The latest McConnell infrastructure debacle proves for the umpteenth time that Trump blew it when he broke with Bannon, but it’s not too late for The Donald to make amends.
We have to rebuild our infrastructure, our bridges, our roadways…You look at these airports, we are like a third world country. And I come in from China and I come in from Qatar and I come in from different places, and they have the most incredible airports in the world. You come back to this country and you have LAX, a disaster. You have all of these disastrous airports. We have to rebuild our infrastructure.
– Donald J. Trump’s Presidential Announcement Speech
For many Americans, June 16, 2015 was the day everything changed. It was the day that a loudmouthed, crass, philandering, golden-haired, but, most importantly, 100% right, blowhard billionaire came down the escalator at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan and announced that he was officially running to become the next President of the United States of America. For nearly an hour, the host of The Celebrity Apprentice defined, in clear and simple language, the serious problems facing America at a most critical juncture.
Self-righteous chattering class idiots (the ones responsible for bringing America to her knees in the first place) immediately dismissed The Donald as the laughing stock of the century. Meanwhile, the ears of independent-minded patriots everywhere – Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in-between – perked up bigly. After all, as anyone with an inkling of common sense will tell you, you must define a problem before you can solve it. Why else would our ruling class be working overtime to censor freethinking American citizens at a faster clip now than at any other point since our founding?
Pundits on television ranted and raved about how Trump had no platform, policy prescriptions, or ideas. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. At every rally and debate, Trump hammered the same issues repeatedly. Immigration. Trade. The perils of political correctness. Healthcare. The stupidity of endless, pointless foreign wars that cost us an arm and a leg (literally and figuratively). And, of course, infrastructure. After all, who else better to tackle the problem of America’s crumbling infrastructure than a real estate developer who made his billions building?
The issue of infrastructure was so important to Trump that he dedicated an entire chapter to it in both his 2015 MAGA blueprint, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, and its subsequent revised 2016 edition, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America. Taking what can only be described as a non-orthodox position for a Republican presidential candidate, Trump explained his intent to rebuild America by reviving the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), which employed nearly 9 million men and women to build up the country’s parks, schools, roads, streets, bridges, airports, highways and more from 1935 to 1943:
If we do what we have to do correctly, we can create the biggest economic boom in this country since the New Deal when our vast infrastructure was first put into place…On the federal level, this is going to be an expensive investment, no question about that. But in the long run it will more than pay for itself. It will stimulate our economy while it is being built and make it a lot easier to do business when it’s done.
When Trump told Fox Business that he wanted to spend at least twice (if only it was as simple as just a matter of spending more) what Hillary was proposing on infrastructure, Russell Berman published a piece titled “Donald Trump’s Big Spending Infrastructure Dream” in The Atlantic in an obvious underhanded attempt to further polarize Washington establishment GOP political class apparhackchiks from the Republican Party’s official presidential nominee:
Trump’s rhetoric on infrastructure is remarkably similar to that of Clinton and President Obama, who has spent nearly six years trying to persuade conservatives in Congress to support the kind of major public-works program that Democrats began to fund in the 2009 economic stimulus package. According to arguments that both Trump and Obama have made, huge new investments in infrastructure would reverse decades of decay in the nation’s public transportation arteries and create millions of jobs. That philosophy is anathema to conservatives who have long derided the stimulus package and the underlying push for more federal spending on infrastructure…Yet Trump’s embrace of an ambitious infrastructure agenda has been one of the most consistent themes of his campaign, a core plank from the moment he descended his gold-rimmed escalator in Manhattan 14 months ago…His signature proposal—that big, beautiful wall along the southern border—is, after all, nothing more than an infrastructure project.
As a tried-and-true populist, Trump was merely running on an issue that was incredibly popular with voters, those people, you know, who “vote” in elections. There was a reason why so many disenchanted rust belt voters, American citizens who had been financially devastated by the Great Recession and had twice gotten behind Obama, a man who previously beamed to them about his plan “to start helping states and local governments with shovel-ready projects all across the country” with his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) stimulus package, were hopping on the Trump Train. In fact, Morning Consult released a poll that same week revealing that 70% of voters were in favor of more federal spending on infrastructure because the nation’s roads, bridges, and energy grids were in urgent need of repair.
With less than three months to go until Election Day, Trump was on fire, and, on August 17, 2016, he invoked the wise “personnel is policy” philosophy of Scott Faulkner, Ronald Reagan’s director of personnel (who helped Reagan lead an insurrection against the GOP establishment during the 1980 presidential transition, in turn setting the “new sheriff in town” tone that defined the Reagan Revolution) and made the best hiring decision of his political career by appointing American former naval officer, investment banker, filmmaker, and media executive Steve Bannon to be his Chief Strategist. Bannon and Trump were simpatico, firebrands who had once been members of the very elite that they now found themselves rebelling against on behalf of the American people.
Once candidate Trump became President-Elect Trump after sweeping Election Night in a stunning landslide (what Michael Moore refers to as “The Biggest F**k You Recorded In Human History”), he pledged that he would “put millions of people to work” in his victory speech. Bannon immediately rolled up his sleeves and got down to brass tacks. In a conversation with Michael Wolff for The Hollywood Reporter, Bannon laid out the new administration’s ‘economic nationalist’ gameplan:
Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement. It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, ironworks, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.
You can only imagine then Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reading Bannon’s words, sweating bullets while pleading with his globalist donor puppetmasters to forgive him for having not done more in order to prevent Trump from winning. Meanwhile, McConnell was not shy about his adamant, fuddy-duddy opposition to Trump and Bannon’s ‘trillion-dollar infrastructure plan,’ telling reporters “What I hope we will clearly avoid, and I’m confident we will, is a trillion-dollar stimulus. We need to do this carefully and correctly, and the issue of how to pay for it needs to be dealt with responsibly.”
Hopes were high for the administration after Trump was sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States of America on January 20, 2017. Following a grueling 19 months and the most vicious election since 1860, patriots everywhere were breathless with anticipation, eager for Trump to implement his economic nationalist agenda, a rising tide to lift all boats, no matter one’s creed or color.
It was the time for the revival of the American spirit.
Understanding how the Electoral College works, Trump had wisely spent a great deal of time on the campaign trail speaking to those two-time Obama voters who Obama and Hillary had foolishly alienated with nonstop lectures about straight, cisgender white male privilege, mansplaining, toxic masculinity, and other weird, creepy made-up non-issues. It’s why nine million Democrats switched parties to vote for him (and, consequently, got him elected). As such, if Advanced Citizenship had been advising Trump, we would’ve recommended that the administration tackle infrastructure on DAY 1, coupling it with the construction of the wall. “Build the wall” catapulted Trump to the presidency, and, to Berman’s point, a ‘big, beautiful wall along the southern border’ is ultimately just an ‘infrastructure project.’
It’s anyone’s guess what actually went on during those first eight months in the White House, but what definitely didn’t go on was Trump making things happen on the infrastructure front. After a non-existent honeymoon period for the new administration, you could almost say the party ended before it even had the chance to begin. GOP hacks McConnell and then U.S. House Republican Speaker Paul Ryan, butthurt-as-ever over Trump’s victory, vocally hated the idea that the new administration would even dare conceive of spending money in order to improve the lives of everyday Americans rather than the dumb, suicidal globalist-uniparty GOP donor class or the loser Country Club Republicans (put down your drink and stop crying, John Boehner, you’ve had enough for tonight) who had previously ensured that the GOP remain the “stupid party” of the late John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Bush family.
The internal GOP civil war between the populists and the establishment hacks came to an abrupt end on August 18, 2017, as the controlled opposition pearl clutchers somehow managed to leverage Charlottesville into getting Bannon ousted from his post as Senior Counselor to the President. Sure, Bannon told the truth and called Ryan “a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation”. On the other hand, he had also helped deliver these imbeciles the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. As Bannon told The Weekly Standard, “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over.”
So much for “democracy”.
Despite running as a patriotic Tony Soprano who was going to get into office and crack the whip to MAGA in order to deliver on behalf of the American “family”, Trump’s firing of Bannon, an obvious attempt to appease McConnell and Ryan, two completely controlled anti-Trump globalist snakes, was the first real red flag that Trump was not the tough-as-nails, no-bullshit boss he had portrayed himself as being. The Reagan Revolution had succeeded because the so-called lunatics had taken over the asylum, not because they showed up and then left after a few months.
Trump’s decision to can Bannon was, for lack of a better word, retarded. You’re supposed to reward your friends and punish your enemies. Not the other way around!
Bannon, hardly your typical establishment Republican, appeared on 60 Minutes and gave Charlie Rose the straight poop about what had gone down in the preceding months.
The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election. That’s a brutal fact we have to face. Mitch McConnell, and to a degree, Paul Ryan. They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. It’s very obvious…When we first met [Mitch]…he basically [said], ‘I don’t wanna hear any more of this drain the swamp talk.’ A guy up on Capitol Hill can’t buy a Coke unless it’s reported. I can’t hire any smart people…[so] gotta back off that.
Charlie Rose responded to Bannon by pointing out at that he was attacking the very people he needed to help him get things done. However, Bannon, a lifelong student of history and human nature, was quick to remind Rose about how the world really works.
They’re not gonna help you unless they’re put on notice. They’re gonna be held accountable if they do not support the President of the United States. Right now there’s no accountability. They do not support the president’s program. It’s an open secret on Capitol Hill. Everybody in this city knows it.
With his hands back on his weapons, Bannon made it clear to Rose that he absolutely intended to go to war with the GOP establishment. Soon thereafter, he (correctly) warned anyone and everyone with an open mind who would listen to him that establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell could not be trusted with implementing Trump’s “America First” agenda. At one Gatestone Institute event in New York City, he gave a stark warning to an audience of GOP donors consisting of policy makers, bankers and real-estate moguls, urging them to stop giving their money to uniparty Republican ‘cowards.’
The Republican Party and the leaders of the Republican Party are cowards. You’re writing your checks to cowards. They are petrified of the opposition party. You know what my superpower is? I don’t give a damn, I could care less what they say about me … It’s about action. Understand this. They’re there for you when it’s easy, ok, they’re there to take your check. But when something comes up like the Iran situation, they will flip the Constitution of the United States so they can have some sort of conscience in voting for that. It’s outrageous. I tell you how it’s going to stop. You stop giving the checks and stop having those guys in and read them the Riot Act. Because they’re all cowards and that’s why I have no respect for them. And trust me, they hate me. Let me tell you, I wear their hate like a badge of honor.
Meanwhile, despite Trump publicly dismissing Bannon in an attempt to distance himself (did he think the media would be nice to him if he did this?), Bannon has never stopped fighting for Trump.
Flash forward to the present and Trump, unable to communicate on social media (some democracy we’ve got, it’s unbelievable), and having totally dropped the ball on infrastructure (amongst other items of business) during his one-and-done term, has essentially become the caricature that his enemies have portrayed him as since the beginning. Railing against now Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell at a Turning Point Action rally in Phoenix, Arizona on July 24, Trump expressed his understandable disappointment over McConnell’s repeated backstabbing despite the fact that he gave the Kentucky Senator his winning endorsement, as McConnell absolutely would have lost had he not done so.
Truth be told, however, it’s a bit rich to watch Trump stomp his feet and whine about how people who have always hated him, people only too eager to betray him…once again reveal that they have always hated him and are only too eager to betray him. To think what a different situation he’d be in had he only listened to Bannon about McConnell’s deceitful ways.
Let’s get real. Trump who won the presidency! He held all the cards, not McConnell, Ryan, McCarthy, or any of the other mouthbreathing dweebs in the GOP establishment. And, yet, for some bizarre reason Trump thought by playing nice with these low-rent Cassius and Brutus knockoffs (the very people the voters put him in office to either get in line or drain from the swamp) and their Benedict Arnold donors and signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 into law, he could get these zombies to play ball with him.
The Art of the Deal, huh? Ha! More like a piece from the Hunter Biden collection.
On August 10, Trump lamented that McConnell had joined 18 other GOP senators (joining 50 of their Democratic colleagues in a “bipartisan negotiation” in order to say “yes” and pass the bill in a 69-30 vote), publicly defying him by approving and voting for President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, the very same one he had been working oh-so-hard to kill with his snore-inducing “Save America” press releases, writing:
Nobody will ever understand why Mitch McConnell allowed this non-infrastructure bill to be passed. He has given up all of his leverage for the big whopper of a bill that will follow. ‘I have quietly said for years that Mitch McConnell is the most overrated man in politics—now I don’t have to be quiet anymore. He is working so hard to give Biden a victory, now they’ll go for the big one, including the biggest tax increases in the history of our Country.’
‘Now’ he doesn’t have to be quiet anymore? NOW?!
That this bill (you can read it here) can even be called an ‘infrastructure’ bill in the first place is adorable. For every single itty-bity mini crumb allotted within its 2,702 pages for roads, bridges, highways, or broadband access, there’s an entire loaf for studies on people hitting deer, the creation of “Transportation Resilience and Adaptation Centers of Excellence” (which will conduct *important* climate change reports and engage “disadvantaged communities”), upgraded Amtrak train service in (yup, you guessed it) Canada, “promoting women in the trucking workforce,” a cool $50 million skim for #NeverTrump globalist and succubus Mitt Romney, the “Digital Equity Act of 2021,” a pilot mileage tax that just might make it too expensive to drive, a nice $3.5 billion for the “Indian Health Service,” and so, so much more.
From being so uptight about infrastructure spending that he could grind uncut gems in his tiny little turtle ass to conveying to the The Wall Street Journal that “Infrastructure is popular with both Republicans and Democrats…if you’re going to find an area of potential agreement, I can’t think of a better one than infrastructure, which is desperately needed.” Wow. Just wow. McConnell, a conniving bullshit artist if there ever was one, sure has come a long way.
Or, rather, is this actually about something else altogether? As Noor Bin Laden says about such sudden, miraculous “bipartisan” change of hearts that miraculously seem to really just benefit Globalist American Empire each and every time, “This is a plot that goes beyond what’s playing in the political theater today between left and right, or Democrat and Republican – a lot of it is theater and a distraction of something much bigger going on.”
People naturally evolve on positions and change their minds, but McConnell’s whiplash takes seem, well, less-than-organic. A mere decade ago, when he was previously the Senate Minority Leader, McConnell told National Journal “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Now he’s telling The Washington Post, “I’ve never felt that we ought to be perceived as being opposed to everything. I’m dealing with the future, not the past. My judgment was it would not hurt the Republican Party to be part of an agreement to do something the American people desperately need.” It’s all so very interesting, particularly given McConnell’s firm declaration this past May when he said “100 percent of my focus is on stopping this new [Biden] administration” (before then reshifting his focus yet again to stopping American citizens from being able to make a living or go about their lives with the threat of additional lockdowns).
Donald, if you’re reading this, it’s not too late to remember that in politics, personnel really is policy. You once (ok, probably more than once) said, “We are led by very, very stupid people.” It’s a statement that holds more truth today than it did when you said it six years ago. The Globalist American Empire is as sick, decadent, emboldened, delusional, anti-American, disengaged, and detached from actual American citizens as ever, and the people could really use your chutzpah and inside knowledge.
We can make mistakes. But ditching Steve Bannon? That one was a beauty. You should have never done it, because when you did, you destabilized MAGA. Being the pattern recognition specialists that we are at ADVANCED CITIZENSHIP, we strongly, strongly recommend that you swallow your pride and reinstall Based Yoda as your top advisor. Bannon has always remained loyal to you and your populist economic-nationalist agenda (even though he could not be based on how you’ve treated him). He has always had your best interests at heart. And, quite frankly, if you had never let him go to begin with (and listened to him about cockroaches like Mitch McConnell), you’d still be President today.
“Let’s hug it out, bitch”. We’ve got an America to Make Great Again.
“I don’t trust Mitch, Donald.” “I know, Steve. I know.”