How Trump Could Cripple the Deep State
How Trump Could Cripple the Deep State
How Trump Could Cripple the Deep State PermanentlyGary North - December 12, 2018Printer-Friendly FormatDavid Stockman wrote a fine article on how and why Trump should declassify documents. Here are a few of his observations.When the Donald promised to "drain the swamp" during the 2016 election campaign – it did sound vaguely like an attack on Big Government, and at least a directional desire to shrink the state and let free market capitalism breathe.After 22 months in office, however, the truth is patently obvious: The only Swamp that Donald Trump wants to drain is one filled with his political enemies and policy adversaries at any given moment in time. Even then, you have to consult his tweetstorm ledger to know exactly who the swamp creatures de jure actually are.Still, the Donald’s daily Twitter assaults on the Deep State are a wondrous thing. They surely do undermine public confidence in rogue institutions like the FBI, CIA and NSA, which profoundly threaten America’s constitutional liberties and fiscal solvency.Stockman has hit the nail on the head. First, Trump has his huge Twitter account. No other President has ever had one. He can bypass the media. He can get his message to his troops.Stockman did not mention the fact that Twitter enables the person doing the posting to include a shortened link, such as a Bit.ly, to direct readers to far larger documents. Trump could start issuing PDF's of unredacted incriminating documents from every deep state institution.He is legally allowed to do this as Commander-in-Chief.The media would be trapped. They would have to serve as Trump's accomplices in getting publicity for these documents. Why? Because the media could not resist the temptation of publishing these documents. The media want viewer traffic. These documents would get lots of traffic.The media have been doing this with enthusiasm ever since The New York Times released the famous Pentagon Papers, which had been stolen and handed over to the paper by Daniel Ellsberg. For the media to assail Trump as being somehow unpatriotic or even a traitor would be the rankest form of hypocrisy. Furthermore, the media would have to quote the materials that he supposedly should never have released. This will give tremendous notoriety to some of these documents.Second, the documents really would undermine people's confidence in these agencies. This is the question of legitimacy. For the next two years, he could undermine all of these agencies. He could release documents that people have wanted to know about for years, such as all of the Kennedy assassination documents. He could release everything connected with the Russian election scam. He could release unredacted materials.He could release the materials associated with the 9/11 investigation.This would cost him almost nothing. He could bring in representatives of organizations that have complained about federal government stonewalling. He could ask them to provide lists of documents that have been bottled up by the government. Then, list by list, he could demand that the agencies release the documents to the public. Once they are out there, they could never be pulled back. The PDF's would go everywhere.He could become known as the transparent President. Historians, however much they hate his politics, could not resist using these documents. Every revisionist history group in the country could get its hands on juicy materials. So could all of the conspiracy historians. Day after day, week after week, he could release these documents. Then he could go to his Twitter account and tell people about what he has just done.The agencies could resist this for a time, but for how long? Say that some head of an agency refuses to release the documents. Trump would fire him immediately. He would replace him with somebody from a particular anti-establishment research organization. He would tell that man to make certain that the documents get released. If anybody in the lower end of bureaucracy resisted, that person could have his desk cleared out, and he would be placed in a room where he did nothing for the rest of Trump's presidency. Trump's senior agency directors could not fire these people, but they could humiliate them. They could take away every trace of authority that the lower-level department heads possess. Nobody wants this to happen to him. Fear would spread throughout the agency. Then the newly appointed agency head would elevate some lower-level bureaucrat into the now empty position. He would demand that the documents be released. Before the end of Trump's term, hundreds of thousands of these documents could be released.Ultimately, the President sets the budget. The House does not. Trump could cut the budget of any non-cooperating agency by 5% or 10%. That would get cooperation. Would the House reinstate the money? The Senate could oppose this. Gridlock!Stockman understands this. Trump does not. Stockman writes this:In terms of the Donald’s great mission of wrecking the Deep State, we would only take issue with him to this extent: Why in the world does he not understand that he is actually President and has a far more powerful weapon at his disposal than his Twitter account – 56 million followers to the contrary notwithstanding?To wit, he has the unquestioned constitutional power to both appoint and fire his own cabinet, sub-cabinet and upwards of 3,000 Schedule C policy jobs; and also to declassify anything lurking behind the Deep State’s massive wall of unjustified secrecy if he deems it in the public interest.Then there is the issue of legitimacy. I keep coming back to this. This is the soft underbelly of every institution. Every institution depends upon the voluntary cooperation of everyone in the institution, and also with those who finance the institution, whether politicians, donors, or customers. Stockman understands this.The Deep State thrives and milks the public treasury so successfully in large part because the Imperial City’s corps of permanent policy apparatchiks like Comey and Brennan (and thousands more) pretend to be performing god’s work. So doing, they preen sanctimoniously to the adoration of their sycophants in the mainstream media, claiming to be above any governance or sanction from the unwashed electorate.Attacking this rotten perversion of democracy, therefore, is the Donald’s real calling. While he lacks both the temperament and ideas to solve the nation’s metastasizing economic and social challenges and has no hope whatsoever to make MAGA, he is more than suited for his "Great Disrupter" mission.That is, the existing order needs to be discredited and brought down first, and on that score his primitive economic populism will more than do its part. As we have previously explained, Trump’s deadly combination of Fiscal Debauchery, Protectionism and Easy Money will eventually blow the nation’s debt and bubble-ridden economy sky-high.This really is the heart of the matter. It is politically impossible to cut the budgets of respected institutions. Trump is in a position to undermine people's confidence in these institutions. No other President has ever had the courage to do this. No other President has had a Twitter account to publicize everything he does. Trump does.I don't think he will do it. He shows no sign of systematic thinking. He doesn't understand the deep state. He doesn't understand the nature of the power of his enemies. He also doesn't understand the weaknesses of these enemies. His Presidency is going to be remembered by anti-establishment conservatives and liberals as a wasted opportunity. He messes around with hiking tariffs when he could be undermining the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI. All it would require is massive data dumps. These would send the deep state into apoplexy. They would send senior bureaucrats into frantic mode.There would be only one agency that Trump would leave alone: the Secret Service. That is the one agency that has to be completely supportive of him. He can do without the rest of them, but he cannot do without that one.