By Cherie Zaslawsky
It was a sad day for me when I had to largely agree with Matt Bai as he criticized the Trump White House in a recent article for Yahoo News. Like many others with great admiration and high hopes for our new president, I am grateful for many steps he’s taken – shelving the disastrous TPP, to name one “big league” example. Many promises have been kept in a mere 75 days.
But there are certain dangers lurking that the president doesn’t seem to recognize. With the D.C. insiders, the deep state, the RINOs, the Democrats, globalists and their minions in the mainstream media all aligned against him, Trump can’t afford to make many mistakes – already he’s made a few potentially serious ones.
Not only has he been denied the traditional honeymoon, he’s being pummeled in the media over his every word, not to mention his every tweet. This is unprecedented. But we can take some comfort in the fact that, time and again, he’s been proven right – at least in the eyes of the wakeful. During his campaign, it made sense for patriots to give him our unqualified support; now, however, we can best support him by pointing out his missteps and how he might right them.
As I see it, the first blunder – and a very critical one – was the firing of Gen. Michael Flynn. During his presidential run, Trump had been brilliantly playing chess, so to speak, while the “Never Trumpers,” Democrats, globalists et al., and their pals in the mainstream media played checkers. True, they cheated at checkers, adding extra pieces here and there and stealing others, but Trump still beat them time and time again.
Unfortunately, when it came to the Flynn debacle, Trump switched from chess to checkers himself. He saw the situation as a simple case of loyalty to his vice president, who’d been “embarrassed” by the information illegally leaked regarding Flynn. The deep-state players, however, were gleefully playing chess. They knew if they could trick the president into firing one of his few staunch allies who opposed the insiders and globalists, they’d win a major victory; they could then replace Flynn in his all-important capacity as national security adviser with one of their own, neocon Gen. H.R. McMaster, figuring that Trump was too new to the game to recognize the crucial ideological difference between these two men – or that he’d been outmaneuvered – trumped, as it were. The very serious fallout of this misstep, combined with Stephen Bannon leaving the National Security Council team, is that we may now be on the brink of war – the cherished goal of the hawkish neocons.
In addition, as Matt Bai pointed out in his recent article, though with far too negative a slant, Trump has also made a major mistake in handing over tremendous responsibility and power to his completely inexperienced son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
While one can only respect Trump’s love and loyalty to his family, he was elected to save our country and to put America first. Putting Kushner first was not part of Trump’s contract with the American people. This is our republic’s last chance. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and Trump understands this. This is why he ran. He electrified crowd after crowd of cheering fans with his “America First” message. But to deliver on his promises to the American people, he must surround himself with mature men who are top-drawer experts, proven patriots, and who respect the Constitution and understand the threat of globalism in all its manifestations.
Jared and Ivanka are a lovely couple, and Trump is quite right to be proud of them, but they simply don’t belong in the inner circle of the most powerful nation in the world, particularly not during this time of crisis. They are essentially young liberals with good hearts who mean well, but who lack the experience, credentials and comprehensive understanding of history and politics so necessary for the president’s advisers. This is neither the time nor the place for such naïve amateurs.
Trump’s next major miscalculation involved the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. We know that Trump is a superlative executive. He’s managed his hugely successful companies for decades, surrounding himself with a loyal, honest team who gave him the accurate information he used to make his executive decisions. And, yes, several of his trusted team were family members, working in the family business. However, now he’s in the White House, where he’s surrounded by would-be saboteurs dedicated to plotting and planning, eavesdropping on his private conversations and busily figuring out ways to undermine his presidency.
Donald Trump is a rarity in politics: He’s an honest man with no hidden skeletons in his closet, despite the deep state’s and mainstream media’s constant attempts to dredge something up, and he remains outside their grasp. He can’t be bought, and he can’t be blackmailed. He fully intends to keep his word to the American people, and he’s fearless.
So how can they stop him? Only through trickery.
The insiders know he’s a fierce fighter for the causes he believes in, so their game is to mislead him, giving him phony information and bad advice. They’re hoping he’ll then move full steam ahead in the wrong direction. They recognize that, as an executive, his decisions will be based on the information and advice he gets from his top advisers. Uh-oh …
This is what I imagine transpired over RyanCare. Paul Ryan, along with other RINOs and their pals, told the president they had written a bill that delivered on his promise to the American people and that could get passed in both Houses, but the Freedom Caucus was gumming up the works. Being an executive and not a policy wonk, Trump took them at their word regarding the bill. On cue, he went after the Freedom Caucus, not realizing that they were his natural allies. The insiders were playing chess, while Trump got tricked once more into playing checkers.
Trump is so used to getting correct factual information from trustworthy advisers that he hasn’t fully realized he’s surrounded by scheming enemies of America – the very swamp creatures he vowed to expel from Washington. It’s harder to recognize them up close, with their impressive credentials, professional demeanor and convincing arguments.
The president was lured into his most recent, and arguably most worrisome misstep, by the neocon globalists in the National Security Council. First they got Trump to oust Flynn as national security adviser; then they persuaded him to banish Bannon from the National Security Council. With those voices of reason removed, all that remained was for the quislings to convince the president that the right thing to do was to attack Syria for using chemical weapons on civilians. They were playing chess; Trump responded with a simple, unstrategic move – checkers again.
Bannon, a very smart and savvy man, likely suggested that Assad would have no reason to gas his own people, and that this attack had all the earmarks of a false flag event. In fact, George Soros has since been implicated as possibly being behind the operation. However, the cadre of formidable neocons likely complained that they knew best and that Bannon was given to “conspiracy theories,” etc. These trusted advisers didn’t even caution the president to wait until we had all the facts!
Without Bannon and other patriots who can give the president the accurate intel he needs, without those who can help him oust the traitors in the White House and key agencies and replace them with people loyal to his agenda, Trump will not succeed.
They’ll checkmate him.
Cherie Zaslawsky is a writer, editor and educator/English tutor who lives in California.