My last article attempted to stay grounded in reality regarding the need to keep in check any expectation the Trump presidency will be any different from previous administrations, knowing whomever occupies the White House is simply the elite’s figurehead puppet choice. Based on the rhetoric expressed in his inaugural address, the article title alone claiming “Trump has declared war on the ruling elite” already appears to be way off base from the actual truth. Less than a week into office and the real Donald Trump presidency has already reared enough of its ugly head to see that his “vison” for America is soon likely to be every citizen’s nightmare.
No surprise really, as alluded to previously, this honeymoon phenomenon of excessive expectation and wishful thinking fantasy surrounding each new president as he takes office is a longstanding yet always short lived pattern. Switching back and forth from one antithetical selection after the next, the opposite of George Bush was Barack Obama. Now the opposite of Barack Obama is Donald Trump. Here we go again. Different face and party, same policy. The elitist, divide and conquer rulers wouldn’t have it any other way.
This presentation will dissect actions already taken in Trump’s first week as president that should give all of us citizens grave concern.
Torture and “Rendition”
A year ago Donald Trump the presidential candidate made no bones about it, he wants to torture people, specifically Muslims in the so called war on terror. As the future president he promised he would bring back waterboarding “and much worse.” On Wednesday this week Trump the president revisited his plan, confidently repeating his assertion, “Absolutely I feel it [waterboarding] works.” All those illegal CIA “black sites” around the globe and illegal “rendition” of enhanced interrogation techniques that the infamous Cheney-Bush regime and CIA insisted were not torture… the same torture practices that Obama secretly continued despite his signed executive order in 2009 making it officially illegal. Now President Trump once again is emphatic, insisting that waterboarding and torture “work” when the bottom line is they don’t. And that’s from honest insiders from the US intelligence community who have gone on record stating that little to no benefits were ever gained from those methods.
Within an hour of Trump sounding off on torture, even war hawk senator and former POW John McCain stated that the anti-torture law reaffirmed in this year’s NDAA and supported he said by both Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis are not in favor of torture. Trump had earlier stated that if Pompeo and Mattis are against torture, Trump would yield to their decision.
Virtually every human being as a victim of torture, having endured the most egregious levels of suffering and pain, ultimately forces them to willingly say or sign anything that gives them hope or reason to think the torture might cease. And whatever comes out of torture rarely if ever translates into concretely usable, accurate information that saves lives or exceeds the consequential costs of such evildoing. And that’s not even considering the ethical and moral issues of just how inhumane and brutal these sick, perversely sinister practices are. Plus, if Trump’s totally okay with black site torture around the globe, what will stop him from taking it to the next level, justifying it against Americans deemed enemies of the state inside black sites on US soil. With authoritarian tyranny and abuse already skyrocketed in America, who knows, aby of us could be next.
First Amendment Rights
That segues right into the next Trump approved action as brand new president. During the weekend demonstrations in Washington, Americans exercising their First Amendment rights of assembly and protest included two journalists attempting to do their jobs at providing a free press were also rounded up, arrested and slapped with felony riot charges carrying a sentence of up to ten years in prison. It’s uncertain if the actual violent rioters are among the 230 adults detained on felony charges.
This is outrageous and only proves that Trump is already violating our constitutional rights even worse than the Obama-Bush regime. Allowing this to happen on his very first day in office makes him a liar, unwilling to honor and uphold the Constitution he swore just hours earlier to defend. His thin-skinned, reactionary venom against anyone he perceives to either disagree or criticize him confirms accusations from a large segment of the American population who believe he will be a fascist dictator. In this case, he’s already showing his true colors.
Speaking of another serious constitutional violation, without setting up a completely blind trust after selling off and divesting all his assets in order to comply with the constitutional provision designed to eliminate conflict of interest, Trump is headed for a legal showdown. Having only resigned and turned his businesses over to his two sons and a manager, the president remains in violation of the Constitution.
Though it seems Trump may be justifiably at war with the mainstream media for its outlandish lies and venomous hatred directed towards him throughout his candidacy and now first week as president, Trump’s thin-skinned insecurities have him constantly paying way too much attention to his bad press and obsessing with get-even, tit for tat tweets at all hours of the day and night. His war with the media does not bode well for him, a free press or America. His increasingly hostile relationship with the press benefits no one.
Granted, it’s a two-way street but for Trump’s presidency to be successful, he needs to at least cultivate a semi-civil, working relationship with the media. The squabble over the weekend about Time falsely reporting the MLK bust disappearing from the Oval Office, then came the debate over inauguration crowd size, and now MSM’s tit-for-tat accusing Trump of lying about 3 or 4 million illegal alien votes against him. When Obama lied through his teeth virtually every time he opened his mouth, rather than the media jumping all over him or even serving its due function diligence as a free and accurate press to challenge and confront him, MSM responded no different from thepropaganda ministry of the Third Reich. Right up to the Trump presidency, the political machine had the federal government and mainstream media melded into one co-opted, highly corrupt web of entangled deceit, with neither serving the people’s interest at all.
Fake News
Clearly the fake stream news needs to clean up its act and start reporting the truth or Trump has every right to bar so called elite media from his press conferences. In fact, MSM’s over-the-top unfairness towards Trump helped sway a number of voters into supporting him. As a result, the big boys have far less credibility nowadays with both Trump and the American people. Thus, a growing presence of alternative media journalists will be receiving more access to this president than some conventional mainstream journalists.
But back to effective leadership, Trump must learn not to be so combative towards those who may disagree or oppose him. His combative, kill or be killed mentality and style as an aggressive, win-at-all-cost businessman and dealmaker does not make for a good leader of a world superpower. His brash, uncompromising, impulsive nature and approach to dealing with others in general will only further polarize and divide both our nation and world, causing more conflict and instability that again cast an ever-darkening shadow on our future rather than a bright, peaceful, prosperous America and world. Keep in mind the NWO agenda. Trump may well have been selected as the globalist tool in America’s highly polarized pressure cooker to act and react as a global destabilizer. In that given role, the Donald may be their perfect actor, whether he even knows it or not.
The Banning of Muslims From entering the US
Trump’s banning of all Muslims in Islamic majority nations from entering the United States is wrong on so many levels. Again, it’s reprehensible on moral as well as pragmatic grounds. It goes against all principles American and represents a resurgence of ugly dark pages in America’s racist past – the longstanding shameful exclusionary laws prohibiting all Chinese from legally entering America from 1882 to 1943. By far Trump’s biggest criticism is that he is a racist and such extreme reactionary measures as not permitting Muslims into the US carries woeful consequences not only for Americans on US soil but Americans in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s one thing to enforce existing immigration laws and vetting all arrivals to America for national security purposes, but it’s entirely another to make a sweeping discriminatory practice of excluding all Muslims from all the war ravaged nations where the US has illegally bombed and murdered four million Muslims. 1.7 billion Muslims worldwide have been egregiously misused as Washington’s scapegoats the entire twenty-first century and Trump as president is only making it worse in his first few days in office.
The Wall
One related promise Trump is quick to make good on is the dubious wrong kind – a wall along the border with Mexico. If anything, it will reinforce the common if not accurate perception that Trump’s a racist. No doubt he will only alienate himself from the near 57 million (or near 18%) of his fellow Americans of not just Hispanic or Latino descent but only polarize race relations in this country even further than they’ve already been strained under the divider Obama. Secondly, it most definitely will not benefit America’s relationship with its southern neighbor or entire Latin America. Enforcing existing immigration laws and beefing up the Border Patrol without Obama and Homeland Security’s notorious stand down order would go far in cutting off the flow of illegal aliens. Charging already strapped American taxpayers for this bad idea to begin with is not the answer. And believing that Trump will extort the cost from Mexico at a later date is neither realistic nor constructive.
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and Keystone XL
Trump signed two executive orders on Tuesday that override last month’s US Army Corps of Engineers calling for more research on the environmental impact of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), reversing the protesters short lived moral victory. This comes after a day after massive oil spill at the Canadian tar sands in an indigenous community. Apparently contaminating the water supply and health of indigenous peoples isn’t worth the up to $1 million Trump already invested in DAPL. Like all elite rulers, he’d rather rape and pillage both America (especially aboriginal populations) and the earth much to the delight of the Exxons and Shells of the world. In November 2015 Obama finally rejected the Keystone XL pipeline out of Canada but now Trump overturned it in his very first week in office. So under President Trump it’s for full speed ahead with more environmental disasters on the way.
The giveaway in knowing President Trump would not be good for our heath and earthly environment was his selection of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State. With his foreign relations head from the world’s largest oil company, and now signing the two controversial pipeline agreements, it’s be damned with any ethical or environmental consequence. Trump has every intention of exploiting every last drop of gas, oil, precious metal and natural resource in both America and around the world. Trump has already advocated abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency (not that it did any good cleaning up, stopping or slowing the tide of poisoning our air, water and soil). His administration is a total victory for the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries, both being bedrocks of raw elite power at its worst. Billionaire Donald Trump becoming president brings to the fore the most nefarious aspect of our reality – a handful of elitists will profit from continued raping and pillaging of our most valuable resources all at humanity’s expense.
As a side note, according to Alex Jones ,Trump’s aware of the detrimental impact that aerosol geoengineering has on human health. But don’t expect him to change the elite’s daily dose regimen raining heavy toxic metals down on us saturating our soil, food chain, lungs and brains. That diabolical program comes from the very top of the power food chain and Trump the figurehead is powerless even if he wanted to stop it. To billionaires, human health has never been much of a priority over literally making a profitable killing. And chronic disease is very lucrative.
The Wealthiest Cabinet in American History
Surrounding himself with the wealthiest cabinet in American history (7 members are worth a total of $11.5 billion), if Trump is to be taken seriously as an anti-elitist, his recent moves aren’t the least bit reassuring to working class America. Comprised of so many former Goldman Sachs executives, five in all, it lends Trump little credibility to the notion that he is really looking out for the little guy. Wall Street’s largest bank, known for putting profits over people, speaks volumes. As a supposed populist, Trump won the presidency because he convinced enough American voters that he will champion the forgotten and forsaken working class. So what does the multi-billionaire president-elect do? He draws from his fellow class of billionaires to fill his innermost circle of his most influential policymakers to begin making decisions that most directly enhance the transnational corporate elite – not the everyday people he says he represents. One of his key proposals – tax cuts for the wealthy, has proven only favorable to the wealthiest class as we learned long ago from Reagan’s trickle-down economics that never works in the real world, where the rich get richer and the poor always poorer.
Trump’s campaign promise to better the lives of all Americans appears thus far at this albeit early stage to be nothing more than empty words. So far the only sure thing is the corporate elite from big oil, central banks and military industrial complex stand to gain the most from his presidency. And that reality is just the opposite of the rhetoric that got him elected. Another fact, he’s bringing a boon to Wall Street and the stock market with Dow breaking 20,000 for the first time, all that hoopla does nothing for the downtrodden America he spoke of in his inaugural address. Instead of making good on his alleged “war against the ruling elite,” based on his choice of both economic policymakers and policy proposals, all signs indicate he’s making love rather than war to only the richest 1% of Americans, and neither enriching the lives of the rural or urban poor that he promised to uplift. Unless he pulls some unforeseen magical rabbit out of his hat, he’s destined to be just like all the rest of the broken promise liars before him.
Anti-Abortion Bill
President Trump signed an executive order banning foreign aid to all family planning organizations that provide counseling and referral services for abortions. He is also on board eager to soon sign a just passed antiabortion House bill, permanently barring federal funds for abortion to poor women. It also prohibits abortion coverage under the Affordable Care Act. And with a Supreme Court opening after the suspicious death of Judge Antonin Scalia last year, as early as next week Trump will appoint an antiabortion judge committed repealing Roe vs. Wade. With Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, the 1973 landmark decision may soon be doomed, outlawing abortion and sending our nation back to illegal back alley butcher houses, placing many women’s lives at serious and deadly risk.
All this in less than a week, President Trump is making an indelible, lasting imprint and splash on where our nation is treacherously heading. And it doesn’t look good for the home team of struggling Americans victimized by the ruling elite. If anything, with one of their own in power who prides himself as a doer and less a thinker, it appears that yet again it’s a win-lose proposition, always a win for the ruling elite, and always a loss for the people Trump swore he’d uplift. There is no Santa Claus. I dare the Donald to prove me wrong.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.
