Understanding the Trump Ascendancy
As I have lain stricken in hospital and now recovering at home, I have been listening to a number of podcasts and reading many different articles about Donald Trump’s extraordinary victory in the US presidential race. Trump’s storied history over the last ten years may be Kabuki Theatre but it certainly is entertaining. Given the various forces that lie behind presidential politics, it is challenging to decide whether there are actually “goodies” and “baddies”, or instead a contrived and orchestrated drama that involves billions of dollars of expenditure, with the “winner” (and his/her financial backers) predetermined and taking the spoils.
James Delingpole wrote an interesting piece on his substack last week and he is convinced that the whole process is a sham. James writes in his post: Yes. Everything is a Conspiracy. Even Trump:
“They lie to us about the big things and They lie to us about the small things, because They love it, out of force of habit, and because it works.
Why is it, then, all you ‘Everything is a conspiracy’ sceptics, that you believe there are loopholes in this comprehensive, superbly organised, long established system of diabolical control?
What evidence do you have - besides wishful thinking - that the Dark Overlords who made sure that the US Presidency was controlled by the Illuminati and the freemasons right from the start somehow took their eye off the ball when it came to President 45 and (shortly) President 47?
Yes it’s conceivable, I suppose. But where does the balance of probability lie?………
I’m not saying that Trump is any worse than any of the other Deep State actors we’ve come to loathe, fear and despise. But if you think he’s any better than them I’d love to hear your counterargument. “I trust that this lying liar with a long, proven track record of lying isn’t going to lie to me because…”, you can begin your defence. I leave the rest up to you and your evidently fertile imagination.”
According to Delingpole, we live in a world where the key actors in the global power game are constantly working to deceive us and hide those who actually wield power (eg the Rockefellers) and who really control the game. In the worst case scenario, we are gradually being ushered into a new world order, where global leadership will be unelected and technocrats will control everything we do. There is good evidence for this with the “sustainability” movement of the UN leading to the control of energy production, promotion of digital IDs to ensure global “equity” and our online “safety”, and ultimately the monitoring and surveillance of every digital transaction and post using the increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence. Interestingly, this accords with the biblical narrative of the rise of an evil global leader who will demand worship and require a “mark” in order to be able to buy or sell (Revelation 13:16-18).
So, it is clear from the direction that we are heading, the only area of contention is when we will get to the point where a charismatic evil leader takes control of the world and demands global worship. Donald Trump is not that person because he is too divisive and polarising. While I have no faith in Trump to be any type of “saviour”, his main virtue may possibly be found by examining the various forces who are against him - which includes all the collectivists on the left side of politics as well as the “neocons” and the never-Trump conservatives.
Ever since Trump entered presidential politics in 2015, he induced an extreme hatred and fear within the permanent administrative state. Standing back from the fray, this “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has justified various extreme actions by the media and the permanent administrative state. The end result is a narrative in the months leading up to Trump’s November 5th election where he was described as a “threat to democracy”, “a fascist”, “a supporter of Hitler”, “a Nazi” and a threat to world order. These extreme statements about Trump appear to have been designed to make any action taken against him (eg assassination), legitimate.
Given the influence of the US intelligence agencies and the embedded “Deep State”, there will be no sudden turn around in the concerted actions to remove Trump from office. So, we can expect ongoing conflict as the never-Trump forces marshal their resources in the period leading up to 20 January 2025 inauguration.
My main argument for Trump being a figure of some possible virtue is to simply examine all those who are aligned against him. There is a pathological hatred of Trump by the entire legacy media and the political left. It is more extreme internationally and Trump’s election seems to have induced great fear within the European leadership. If all the “baddies” are against Trump, perhaps he does have some redeeming qualities?
The Conspiracy Against Trump
The Trump story will fascinate for years and it is difficult to understand all the elements that have led to him being elected for an unprecedented second term, following the drama associated with the disputed 2020 election that put Biden in office. Here are some of the facts that have been obscured over the last eight years regarding the concerted attempts to take Trump out of the presidential race:
Undermining of Trump by the “Deep State”: Even before his inauguration in January 2017, the intelligence services tapped the phones in Trump Tower and organized strategies to undermine his presidency. From Day 1 there were plans to impeach him, followed by constant leaks and confected outrage about decisions that Trump had a mandate to implement. Undoubtedly, even now, the permanent administrative state holds all the cards with the Washington bureaucrats overwhelmingly anti-Trump and with the power to prevent his policies from being implemented
The January 6th 2021 “insurrection” at the US Capitol Building was never an insurrection but a “false flag” possibly set up with FBI input: There were no armed combatants and protestors entering the building, rather the crowd seemed to have been actually led to various locations by the inadequate security presence. Worse still, it appears that various FBI “plants” actually encouraged protestors to enter the building. The US Justice Department has since implemented a “witch hunt” to track down those who were part of the January 6th protest and many of those arrested have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms on flimsy evidence, and held for long periods without trial. The Democrats were able to arrange a partisan “investigation” of the January 6th protest. The January 6th Committee published in December 2022 the findings of their “kangaroo court”. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, in her foreword to the report makes it clear that the intent is not an even-handed investigation. She writes:
“The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol was charged with investigating the facts, circumstances and causes that led to this domestic terror attack on the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution”. To describe the protest as a “domestic terror attack” demonstrates the politically partisan projection of a protest that simply got out of hand because of inadequate security presence and FBI “actors” fomenting the storming of the Capitol.
Remarkably, the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020 were not condemned by Democrat politicians even though the cost from the arson and looting may have exceeded US$4 billion. The 6 January 2021 protest pales into insignificance compared to the riots associated with the George Floyd protests. However, January 6 was used politically to demonize Trump and his supporters. Further, the biased findings of the January 6th Committee provided the narrative of Trump being “a threat to democracy”.
The “rigged” 2020 presidential election: Even though it was said to be the “fairest presidential election in US history”, there seemed to have been (even to the most neutral observer) hijacking of the normal voting process. With the claim of the danger from COVID-19, an unchecked postal ballot process was implemented with huge potential for fraud. Almost 160 million people voted in 2020 which was around 10 million more than usual. Trump called attention to the potentially fraudulent processes with very poor ballot security. Of course, this varied from state to state but was most evident in some of the swing states where there was “stuffing” of postal ballot boxes. The 2024 election results vindicated Trump’s contention that there had been “rigging” of the election because the number of votes decreased back to around 150 million, just over 60% of the eligible population. The total number of votes in 2016 was around 137 million. Trump refused to acknowledge that the 2020 result was fair and over time, the majority of Americans came to support his view. However, almost all the mainstream media continue to support the idea that the 2020 election was “the most fair election in history”.
The politicization of the US Justice Department: At some stage during 2022, various key Democratic Party figures appear to have developed a strategy to eliminate Trump from the 2024 presidential race, via various legal suits. The Attorney General promoted various legal cases against Donald Trump, and there is evidence of meetings at the White House with key legal figures from New York and Georgia. Most of these cases had flimsy legal bases but were brought to courts in Democrat-controlled cities where it was impossible for Trump to receive a fair trial. A special prosecutor, Jack Smith, was appointed by the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, and until recently when the cases were dropped, more than US$50 million was spent to try to convict Trump on charges of election interference and mishandling of presidential papers. Independent legal scholars such as Jonathan Turley decried the “weaponization of the justice system”. This week, The Atlantic reviewed the plethora of legal cases brought against Trump:
fraud, brought in New York State;
defamation and sexual assault brought in Manhattan (with the case being funded by a Democratic Party megadonor);
falsification of financial records (to pay hush money to women) brought in Manhattan;
US Department of Justice case about presidential records being wrongly stored at Mar-a-Lago;
Fulton County, Georgia case of election subversion brought by District Attorney, Fanny Willis;
Department of Justice case of election subversion brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith;
Cases filed in more than 30 states to try to prevent Trump from being placed on the election ballot because he had promoted “insurrection”.
The sheer number and volume of cases would have beaten most people but Trump and his legal team have been successful in pushing back against all the cases which, if successful, would have seen Trump sentenced to hundreds of years in jail. His election is likely to result in all the legal cases against him being dropped.
The bias of the mainstream media: As one read various papers of influence eg The NY Times and Washington Post and viewed CNN or MSNBC, the extreme bias against Trump and the protection of Biden (and then Harris) were evident to any reasonable observer. The consistency of messaging: Trump as a “threat to democracy”, “a fascist”, “a Nazi”, indicated central coordination. A senile Biden and an incompetent Harris, were promoted as saviours of democracy.
However, with the rise of independent broadcasters such as Joe Rogan, the mainstream media has had less and less influence over the voting public. Rogan’s three-hour interview with Trump resulted in almost 60 million views on YouTube and Spotify and may have had a significant impact on final voting.Joe Biden’s mental decline and the “sub in” of Kamala: From the White House to the majority of the mainstream media, Joe Biden’s obvious mental decline (to the point that he could barely read a teleprompter) was covered up and some media commentators claimed earlier in 2024 that “Biden is better than he ever was”. The game was up when the 27 June 2024 debate between Biden and Trump, demonstrated that Biden was confused and incapable of continuing as president (remarkably, he has been propped up to continue to this day). After insisting for a few weeks that only he could beat Trump, Biden was “leant on” by Democratic Party grandee Nancy Pelosi, who is reported to have told Joe that “we can do this the easy way or hard way”. We never found out what “the hard way” was but Joe stepped away from his campaign and anointed Kamala Harris to run as the Democratic Party candidate. A fascinating new narrative was then promoted. A vice president who had a record of mistreating staff and one of the lowest approval ratings for any vice president in history, suddenly was the woman to save America and spread joy. It was a policy-free zone and gradually Kamala ditched her extreme collectivist policies as she avoided any questioning by the media. Money poured into her campaign and she recently revealed that almost US$1.5 billion was raised in just over three months. In a sign of extraordinary financial incompetence, the campaign nonetheless spent more than it raised and now is organizing fundraisers to make up for overspending.
What Happens Next?
If James Delingpole is correct, then the global forces of darkness that are behind the new Trump ascendancy will manipulate Trump and his team to simply keep moving us all toward a global dictatorship. This view may be correct, and Trump and his team may have little agency to take independent decisions.
However, an alternative view is that Trump's policies may provide a temporary respite against the global collectivists and the New World Order. Trump's cabinet choices, where Donald Trump Jnr seems to have had an outsized influence, is notable for the selection of people who have complete loyalty to Trump and commitment to fighting the “Deep State”. This includes previous Trump enemies such as Senator Marco Rubio (“Little Marco”), and even Senator JD Vance, who is now vice president.
Trump's policies are clear but will be difficult to implement:
close the border and deport millions of illegal immigrants;
decrease taxation and unleash the power of capitalism;
“drill baby drill “ to provide energy independence;
protect American industries using various tariffs and trade barriers, and;
stop US involvement in various international conflicts.
A shorthand for all these policies is “America First” or Trump’s repeated slogan says: “Make American Great Again”.
The US president via the executive branch of government, has enormous power to control policy via thousands of presidential appointments. Senior appointments must be confirmed by the US Senate, but the Republicans now have a significant majority with 53 seats (out of 100) in the Senate. It is likely that most of Trump's nominees will make their way through the confirmation process. The new Congress commences their new term on 3 January 2025, with Joe Biden having 17 days remaining in office before Trump takes his place on January 20th.
Tucker Carlson had a fascinating interview with Russ Vought who was previously the Director of the Office of Budget and Management and it is worthwhile viewing.
Trump and his supporters are more savvy this time around, in understanding the barriers that they will face within the permanent administrative state, which runs to around 4 million employees. Forbes magazine in 2017 described the permanent administrative state (“the swamp”) as follows:
“The federal government disclosed 1.97 million employees across 122 independent agencies and departments. In FY2016, these 2 million workers received $136 billion in compensation. If we could factor in another 2 million undisclosed employees – at the Department of Defense and on active military and other agencies – the cost would be much higher.”
More than 90% of these employees are philosophically aligned with the Democratic Party. Even now, it is likely that various impediments to Trump's policies are being put in place in advance of his 20 January inauguration.
Conclusions
If James Delingpole is correct, what we are seeing in Washington is a mirage, and the real action is taking place behind the scenes with various wealthy influential players controlling our destiny.
My own view is that we may have a respite from the globalist agenda because Trump and his cabinet will be focused on delivering election promises that are likely to push back against the unrelenting forces of globalism. Who really knows though? Influential Big Tech billionaires such as Peter Thiel (Founder of PayPal and original investor in Facebook) and Elon Musk have their own agendas and will undoubtedly steer the direction of the Trump administration toward technocracy. Even Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) has appeared this week to pay homage to Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Patrick Wood provides the following assessment of the role of the technocrats in the Trump administration:
“But make no mistake that Technocrats have affixed their talons to Trump in order to achieve an alternative reality.
Does this make Trump a Technocrat? It doesn’t matter. He is surrounded by Technocrats who bring Technocracy to the table.
When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are appointed to DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to dismantle and reorganize the federal government, their goal is not our goal to make the government smaller. Rather, it is to fundamentally restructure, decentralize, and deconstruct it.
Ramaswamy is a practicing Hindu who made his first billion in Big Pharma. Musk is the richest human on earth with almost $350 billion and is projected to be the first trillionaire. He has fathered three children out of wedlock with Claire Elise Boucher, aka Grimes, who holds to polytheism beliefs that are similar to Hinduism.
Both Ramaswamy and Musk are arch-Technocrats.
Peter Thiel, another arch-Technocrat, is mentor to J.D. Vance, having formed his political career by sponsoring his election to the Senate (OH) and then lobbying for his selection as Vice President. If there is one man who has undue influence over Trump, it is Thiel.
But wait, how is it possible that Thiel is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group? A deep state actor? Indeed, the Bilderbergs initially encouraged the formation of the Trilateral Commission in 1972.”
Trump’s campaign director and now Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles, has deep ties to “the Swamp” and has been a Washington lobbyist with a range of clients, including the Venezuelan government. The Huffington Post wrote recently that:
“The Public Citizen report found that Wiles was registered to lobby the White House, Congress and several federal agencies on behalf of 42 individual clients, including two Canadian mining giants, a tobacco company and a waste management firm that for years fought to keep from having to remove radioactive waste from a landfill it owns outside St. Louis, Missouri.”
Then there is the outsized influence of Elon Musk, who has been more or less permanently ensconced at Mar-a-Lago since the November 5 election. Given the personalities of Trump and Musk, it can be anticipated that at some stage these two will fall out of love and the consequences could be significant.
One test will be to see if Robert F Kennedy Jnr is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). He will be seen as a direct threat to Big Pharma and they will be marshalling all their forces against his confirmation. I suspect they will be successful because Kennedy’s own chequered history could torpedo his support by the US Senate.
It will be a fascinating few months and anything could happen, including an escalation in conflict between Russia and Ukraine that involves nuclear weapons. Undoubtedly, the climate change train will keep rolling along the tracks to promote global control of everything but it is still possible that Trump’s policies could cause a temporary derailment.
It is interesting that despite all the weapons that have been employed against Trump, somehow he has withstood all the challenges, and in some type of anti-kryptonite effect, has become stronger. Some have proposed divine intervention. It is possible.
What is guaranteed is that we are in for a range of surprises as we ride the Trump wave, and it feels as though a “wipeout” is possible at any stage. In the best case scenario, the “wisdom of crowds” theory (large groups are more likely to be correct than individual experts) indicates that the US electorate has recognized the dangers of globalism and there may be a coming renaissance of freedom and individual enterprise in the US. Delingpole’s advice: “you’re dreamin’”!
Stories That Caught My Attention This Week
Debt and Trust
Lau Vegys wrote a fascinating post last week on Doug Casey’s substack: Crisis Investing. He noted that the US national debt had just exceeded US$36 trillion! This figure is hard to comprehend but if you translate it into the debt per head of the US adult population, it turns out to be around US$134,000 per person.
Figure 1. Graphic from Doug Casey’s newsletter of 20 November, 2024.
Here are a few highlights from the newsletter:
“Last week, amid the post-election frenzy, a critical milestone slipped by almost unnoticed: U.S. government debt surged past $36 trillion.
Let that number sink in for a moment. In just twelve months, the debt has exploded by $2.9 trillion. That's $8 billion of new debt every day, $331 million each hour, and $5.5 million every minute.
…In short, America's finances aren't just shaky—they're coming apart at the seams.
…..
The latest figures were published just days ago, and they showed …that net interest payments hit $949 billion for this fiscal year through September. That's about $2.6 billion every single day.
Note: “Net interest” is the interest paid on U.S. Treasury debt held by the public, including both domestic and foreign sources.
Now, I'm focusing on net interest payments here because that’s what Yellen talked about. The gross figure, mind you, sits at about $1.2 trillion.
But even this adjusted $949 billion figure already makes up 3.3% of America's GDP – something we haven't seen in decades.
To put this in perspective: that’s more than the annual spending on Medicare ($870 billion) and dwarfs Medicaid ($618 billion). It’s also more than triple what the government spends on veterans’ affairs ($325 billion). In fact, you could combine spending on the Department of Education ($268 billion), Veterans’ Affairs, and the entire military budget—and interest payments would still be greater.
…..
At writing, foreign nations hold about $8.7 trillion of U.S. federal debt — and that doesn’t include the many trillions of additional agency debt they also hold…
Doug Casey: Our main export has been dollars. So, now there are tens of trillions of dollars that are outside the U.S. owned by non-Americans, that don't have to own those dollars. And when they get scared enough of those dollars, they will dump them. And when they can't dump them to each other anymore at lower values, those dollars will come back to the U.S. where they'll buy stuff that Americans now own. Like titles to stocks and real estate and so forth. So, the average American is in for a very rude awakening in the next few years.”
Somehow, the US dollar remains strong and Trump’s election has provided a great deal of confidence in the economy. I think that Doug Casey is correct: “the average American is in for a very rude awakening in the next few years”.
The national debt is combined with a dramatic rise in US credit card debt. Doug Casey has written about this in a more recent post.
Casey writes:
“The truth is that American consumers are drowning in a sea of debt, and nowhere is this more obvious than with credit card debt. New data from the latest consumer debt report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that credit card balances hit $1.17 trillion in the third quarter of 2024. This is the highest balance on record since 1947.”
Figure 2. Change in credit card debt in the US over the past 6 years. From Doug Casey’s Crisis Investing Newsletter, 24 November 2024.
One wonders when the next global financial meltdown will occur?
Henry Kissinger’s Final Word from the Grave
Henry Kissinger has played an extraordinary role in global affairs since the 1960s. When he was a professor at Harvard University, he was selected by the Rockefeller family to head up the Rockefeller Brothers Family fund and helped to found the globalist Trilateral Commission. Kissinger also was influential in the ascent of Klaus Schwab who, after attending the Kennedy School of Government in 1967 and with Kissinger’s mentorship, started the influential globalist organisation, the World Economic Forum.
Kissinger has played important roles in many US administrations, since his appointment as Secretary of State in the Nixon administration. He also has been available to provide advice to US presidents, and notably, arrived unannounced at the White House when Trump was president, to give him the benefit of his wisdom.
Kissinger was, of course, the ultimate globalist and now despite his death one year ago, aged 100, has published a new book in conjuction with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Microsoft excecutive, Craig Mundie. The book is titled: Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit.
Patrick Wood provided the following overview in Technocracy News:
“Trilateral Commission members Eric Schmidt and the late Henry Kissinger express the endgame of fellow member Zbigniew Brzezinski's Technetronic Era, aka Technocracy: those who will control the world are the superhumans who are genetically hacked or otherwise merged with advanced technology like AI. Their book, Genesis, talks about taking intelligent design out of God's hands and giving it over to posthuman designers of co-evolution.”
Kissinger and his co-authors provide a warning that life on earth may be under threat from artificial intelligence. Here is how the book description sets out the challenges:
“As it absorbs data, gains agency, and intermediates between humans and reality, AI (Artificial Intelligence) will help us to address enormous crises, from climate change to geopolitical conflicts to income inequality. It might well solve some of the greatest mysteries of our universe and elevate the human spirit to unimaginable heights. But it will also pose challenges on a scale and of an intensity that we have never seen—usurping our power of independent judgment and action, testing our relationship with the divine, and perhaps even spurring a new phase in human evolution.”
Ultimately, the techocrats believe that technology can solve everything and direct us to a new evolutionary pathway. These are the globalists who are directing the future of mankind and who have a desire to play God. We have to pray that the ultimate levers of power are kept out of their grasp.
Some Final Thoughts
As I thought about the challenges ahead for us as a society, my mind was drawn back to the hope that we have and Paul the Apostle wrote about in his letter to the Romans:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39).