Darren Weeks

Douma Danger: Is Trump Growing Weary of ‘Deep State’ Dictation?

Trump-mic PixabayDarren Weeks
Coalition to Govern America
April 9, 2018

 

As the news breaks that President Trump is planning swift action against Syria over the alleged chemical weapons attack at Douma, it would seem that the Deep State swamp is firmly in control of the White House. But the fact that the attack took place at all, could be a sign that Trump's handlers are struggling to maintain control.

This writer is skeptical of chemical weapons attack claims, given the past claims of similar attacks by war-hungry neocons and their lapdogs in the media that have used them to villainize their targets. A case in point is the repeated claim that Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds. Despite dubious evidence, the Halabja incident was used to villainize the Iraqi leader, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion and subsequent overthrow of his regime. Similar claims were lodged at Syria's Bashar al-Assad regarding the Ghouta chemical attack in 2013, which were equally dubious. Demonization of Assad by the Obama administration led to a desperate call for calm by Vladamir Putin in the New York Times on September 11, 2013, where he submitted,

 

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

 

Could this be what happened in the latest gassing incident? This latest chapter is highly suspicous, given that it comes just after Trump announced plans to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Syria "very soon", after reportedly musing about it for weeks. Before the latest incident, Trump had also froze some $200 million in recovery aid for Syria. A March 30th Reuters report was headlined, Trump tells advisors he wants U.S. out of Syria, says (underscore added):

 

President Donald Trump has told advisers he wants an early exit of U.S. troops from Syria, two senior administration officials said on Friday, a stance that may put him at odds with U.S. military officials who see the fight against Islamic State as nowhere near complete.

A National Security Council meeting is set for early next week to discuss the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Syria, according to U.S. officials familiar with the plan.

Two other administration officials confirmed a Wall Street Journal report on Friday that said Trump had ordered the State Department to freeze more than $200 million in funds for recovery efforts in Syria while his administration reassesses Washington’s role in the conflict there.

 

Following Trump's announcement, the blood-thirsty Establishment media buzzed with outrage over Trump's stated intent to end U.S. involvement in Syria. War mongering neocon senator, John McCain, accused Trump of embolding Assad by announcing the troop pullout. This is laughable. What would Assad have to gain from gassing his civilians, just as the United States is about to leave?

Contrarily, it would make perfect sense that the war-hungry neocons and the Deep State intelligentsia would have everything to gain by staging an event that can be used to blame Assad to thwart Trump's plans for a troop withdrawal. To be clear, I am not saying that is what happened; no one yet knows what really happened. But, why the rush to judgement? It has the smell of being the latest in a series of efforts by the Deep State to push the United States into war.

Like many, I have long been trying to reconcile some of the things Candidate Donald Trump ran on, with the actions that President Donald Trump has been taking. It would be easy to dismiss the disconnect between the two as just another lying politician, saying one thing, then doing another. However, there have been clues, along the way, that Donald Trump is, at times at least, attempting to do good things.

For those who have been both pleased and disappointed in the president at different times, a very revealing article was published today by the Associated Press. Titled, To hell with it: Trump increasingly weary of staff advice, it gives this observer some hope. It starts off with a story about how Trump's staffers (handlers?) carefully prepared remarks for him, only for him to reject them, saying that they were boring. Then it picks up from there (underscoring added):

 

This president has never been one to stick to a script, but that abandoned speech illustrates a new phase in Trump’s presidency. He is increasingly at odds with his staff — and growing wise to their tactics.

One favored staff strategy: Guide the president to the right decision by making the conventional choice seem like the only realistic option. Except now, 14 months into his administration, Trump is on to them, and he’s making clear he won’t be boxed in.

That was the message that an irritated Trump delivered to his national security team last week in a classified meeting about U.S. involvement in Syria.

Trump’s advisers, among them Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, were advocating for an ongoing U.S. military presence to provide stability. They aimed to rely on the same playbook they used last year in persuading Trump to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely. They would paint a dire picture of a pullout, of regional chaos benefiting Russia and Iran, and the potential resurgence of the Islamic State group.

But even before they could begin their pitch in that meeting Tuesday, Trump headed them off, saying he wanted to remove U.S. troops immediately. The ensuing heated argument put new distance between the president and his team and left the military with a mandate, if not a formal order, to remove U.S. troops from Syria within six months.

 

The AP writers cite ten unnamed "sources" for the piece and, while I don't like unnamed sources, I can understand their use in this context. With that caveat, if the article is true, it would serve to confirm what we've long suspected: that Trump is being pressured by his "Deep State" handlers, who are attempting to tell him what to do, even against the well-being of the country and against the mandate upon which he was elected. The hopeful part is that it sounds like he isn't too keen on quiet compliance. It sounds as if Trump may not be just blindly listening to the neocons and the intelligence Establishment trolls around him and doing whatever they say.

Note the phraseology they choose to describe a man who is supposed to be the most-powerful man in the world; he is being "managed". It also alludes to the notion that Trump's mistrust in his handlers is causing him to seek counsel outside of the sphere of their influence.

 

Managing a boss who despises being managed is a difficult game. And those who have succeeded have proceeded carefully. Some aides, convinced that Trump puts more stock in what he sees on TV than in his own aides’ advice, regularly phone prominent commentators and news hosts to provide talking points on everything from tax policy to Syria in hopes of influencing Trump. Similar strategies have also been embraced by foreign governments and outside groups trying to sway the president’s thinking.

Stall tactics were favored by Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus. He often told Trump that staffers needed more time to work on a proposal or that it would be better put off until the next week, hoping Trump would change his mind or forget.

Indeed, as Trump considered the impact of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and on some imports from China, his free-trade-supporting aides hoped they could wait him out.

But Trump, fed up with aides who were pleading for more time on tariffs, blew up.

In the chaotic aftermath of Porter’s departure, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and hawkish trade adviser Peter Navarro encouraged Trump to take protectionist action. Aides including Treasury Steve Mnuchin and then-National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, whose actions some aides compared to “hiding the ball,” were suddenly left scrambling to devise a rear-guard action. Cohn resigned days later when it became clear that tariffs were imminent.

 

We hear repeatedly in the media about a "White House in chaos". These claims appear to be thinly-veiled attempts at making Mr. Trump to appear crazy, unstable, and mentally unhinged. But if the White House is really in chaos, the turmoil is undoubtedly being driven by the people around the president who are bent on keeping him from making the necessary decisions he was elected by the people to make.

It is a ray of hope to discover that Mr. Trump may be having doubts about the quality of the information and advice he's being given by those around him. With the likes of the bloodthirsty characters he's placed in charge, such as Nikki Haley, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and "Bloody" Gina Haspel, just to name a few, he has good reason to be worried. The globalists will do anything to rescue their faltering world order. Starting the next world war appears to be at the forefront of their agenda. The only question that remains is, will Donald Trump fall for it?

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