#Trump’s Foreign Policy Influencers

[xtruss]

Trump’s Foreign-Policy Influencers!

Meet The 11 Men Whose Worldviews Are Shaping The 2024 Republican Ticket.

— 26 August 2024 | Foreign Policy Feature | By Foreign Policy Staff

Oriana Fenwick Illustration/Getty Images

If former U.S. President Donald Trump wins the White House again, what might his foreign policy look like? The Republican candidate often shoots from the hip—consider his grand declaration that he can end the Russia-Ukraine war in a single day as just one example. Trump is also quick to distance himself from policy shop documents, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, when they become politically inconvenient.

But beyond the noise of the campaign trail, one way to gauge the possible foreign-policy agenda of a second Trump term is to profile the key national security thinkers in his orbit: Who are the advisors he listens to? What is the genesis of the ideas that animate the former president’s current worldview?

Consider the list below a handy guide in the days and weeks leading up to Nov. 5. But first, a few disclaimers. The men listed below (and yes, they’re all men—the picks reflect what our sources told us) are ranked not in order of importance but in alphabetical order. The names are not earmarked for any particular roles, such as national security advisor or secretary of state; we thought it best to just describe the people whose views and ideas could have a meaningful impact on Trump’s foreign-policy decisions. And lastly, the spirit of this endeavor is to add some texture to what is a common parlor game in Washington these days—nobody, of course, can actually claim to know exactly what Trump will do.

And now, here’s the list you came here for. — The Editors

Elbridge Colby (L), Fred Fleitz (R)

Elbridge Colby

Elbridge Colby, a once and possible future Trump administration defense official, is the loudest and perhaps most cogent voice in Washington advocating a complete shift away from Europe, NATO, and Russia and toward the growing challenge from China.

Colby served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense for more than a year in the Trump administration, where he helped put teeth into the belated U.S. pivot to Asia. He then joined with other Trump administration veterans to co-found the Marathon Initiative, a Washington-based think tank focused on great-power competition. If he gets another shot in a future Trump administration—and his name has been floated for another defense position or even a job with the National Security Council—he would hammer home his overarching point: China, not Russia, is America’s biggest problem.

In a series of articles, books, and speeches, Colby has for years made the case for the United States to use its limited defense resources to prevent a hostile hegemonic power from gaining ascendancy over the Asia-Pacific region. China has already economically cowed many of its smaller neighbors, and it continues to chip away at regional security in places such as the South China Sea. But Taiwan is the real test: A Chinese effort to reincorporate the island by force would mean a conflict with the United States and likely Japan—and, if successful, would open China up to domination of the entire Pacific Basin, the world’s most important economic region by far.

Colby’s ideas are a timely reprisal of one of the original blueprints of U.S. grand strategy, written by Nicholas Spykman in the middle of World War II, but turned on its head: Asia, not Europe, is now the economic and political center of gravity of the world, and its domination by Beijing would severely constrain America’s future prospects and freedom of action.

One problem for Colby is that his potential future boss, while willing to be plenty hostile to China at times, is also utterly transactional, and Trump has already signaled his willingness to barter away Taiwan’s autonomy. Realist hawks such as Colby tend to sit uncomfortably with a foreign policy that has no true north.

Another problem is that Colby’s vocal and repeated urgings to use limited U.S. resources exclusively for the big China fight that may one day come, even if that means abandoning Ukraine in the middle of a war, are grist for the Kremlin’s goons; Russian state television cheers Colby’s foreign-policy priorities.

Lawmakers may not buy an Asia-only defense strategy anyway, in a future Trump administration or a future Kamala Harris one. A congressionally mandated defense review panel argued in July that the United States should prepare to defend its vital interests in both Europe and Asia.

—Keith Johnson

Fred Fleitz

Despite being a longtime member of the U.S. national security community, Fred Fleitz is a hard-nosed proponent of the Trump-driven anti-establishment MAGA ideology that roiled Washington for four years. Fleitz is a Trump administration veteran who has emerged as one of the former president’s few top advisors on national security on the campaign trail.

Fleitz, alongside Keith Kellogg, drafted a plan for Trump to review aimed at ending the war in Ukraine if Trump wins reelection. The plan entails pushing Ukraine and Russia to come to the negotiating table and brokering a temporary cease-fire at the current battle lines, which would be sustained during the peace talks. The Trump administration would pressure Ukraine on one side by threatening to cut off U.S. aid if it didn’t negotiate, and Russia on the other by threatening to open the floodgates on U.S. military aid to Ukraine without peace talks. The proposal marks the most detailed preview yet of what a Trump White House’s Ukraine policy could look like if Fleitz and others in his orbit joined the administration.

Fleitz is vice chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, the think tank founded in 2021 to keep MAGA boots on the ground in Washington as Team Biden took power. He is a regular commentator on the right-wing news channel NewsMax and the author of Obamabomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud and The Coming North Korea Nuclear Nightmare: What Trump Must Do to Reverse Obama’s ‘Strategic Patience.’

Fleitz has garnered controversy over his past comments and affiliations with hard-right and anti-immigrant groups that opponents refer to as fringe and Islamophobic. (He later distanced himself from some of those past affiliations.)

Fleitz spent more than two decades working in the U.S. government, bouncing between posts at the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department, and the Republican side of the House Intelligence Committee. For significant chunks of his career, he circled the orbit of the pugnacious neoconservative hawk John Bolton, serving as his chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration when Bolton was the undersecretary of state for arms control, and then later as the National Security Council chief of staff when Bolton was Trump’s national security advisor.

Bolton has since broken very publicly with Trump, but Fleitz remains nestled in the MAGA world. While Trump has given no indication of who would staff his administration if he won, many Republican insiders say Fleitz is near the top of the list.

—Robbie Gramer

Ric Grenell (L), Keith Kellogg (R)

Ric Grenell

Within hours of presenting his diplomatic credentials to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2018, Trump’s new ambassador to Berlin, Ric Grenell, took to Twitter to demand that German companies doing business with Iran should “wind down operations immediately.” The diplomatic relationship went downhill from there.

Disagreements with the German government were aired publicly, as Grenell—a political appointee—threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany over the country’s lackluster defense spending and impose sanctions over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would have increased the country’s dependency on Russian energy. Wolfgang Kubicki, the vice president of the German Parliament, at one point accused Grenell of acting as if the United States was “still an occupying power.”

The pugilistic diplomat’s approach may have horrified Berlin’s mild-mannered political establishment. But if ambassadors are judged by their ability to convey their boss’s message, Grenell was an effective foot soldier. He was later appointed as the special envoy to the Balkans—where he was accused of causing the government of Kosovo to collapse—and acting director of national intelligence, becoming the first openly gay person to hold a cabinet-level position.

A graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Grenell worked as a spokesperson for a number of prominent Republicans before joining the 2000 presidential campaign of former Sen. John McCain—who would later become one of Trump’s most vehement critics.

From 2001-2008, Grenell served as the director of communications for the U.S. mission to the United Nations under four ambassadors, including John Bolton, who would go on to serve as Trump’s national security advisor.

Long before the Trump presidency, Grenell was known for his combative tweets—which, like those of his future boss, often took swipes at journalists and mocked the appearance of prominent women Democrats.

While several senior figures in the Trump administration broke with the former president during the ignominious end to his tenure, Grenell remained loyal. In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Grenell was dispatched to Nevada to help challenge the results of the vote—despite knowing that there was no basis to the claims, according to a recent profile in the New York Times.

Since leaving government, Grenell has served as Trump’s envoy, traversing the world, meeting with far-right leaders, and undercutting the State Department—including in Guatemala. It’s that loyalty that is likely to land him a senior foreign-policy job in a future Trump administration.

A secretary of state needs to be “tough” and a “son of a bitch,” Grenell said during an appearance on the Self Centered podcast in March.

Keith Kellogg

When Michael Flynn was fired from his role as U.S. national security advisor just 22 days into Trump’s first term after lying about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Keith Kellogg was one of the first people considered to replace him. He didn’t get the job, which went to another three-star Army officer: H.R. McMaster. Instead, Kellogg advised Vice President Mike Pence and served as the chief of staff to the National Security Council.

In those roles, Kellogg was caught up in some of the most pivotal moments of Trump’s presidency. Kellogg said he heard “nothing wrong or improper” on the July 2019 call where Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden. And Kellogg privately urged Pence to certify the 2020 election “TONIGHT” while a pro-Trump mob was still being cleared from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But Kellogg nonetheless endorsed Trump over Pence in August 2023, criticizing Pence for concentrating on “political maneuvering” and his image. (Pence withdrew from the presidential race in October 2023 and has not endorsed Trump.)

Since then, Kellogg has sought to become a key member of Trump’s national security brain trust at the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank that is seen in Washington as a White House in waiting. Kellogg—a Vietnam War veteran who was serving as a three-star Army general in the Pentagon when al Qaeda flew a Boeing 757 into the west side of the building on Sept. 11, 2001—is at once pro-Ukraine and pro-NATO and yet willing to exact Trump’s famous brand of leverage on both. He’s tried to put teeth behind Trump’s pledge to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine “in a day,” mapping out a plan that would cut U.S. military aid to Ukraine if Kyiv refused to go to the bargaining table, but boost it if the Kremlin refused to negotiate.

At the July NATO summit in Washington, where European officials sought out Trump insiders, Kellogg was one former official taking meetings with U.S. allies. But the message they got might not have been the one that they wanted to hear. Kellogg has said that NATO countries that don’t meet the alliance’s defense spending target are violating the Washington Treaty (Trump threatened at a campaign rally earlier this year not to defend NATO allies that weren’t hitting the bloc’s spending mark of 2 percent of GDP ).

—Jack Detsch

Robert Lighthizer

Robert Lighthizer

Few members of the Trump administration still maintain a large degree of influence on policy. But Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s trade representative, current advisor, and perhaps future Treasury secretary, has become such an influential economic voice, especially through his back-to-the-past vision of trade, that he has helped shape the Biden administration’s newfound love of trade wars.

Lighthizer, a longtime trade lawyer who began his public service career in the Ronald Reagan administration, turned Trump’s inchoate notions on trade and the economy into a more or less coherent policy. Now, with Trump campaigning to return to the White House, Lighthizer is eager to double down on the policies he pursued the first time around.

Those famous Trump tariffs—on steel, aluminum, and many products from China—were the fruit of Lighthizer’s vision, and he was just getting started. He believes raising taxes on American consumers and businesses for things they import will make them import less; in an ideal world, it would also make American businesses manufacture and export more things as well.

His plans for the future, as laid out in books and writings since he left office, include much higher tariffs on a bigger range of countries (all of them, actually) in order to balance the ledger of American imports and exports, with a particular eye on China—one of America’s biggest trading partners and its top geopolitical rival. Ultimately, his objective is to get much closer to full “decoupling” from China than the lukewarm and partial “de-risking” now favored by the Biden team.

It’s of little concern to Lighthizer and some of Trump’s other still-influential trade advisors such as Peter Navarro (who was released from prison in July) that the avalanche of tariffs and belligerent trade policy achieved none of their stated aims. The trade deficit, the main concern for tariff hawks such as Trump and Lighthizer, grew under their watch. U.S. exports shrank, as did, in the end, manufacturing jobs (thanks to COVID-19).

Retaliatory tariffs by friends and allies curbed U.S. trade options abroad and weakened the prospects for an anti-China coalition. Consumer prices, juiced by import taxes, rose. China did not moderate any of the predatory economic behavior that prompted the trade wars in the first place, and in fact has made its own form of turbocharged, export-driven industrial policy the very centerpiece of its own economic rejuvenation.

But, as Lighthizer himself has argued, it takes time to right a ship that’s on the wrong course. Maybe this time the same old remedies will produce dramatically different results.

—Keith Johnson

Johnny McEntee

Johnny McEntee

In the summer of 2020, as Trump was running for reelection, an email from the White House invited Pentagon officials to sit down for interviews with a pair of staffers, where they would be evaluated for positions in a second Trump administration. After a spate of high-profile resignations in the building as the White House increasingly sought to assert itself over the Defense Department, officials saw the interviews as a test of loyalty to Trump.

The man behind the email was White House Presidential Personnel Office Director John McEntee. A onetime walk-on quarterback at the University of Connecticut, McEntee served as the president’s “body man” for the first year of the administration. He was fired by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in 2018 for failing a background check due to a gambling investigation, only to return two years later, this time in charge of the powerful personnel office.

It’s often said in Washington that personnel is policy. Many of Trump’s early appointments came from the traditional Republican foreign-policy pool: more international, pro-trade, pro-NATO, and pro-ally than the standard MAGA crowd. Kelly, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson formed the “axis of adults” that largely controlled the levers of foreign policy for Trump’s first two years in office—even as the commander in chief finger-wagged at Washington’s perceived “deep state” for allegedly slow-walking his agenda.

But late in the game, McEntee would help get MAGA-approved people into top jobs. He helped orchestrate Trump’s reshuffling of the Pentagon brass, including the firing of then-U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He also tried, with others, to stack the Pentagon’s top policy boards with close Trump allies. Had Trump won, McEntee would have played a key role in trying to implement Trump’s planned “Schedule F” reforms that would have essentially turned tenure-track government jobs into at-will employees.

Since then, loyalty tests have become standard practice in Trump world. McEntee is now at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, where he’s helping to spearhead Project 2025—an initiative that calls for the next president to “confront the Deep State.” If you want in on a list of would-be Trump appointees, you have to send in your phone number and fill out a detailed questionnaire, largely predicated on loyalty to Trump.

—Jack Detsch

Christopher Miller

Christopher Miller

Christopher Miller had some early missteps after being named Trump’s acting secretary of defense in November 2020—literally. First, he tripped on his way up the steps and into the Pentagon. And then when he got up to give his first public speech at the U.S. Army’s national museum two days later, he forgot his prepared remarks under his seat.

It set the tone for perhaps the wildest two-month tour that any Pentagon chief has ever had. Trump moved Miller from the National Counterterrorism Center to take over for Esper as acting secretary of defense. Trump announced via tweet that Esper had been fired, less than 48 hours after the networks began calling the presidential election for Biden.

Miller, a former Green Beret, was given an ambitious lame-duck agenda for the Pentagon ahead of Biden’s inauguration. The Pentagon was tasked with withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia—all in the course of two months.

Miller faced widespread criticism for his failure to approve the deployment of the National Guard to contain the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol for more than three hours after the Pentagon became aware of the breach. Miller said later that he feared creating “the greatest Constitutional crisis” since the Civil War by deploying active-duty U.S. troops. He has also said that Trump deserves blame for stoking the riots—but he hasn’t explicitly ruled out working for him again.

“I thought he was really good,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt in a December interview, describing Miller and his short stint at the Pentagon. “I thought he was very good.”

—Jack Detsch

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller

Throughout Trump’s term, Stephen Miller made a name for himself as the radical architect of the president’s hard-line—and highly controversial—immigration policies. If Trump triumphs in November, he is widely expected to again lean heavily on Miller, who has already outlined sweeping new proposals to overhaul U.S. policy and crack down on immigration.

As Trump’s then-senior advisor and speechwriting chief, Miller played a pivotal role in shaping his presidential agenda. He drove forward some of the former U.S. leader’s most contentious schemes, including his family separation policy, known as zero tolerance, and the so-called Muslim ban, which barred travel and refugee resettlement from several Muslim-majority countries to the United States. Beyond pushing to slash refugee admission numbers, he reportedly also wanted to deploy troops to close off the United States’ southern border and proposed banning student visas for Chinese nationals.

Miller was known for encouraging some of Trump’s more hard-line positions, even in situations where other advisors reportedly urged the president to exercise restraint. In 2019, Miller came under fire after a batch of leaked emails published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group, revealed that he privately touted white nationalist views. The emails, which were exchanged between Miller and conservative news site Breitbart News, date back to 2015 and 2016.

Today, Miller spends much of his time waging legal battles against “woke corporations,” despite having no formal legal training. In 2021, he founded the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative legal advocacy organization focused on challenging the Biden administration and the practices of private companies, including Kellogg and Starbucks. “America First Legal is holding corporate America accountable for illegally engaging in discriminatory employment practices that penalize Americans based on race and sex,” the company said.

If Trump defeats Harris in November, Miller has vowed an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy. “Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” he told the New York Times. “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”

Under a potential second Trump term, Washington would dramatically expand policies aimed at cracking down on immigration, including by halting the U.S. refugee program and reinstalling some variation of the Muslim travel ban, the New York Times reported. Trump envisions conducting sweeping public workplace raids, enacting mass deportations, and constructing “vast holding facilities” to detain those awaiting deportation, Miller said. The former U.S. leader is also eager to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, he said.

“I don’t care what the hell happens in this world,” Miller told right-wing personality Charlie Kirk in a podcast interview earlier this year. “If President Trump gets reelected, the border’s going to be sealed, the military will be deployed, the National Guard will be activated, and the illegals are going home.”

—Christina Lu

Robert O’Brien

Robert O’Brien

Trump cycled through three national security advisors during the first two years of his tenure before settling on one who fit just right: Robert O’Brien. He stuck around for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.

A Los Angeles lawyer, O’Brien began his White House role as special envoy for hostage affairs. He helped to secure the release of Americans from prisons in Turkey and Yemen, as the Trump administration prioritized the plight of Americans wrongfully detained abroad.

More memorably, O’Brien led the administration’s efforts to lobby Sweden, an ally, to release the American rapper A$AP Rocky following a request from the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, according to the New York Times. Rocky had been convicted on assault charges.

As national security advisor, O’Brien had significantly less experience than his predecessors. He proved to be low-key and loyal, and served out the remainder of the Trump administration without major controversy.

In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, O’Brien became one of the first senior Trump officials to acknowledge, if grudgingly, that Biden had won the vote. “If the Biden-Harris ticket is determined to be the winner, and obviously things look that way now, we’ll have a very professional transition from the National Security Council. There’s no question about it,” he said at a virtual meeting of the Global Security Forum.

O’Brien has remained close with the former president and is likely to be tapped for a senior role should Trump return to the Oval Office.

In an essay in Foreign Affairs published in June, O’Brien sketched out the contours of a future Trump foreign policy: “A Trumpian restoration of peace through strength.” China is the primary focus, as O’Brien calls for a muscular posture in the Indo-Pacific, including the deployment of the entire Marine Corps to the region and for a U.S. aircraft carrier to be transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

O’Brien also advocated for the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing, not carried out since 1992. “Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992—not just by using computer models,” O’Brien wrote.

—Amy Mackinnon

Kash Patel (L) Mike Pompeo (R)

Kash Patel

Kash Patel had a meteoric ascent during Trump’s tenure, rising from little-known staffer on the House Intelligence Committee to chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense in the last months of the administration, despite having no military background. As an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, who was then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Patel was central to efforts to challenge accusations that the Trump team had inappropriate contact with Russian government officials while on the campaign trail.

Patel was reportedly the lead author of a controversial 2018 memo that alleged that law enforcement officials had acted improperly when they sought permission to surveil the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. While Democrats slammed the decision to release the document, describing it as a partisan attack on the justice system, a court later found that some of the surveillance warrants against Page were unjustified.

After a stint at the National Security Council as senior director for counterterrorism, Patel moved to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2020 as a senior advisor to the director of national intelligence, where he became integral to the former president’s attacks on the intelligence community, pressing for declassification of documents from the investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the former president reportedly considered firing CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop and replacing him with Patel, according to Axios. If then-CIA Director Gina Haspel resigned in protest—which she threatened to do—Patel or another Trump ally would be appointed to lead the sprawling intelligence agency, according to reports.

Patel would likely play an integral and senior role should Trump return to the Oval Office. In an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast in December, Patel said a second Trump administration would target and prosecute journalists. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections—we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” he said.

Patel has also authored a children’s book titled The Plot Against the King, a revisionist fairy-tale rendering of the Russia investigation in which Patel appears as a wizard who informs the kingdom that King Donald “did not work with the Russonians.”

—Amy Mackinnon

Mike Pompeo

Mike Pompeo was one of the few Trump cabinet officials to maintain a strong relationship with the brash and mercurial president throughout his term in office. Trump plucked Pompeo from relative obscurity as a Kansas congressman to be his first CIA director. As head of the premier U.S. intelligence agency, Pompeo forayed into diplomacy by secretly traveling to North Korea to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In 2018, as Trump sacked his first secretary of state, Tillerson, he announced Pompeo as his replacement. Pompeo joined the State Department vowing to restore “swagger” to the diplomatic corps after the Tillerson era, prompting relief among some longtime diplomats and eye rolls from others. While at the State Department, Pompeo was careful to ensure he remained a top player in Trump’s inner circle, even when it put him at odds with the embattled diplomatic corps—during Trump’s tumultuous first impeachment hearing, for example, and other scandals involving harassment, mismanagement, and watchdog investigations into Trump appointees at the State Department.

Pompeo, a California native, graduated first in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served as a U.S. Army officer, and attended law school at Harvard. He moved to Kansas in the 1990s and served as a member of Congress for the state’s 4th district from 2011 to 2017 before joining the Trump administration. After Trump was voted out of office, Pompeo did not join other top Trump administration officials in condemning the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s demonstrably false claims of election fraud.

Pompeo briefly toyed with the idea of running for president but bowed out of the race early on when he failed to raise his national profile or as much money as other Republican challengers to Trump like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. In June, he established a new private equity firm with veteran financiers that aims to back mid-sized technology companies.

Mike Pompeo About CIA : “We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole”

Pompeo still maintains close ties with Trump and his inner circle, and many Republican insiders believe he would be a top contender for a senior administration role, such as secretary of defense, if Trump is reelected.

In Trump’s circle, Pompeo is among the most outspoken advocates of Ukraine. He visited Kyiv in early April and told Fox News that arming Ukraine was the “least costly way to move forward.” Many European officials believe that the appointment of Pompeo to a senior cabinet position would be a good thing for Ukraine and NATO, and bad news for Russia.

An ardent hawk, he was also a primary driver of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and architect of the former president’s muscular approach to China that now largely has bipartisan backing.

—Robbie Gramer

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

“President Joe Biden ticked through several things that he needed to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do immediately: open up the Erez crossing into northern Gaza and the port of Ashdod in southern Israel for humanitarian aid; significantly ramp up the supplies getting in through Kerem Shalom.

A person familiar with the Thursday call paraphrased Netanyahu as responding: “Joe, we’re gonna do it.”

But Biden wasn’t finished. The prime minister must announce the moves that evening, the president insisted.

By Thursday night, the Israeli security cabinet had approved those three measures to increase humanitarian aid entering the besieged enclave.”

[kesarijournal]

A New Reality of US-India Relations: Going From Natu Natu to NATO+

Joint Press Conference Trade In recent years, the relationship between the United States and India has undergone a significant transformation. The two nations, once distant allies, have now emerged as strategic partners, collaborating on a range of issues from defence and technology to space exploration and clean energy. The recent developments in the US-India relationship signal a new era of…

[avelera]

PSA: You should question news articles that make you not want to vote

Hey Tumblr friends, but especially young Americans in this, the year of our Lord 2024.

Unfortunately, it is an election year.

Unfortunately, a US election year becomes everyone's problem, and yes everyone else, we are very very sorry that you have to deal with our nonsense.

But in all seriousness, the level of propaganda that's going to be flung around on all sides is going to reach peak levels this year for the English-speaking internet in particular. There's going to be a lot of influence operations, on all sides, and yes including on sides you agree with but they are still influence operations.

Source: I am speaking as a cybersecurity professional who also did a great deal of work in election security.

So, here's what I am going to ask you to do. What I am going to beg you to do: be careful of any article that makes you think there's no point in voting.

That's it. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, or how to think, or that you should trust or distrust every article out there. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not it makes you think you shouldn't vote.

A lot of influence operations are about making you feel like there's no point. That both sides are just as bad as the other. The the election is falsified. That you can "protest" by not voting (false: you will simply not be counted and your voice will be ignored). All sorts of reasons not to vote.

No matter what you do, what you believe, or who you trust, you really really have to vote this year, and every year, and you need to not listen to articles that say there's no point because among those articles are in fact active foreign influence campaigns trying to promote one side or the other for their own reasons, I am deadly serious right now.

(More context, sources, and examples sources below the cut.)

In 2016, Russian influence operations were focused on tearing down Hillary in order to specifically depress voter turnout among young men of color in the belief that this would help Trump get elected.

From the article: "“Buried literally in the middle of the indictment is a paragraph that should jar every American committed to the long fight for voting rights,” Anders wrote in a statement. “The Russians allegedly masqueraded as African-American and American Muslim activists to urge minority voters to abstain from voting in the 2016 election or to vote for a third-party candidate.”

This is the flavor of influence campaign that has been proven, that does exist, and is the sort of thing that does numbers here on Tumblr.

Things like the situation in Gaza, for example, are incredibly fraught situations. Articles don't even need to lie about facts on the ground there to make people feel hopeless and angry. Again, I am not telling you who to trust or not trust when it comes to news sources. But if an article about this event, for examples, makes you think or even outright tells you, "There's no point to voting, both sides are awful, I just shouldn't bother." You need to pause and at least consider that this might be an influence operation. You need to think critically. You need to check sources. You need to think about the world you want to live in, to vote for, and who might not want that world to happen for any variety of reasons.

Protesting by failing to vote isn't a real thing.

Old politicians ignoring young voters because they famously do not bother to vote is absolutely 100% a real thing. It is why so many policies that are popular with young people are low priority for politicians: they are not afraid of losing the young vote because no one plans on having it in the first place when it's never there in big enough numbers to matter.

So please, please, read what you want. Believe what you want. Follow your heart and your brain and whatever other organ you want to think with. I'm not here to tell you who is right, wrong, trustworthy, good, or bad. I'm just here to tell you that despite all of that, whatever you read, you must vote in your elections, no matter where you are in the world and you must not listen to voices that tell you not to as a protest.

[metamatar]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/?itid=ap_jeffstein

NEW: THE STAGGERING RISE OF AMERICA'S GLOBAL ECONOMIC WARFARE (summary by author Jeff Stein from twitter)

1. ~1/3 of all nations on Earth now face some form of US sanctions. Huge increase from when mostly applied to Cuba & a handful of regimes

2. +*60%* of *all poor countries* are under US sanctions of some kind. Has become almost a reflex of US foreign policy

3. Sanctions have spawned multi-billion-dollar lobbying & influence industry, enriching former US officials who are hired by foreign countries & oligarchs

4. Sanctions have had devastating effects on innocent civilians. In Cuba, they've made critical medical supplies impossible to import. In Venezuela, they contributed to a financial collapse 3X greater than the US Great Depression. Syria faces its greatest humanitarian crisis this year after a decade civil war & sanctions.

5. Treasury staffers drafted a ~40 page plan aimed at reforming the sanctions process that was dramatically whittled down amid disagreements w/ State

6. OFAC is widely described as overwhelmed by tens of thousands of requests. WH officials have brainstormed sanctions scenarios w/ outside nonprofits

7. Biden has unleashed unprecedented volley of +6K sanctions in 2 years. Higher than even previously unprecedented rate of Trump.

“We don’t think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war ... But we should.”

[1americanconservative]

🚨 🇺🇸BREAKING: WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST'S WIFE INDICTED AS FOREIGN SPY

Remember Max Boot - he led the Trump-Russia Hoax propaganda at WaPo?

Well, it turns out his wife, Sue Mi Terry, has been indicted for spying for South Korea.

She used her position to trade US government access for luxury goods and high-end sushi dinners.

She allegedly passed intel to South Korean handlers, including handwritten notes about a private meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Accused of influencing US policy and accepting over $37,000 in bribes.

Faces up to 5 years in prison if convicted.

Source: @zerohedge

[mariacallous]

you don't have to answer if you think it'll give you too much blowback but I think Biden's Israel strategy is that he thinks Bibi is likelier to listen to him if he gives US support than if he pulled the plug on support entirely, and he thinks Bibi would be even more unhinged if the US turned on him, so it's a harm reduction approach to diplomacy . There aren't any good options so he's taking the option that'll lose him the least votes domestically and what MIGHT result in Bibi being less awful. People can disagree with this strategy but it's frustrating to see the people who call him Genocide Joe not reading the news stories of the Biden administration putting immense pressure on the Israeli gov't behind the scenes. like idk maybe real diplomacy might work better in foreign policy than performative slogans and speeches ...

Unfortunately I think that’s exactly the calculation, and I do also think that it’s probably the best option available. Netanyahu and his government have made no secret of how extreme they are, and how little they care, both about people they disagree with/are opposed to and things like norms and morals. His government is also one that is prone to disproportionate reactions, both militarily and otherwise. All of that is to say that the options available and the outcomes are limited.

The US has also very poorly handled things in the Middle East (huge “no shit” moment there, I know, and obviously not just in the Middle East) historically and recently, and between the Trump administration left things in general and their specific actions re: Israel, the cards the US holds are very weak, and completely pulling support for Israel and doing the political and policy equivalents of chanting “from the river to the sea” a) makes Netanyahu and his government even more extreme and unresponsive and therefore they *really* can just go off and do what they want, since any restraining or moderating influence is completely gone, b) pushes them even closer to Russia and other powers who would welcome that kind of realignment and split, c) will cause Iran and its proxies (Hezbollah and Hamas) to be even more active and empowered and violent and d) is completely unhelpful for both Israeli and Palestinian civilians who would suffer more.

Because of how Biden has been handling things, we’ve gotten more aid in to Palestinians, more pressure to stop harming them, and more credit and support among the Israeli citizens, which puts even more pressure from above and below on Netanyahu, and it’s being done in a way that makes it difficult for Netanyahu and his government to try to use it or publicize it, plus it’s a steady pressure.

Is there more he could and should be doing? Absolutely. More aid and support going to Palestinians. Pushing even more on Egypt to open relief corridors. Less military aid being sent to Israel currently. But there’s no button or switch that can be used which just stops what’s happening.

[hero-israel]

homelessness and the housing crisis is growing, healthcare is shit, education system is shit, ppl can barely find jobs, white supremacy movements is growing, etc etc etc but ppl are willing to let trump win bc biden and kamala aren’t anti israel. as if trump isn’t even more outwardly pro israel than they are?? and why are we letting issues in israel and palestine, that yes are important, decide what president we elect in the united states of america???

foreign policy has never played such a big role in an election since what, vietnam?? afghanistan? but americans were getting affected by those two on a large scale. there are only a few US spec ops forces in israel rn, and that’s mainly to help identify hostages especially american ones. and ppl are blaming all of these issues above on US aid money to israel when that’s not the cause of it and would most likely just increase under trump. ffs i hate these leftists so much.

In Putin's Russia, robots program people!

This is the most obvious case I've ever seen of trollbot accounts swaying public opinion and motivating previously normal-ish people towards political extremism and even violence. It's like all the propaganda we see whipping up angry mobs in "The Boys," but on the other side; their college diplomas did not save them from becoming Sandy Hook Truthers.

I remember when Occupy Wall Street fizzled out ineffectively - and that was about day-to-day economic conditions for American voters! People couldn't motivate themselves over that, but some influencer talking about a "Gaza famine" could help Trump carry MIchigan? A repulsive, sick joke.

The epistemic closure of leftists needs a lot more examination. I will not forget the person who posted this: "Do you dare to claim that the Left promote anywhere in the world real anti-semitism, namely theories that the Jews are by their nature evil or inferior or that they are the root of all the problems in the world  ? Or do you claim perhaps that the Left promote policies of discrimination or exclusion towards Jews, let alone of persecution of the Jews ?...

...Anti-semitism is not a problem for the Left as a movement for the reason that I have explained above, namely the total incompatibility between the worldview of the Left and anti-semitism. The same obtains for anti-Black racism. Perhaps there are some leftist individuals with residual anti-Black tendencies, but obviously anti-Black racism is not today a problem for the Left as a whole, as the Left is in its very essence for the equality and equal dignity of all people”

Homelander can't be a badguy, he's the goodguy

[forsetti]

On Calls For Pres. Biden To Step Aside: Know The Players And Motives Tossing aside one of the most progressive presidents in fifty years because you are afraid they might not win an election is just plain stupid without a really, really, really solid backup plan. It is even stupider if you look at who is pushing for him to step aside and their motives. Here are the main groups calling for Pres. Biden to step away from running against Trump in November and why:

1-Republicans. Republicans know Biden is the biggest threat to them getting back the White House and enacting their batshit crazy policy agenda. They want nothing more than to not run against Pres. Biden because not only does he have the track record of beating Trump before but has an amazing economic record to run on. If you ever want to understand who Republicans view as their political threat, all you have to do is look at who they are attacking. They were going after Hillary for three years prior to 2016. The entire Benghazi witch hunt had no other purpose than to damage her electorally. Every single hearing about Hunter Biden, the border, the Biden Crime Family,… is nothing more than dog and pony hearings to dampen Democratic and Independent voter enthusiasm.

2-The Media. Trump’s non-stop crazy train administration was a goldmine for media outlets. Every day there was a new outrage, wild-ass rant, something that brought eyes to screens which translates to selling ad time/space. The Biden administration is efficient and boring. No scandals, except the ones Republicans gin up that turn up nothing. No rants. No chaos. No real controversy. Just plain old boring governance which is great for the country but bad for a business model that relies on shock, drama, and negativity. “Dems in disarray,” has been a media cottage industry since Bill Clinton was in office. If you don’t understand the financial motivation for why the media constantly derides Democrats for the slightest misstep while ignoring Republican malfeasance, you are probably likely to fall for their own brand of political propaganda.

It should tell you something that major news outlets have come out demanding Pres. Biden step aside for not looking good on camera during one ninety-minute debate but not a single one has asked the same of the candidate who was found guilty of sexual assault, found guilty of thirty-four felony charges, misspeaks dozens of times at every rally, and goes off on wild, illogical, batshit crazy tangents, and is tied to child sexual abuse via Jeffery Epstein. That they are not treating Trump with the same non-stop demands to step aside as they are Pres. Biden should tell you something about their motives.

3-Bad Foreign Actors. Russia wants nothing more than for Biden to lose the election. He is their biggest threat to taking over Ukraine and pushing their influence farther into Western Europe. NATO is stronger now and has more members than at any time in its history. This is the last thing Putin wants. Russia has been actively pushing propaganda online to influence U.S. elections for some time but really have ramped it up the past few election cycles.

Russia targets Republicans by fueling rage over culture war topics like abortion, immigration, racial violence, and the decline of Western, Christian norms. They also target liberals by trying to divide them over issues they care about Israel/Palestine, LGBTQI rights, Bernie vs Clinton, Bernie v Biden, DNC v “real progressives,”… They want liberals at each other’s throats because, if unified, the left is the largest voting bloc in America. Conservatives are electoral dinosaurs but they maintain power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and liberals being more invested in their petty arguments than voting Republicans out of office.

4-Sandernistas. There is still a good-sized faction of people on the left who are still upset about Bernie Sanders not being the nominee in 2016 or in 2020. They are especially mad at what they deem as “establishment Dems,” screwing over Sanders in 2020 starting with the South Carolina primary. What they really are upset about is black voters, predominately female black voters, denying their White Progressive Savior his rightful spot at the head of the ticket. Because Pres. Biden was the one who benefited from this minority voting bloc in 2020, tearing him down and taking him out is a passion project for a lot of so-called “progressives.”

These “progressives,” are under the disillusion that if the Democratic Party fails far enough, hard enough, they will be able rebuild it in their own, perfectly progressive image. They never explain how this magical transformation will happen, they just take it as a matter of faith. Of course, anyone who understands American history and basic civics knows if/when conservatives have ultimate power, they will make sure they never lose another election.

These “progressives,” are the worst kind of progressive. They are often white, middle to upper-class liberals who view politics as a game because they are usually shielded from the consequences of the electoral decisions. If you are a middle/upper-class white, male progressive, very few, if any of Trump’s actions when he was in office affected you directly. The same cannot be said about the progressive voters who overwhelmingly supported Hillary in 2016 and Joe in 2020. They have the most skin in the game, have the most to lose and they vote accordingly. For white dudebros to step in and demand Pres. Biden step aside is a direct “fuck you” to the most loyal part of the base which has the most to lose if Trump is reelected.

Never mind this group has NEVER accomplished a damn thing politically other than cost many good Democrats to lose and decades and decades of progressive policy and law wiped out. They are as adamant about their political skills as they are it is always someone else’s fault when the find-out portion of their fuck around actions comes to fruition.

5-Progressives suffering from 2016 PTSD. This is the one group I can actually relate to and sympathize with. Hillary's loss in 2016 was a major shock to a lot of people. This shock was compounded because not only were we denied the first female president, but we got a lying, narcissistic, misogynist man-child in her place who went about rolling back decades of hard-earned progressive policies and turning the Supreme Court into a right-wing arm of the Federalist Society.

For those of us who lived through 2016, there is no election data that will make us feel good or at ease. It also makes us hyper-vigilant about anything and everything that can be seen as a negative towards the nominee. The second anything bad happens, whether factual or not, a lot of people in this group take the flight instead of the fight option which is associated with PTSD.

Being overly anxious and hyper-vigilant are not necessarily bad unless they lead to bad decisions.

There is only one sure way to make sure Trump is not reelected. Vote for the candidate running against him. Period. Full fucking stop.

If you aren’t willing to do this, for whatever reason you tell yourself, then you will be directly responsible for the very thing you claim is a politically existential moment. Stop listening and parroting Republican talking points. Stop allowing the media to determine who you should vote for. Stop listening to butt-hurt progressives who have no record of political success about what those who do should/shouldn’t do. Stop acting like frightened little bunnies whenever someone says something negative about successful Democratic leaders. Stop automatically going into flight mode when something goes wrong or something negative is said. Fight.

If you aren’t willing to fight, and I’m not talking about inter-party fighting (that time came and went,) for women’s rights, minority rights, safe air/water/food, climate policies, democracy… then you really aren’t as progressive as you tell yourself and others. You are a big reason why we are even in this situation. Whether you like Pres. Biden or think he is too old really isn’t the pertinent issue if you really care about the things you say you do. As long as Pres. Biden is willing to fight like hell for progressive policies and prevent Republicans from turning the country into a white supremacist, misogynist, oligarchy, you should be doing the same.

I don’t know what is going to happen between now and election day. Neither does anyone else. The one thing I am 100% positive about is if Trump does win, the people on the left who have spent the majority of their time and energy railing against the Democratic Party and Pres. Biden will blame anyone and everyone other than themselves. If Pres. Biden wins reelection, these same people will claim their childish hissy fits are what led him to “change course,” enabling him to win. Their view of personal responsibility for election outcomes is some fucked up “No True Scotsman,” bullshit. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING ever counts against their political beliefs and views.

I know some people reading this will wonder why I spend so much time and energy railing against the left. The answer is really simple-I fully expect the people on the right to be bad-faith actors who are hell-bent on destroying any and all progressive policies and candidates. I don’t, and shouldn’t expect the same from people who claim to be political allies. You can't claim to be a member of Team Good™ if your behaviors and actions help Team Bad™.

[ngdrb]

"The Growing Dangers of the MAGA Movement"

A Growing Threat to American DemocracyIntroductionThe "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement, which coalesced around Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and has persisted beyond his presidency, represents one of the most significant political and cultural forces in modern American history. What began as a catchy campaign slogan has evolved into a broad ideological movement with tens of millions of devoted adherents.

While supporters view it as a patriotic effort to restore traditional American values and strength, critics see the MAGA movement as an existential threat to democracy, pluralism, and the rule of law in the United States. This essay will examine the origins and evolution of the MAGA movement, analyze its core ideological tenets and tactics, and explore the various ways in which it poses growing dangers to American democratic institutions and social cohesion.

By synthesizing research, expert analysis, and recent events, we can better understand the nature of this movement and the challenges it presents.

Origins and Evolution of the MAGA Movement

The roots of the MAGA movement can be traced back to long-standing currents of populism, nativism, and anti-establishment sentiment in American politics. However, it was Donald Trump who managed to coalesce these disparate threads into a potent political force during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump's promise to "Make America Great Again" resonated with millions of Americans who felt left behind by globalization, demographic changes, and shifting cultural norms.

His brash, outsider persona and willingness to buck political correctness attracted those who were disillusioned with conventional politicians. Trump tapped into feelings of economic anxiety, cultural displacement, and resentment toward coastal elites to build a devoted base of support.

After his surprise victory in 2016, the MAGA slogan transformed from a campaign catchphrase into a full-fledged movement and identity. Trump supporters eagerly adopted the MAGA label, proudly wearing red hats and using the hashtag online. The movement took on a life of its own, with Trump as its figurehead but extending well beyond just one man.

Throughout Trump's presidency, the MAGA movement continued to evolve and radicalize. As Trump faced investigations, impeachment proceedings, and constant media scrutiny, his base became increasingly defensive and hostile toward perceived enemies.

Conspiracy theories like QAnon found fertile ground among MAGA adherents. The movement adopted an increasingly apocalyptic and militant tone, portraying itself as the last line of defense against sinister forces trying to destroy America.

The movement reached a crescendo - and a dangerous breaking point - on January 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. This event crystallized the growing extremism within the MAGA movement and its willingness to subvert democratic processes. Even after Trump left office, the MAGA movement has endured as a powerful force in American politics. It has reshaped the Republican Party in Trump's image and continues to exert enormous influence through primaries, fundraising, and setting the terms of political debate on the right.

Core Tenets and Ideology

While the MAGA movement encompasses a range of views, several core ideological tenets have emerged as central to its worldview:

America First Nationalism: The movement advocates an "America First" foreign and economic policy, rejecting globalism in favor of national sovereignty and protectionism.

Anti-immigration: Restricting both legal and illegal immigration is a top priority, often couched in nativist rhetoric about preserving American culture.

Cultural traditionalism: MAGA adherents push back against progressive social changes, championing traditional gender roles, religious values, and a nostalgic view of America's past.

Deep state paranoia: The movement is deeply distrustful of government institutions, mainstream media, and other power centers, believing them to be corrupt and working against the interests of everyday Americans.

Cult of personality: Loyalty to Donald Trump personally is a defining feature, with the movement portraying him as a messianic figure fighting dark forces.

Anti-"wokeness": The MAGA movement positions itself in staunch opposition to progressive ideas about systemic racism, LGBTQ+ rights, and other social justice causes.

Election denialism: Following Trump's lead, much of the movement refuses to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election results, pushing baseless fraud claims.

Conspiratorial thinking: The movement is prone to embracing and amplifying conspiracy theories that support its worldview, from QAnon to COVID-19 misinformation.

These ideological pillars form the foundation of the MAGA movement's grievance-fueled politics and its antagonistic stance toward democratic institutions and norms.

Tactics and Strategies

The MAGA movement employs a range of tactics to advance its goals and expand its influence:

Social media mobilization: Savvy use of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and newer alt-tech sites allows rapid dissemination of messaging and coordination of grassroots action.

Alternative media ecosystem: A network of right-wing news outlets, podcasts, and influencers creates an insular information bubble for supporters.

Intimidation and threats: Movement figures often use violent rhetoric and veiled threats to intimidate opponents and critics.

Litigation and legal challenges: An army of pro-Trump lawyers file dubious lawsuits to challenge election results and other perceived slights.

Primary challenges: The movement targets "disloyal" Republicans with primary opponents to enforce ideological conformity.

Propaganda and disinformation: Coordinated campaigns spread misleading narratives and outright falsehoods to shape public opinion.

Protests and rallies: Mass gatherings serve to energize the base and project a show of force.

Infiltration of local offices: The movement has pushed supporters to take over low-level government positions like election boards and school boards.

These tactics have proven effective at solidifying the movement's power within the Republican Party and exerting outsized influence on the national political conversation.Growing Dangers to DemocracyThe MAGA movement poses several interconnected threats to the stability and functioning of American democracy:

Undermining faith in elections

Perhaps the most immediate danger is the movement's persistent efforts to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections. By pushing baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and refusing to accept unfavorable results, MAGA leaders are actively eroding public trust in the democratic process.This delegitimization of elections has several alarming consequences. It provides justification for new voting restrictions that disproportionately impact minority communities. It increases the risk of political violence, as we saw on January 6th when MAGA supporters felt empowered to use force to "stop the steal." And it creates a permission structure for future attempts to overturn legitimate election results.If a large segment of the population no longer believes in the basic mechanics of democracy, it becomes nearly impossible to have peaceful transfers of power or to solve problems through normal political channels.

2.Assault on the rule of law

The MAGA movement has shown a troubling willingness to disregard the rule of law when it conflicts with their goals. This manifests in several ways:

Refusing to comply with lawful subpoenas and oversight efforts

Pardoning political allies convicted of crimes

Interfering in ongoing investigations for political purposes

Calling for the imprisonment of political opponents without due process

Flouting ethics rules and profiting from public office

By treating the law as optional or applicable only to their enemies, MAGA leaders set a dangerous precedent that threatens the foundations of constitutional governance.

3.Embracing political violence

While not universal among supporters, there is a strong current of militancy within the MAGA movement that views violence as a legitimate political tool. This mindset has led to increased threats against public officials, journalists, and even fellow Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal.The events of January 6th represented a shocking escalation, demonstrating that a significant portion of the movement is willing to use force to achieve its ends. Even more concerning is the way many MAGA leaders have subsequently downplayed or justified the Capitol attack.This normalization of political violence profoundly destabilizes democracy and makes peaceful resolution of differences far more difficult

4.Undermining truth and shared reality

The MAGA movement's loose relationship with factual reality represents another serious threat to functional democracy. By embracing conspiracy theories, rejecting scientific expertise, and creating alternative information ecosystems, the movement erodes the possibility of having good-faith debates based on a shared set of facts.When a large segment of the population lives in a completely different epistemic reality, it becomes nearly impossible to find common ground or craft effective policy solutions. This rejection of truth and expertise also leaves followers vulnerable to manipulation and extreme ideas.

5.Weakening of democratic institutions

MAGA leaders have waged a sustained assault on the legitimacy of key democratic institutions like the justice system, intelligence agencies, the press, and career civil servants. By portraying these entities as part of a nefarious "deep state" working against the people, the movement weakens public trust in the very institutions needed for democracy to function.This institutional erosion creates a vicious cycle, as weakened institutions are less able to serve as a check on abuses of power, leading to further deterioration.6.

Personality cult dynamics

The MAGA movement's intense devotion to Donald Trump personally introduces instability and irrationality into the political system. When loyalty to an individual trumps commitment to principles or the national interest, it opens the door to significant abuses of power.The personalization of politics around Trump also makes it more difficult to resolve political differences through normal democratic means. Policy debates get reduced to whether one supports or opposes Trump as an individual.

7.Minority rule tendencies

There are strong anti-democratic currents within the MAGA movement that seek to entrench minority rule through a variety of mechanisms:

Extreme gerrymandering

Voter suppression targeting Democratic-leaning groups

Exploiting the electoral college and Senate's rural bias

Court packing to lock in a conservative judiciary

Calls to repeal the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators)

These efforts to insulate MAGA power from the will of the majority represent a fundamental threat to the principle of popular sovereignty.

8.Scapegoating and demonitiization

The MAGA movement's rhetoric often seeks to divide Americans into "real" patriots versus dangerous "others" - whether immigrants, racial minorities, liberals, or the nebulous "elite." This deliberate "us vs. them" framing corrodes social cohesion and paints political opponents as existential enemies rather than fellow citizens with differing views.Taken to extremes, this dehumanization of the opposition can be used to justify anti-democratic actions or even violence in the name of defending the "real America.

Potential Future Trajectories

Looking ahead, there are several potential paths the MAGA movement could take, each with significant implications for American democracy:

Moderation and reintegration: In this optimistic scenario, the movement gradually moderates its views and tactics, allowing for its reintegration into normal democratic politics. This would likely require new leadership and a rejection of its most extreme elements.

Continued radicalization: The movement could continue down the path of escalating extremism, embracing more conspiratorial thinking and explicit calls for anti-democratic action. This risks further political violence and democratic backsliding.

Splintering: Internal divisions could cause the movement to fragment into competing factions, potentially diminishing its overall influence but also creating space for even more radical offshoots.

Institutional capture: The movement could succeed in taking over the Republican Party entirely and gaining control of key government institutions, allowing for the implementation of its agenda through official channels.

Authoritarian takeover: In a worst-case scenario, MAGA leaders could leverage a crisis or electoral victory to rapidly dismantle democratic guardrails and institute authoritarian rule, similar to what has occurred in countries like Hungary.

The trajectory the movement takes will depend on a variety of factors, including the actions of MAGA leaders, the response of democratic institutions, economic conditions, and unforeseen events that could reshape the political landscape. Responding to the Threat Given the serious dangers posed by the MAGA movement, a robust democratic response is necessary. Some potential strategies include:

Strengthening democratic institutions: Shoring up the integrity and independence of bodies like the Justice Department, election administration, and civil service to withstand political pressure.

Civic education: Improving public understanding of democratic processes and values to build resilience against anti-democratic messaging.

Media literacy: Equipping citizens with the tools to critically evaluate information sources and resist disinformation.

Bipartisan coalition building: Forging alliances between Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans to present a united front in defense of democratic norms.

Economic policy: Addressing the legitimate economic grievances that fuel support for the movement through inclusive growth policies.

Legal accountability: Ensuring that violations of law and democratic norms face appropriate consequences, regardless of political affiliation.

Depolarization efforts: Investing in initiatives that bridge partisan divides and rebuild social cohesion at the community level.

Election reform: Implementing reforms to increase faith in election integrity while expanding access to voting.

Countering extremism: Providing off-ramps and support for those at risk of radicalization into anti-democratic ideologies.

Conclusion

The MAGA movement represents one of the most significant challenges to American democracy in generations. Its potent mix of grievance politics, personality cult dynamics, and anti-democratic tendencies poses a multifaceted threat to the stability and functioning of the country's political system.

While the movement taps into some legitimate frustrations with the status quo, its proposed solutions and tactics risk undermining the very foundations of constitutional governance. The normalization of political violence, erosion of truth, and delegitimization of democratic institutions create a volatile situation with the potential for severe instability.

Responding effectively to this threat will require a clear-eyed understanding of the movement's appeal and tactics, coupled with proactive efforts to strengthen democratic guardrails and rebuild civic cohesion. The future of American democracy may well hinge on the ability to successfully navigate this challenge in the years to come.

Ultimately, preserving a healthy democracy requires constant vigilance and renewal. The MAGA movement serves as a stark reminder that even long-established democracies are not immune to authoritarian impulses. By understanding the nature of this threat, Americans across the political spectrum can work to uphold the principles of democratic self-governance for future generations.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Pfeiffer at The Message Box:

The generally accepted — and oft-repeated — narrative about Trump is that he is a cult-leader who can bend the Republican base to his will. On issues like free trade and foreign policy, he broke with long-standing Republican orthodoxy and faced no repercussions. He attacked Republican stalwarts like the Bush family and John McCain. Not only was there no blowback, Trump also made these folks' personas non-grata in the Republican Party. Whether it’s indictments, his sexual assaults, or his dalliances and dinner dates with Nazis, Trump could force the Republican Party to go along. The GOP is Trump’s party and what he says goes. Trump is a man accountable to no one. This has benefited him politically and brought in folks who hate politics and distrust institutions. But that image became fuzzy last week when Donald Trump bent to the will of anti-abortion extremists in a stunning flip-flop on abortion that tells us everything we need to know about Donald Trump. He poses an existential threat to reproductive freedom for tens of millions of Americans.

The Flip-Flop to End All Flip-Flops

I have written about Trump’s abortion flip-flop a couple of times in the last week, so if you are a regular reader of Message Box, please feel free to skip ahead. If not… In an interview with Dasha Burns of NBC News, Trump implied that he would vote for the amendment on the Florida ballot guaranteeing access to abortion and effectively overturning the state’s six-week ban. Trump is now a Florida resident and many are unsure how he plans to vote on the amendment. Trump’s stated position on abortion is that it's up to the states. For crass political reasons he has been critical of Florida’s extreme ban. A day ago, Trump flip-flopped, telling Fox News that he would vote NO on the amendment. So what happened in the subsequent twenty-four hours?

Well, the evangelical community and anti-abortion activists went ballistic. They blew up the phone lines to Mar-a-Lago or wherever Trump  was laying his head last week. They argued that Trump’s new stance would depress turnout from his base. Ever since Dobbs, Trump cannot get it right. He watched his slate of hand-picked candidates get mowed down in 2022 and he sees the polls showing large majorities oppose the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the sorts of state and national abortion bans of which Republicans have long dreamed. Trump thought his “leave it to the states” policy would help. It didn’t. Floating the idea of voting for the abortion amendment was another desperate effort to get on the right side of the issue that has cost Republicans nearly every election. This time, Trump crossed a line. The anti-abortion faction of the party told him to reverse course and he did so immediately. One of the core tenets of Trump’s political philosophy is to never, under any circumstances admit to wrongdoing. Heck, Trump doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on defending and dining with Nazis. So the fact that Trump changed course so quickly and with so little resistance on abortion is quite notable.

[...] These folks will be calling the shots in a Trump Administration. They will influence policy and staffing decisions and that should scare the shit out of anyone who cares about reproductive freedom. Dobbs was the beginning — not the end — of the Far Right’s efforts.

Donald Trump being made to cry “uncle” and say that he is voting no on Florida Amendment 4 after being heavily criticized by anti-abortion commentators when he stated that he would initially consider voting in favor of Amendment 4 is proof that the anti-abortion extremists still call the shots in the GOP.

[ahaura]

Brad Simpson on Twitter said:

Historian of US foreign policy here. One of the core functions of US diplomacy towards client states engaging in mass murder is denial of death tolls. I cannot think of a single example of simple acknowledgment of client state atrocities since 1945. A few examples:

When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, with US military and diplomatic backing, its armed forces killed 50-100k civilians in the first 12 months (roughly 15% of the population). US officials flatly denied the scope and scale of killing: (Source)

In Dec. 1981 a US backed El Salvadoran special forces unit massacred more than 800 civilians amidst the Salvadoran civil war. The Reagan Administration, led by Elliot Abrams, initially just denied the massacre or blamed FMLN guerrillas. [Link]

We can find dozens of similar examples over the last 40 years. More recently the Trump (and now Biden Admin) denied the scope and scale of US backed Saudi atrocities and killings in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has killed more than 100,000 civilians: [Link]

The point here is simple. The US government, under Democratic and Republican Administrations, *will always deny atrocities* carried out by client states and allies and use its diplomatic and media influence to this end. We should expect the Biden Admin to lie in this way.

It’s worth noting that no US government since has initially acknowledged an Israeli massacre or atrocity. Its reflexive response is to back Israeli denials. If anyone can think of one, please post. I cannot think of a single one since the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

(posted Oct. 25)

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Trump and his sycophants have destroyed the Republican Party. They are no longer conservatives either fiscally or on foreign policy. They are a party of chaos beholden to the right-wing culture warrior oligarchs. They are the derogatory agents of those oligarchs and the corporations owned by them. They make decisions based on the whim of a deranged madman.

They have gone from being closet racists/bigots to being full blown Nazis that call for the extermination of their culture war scapegoats they call “vermin” (marginalized people/political rivals). They take this term directly from Hitler who they openly embrace in speech and writing. They no longer care about tax cuts for all but just for the 1% and corporations. They want endless wars to profit from and to distract and rally their deplorable base. They no longer want small, limited government but opt for a massive government that intrudes into its citizens private lives and tramples their freedoms.

The party of law and order is now a party of criminals, sex offenders, grifters, traitors, and murderous street thugs. They are proud of this and fund raise and merchandise from their lawlessness. They have bought control of what is now an illegitimate SCOTUS which never allows them to be held accountable.

They use the KKK, Neo-Nazi groups, armed right-wing militias, Neo-Confederates, and white supremacists to persecute their opponents and victims in the streets and inside the Capitol itself. They tell us to “get over it” when mindless gun violence decimates our families in every public venue from churches, to schools, to 4th of July celebrations, movie theaters, shopping malls, and even a Super Bowl parade.

The police, courts, and legislatures are infested with their white nationalist/supremacists and Christo-fascists. They openly take money from Russia and others to influence our foreign policy and economic policy. Money from Russia is funneled into the NRA and Congress to allow a massive proliferation of gun violence on our streets that destabilizes our society.

They claim to be the party of the military but they degrade and insult our troops and cast our veterans into the streets. They abandon our allies and our treaty obligations at the behest of foreign dictators that bribe them.

They bust our unions and pass laws to weaken or prevent organized labor. They are forcing society to become wage slaves with no security, insurance, or pensions. They force our workers into the “gig economy” where everyone works incredible hours 7 days a week at multiple jobs and still are left unable to afford rent or mortgages. Nearly the entire population is one or two paychecks away from being homeless.

Decades of trickle down economics has seen our tax dollars poured into the accounts of billionaires, millionaires, and corporations with not a penny trickling down to the working class. The middle class has been practically wiped out by cruel Republican legislation written by political think tanks established and funded by oligarchs. The only thing these pseudo-conservatives conserve is their own wealth.

This is late stage capitalism run amok. The economy has been drained and now the oligarchs and corporations are plundering the government. They have taken advantage of decades of right-wing propaganda proliferated by Fox News, conservatives talk radio, and internet podcasts that have brain washed the rural areas into blaming the Democrats that are trying help them while convincing them to vote for the Republicans who have impoverished them. The French Revolution in reverse.

They see the Orange Dictator as their last best chance to completely take over the government and create a kleptocracy that pulls the strings behind an autocracy that pretends to be a republic.

The chaos of the Republican puppets is to distract everyone from the takeover by the oligarchs, corporations, and deep pocketed foreign adversaries.

[warsofasoiaf]

Hello slal! How are you? I was wondering what your opinion is of J D Vance’s foreign policy? Have a nice day!

He is overwhelmingly pro-Israel, to the point where his foreign policy has been characterized as "America First with an Israeli exception," and would likely support an escalation in Gaza and be unlikely to call for humanitarian pauses or expansion of humanitarian aid. I actually don't believe he'd have any real influence on the course of Gaza though - Netanyahu is driven primarily by domestic concerns, not foreign ones.

Vance sells himself as part of the Ukro-skeptic foreign policy community that wants to pivot to China, as emphasized by figures like Eldridge Colby (who is likely to be on the Trump natsec team should he win in 2024). He believes that there's no credible end-state to the War in Ukraine and that limited defense resources should be focused on China.

But of course, this is scuppered by the fact that Vance regularly repeats Russian talking points, unwilling to actually invest in expanding defense production, which has some of the highest ROI and would be a wise choice for anyone who claims to desire economic prosperity and a desire to revitalize American manufacturing. Whether Vance blames Ukraine for Trump's first impeachment and wants to punish them (as is likely the case with Trump) or he believes in the Russo-Ukrainian War as the next arena for the culture war, I do not know.

So in that sense, Vance has no real coherent foreign policy outlook and rather uses foreign policy as a means to pander to his base, which makes sense as he was picked largely because of his overwhelming Trump sycophancy (and his position as a swing state Senator) as opposed to any specific policy choices.

Thanks for the question, Fang.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[tomorrowusa]

Donald Trump may have gotten an illegal campaign contribution from an Egyptian dictator. Trump's attorney general derailed an investigation into this illicit cash transfer.

And it really was CASH. The Washington Post reports on this bizarre scene at an Egyptian bank.

Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash. Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, according to records from the bank. Four men arrived and carried away the bags, which U.S. officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of U.S. currency.

Now we know that $10 million in US cash weighs 200 lbs./90.7 kg.

Trump loves dictators because they can give him money from national banks without a free press or pesky opposition squawking about it.

Trump is corrupt to the core. And when a president is getting emoluments from other countries then US foreign policy is being influenced in a way which Americans are in the dark about.

The attorney general who derailed the investigation is the creepy Trump apologist Bill Barr. He is the poster boy for why there should be more independence for investigators looking into wrongdoing at the highest levels of government – including Supreme Court justices.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Article published 2021

The U.S. has a habit of ignoring its own laws when it comes to arming and supporting authoritarian regimes. The latest example of this came last month when the Biden administration waived Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which was created to block U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan during and after the first Karabakh war. 

One administration after another has issued this waiver since it became available in 2002 in the name of counter-terrorism cooperation, but events in the last year have made the usual rubber-stamping of supplying weapons to the Aliyev regime much more controversial, and rightly so. Azerbaijan’s aggressive military campaign in Karabakh last year was exactly what the original cutoff in military assistance was intended to discourage, and the assault on Karabakh proved that Baku’s commitment to diplomacy was a lie. Issuing the waiver in the wake of the second Karabakh war is indefensible. Doing so shortly after recognizing the Armenian genocide is a slap in the face to the Armenian-American community, and it makes a mockery of the Biden administration’s pretensions to making human rights central to its foreign policy.  Azerbaijan is just one of many client governments whose war crimes the U.S. has ignored in order to keep military assistance flowing. Enabling further aggression against the people of Karabakh and Armenia is a particularly obnoxious and shameful example of how our government’s partnerships with corrupt authoritarian states puts innocent lives in jeopardy.  Within weeks of the administration’s decision, there were already reports of new incursions by Azerbaijan’s forces into Armenian territory.[,,,] Specifically, members of Congress should insist that Secretary Blinken explain why he signed off on this when the government of Azerbaijan is putting its war crimes on display in its appalling Military Trophies Park, complete with “ghoulish displays of helmets and caricatured mannequins of Armenian soldiers.” The dehumanization of Armenians has become a major feature of Azerbaijan’s official ideology, and by supporting Azerbaijan’s government the U.S. is giving its stamp of approval to a regime that both denies the Armenian genocide and threatens to commit another one.[...] It is no accident that the amendment that created the waiver for Section 907 was passed just a few months after the September 11 attacks. Our government’s “war on terror” has spawned a host of destructive policies, and establishing a closer security relationship with the dictatorship in Azerbaijan in the name of combating terrorism was one of them.[...] There are some hard-liners in Washington that were cheerleading for Azerbaijan during its aggressive war in Karabakh, and they are no doubt pleased with the Biden administration’s decision to ignore Azerbaijan’s many crimes. According to the hard-liners’ view, backing Azerbaijan is not only tolerable but necessary to counter Russian and Iranian influence in the region.[...]

Presented with the opportunity to undo Trump’s decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, Biden has demurred, and it now appears that no reversal of that decision will be forthcoming. Given the chance to block an unjustifiable $23 billion sale of advanced weapons to the United Arab Emirates, Biden has let it go ahead. Issuing the waiver for military assistance to Azerbaijan makes the same kind of mistake. If Biden and Blinken want to make good on their rhetoric about emphasizing the importance of human rights in their foreign policy, they should begin by cutting off all military assistance to Azerbaijan. U.S. and Turkish support for Azerbaijan have served to create a menace in the Caucasus. The least that the U.S. can do is to stop aiding that menace as it threatens the stability of the region.