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writing for godot

New York Times Takes the Bait, Or, Charles Koch's Squealer in the Trump Administration

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Written by Carl Peterson   
Wednesday, 05 September 2018 16:57

 

So, what kind of person wrote the anonymous op-ed, I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration?

Some clues: If you accept the author's description of her or his actions and motivations at face value, this person and other "like-minded colleagues [within the Administration] ...have vowed to thwart parts of [President Trump's] agenda and his worst inclinations."  The reason given for this unusual activity in contravention of normal operations in a US presidential administration?  The author and the others who have taken the vow with him or her, "believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic."  The context and self-description so far tells us that this individual is willing to take personal risks out of love of country--patriotism--and puts duty to country above duty to the president.  We might well say, based on the description so far, that this person and his or her colleagues who are also working to thwart presidential activity that in their opinion would be bad for the country, are at least somewhat heroic.

Later the author comes right out and says it.  The president's "erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren't for unsung heroes [like the author]...going to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing."  What do you think?  Are they not heroes?  If this self-description is telling us the whole story?  And if, as the author seems to believe, their judgments about what is good for the country would be validated by the people if the people knew what these heroes know?

But there are more clues: The author continues, "We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous."  Progressive ears would perk up when reading this.  Safer and more prosperous?  What policies would those be? Later the other shoe drops: "Don't get me wrong.  There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more."

Oh.  Does the author mean "effective deregulation" like the Trump administration's October 31, 2017 abandonment of federal protections for workers' overtime pay that has cost American workers over $1,019,000,000 in overtime pay so far in 2018?  Or does the author mean effective deregulation like cutting back Dodd-Frank protections that make it more likely that the middle class will have to bail out the super-wealthy again someday as they did in 2008?  Or does the author mean effective deregulation like rolling back over 70 environmental rules meant to protect human beings, air, water, and wildlife?  Or is the author just generally talking about all of the ongoing deregulation meant to favor super-wealthy interests at the expense of regular people?

Does the author mean "historic tax reform" like the one signed by the president on December 22, 2017 that puts an estimated $1billion per year each into the pockets of Charles and David Koch, and that does similar things for other super-wealthy Americans but little for regular Americans--and will stack an additional $1.4 trillion onto the national debt which fact is already the excuse Republicans are using to explain why it is imperative that they cut the social safety net? Oh.  That "historic tax reform."

Does the author mean "more robust military," like even more robust than the $603 billion budgeted in 2016 for the US military at almost 35% of the total military spending in the world, and more than 4 times the total 2016 military spending of China, the country with the second highest defense budget that year?  Oh.  The author does mean even more robust, like almost $700 billion for 2018.

These policy preferences expressed by our hero may be a little more of a clue than he or she wanted to leave, because from there the whole puzzle seems to become rather simple to solve.  Policy preferences such as these certainly affirm that that the author is not, as the author admits--a part of the "'resistance' of the left."  Certainly the author is a Republican...or someone who uses the Republican party as a vehicle to achieve goals assigned to the Party by the plutocracy.  But apart from the "more robust military" claim, the successes mentioned by the author are two of the major successes that Charles Koch crowed about and took credit for in a newsletter he sent out earlier this year in a confidential newsletter to the super-wealthy minions who attend his twice-yearly seminars.  This by itself is only part of the picture.  Note that the anonymous author takes the time to make clear that although the successes mentioned happened during the Trump administration, "these successes have come despite--not because of the president's leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective."  The author does not elaborate on how, exactly, these successes were achieved despite such hurdles thrown up by the president himself.  Did this group of heroes who together took a vow to save the country from its president somehow trick him into doing what the author believes are good things?  Was the president led by the nose to the signing table and a pen thrust into his hand?  Or, let me think, was the president's administration heavily stocked at the beginning with, I don't know, let us say many, many Koch brother stooges of whom the author might be one?

According to a document, dated 6/18/2017, from the Checks and Balances Project, 70% of Trump's senior level officials had Koch ties. https://checksandbalancesproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/White-House-70-of-Senior-Level-Officials-Have-Koch-Ties-6.18.17-.pdf .  Note that the anonymous author is identified only as "a senior official in the Trump administration."  According to an article on the Public Citizen’s Corporate Presidency Project website, dated November 30, 2017, 44 officials in the Trump administration had close ties to the Koch brothers.  The article states, "The bulk of Koch allies are in the White House, with 21 officials working there or nominated for White House jobs."  These numbers by themselves suggest that it is not improbable that the purported author is a Koch person.

I heard someone say on a talking head show today that the article could be analyzed using modern algorithmic techniques to determine who the author is.  But after reading the article I doubt that any technique like that will work on this op-ed, because I don't think it was actually written by anyone currently working in the Trump administration, and, I don't think it was written by one person, but by a committee including lawyers and political operatives of various kinds who polished and scrubbed it, turning it every which way to get every bit of punctuation, nuance and message in place, to produce...what it is!  Propaganda!  Reading it I was reminded of Charles Koch's propaganda piece, er, op-ed, in the Washington Post dated April 27, 2017, titled, Trump's policies must not benefit only big businesses like mine. [Let history record that this is one case where Charles Koch did not get his way.  Trump's policies did almost exactly what the article title said they must not do.]

So, if this article was not actually written by the person who claimed to have written it when presenting it to the New York Times, and it was written by a group of people in Charles Koch's employ, why was it written, and why was it given to the New York Times at this precise time?  First, you may recall that about a month ago Koch and Trump had a falling out after Koch showed a video at a semi-annual gathering of Koch's superwealthy minions in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  The video criticized Trump's  trade policies in unsubtle terms, and a top Koch spokesman followed that up by telling reporters that Trump's trade policies were doing "long-term damage."  Also at that conference Koch officials said they would not give money to a Republican Senate candidate in North Dakota because he supported Trump's tariffs.

Of course Trump struck back that same day, tweeting that he didn't need Koch money or "bad ideas," and reminding them that he had made them richer by signing tax reform, ["historical tax reform" in the words of the anonymous op-ed] and by "regulation cuts," ["effective deregulation" in the words of the anonymous op-ed.]  The Koch side of the argument fell silent after that but it may be that the anonymous op-ed is the rebuttal of the rebuttal.

The article if written by committee and the final draft given final approval by Charles Koch himself, was probably not written within the past week but began to be drafted shortly after July 31, 2018.  Koch held it back, waiting for the most propitious moment to deliver it.  The release of Bob Woodward's book provided that moment, and the op-ed was the second part of an old one-two.

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