Five days after the Helsinki summit I am inclined to believe that President Donald Trump either knows exactly what he is doing—that there is uncanny finesse and foresight behind his bluster—or else that he is guided by an almost unfailing intuition, with similar results.
Trump’s refusal to parrot the Intel-deepstaters’ “Russiagate” narrative at last Monday’s press conference is a case in point. That refusal was perfectly justified, on factual as well as political and moral grounds. No evidence of any kind exists to prove Russian meddling in 2016, or thereafter. It never will be found, because Podesta’s and DNC mails were leaked, not hacked. The Meddling Myth is simply a tool the Deep State has used since December 2016 to torpedo Trump’s attempt at détente with Moscow. Its operatives saw it, rightly, as a threat to the maintenance of the neolib-neocon system of full-spectrum global dominance. It was right and proper for Trump to refuse to grand credibility to this narrative
The establishment went berserk. The key author of the Russiagate Lie John Brennan accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors. Commentators, politicians and former officials mentioned treason, blackmail, KGB Kompromat. The reaction has been so utterly unhinged, in fact, that it may be yielding unexpected results. According to a major survey released this week, only 45 percent of respondents said outside influence from foreign governments is a major problem in American elections: 68% of Democrats see “interference” as a problem, as opposed to only 22% of Republicans and 40% independents.
In other words, Trump has solidified his base and his foes may have overplayed their hand, not for the first time. This has always been his focus, rather than the hopeless task of winning over self-described Democrats. Furthermore, over one-half of Americans do not accept the Trumpophobic narrative. They must be watching the ongoing, 24/7 hatefest by Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and other screamers with amusement, more likely annoyance. Now that the commentariat are routinely using the phrase “Trump has taken Putin’s word over that of our intelligence services” (an unsubtle attempt at suggesting that there is a collective “we” standing united here), it is to be expected that many hitherto skeptical minds will feel noxious at the thought that Messrs. Brennan, Comey, Strzok, the latter’s concubine, and their ilk, are indeed “ours” in any shape or form.
“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” Trump wrote on Twitter on July 19. “I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed.” Those things include terrorism, nuclear proliferation, trade, Ukraine, the Middle East, and North Korea. “The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia,” he went on, “even a confrontation that could lead to war.”
It is of course possible and desirable to make a fair and enduring deal with Russia on all of those issues. The biggest problem for Trump is not how to keep his supporters loyal amidst the onslaught of raw hate and insanity. It is how to ensure that his own bureaucratic machine will follow and apply his vision, regardless of what Putin and he agreed in Helsinki last Monday or may yet agree in Washington next fall. The problem is that a chronically disloyal civil service apparatus—especially at the Department of State—actually subscribes to the Weltanschauung of Trump’s haters and detractors.
We have seen coups of sorts in Washington before, not that anyone one calls them that (remember JFK, Nixon). The one against Trump is of a different order of magnitude. It had been plotted by the Deep State even before he was inaugurated. Significant power nodes had always refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of this presidency, and after Helsinki they remain relentless, with the regime media machine in the vanguard.
This is without precedent here, but Deep State perpetrators did it with their regime-change operations elsewhere, and they worked. Now they are trying it at home. Robert Mueller is out to get Trump, probably on some sort of money-laundering rap having nothing to do with “Russian meddling.” The only way to defeat this coup, as I wrote in Chronicles over a year ago, is to proceed with shock and awe. Trump needs to keep changing the narrative on his enemies so as to keep them off balance. Doubling down on his populist domestic and foreign policy must be part of the countercoup, Russia included. Most self-described Republicans support Trump’s declared desire for constructive relations with Russia. This is a potentially winning policy, but he has to brave the hysteria as he well knows how to do, and go about reestablishing dominance over the national debate.
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