The 2016 GOP nominee for U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to #draintheswamp. But does he mean it? Not if his suggestions for U.S. Cabinet secretaries and White House senior staff are any indication.
The welfare billionaire has tapped retired Army lieutenant general Michael T. Flynn for national security advisor. Gen. Michael Flynn served as President Barack Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (2012-2014), where he opted to grow the agency, use it for violations of civil liberties, and wanted more war in the Middle East, agreeing with much of Obama's foreign policy.
Gen. Flynn, a "lifelong Democrat," also served in other intelligence positions under Obama, such as two years as intelligence director for several organizations.
Before his intelligence posts, the general now-famous for heading Trump's foreign policy team served in the invasions of Grenada, Haiti, and the Middle East. After serving in the latest Bush war he was appointed by then-president George W. Bush for intelligence posts.
Not to mention Flynn's Clinton Foundation-like baggage. He's a big-government lobbyist like Trump has been the last decade. His consulting and lobbying firm, the Flynn Intel Group, has foreign clients, including world leaders. He continued in this position even after receiving intelligence briefings during the campaign.
Liberals, like neocons, love Flynn. Not until 2015 have liberals shown real opposition to him, and their criticism is about his rhetoric, not about his Clinton-like policy.
The Hollywood entertainer has tapped U.S. senator Jeff Sessions to be U.S. attorney general. The senator from Alabama was the first sitting member of the senate to endorse Trump in the primary.
Being a decade-long senator, Sessions serves on two power committees - the Armed Services and Budget committees (and is chair of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces) - and is on the Environment and Public Works and Judiciary committees (chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest).
His voting record reveals he loves war, taxes, violations of civil liberties, gun control, government involvement in social issues, government regulation, the drug war, etc.
Before his time in Congress, he was appointed by then-president Ronald Reagan to be a U.S. attorney, where his record, revealed in a failed judgeship confirmation hearing, is rife with blatant racism against blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, and immigrants of all races. From prosecuting civil rights activists to advocating laws against even legal immigration, it is said by Politico that Sessions inspired Trump's immigration views.
His record as attorney general of Alabama is minuscule since he abandoned the office halfway through it to run for senate.
Trump, a big donor to the Clinton Foundation, has picked congressman from Kansas since 2010 Michael R. Pompeo for director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Rep. Mike Pompeo got elected to Congress during the tea party movement, from the big-government wing of it. He serves on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the House Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.
His voting record is riddled with violations of civil liberties, from NSA spying to torturing indefinite detainees, the PATRIOT Act, more funding for a bloated military, taxes, government involvement in social issues, etc.
Before being elected, he earned a law degree from Harvard, was a lawyer for prominent law firm Williams & Connolly, the founder of a space tech company Thayer Aerospace, and the president of an oilfield equipment company Sentry International.
Chosen to be Trump's White House chief of staff, a position so powerful it has been called the "co-president," is RNC chairman Reince Priebus. An establishment insider who helped senators Marco Rubio and Kelly Ayotte, congressmen Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann, and governors Sarah Palin and Rick Perry co-opt the tea party movement, Priebus is anything but populist.
The RNC chairman broke the GOP by-laws to change them when he told Ron Paul delegates to vote for the progressive Mitt Romney. He even had a hand in manipulating the times and locations of caucuses in the 2012 primary election.
It should also be noted he never could win a race himself.
The following are highly-touted rumors. Every political news outlet, from Politico to the Washington Post, are following these rumors intimately.
For state secretary, Trump is rumored to have offered the position to self-described progressive governor and failed 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. As governor of blue state Massachusetts Romney grew government and debt, even raised taxes, enacted gun control and the state equivalent of the ACA (a.k.a., Obamacare), and appointed liberal judges. His foreign policy views are pretty close to Clinton's, to boot.
Former Democrat and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (famously outed for being ignorant about 9/11 and foreign policy in the 2008 election) who has Clinton-like foreign policy connections via his firm, Giuliani Partners, not to mention his speeches paid for by suspected terrorists, is on the short list.
There is also Richard Haas, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who in the 2016 election called both Clinton and Trump "foreign policy realist(s)." His diplomatic career is rife with establishment ties, such as working in the Carter and H.W. Bush White Houses, with Democrat-Republican-Democrat Colin Powell, and a Bush ambassador who helped the U.K. with Northern Ireland. In a 2015 interview, he called non-interventionist foreign policy a mistake.
Senator Bob Corker is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has been a senator from the Republican Party for the last decade. His sadist, enthusiastic support for war aside, his voting record is riddled with liberal, anti-constitutional votes, including gun control.
Finally, there is the famous neocon U.N. ambassador John Bolton, who has called for more war for years (more war always means growth in government, violations of the constitution, and debt accompanied with either more taxes or more borrowing). He has held many positions in think tanks and political campaigns clamoring for war and government, including the cronyist American Enterprise Institute and the progressive governor Mitt Romney.
For treasury secretary, the Wall Street lobbyist has touted big-business cronyists like Henry Kravis, Jamie Dimon, and Steven Mnuchin.
Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan Chase CEO since 2005, is a Democrat and former board director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Formerly of Goldman Sachs and earning the MBA from Harvard, Dimon is another New York liberal who earned his billions by manipulating the economy at the expense of the people - such as with TARP.
Dimon worked at the Fed bank that Timothy Geithner was the president of before President Obama tapped him for treasury secretary. According to the Associated Press, Dimon was one of few allies to kept close ties to Geithner, a staunch Democrat.
Steven Mnuchin, a Yale graduate from a prominent liberal banking family, amassed his own wealth being a veteran of the Goldman Sachs bank. Among his schemes was manipulating mortgage loans via a financial institution he had ties to, CIT Group.
It should be noted Mnuchin is a film producer. Making Trump not the only entertainer in this show.
Henry Kravis, who got his MBA from Columbia, worked for financial institution Bear Sterns before it was bought out by JPMorgan Chase during the 2008 financial crisis. On top of other Wall Street positions, Kravis is a trustee of the pro-Clinton CFR, vice chair of Rockefeller University, and a big donor for GOP liberals, like senator and 2008 GOP nominee for president John McCain.
Carl Icahn, a well-known corporate raider on Wall Street, has led many hostile takeovers since the 1980s, and a stock broker since the 1960s. He owns business interests in technology, energy, entertainment, financial institutions, real estate, equine, and political lobbying, among others.
For defense secretary, Trump has a slew of pro-war generals and advisors with love/hate relationships with Clinton. Such as generals James Mattis, Jack Keane, and Keith Kellogg, senators Jim Talent and Tom Cotton, Clinton CIA director Jim Woolsey, and W. Bush national security advisor Stephen Hadley.
Marine Corps four-star general James Mattis, nicknamed the Mad Dog, served for forty-four years in the U.S. armed forces. He held command roles during the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.
Notably he was the commander of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, where he made his "fun to shoot some people" comments, the Unified Combatant Command force Joint Forces Command, NATO's Allied Command Transformation, and when being considered for the Commandant of the Marine Corps post (the statutory member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Obama appointed him to be the combatant commander of U.S. Central Command.
Since retirement, General Mattis is a speaker for FWA Consultants, a fellow of the pro-establishment Hoover Institution, and a board member of the defense contractor benefiting from the wars called General Dynamics and of the biotech company with a conflict of interest with the Defense Department called Theranos.
Army four-star general Jack Keane served for thirty-seven years. He held several different division commands, a corps command, and was a Vietnam veteran. He even held the position of vice chief of staff of the Army.
Since retirement, General Keane has been a member of the federal Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (among other establishment insiders on the committee is Henry Kissinger), wrote a policy paper encouraging putting more U.S. troops at risk through the pro-establishment American Enterprise Institute, consultant for the conflicted-of-interest private-public military Academi, a lobbyist and executive chair of defense contractor AM General, and a board member of the fore-mentioned General Dynamics.
Army three-star general Keith Kellogg served for thirty-two years. He held command roles from the Panama Invasion to the Iraq War.
He has held a number of leadership roles at Fort Bragg and in the 82nd Airborne Division. He has worn several director hats for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Him and his Army officer wife are veterans of the Grenada Invasion.
Since retirement, General Kellogg serves as vice president of Strategic Initiatives at Cubic Corporation and has been involved in several regime changes, especially with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and been intimately involved with several pro-establishment, government-connected firms, such as intelligence consulting firm CACI, Ground Combat Programs at Cubic Defense Applications, Inc., Homeland Security Solutions of Oracle Corp., Raytheon Trusted Computer Solutions, Inc., GTSI Corp, Analex Corporation, and RedXDefense, LLC.
Former U.S. senator Jim Talent, Republican from Missouri, served from 2002 to 2007 after winning a special election but losing his re-election bid. He served on the senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and Energy and Natural Resources committees, and the Special Committee on Aging.
He served eight years in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2001, defeating a cousin of H.W. Bush's in 1992 but refused to run in the 2000 election, opting for an eventually-failed bid for governor. He chaired the Small Business Committee for four years.
In 2001 he was a D.C. lobbyist for the liberal lobbying group and law firm Arent Fox. His senate campaign was heavily funded by establishment lobby groups and law firms, such as Preston Gates & Ellis, and GOP establishment PACs. And his voting record is rife with both neocon and liberal votes.
Sitting U.S. senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas, has served since 2015, at age 39 being the youngest current senator. He serves on the Armed Services and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committees, chairing the former's Subcommittee on Airland, and Special Committee on Aging, Select Committee on Intelligence, and Joint Economic Committee.
He served a term in the U.S. House from 2013 to 2015, being backed by the establishment neocon and moderate Senator John McCain. He served on the Financial Services and Foreign Affairs committees.
His tenure in Congress is mired in being extremely anti-immigration and staunchly pro-war. Cotton is famously opposed to Iran, even advocating war. He has said his influences are neocon hawks Walter Russell Mead, Robert D. Kaplan, and even Henry Kissinger.
The man who served as director of the CIA under Bill Clinton and undersecretary of the Navy under Jimmy Carter, both for two years each, Jim Woolsey Jr., is also being considered by Trump.
In the 1960s he was an antiwar activist when it came to Vietnam, but a war hawk against "global communism." He worked as a lawyer for a prominent law firm, Shea & Gardner, and for the government during wartime. He has been an advisor to many military groups and missions under the Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations.
Known as a neocon Democrat, he advised both Trump and Clinton during the 2016 election. He is also involved in many pro-war groups, such as being the chair of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the advisory board at Opportunities Development Group (ODG), and formerly of the Freedom House board of trustees; a board member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, the Set America Free Coalition, the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor, the European-based Global Panel Foundation, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Fuel Freedom Foundation, and formerly on the Rumsfeld Commission; and co-founded the United States Energy Security Council; and the senior vice president of the pro-establishment defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton for Global Strategic Security, a patron of the Democratic Henry Jackson Society, a partner of VantagePoint Venture Partners and of Lux Capital, and an energy advisor for McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
He also serves as chancellor of the Institute of World Politics and the independent non-executive director of Imperial Pacific.
The neocon who served as national security advisor under George W. Bush and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under George H.W. Bush, Stephen Hadley, was a culprit in the Iran-Contra affair under one of his posts under Ronald Reagan.
He served for five years as senior adviser for international affairs at the pro-war United States Institute of Peace before becoming its chair. Hadley is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the pro-establishment defense contractor Raytheon, the Defense Policy Board, the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, the National Security Advisory Panel to the Director of Central Intelligence, the board of trustees of Analytical Services (ANSER), and formerly a pro-nuclear war member of the National Institute for Public Policy; and a co-founder of the RiceHadley Gates LLC consulting group with other neocons, that engages in pro-war activism and growing government.
If actions speak louder than words then Trump is going to be more of the same. His short lists for cabinet and cabinet-level secretaries and other appointments are full of neocons, liberals, and moderates. His economic and foreign policy choices are similarly aligned to the likewise views of Hillary Clinton.
