More than half of the country is taking a collective victory lap while others record their meltdowns on social media; but the deep political establishment has been uncharacteristically quiet, and that signals to me that something is likely brewing behind the scenes, and that Kamala’s loss was anticipated, and is irrelevant to whatever skullduggery they have up their sleeve.
It’s easy to get swept up into the reverie of a resounding victory, but the real enemy of the public never sleeps, and they are certainly not going to relinquish power without a fight.
Remember, the political establishment is not just a bunch of politicians and civil servants whom you simply disagree with, it’s a deeply entrenched criminal syndicate, one with ties to shadowy international string-pullers and an unaccountable shadow-government of unelected individuals operating in the black-budget or “special access” space. These are individuals who do not want to see America succeed.
As many commentators in this space have suggested, the syndicate is like a cornered animal right now, and they may presently be at their most desperate and dangerous.
I can’t say what strategy is being prepared by the enemy, but there are no shortage of things worth writing about in the context of “moves and counter moves” in the election’s wake.
First, a headline at the Washington Times that I have trouble believing:
Does anyone believe for a second that Trump’s landslide victory caught anyone but maybe the hacks in the corporate media off guard?
You know the media got it wrong because of how they lashed out against the American people in the days following the race. But the spooks and operatives of intelligence and NGO world—what Mike Benz affectionately refers to as “the Blob”—had to have known what was coming, which means they’ve yet to show their hand.
People like Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, John Brennan—all of the usual deep-state operatives and strategists have been radio silent, but it would be foolish to mistake their silence for inactivity.
So what do we know so far?
1. Gathering of the Progressive Tribes
The WaPo opinion piece shown above sits behind a paywall; I would never do something so counterproductive as suggest that you donate your hard-earned dollars to a propaganda rag, but being a journalist who tries to stay abreast of the whole spectrum of political discourse, I’ve read the piece so that you don’t have to.
The Op Ed dovetails nicely with another, free article over at Fast Company titled, “Trump resistance begins with over 100 progressive groups gathering Thursday”:
The article lists a litany of organizations from NGO world—many are Soros surrogates—who are banding together to counteract the will of the American electorate by once again impeding a duly elected President:
In the lead-up to the election, the Working Families Party (WFP) had already joined with other sponsor organizations including MoveOn (which started as an emailed petition in 1998), Indivisible Project (which emerged from a Google doc in 2017), Public Citizen, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
They have aligned with more than 100 other groups, according to organizers, and with Democratic U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington. The organizers have already set a schedule for eight, roughly weekly “Mass Calls,” at 8-9 p.m. EST, starting on November 7.
So we have a gathering of the tribes right out of the gate.
They’re aptly being billed as “Resistance 2.0,” a sequel to the movement whipped up in the wake of Trump’s 2016 win. It’s basically NGO world, Hollywood and possibly even the State Department running a domestic color revolution against MAGA.
Those who’ve read my piece on NGO World, Charitable Devils: Philanthropy and the Deep State understand how this network of tax-exempt organizations acts as the deep establishment’s nervous system—the arms and legs, if you will—facilitating the will of the brain, which in the context of this elaborate metaphor would be what I often refer to as “the think tank class”; I’m talking about the Atlantic Council, Council on Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum, and similar deep state milieu.
Running a brief check on some of these progressive groups reveals some rather unsurprising connections. The Working Family Party (WFP) is filled with union personnel and has backed many prominent establishment politicians on the left, including Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo, Leticia James, etc.
During the 2024 election cycle, in commenting about a potential 2nd term for Former President Donald Trump, WFP national head Maurice Mitchell claims that activists were focused primarily on preventing Trump from winning reelection, but would also take actions to respond to a 2nd Trump term.
“A lot of folks are in the mind frame of, What can we learn from the past…How can we apply those lessons going forward? And how can we think through the various scenarios that might present themselves, and how might we leverage everything that we have?”
Another group mentioned is the The Indivisible Project (Indivisible), a left-of-center 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., and created in late 2016 as a response to the election of President Donald Trump.
Indivisible’s most prominent allies include the Democratic Socialists of America, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, the Working Families Party, Tides Foundation, among others.
Indivisible claims not to be a part of the Democratic Party establishment, but The Tides Foundation is a funding partner for the Indivisible Fund (now Indivisible Civics), the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of the organization.
Founded in 1976, the Tides Foundation is a pass-through organization and a pillar of the Left. Additionally, Angel Padilla, Indivisible Project’s policy director, previously worked as an analyst with the National Immigration Law Center (an organization funded by grants from Soros’ Open Society Foundations) and as an immigration policy consultant at UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza).
So you have these groups and others pledging to fight back against Trump, but when you attempt to ascertain what it is exactly that they feel so compelled to fight back against, they can only point to the now-comical Project 2025, an initiative penned by the spook-infested Heritage Foundation that has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump.
Reading between the lines, there is no specific policy that they feel morally compelled to fight against, they are just acting as establishment attack dogs against a populist candidate. Remember, populism must be crushed at all costs, the working class must never come together, and must remain perpetually siloed by their ethnicity and gender.
Rioting in the streets wasn’t nearly as effective as lawfare, and so I believe that this web of NGOs and their lawyers will be one of the primary vectors of attack against Trump 2.0.
2. Protect the King, Identify Enemy Commander
Of all the interactions I’ve listened to since the victory last Tuesday, I’ve found the call between General Flynn and the War Room to be among the most illuminating. I highly recommend listening to this exchange:
Flynn exclaims, “Job number one is for Trump to stay alive”, and obviously, considering that at least two assassination attempts have failed, this one is kind of a no-brainer. Ideally he’d hunker down at Mar-a-Lago and strategize, making as little public appearances as possible.
Flynn then identifies former CIA director-turned CNN commentator John Brennan as the “tactical commander,” which makes sense considering he’s among the most qualified liars and strategists on the deep political roster.
He also mentions Obama—and he’s mentioned Susan Rice as another shot caller in the Biden White House in previous interviews—but he also alludes to “some of these globalist characters”, which is likely an acknowledgment of the players in the international think tank class—the people who want to see America taken down a few pegs in the global pecking order.
3. Trump’s Senate Play
On Monday night, the usual talking heads were having a coordinated freak-out about Donald Trump’s plan to make the Senate recess and then push through appointments for his cabinet as soon as he gets in office.
There was the usual framing coming from spin doctors like Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow:
But it was MSNBC on Tuesday that asked the right question: “what kind of cabinet is Trump assembling?”
The answer, which should be obvious, is that Donald Trump is assembling a dream team cabinet of proven individuals to clean out the bureaucratic rot in the federal government and crush the Deep State.
People bemoan the lack of swamp drainage during Trump 1.0, but forget that they jammed him up at every stop, especially the most lamentable, shambling ghoul Mitch McConnell, who is hard at work trying to “strangle Mr. Trump’s Cabinet appointees in their cribs,” as Dr. Peter Navarro put it in a recent OpEd for the Washington Times.
So what you are seeing, despite assurances from the corporate media that this is some dictatorial play, is team Trump doing what needs to be done to be in a position to keep promises this time.
By the time this piece is published, some of these things will already be decided, the Senate republicans will convene tomorrow (Wednesday, the 13th) to elect a new Senate Majority Leader behind closed doors.
As per the Washington Times:
On Nov. 13, Senate Republicans will hide behind closed doors and elect a new majority leader. If current Republican leader Mitch McConnell has his way, he will saddle President-elect Donald Trump with one of two Never Trump, anti-tariff, open border Republicans in name only: John Cornyn of Texas or John Thune of South Dakota.
If either Mr. Cornyn or Mr. Thune is elected to be Mr. McConnell’s pope and Mr. Trump’s nemesis, the new Senate majority leader will strangle Mr. Trump’s Cabinet appointees in their cribs and set back implementation of the Trump agenda by months — an agenda endorsed by a landslide of the American people.
There is an easy two-part way out of what will otherwise be a catastrophic Senate Republican failure. Mr. Trump and Elon Musk have already called for it: The Senate must choose its new leader in open session. Any candidate for the post must pledge to hold at least a 30-day recess by the end of the first month of the new Trump administration.
An open ballot will guarantee that all senators who have pledged their support for Trump will vote for the candidate of Trump's choosing. They are unable to deceive MAGA when all information is publicly available, and there will be no backing down under pressure.
This will also allow Trump to put whomever he chooses into his administration without the roadblocks of either new Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer or the open border, amnesty-pushing, anti-tariff Senate Republican wing.
The Senate has the authority to confirm not only all 22 of Trump's Cabinet appointees, but also the hundreds of deputy secretaries and undersecretaries, many of the assistant and deputy undersecretary positions, and critical West Wing positions, including the head of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Council of Economic Advisers.
The Senate also has the power to confirm heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission, along with appointees to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and National Labor Relations Board. It can also confirm U.S. ambassadors to foreign countries and organizations, such as the United Nations.
But perhaps the most important things the Senate can confirm, given the current state of things in our country, are the heads of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, along with the director of national intelligence and director of the Secret Service. These institutions are perhaps the most important for the deep political establishment to retain control over.
UPDATE: Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) has been elected Senate majority leader, setting the stage for him to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Basically, Mitch McConnel, on the way out, is performing a rearguard action so that he can keep his dead, withered hand on a lever of power.
4. Appointments
The appointments thus far are an odd mix of duds and dynamite. Personally, I hope there is a method to the madness with some of these picks, but I’ll try to reserve my judgement for now.
At the time of this writing, I am aware of these appointments:
Matt Gaetz - Attorney General
Tulsi Gabbard - Director of National Intelligence
Marco Rubio - Secretary of State
Dan Scavino - Deputy Chief of Staff
James Blaire - Deputy Chief of Staff (Legislative/Political/Public)
Taylor Budowich - Deputy Chief of Staff (comms & personnel)
Stephen Miller - Homeland Security Adviser
Elon Musk - Department Of Government Efficiency
Vivek Ramaswamy - Department Of Government Efficiency
Pete Hegseth - Secretary of Defense
John Ratcliffe - CIA Director
William McGinley - White House Counsel
Mike Huckabee - Ambassador to Israel
Mike Waltz - National Security Advisor
Kristi Noem - Homeland Security Secretary
Lee Zeldin - Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Tom Homan - Border Czar
Elise Stefanik - UN Ambassador
Susie Wiles - Chief of Staff
A lot of these, I see as promising: Dan the man Scavino back where he belongs, Tulsi as DNI is very hopeful and Gaetz as AG is both hilarious and a great fit. Tom Homan is a good fit for Border Czar and Elon and Vivek heading D.O.G.E is hopeful as well.
Of course we have to have an Ambassador to Israel announced immediately because Israel is clearly more important than any other nation on the planet in the context of American politics.
Mike Huckabee, while I agree with him on many things, sounds like an unhinged religious fanatic when he speaks about Israel, and is clearly willing to give Israel the endless go-ahead that it’s so accustomed to from the United States, enabling some of the most grotesque crimes against humanity we’ve seen in this century at least.
Regarding Kristi Noem at DHS… all I can say is that I hope she executes the department in a gravel pit like her puppy Cricket because the DHS shouldn’t even exist in my humble opinion.
I try to push back against some of the things that are assumed in this community, not out of malice but because a devil’s advocate is always needed in any movement as the iron sharpens the iron.
I’ll start by playing devils advocate and then explain why I think some of these choices might not be as bad as they appear.
My initial reaction to Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth is not immediate joy, though I am willing to concede that there’s more going on behind some of what I see as the more problematic selections.
Marco Rubio: I don’t need to tell this community why I’m less than thrilled about this selection, but I’m going to just offer some clips and commentary regardless.
The hope is that Donald Trump is going to gut and reform the Security State and the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Naturally, a Rubio appointment to the State Department suggests that it’ll be the typical establishment foreign policy skullduggery we’re so accustomed to by puppet politicians with neoconservative tendencies.
Here’s a pretty damning clip.
I shouldn’t have to explain why putting somebody who actually believes that Russia blew up its own pipeline into the State Department is a less-than ideal choice.
A lot of people are stoked about Hegseth, and I’m trying to remain open minded. Here are some of the mental hurdles I’m trying to navigate.
Here we have Pete Hegseth, then the head of the pro-war lobbying group "Veterans for Freedom," appearing with George W. Bush at the White House to support Bush's plan to escalate and extend the Iraq War. It’s not damning in itself, but something to consider going forward.
In addition to that, he proclaimed his heartfelt belief that the Third Temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem. He also called for Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
With Trump in charge, Hegseth declared, Israel should "do what needs to be done." He’s either playing politics, or he’s just another mad zealot, and personally, those aren’t the types I want to see as defense secretary.
On the flip side, Hegseth is great on veterans and similar issues, and people in whom I place trust have said he’s the real deal. We’ll see.
So those are my personal concerns, however, there’s so many reasons why I don’t think they’ll be as catastrophic as some are want to believe. The big one is that Donald Trump is going to be the president, and I can’t imagine that he’ll allow “little Marco” to keep things business as usual at the State Department. This same logic applies to any of the appointees who’ve had neoconservative tendencies.
It could be another Boltonesque play to scare our enemies, as Rubio has basically advocated for U.S. involvement in just about every conflict that’s arisen since he entered politics. He could very well be canned, like Bolton, very publicly should he become too overtly Hawkish. The pick isn’t exciting like a Tulsi or a Gaetz but I’m willing to bet there’s a more strategic reason for the selection.
Maybe Trump just wanted him to vacate his Senate seat to get Lara Trump swapped in … something to consider.
Regarding Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, I love it. The frustrating part is how difficult it will be to get him appointed. There’s only one thing people should consider regarding the Rinos in congress who’ll vote against Gaetz; most of them voted for Merrick Garland. Anyone who votes against Gaetz who previously voted in favor of Garland cannot be trusted and need to be voted out of office.
I could go on and on about some of these selections, and maybe I will, but for now this piece is already too long and things are changing by the day.
Suffice to say, the real fight is only just beginning. The first battle was the White House, the current battle is assembling the right team and the next battle will be to get the job done. We are witnessing moves and counter moves, and even when things don’t quite make sense, there may well be method to the madness.
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A serious amount of work ahead. Thank you putting this info together so we don't have to scatter ourselves trying to keep up.
The more MSM is making noise about Trumps picks, the more I like them. Period!