China, Russia and North Korea have their “Trojan Horse”: President Donald Trump. They know they have Trump like the horse with a bottle of water strapped to his back just out of reach in front of his eyes.
It could be a quest for a Nobel Peace Prize, some family benefits from China investments, playacting like a communist autocrat or a phony trade war.
The supposed trade war with China is typical bilateral playacting. China offers promises of trade in exchange for dropping investment restrictions in the U.S. and not blocking their obvious stealth cyber warfare tool companies.
Trump is now frantic to help the Chinese tech giant ZTE that purposefully violated North Korea and Iran sanctions. Trump blubbering that ZTE, a company declared by intelligence agencies as a direct military cyber threat to America, needs to get “back into business fast,” “too many jobs in China lost,” as a “favor” (his words) to a Communist dictator.
Or, follow the money. The Trump family has interests in an Indonesian project that just lately got major Chinese investment as Trump talks trade.
The Chinese have also recently increased their U.S. debt holdings again. There’s lots of new debt available because of massive increases forced by the GOP tax bill.
As Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi’s demise shows, if you give up credible threats of the bomb, you get killed. Trump has promised Kim that won’t happen, and North Korea will become rich. That’s because Trump is so believable?
This seems like the 1959 Peter Seller’s comedy “The Mouse that Roared.” The last thing North Korea is ever actually going to do is fire a few nukes at America.
First, the Chinese simply won’t allow it. North Korea knows the U.S. would be allowed to retaliate to keep the Chinese and Russian world economic engines going if it came to that.
China, Russia and North Korea have their man in D.C. They “own” Trump, and the GOP. Just like the Koch Brothers, the Mercers, Adelson and Thiel own Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruitt, Office of Management and Budget Debt Maker Mick Mulvaney, Speaker Paul Ryan, and the GOP.
I have to give Senate President Mitch McConnell much more grudging credit — he has a consistent focused ruthless plan worthy of Sun Tzu (The Art of War).
Pack the courts, change the rules on the fly, make the rich richer, kill the poor with no access to affordable health care, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct until you get what you want. Works best when you have mostly spineless members as a majority.
But Chuck Schumer will rightfully and correctly point to the only important fact that counts — you have to be in the majority to make any real progress.
Black voter turnout declined 7 percent from the second Obama term. Bernie Sanders and Trump both know that the poor, even when they can, don’t vote much. Minority and progressive groups bicker among themselves because “their” splinter group really needs to be in charge. While James Comey rewrites selective parts of history citing his superior morality.
Stay divided and lose.
Trump sees all of America as just another Trump company. He won, he owns it. Politicians, with the aid of the ideological packed U.S. Supreme Political Court, are little more than “clerks and delivery boys” for corporations.
Trump’s swamp creature presidency is turning out to be a fairly accurate reenactment sequel of the “The Godfather,” complete with consigliaries such as Michael Cohen who round up pay-to-play payments from corporations.
Anyone with a single ounce of financial or economic knowledge knows that the good economy of 2017 and 2018 has little to nothing to do with Trump or the GOP. It took almost a decade to rebuild it. And if it’s so good, why is the national debt set to explode?
With the complete lack of basic details on the Alaska-China LNG “deal,” you can probably guess who will get the net profit (Chinese &American energy firms) and who will likely get to take the financing risk (Alaska and it’s Permanent Fund), like the state borrowing billions to pay industry tax credits. Best yet, the Chinese will gain direct access to the U.S. energy cyber system.
What were the sacrifices of our military for if we are only going to invite the fox into the fold?
• Anselm Staack, is registered non-affiliated voter, a CPA and an attorney who has been an Alaska resident for over 43 years. He was the treasury comptroller for Alaska under Gov. Jay Hammond and worked directly on the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. He lives in Juneau.
