A group of globalist White House advisers and generals have apparently teamed up with establishment Republican leaders in Congress to form a “Committee to Save America” alliance. Though their purported aim is to “protect Trump and the nation from disaster,” these self-styled saviors might be better named “The Committee to Betray President Donald Trump’s Voters.”
Axios’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen had “private chats” recently with their usual gang of establishment Republican sources in Congress and the White House about this committee of smarty-pants saviors who think Trump is either a lunatic, dumb, or both.
Allen writes about the usual suspects in this alliance—Democrats like top economic adviser Gary Cohn and globalist former Goldman Sachs executives like Dina Powell, who is notorious for being able to “manage up” as well as anyone.
As one of Powell’s former Goldman Sachs colleagues (does the 44-year-old Powell’s time at Goldman Sachs count as part of her supposed “foreign policy experience” that Allen describes to puff her up?) described, “the most remarkable thing about Dina Powell is that she can manage up better than anybody I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” The former colleague said that “managing up is when you are able to get the people whom you work for to think you are unbelievably good and competent at what you do.” In other words—long on style and charm, short on substance; all hat, no cattle.
These White House globalists and Democrats, according to Allen, try to “refine or moderate” Trump’s “America first” positions.
Embattled national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who has reportedly been purging Trump loyalists from various national security posts and is pushing for more intervention in Afghanistan, has reportedly joined with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly to check Trump. It may be up to Kelly, who is now the new gatekeeper, to make sure that Trump gets both sides of every issue instead of getting bad information that is heavily tilted in favor of McMaster’s internationalist view that turns off working-class voters from Republican candidates. McMaster, after all, seems to care more about how the world views McMaster than defending Trump, as McMaster’s allies have gone out of their way to undercut Trump’s foreign policy agenda in outlets like the Associated Press.
Allen also warns that “Republican congressional leaders”—which probably includes House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI)—“all could move against” Trump if “special counsel Bob Mueller finds crimes” or Trump “succumbs” to their definition of “radical instincts.” Allen’s piece was also published the day after Trump reportedly had a heated phone call with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Allen writes that “these officials see their successes mostly in terms of bad decisions prevented, rather than accomplishments chalked up.”
In Allen’s telling, the “Committee” comes off as a band of selfless freedom preservers doing all they can to save the country from Trump.
But Allen, perhaps inadvertently, reveals a big “tell.” He writes that “one of the biggest dangers to Trump’s” presidency “is that if Mueller acts or public support plummets, he suddenly could be lonely in his own White House.”
So, in other words, these selfless heroes who act like they purportedly care about nothing more than saving the country from the gravest threat it has ever faced in Trump will pack up and run for the hills as soon as Trump’s popularity dips below a certain level or Mueller finds something unrelated to Russia during his fishing expedition.
How noble.
This isn’t anything new for these virtuous “Committee” members, some of whom like Cohn donated to Hillary Clinton and may not even have voted for Trump. As Joshua Green pointed out in his book Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency, former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus and Ryan took off for the hills as soon as the Access Hollywood tape was released. “I am not going to defend Donald Trump — not now, not in the future,” Ryan, according to Green, “told his House colleagues in a private call.”
Allen’s story indicates that these oh-so-heroic “Committee” members would do the same if Trump’s poll numbers–which do not even take into consideration the strong social desirability bias that was responsible for so many Trump polls being off in recent years–go south.
The “Committee” just seems like mostly unelected officials doing all they can to promote their policies that get stamps of approval from globalists and the legacy media who apparently hate policies that put America first and above their friends in their internationalist social circles.
Rupert Murdoch—who was so dismissive of Trump’s candidacy that he grumbled and did not even look up from his soup when Ivanka Trump tried to tell Murdoch that Trump, who was with her at the lunch, was going to run for president—is now trying to use his Wall Street Journal editorial page to take over Trump’s White House for the establishment that Trump swatted away.
Joe Scarborough, whose ally Dina Powell—who Scarborough’s fiancee Mika Brzezinski bragged would not be in the White House if it weren’t for her—is on Team McMaster, has been trying to do the same with his St. Albans-centered morning show, begging Chief of Staff Kelly to “sideline” nationalist Steve Bannon.
But have no fear. Because, according to Allen, the “Committee” members “believe in” Trump and just want “the processes in place” to give Trump the “right options” (read: anything that isn’t part of Trump’s America-first platform).