Trump Folds at G-20 on Everything

Guest Post by Tom Luongo

I knew there was something wrong with Donald Trump’s presidency the day he bombed the airbase at Al-Shairat in Syria.  It was a turning point.  I knew it was a mistake the moment he did it and argued as such at the time.

No act by him was more contentious.

It cost me hundreds of followers gained throughout the campaign who wanted to believe Trump was playing 4-D chess.  My Periscopes went from being events to afterthoughts.

Those that left needed to believe this because they had invested so much in him.

They had to believe he was playing some deep game with Putin to bring peace to the region.

He wasn’t.

I was right and truth is painful.  The need for him to be Orange Jesus was so strong they created Qanon and the ‘science’ of political horoscope as slowly but surely Trump was stripped of all of his power except that of complaining about how unfair it all is.

That day he did something in the moment, with bad intelligence and let fly with tomahawks which Russian and Syrian air defenses misdirected and/or shot down.

Empty President

His goal was to show everyone there was a new, strong sheriff in town.

All it did was weaken him.

The neocons praised him as presidential.  They began to get their hooks in him then.  But truly, Trump was destroyed before he took office, giving up Michael Flynn, expelling Russian diplomats and compromising his cabinet picks.

Because making war is the only true test of a President to the laptop bombardiers who control foreign policy.  With that one act Trump’s days as an independent agent in D.C. were numbered.

And since then the hope has been that given the enormity of the opposition to his Presidency he was still fighting for what he campaigned on — no nation building, bring the empire home, protect the borders, and clean up the corruption.

He’s made a few minor changes but not enough to change the course of this country and, by extension, the world.

The people want this change.  Those with the power don’t.

G-20 Ghost

So here we are with a pathetic Trump outclassed at the G-20, a meeting he should dominate but instead is ushered around like a child, given poor earpieces and looking a little lost.  He’s only allowed to have one meeting of note by his handlers, with China’s Xi Jinping.

Because that meeting wasn’t going to end with anything damaging to the long-term plan.  Trump’s tariff game is tired and all it will do is hasten the demise of U.S. competitiveness in the very industries he wants us to be competitive in.

Because tariffs are a band-aid on the real problems of bureaucracy, corruption, waste and sloth within an economy.  They are not a product of China stealing our technology (though they have).

And that $1 trillion deficit Trump is running?  Music to the ears of the globalists who want the U.S. brought low. More military spending.  More boondoggles the banks can cut a nice big check to themselves for with funny money printed without risk. This can go on for a few more years until it doesn’t matter anymore.

Trump’s folding on meeting Putin is the final nail in his presidency’s coffin.  He’s not even allowed to make statements on this issue anymore.  That’s for Sarah Sanders, Mike Pomposity and John Bolt-head to do.

You know, the grown-ups in the room.

No.  Putin and Trump met once when they weren’t supposed to and since then Trump has been getting smaller and smaller.  Sure, he held some rallies for the mid-terms to shore up his base for a few weeks while the Democrats stole more than a dozen House seats, three governorships and a couple of Senate seats, but hey he’s still working hard for no pay.

Please.

Trump needed to show some real moral courage and speak with Putin about the Kerch Strait incident like men, not sulk in the corner over a couple of ships. And yet his still throws his full support behind a butcher like Mohammed bin Salman because arms sales and Iran.

Putin, for his part, makes no bones about doing business with the Saudis.  He knows that bin Salman is creating a quagmire for Trump while driving the U.S. and European Deep State mad.

Hence:

Putin refuses to apologize for thwarting our plans to overthrow him in Russia and steal Ukraine.

Time Enough to Win

For this Secretary of Defense James Mattis calls Putin, “A slow learner.”  This is a flat-out threat that Mattis has more coming Putin’s way.  But in fact, it is Mattis who is the slow learner since he still thinks Putin isn’t three steps ahead of him.

Which he is.

The game is all about time and money.  And thanks to Mattis and, yes, Trump, Putin will win the war of attrition he is playing.

Because that is what has been going on here from the beginning.  Iran, China and Russia know what the U.S. power brokers want and they knew Trump would always cave to them.  So, they knew exactly how to get Trump to over-commit to a strategy that cannot and will not ever come to fruition.

I warned that Trump’s blind-spot when it comes to Iran was his weakness.  I warned that he would eventually justify breaking every foreign policy promise to fulfill his plan to unite the Sunni world behind him and Israel by giving them Iran.

The End of the Beginning

Welcome to today.

And welcome to the end of Trump’s presidency because now he is pot-committed to regime change while the vultures circle him domestically.   He has become Bush the Lesser with arguably better hair.

He has alienated everyone the world over with sanctions and tariffs, hence his desire to “Get me out of here” as the G-20 wound down.  No one believes he matters anymore.  By tying himself to the Saudis and the Israelis the way he has he, the master negotiator, has left himself no room to negotiate.

And that is leading to everyone defying him versus cutting deals to carve up the world, end the empire and come home.

Trump is not leading here.  He is being led.  And change requires leaders.  He has been led down the path so many presidents have, more militarism, more empire.  Because when you’re the Emperor everyone is your enemy.  This is the paranoia of a late-stage imperial mindset.

It certainly is the mindset of Trump’s closest advisors — Mattis, Bolton and Pompeo.

So Trump’s “America First’ instincts, no matter how genuine, have been twisted into something worse than evil, they are now ineffectual keepers of the status quo fueling ruinous neoconservative dreams of central Asian dominance.

And he has no one to blame but himself.