week, George W. Bush relied heavily on the oil and gas sector to fund his presidential bid while running for office in 2000, reportedly accepting thousands in contributions.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama was a favored recipient of funds from some of the largest oil and gas companies on the planet, including Exxon, Chevron, and BP. According to US News, "Exxon donated $117,946 to Obama and $73,326 to McCain. Chevron pumped $77,875 into Obama's warchest and $61,313 to McCain. BP gave $71,051 to Obama but just $36,649 to McCain."
In 2016, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump (respectively) were the top three beneficiaries of donations from the oil and gas sector, with Trump receiving $820,272. Once elected, Trump wasted little time paying them back for their kindness.
Oil and gas favorites were swiftly nominated to lead cabinet agencies tasked with regulating the industry, with Texas governor Rick Perry getting tapped as energy secretary, Rep. Ryan Zinke becoming Trump's interior secretary, Rex Tillerson - a former Exxon CEO who favors staying in oil-rich Iraq even after the defeat of ISIS - becoming Trump's Secretary of State, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt - who has denied human activity plays a role in climate change - moving to the role of EPA administrator.
Kelcy Warren, the top executive at the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, donated more than $100,000 to Trump's campaign, and less than a month after becoming president, Trump granted the final permit needed to complete the controversial project.
Harold Hamm, CEO of the largest fracking company in the US and long-time friend of Donald Trump, would greatly benefit from the pipeline's completion - as would Trump himself. According to financial disclosures, two of the companies Trump holds stock in are directly funding the Dakota Access Pipeline, and that's not even the worst of it:
In December 2016, US News reported that fossil fuel producers were "eagerly anticipating President-elect Donald Trump's promised rollback of environmental protections, his support for pipelines and other infrastructure, and perhaps an end to the international sanctions that have frozen US oil investment in Russia." Given the aforementioned, the willingness of oil and gas companies to rally behind a Trump administration is more easily understood.
5. Wall Street
Of the two administrations preceding Trump, neither was without the influence of Wall Street. George W. Bush received hundreds of thousands from Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs - and even nominated Henry Paulson, a former Goldman CEO - to the position of Treasury Secretary. Barack Obama, like Bush, also received campaign funding from similar entities as his predecessor, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, etc., and worked diligently to repay them once in office, handing out cabinet positions to Goldman Sachs officials and even, according to Wikileaks, taking cabinet suggestions from Citigroup. During the Occupy Wall Street rallies, the Obama administration even blatantly betrayed its supporters by siding with the banks and working at the federal level to coordinate efforts at stopping the nationwide protests.
Trump is shaping up to be no different. For instance, consider his administration's selection for Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin - a 17-year Goldman Sachs investment specialist - and Mnuchin's Trump-selected assistant, Jim Donovan, a two-decade veteran of the Goldman Sachs world. Or how about Trump's pick for the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Gary Cohn, the former President and Chief Operating Officer of Goldman. Or maybe Jay Clayton - an attorney who specializes in mergers and acquisition and who has earned millions from cases representing big name banks. (Clayton's wife also works for Goldman Sachs)
Unsurprisingly, Trump's supporters in the financial sector are creaming in their golden undies now that their favorite former reality TV star is president. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, said shortly after Trump's inauguration that the country had reached a "moment of opportunity". Former Wells Fargo chief Dick Kovacevich told CNBC that Trump's policy suggestions are "very, very favorable to the earnings of financial institutions". Bank of America stocks jumped upon news of Trump's victory, with analyst David Long, in a note to his clients, writing: "Simply put, we view Bank of America as a general proxy for the health of the economy, and, with expected changes brought by the incoming presidential administration under Trump, we see better days ahead."
Trump's middle class supporters beyond Wall Street, however, are not so optimistic, with many beginning to feel the way Obama supporters did after he was inaugurated in 2009 and quickly began backpedaling on all of his lofty campaign promises.
"The individuals who voted for [Trump] have been utterly lied to," Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, explained to the Financial Times. "They have been instructed one factor, that he was going to get rid of the Wall Street insiders, and as a substitute of getting rid of them he introduced them into the White House."
Small protests hit Goldman Sachs headquarters in late January and early February 2017 over Trump's behavior, echoing sentiments from the Occupy Wall Street days just a few years prior. Richard Robinson, a 60-year-old Trump voter from Utah, was in attendance and explained to the Guardian that he voted for Trump because "maybe things would be run differently in Washington" since Trump wasn't a career politician. "He actually hit Hillary Clinton over meeting behind closed doors with [Goldman Sachs] and now I believe he was meeting with them at the same time. He's appointed them so quickly that I've got to believe at the same time he was campaigning hard on Hillary Clinton for meeting with them behind closed doors, I believe he was doing the same thing."
And it's true: during the campaign, Trump was verbally abusive towards Wall Street, and routinely (and correctly) bashed his opponents for being in bed with them:
"I know the guys at Goldman Sachs," Trump said during the primaries. "They have total, total control over [Ted Cruz]. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton."
All too late, Trump's supporters are now learning that he, too, was under the "total control" of not only the banks, but other facets of the establishment as well.
Nearly all of his opponents on the Republican side - opponents who he routinely labeled "establishment" and part of the problem - opponents who routinely tossed Trump lovely compliments such as "loser", "pathological liar", "orange-faced windbag", "dangerous con-man", and "entertainer-in-chief" - endorsed him in one way or another. And while it's perfectly normal for opponents to endorse the eventual winner, that's exactly the point: If Trump was an actual outsider to the establishment, all of his establishment opponents wouldn't have eventually supported him.
Mitt Romney, the human embodiment of the word "establishment" on the Republican side, went out on a fancy dinner date with Trump back in late November 2016 and wasted no time afterwards gushing like a schoolgirl to reporters about how Trump will lead the country towards "a better future".
Dick Cheney, former Vice President to George W. Bush and the embodiment of the word "evil cyborg", was revealed to be in "close contact" with Trump's VP pick, Mike Pence. "Mike relishes the advice," a senior transition aide told Politco, who added that Cheney is "willing to do what he's asked" and "wants to be helpful" to the administration.
On the "other side" of the political aisle, Hillary Clinton, who Trump called "the devil", "guilty as hell", a "nasty woman", "crooked", the "founder of ISIS", and a "world-class liar" who deserves to be thrown in jail, was immediately vindicated by Trump literally days after he became the president-elect. "She did some bad things," he said during an interview, but then added that he doesn't "want to hurt" her, referring to the Clintons as "good people". And with that, his routine campaign promises to appoint a special prosecutor and investigate/jail Hillary were about as dead as promises made by candidate Obama back in 2008 to investigate the Bush administration for human rights abuses. Trump's reversal on the issue is no surprise considering his heaping of praise for Hillary prior to the 2016 election: "I think she's a wonderful woman. I think she's a little bit misunderstood. You know, Hillary is a very smart woman. A very tough woman. She's also a very nice person. I know Hillary and I know her husband very well. They're fine people."
Following Trump's April 2017 airstrikes against the Syrian government, neoconservatives - who dominated the Bush administration's foreign policy and worked hard to do the same under Obama - for the first time began vocally stating their willingness to back the new president. Neoconservative Elliott Abrams, a former Bush official, said that "Obama did nothing at all year after year to save the lives of Syrians" but now "Trump has to match his rhetoric with something concrete." And Bill Kristol, arguably one of the most vile neoconservatives on the planet - a man who has been routinely wrong on virtually all of his bloodthirsty foreign policy suggestions yet somehow still gets invited on to news programs to give his "expert" advice - took to Twitter following Trump's bombing campaign in Syria: "If President Trump takes appropriate action against Assad, this #NeverTrumper will of course support him."
In short, Trump - backed by the military-industrial complex, some of America's most brutal allies, supporters of drug prohibition, the national security state, the oil and gas sector, the financial sector, and a variety of individual forces encompassing the very definition of "establishment" - successfully catapulted himself into office disguised as a catalyst for change.
Trump has said on numerous occasions that he isn't a "career politician" - yet he didn't need more than a year in office to become one.