Guest Post by Kurt Schlichter
Let’s face it – the news that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo intends to challenge former president Donald Trump in a 2024 primary puts one to mind not of Godzilla v. King Kong, but of Godzilla v. Bambi. It’s Muhammad Ali stepping into the ring against Don Knotts. Pompeo is doomed. But we should be glad that he is offering up himself for sacrifice. Many conservatives are open to a competitive GOP primary, not because they dislike Trump (they like him) but because they want to make sure we nominate the strongest candidate in 2024. Moreover, Trump needs a challenge to prepare him for the real fight in the general. And he’s not afraid of one.
Will Pompeo really run? Reporters with good sources are saying Pompeo is telling his donors he is. And I have heard the same thing from inside sources who would know. Of course, the buried lede is that Pompeo has presidential campaign donors – well, there’s one born every minute.
Other top-flight potential GOP candidates are not jumping in. Ron DeSantis is focused on his family (we’re all pulling for his wife) and winning reelection. Robert O’Brien, the former (excellent) National Security Advisor, is busy helping win back the House and intends to endorse the President the day the President announces. DC establishment darlin’ Nikki Haley, the Jeb! of 2024, will do whatever she has to do to get ahead, and right now she thinks that means staying out if Trump gets in.
But will Trump run? I originally did not expect him to run, but now I do. Between Asterisk’s floundering poll numbers and Trump’s public words and actions, as well as people who would know telling me that he’s running, it’s clear he’s leaning that way. He’s biding his time, and he should. There’s no reason to do anything now but build up his team for a third campaign – and it seems that’s what he’s doing.
All this is setting up a clash of the titan…and Mike Pompeo.
Now, to point out that Mike Pompeo’s chances of prevailing in the primary are about the same as Kamala Harris winning “Border Czar of the Year” is not to throw shade on him. Pompeo would make a fine president. I have heard him speak on the Trump Doctrine, the America First foreign policy that he helped execute and that the current crusty occupant of the White House’s serial failures have fully vindicated. He was excellent, demonstrating a deep and thorough understanding of the challenges we face, which – contrary to our current pseudo-leadership’s view – are not climate change or systemic racism. He’s very conservative. Despite him being a West Pointer, should he be nominated we can all give him our enthusiastic support. And if he is nominated over Trump, we can all ride on our unicorns to the polling places to vote for him.
Pompeomania is just not a thing and isn’t going to be.
The best argument for Pompeo is that, unlike Trump, he doesn’t scare the unsatisfied suburban wine women who make up the Democrat base like Trump does, but don’t worry – he’ll be literally Hitler when the time comes. The argument against him is that he’s bland. Trump oozes charisma (and, to leftists and cruise ship cons, its opposite) while Mike Pompeo inspires, at best, “Well, I guess he’s okay. Yawn.”
To want a real primary challenge is not the throw shade on Trump either. A real campaign will sharpen Trump, hone him, and get him ready for a real fight, be it against Kamala or someone remotely competent.
This should not be a coronation. Trump has to earn his right to make his Grover Cleveland move. That means a real primary with a real challenger, not a media-driven, toobinesque vanity run by some Never Trump doofus like Larry Hogan or the Beltway Cowgirl, who will have nothing to do after being tossed from office next year.
We saw what not having a challenge did to Hillary. She was out-of-shape, soft, unready, and unprepared. Trump needs to go into the general with momentum, the momentum one gets from crushing his primary opponents. And Trump thrives on competition – if you want him to win the general in 2024, then you want him to spar hard in the primary.
Trump has to work out some kinks in his delivery. As Byron York observed, at a recent rally he had the crowd rocking when he was roasting President * over his myriad failures, from the border to Afghanistan to inflation and beyond. Yet, when Trump started going on and on about 2020 in excruciating detail, the rally got off to a flying stop.
If his campaign is about relitigating the last one, we lose. We all know 2020 was rigged. I was in Nevada lawyering for the president in the aftermath, so I saw the traditional fraud, the unlawful rule changes, the zillionaires’ ”donations” to government election agencies, and the informal rigging of the media and corporations in 2020. But that’s the past; the 2020 fight is over. The only thing I want to hear about it is how Ronna McDaniel is preparing – with lots of lawyers and lots of money – for the fight in 2024, because her inexcusable failure to prepare for the legal fights in the half-dozen blue cities where the shenanigans took place caused that fiasco. The Arizona audit revealed a bunch of corruption. Great. What is the name of the GOP law firm currently filing lawsuits in Arizona to fix those issues? Tumbleweeds.
And they are boring tumbleweeds. A boring Trump is a losing Trump, and talking about 2020 won’t win is a single new voter, Conversely, the Democrats whining like little female doggies over the January 6th insignificant “insurrection” is their own losing tangent. Fix the problems, then talk about how Democrats suck. There’s your winning strategy.
We also need assurance that Trump has fixed his personnel problems. The fact that Ronna McDaniel is still around after botching the election integrity fight for him is unsettling. But the fact that, towards the end, he hired solid folks, including Mike Pompeo, is hopeful. It would be good to see Pompeo ask Trump in a debate why he didn’t fire Tony Fauci and Chris Wray – and for Trump to answer “I should have, and I learned that lesson. No slack during Trump 2.0!”
Oh, hell to the yeah!
Bringing up tough questions and having Trump address them is the most important reason we need a primary challenge, even one that’s relatively hopeless. We need Trump to confront his mistakes and assure us he’s learned is lessons. The guy accomplished amazing things even with the entire establishment against him and despite his self-inflicted wounds. We can’t assuage the establishment’s fury, but imagine what he will do with fewer own-goals. And imagine how angry the establishment hacks will be when he beats them again.
Trump is likely to triumph in the end, but he also needs to be circumspect. He could crush Pompeo like a bug if he wished, with the cutting invective that put the gooey likes of Jeb! away in 2016. But he’s not the outsider this time. Like it or not, Trump is the insider, the voice of the GOP base, and now he has to build the movement and reinforce party rather than just lay waste. He needs to thread the needle and prevail over Pompeo and any other non-Conservative, Inc., candidates without leaving them smoking craters. Save the nukes for the Liz Cheneys.
The fact is that 2024 is neither 2016 nor 2020. This third campaign needs to be different. So, if you want to see Trump win in 2024, bring on the challengers.
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OMG, you still believe your vote counts ?
[Moreover, Trump needs a challenge to prepare him for the real fight in the general.]
No kidding gatsby….lyin politicians got us in this mess, so let’s all vote as hard as we can to get ‘our’ liar in office….
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum <—-====the secret destiny of america
I heard they will not let you vote unless you have your shot card. And you get an extra ballot for every booster you took. so by the time of the next election its possible to vote as many as thirty or forty times.
That was funny.
“…the secret destiny of america…”
Have you read all these Manly Hall books, Ordo? How about ‘Morals and Dogma’ by Fat Albert.
???
Pompeo would be a lousy president. Sure he’d be better than the current communist junta fronted by a TelePrompTer-reading Alzheimer’s patient, soon to be replaced by a TelePrompTer-reading skank, but who knows, maybe he’d be just as bad. He might be on board with vaccine passports, and by 2024, 90% of Americans might already be “chipped”. Pompeo is Dick Cheney redux. He only ever feigned support for Trump’s non-interventionism. He headed the CIA and left in place evil actors like Gina Haspel who was complicit in the scheme with CIA plant Stefan Halper to frame Papadopolous while she was stationed in London. He opposed pardoning Assange and Snowden. (Trump’s failure to pardon Assange especially is to his eternal shame and, frankly, unforgivable.)
Pompeo was another horrible Trump here. He was an obvious neocon while in Congress. Neither Trump nor Pompeo should be president.
Iska, it could be summed up simply. He is deep state and is part of the cartel. Need we say more?
Ballots are the only answer. Opps misspelled ballots.
Is this a joke? Do you really believe that your “vote” still meaning anything???
Pompeo gave the world the Coof, so of course Beast System money will be backing this faux Christian fuck.
Just a couple of days ago, an influential MAGA/Trumpist website called The Conservative Treehouse published a 1,400 word piece strongly suggesting that America’s “Fourth Branch of Government,” namely our intelligence services, were quite possibly responsible for the Covid epidemic, and even concurring with me that former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo seems the individual most likely to know who was really responsible.
Did The Fourth Branch of Government Release SARS-CoV-2 Then Blame China
The Conservative Treehouse • October 4, 2021 • 1,400 Words
https://www.unz.com/runz/
It’s highly probable that the deliberate release of the Coof was a Mossad op to hit Iran, using the stooge organization run by the self-proclaimed rapturist Pompeo as the proxy. In fact I’d bet on it.
“As the coronavirus gradually began to spread beyond China’s own borders, another development occurred that greatly multiplied my suspicions. Most of these early cases had occurred exactly where one might expect, among the East Asian countries bordering China. But by late February Iran had become the second epicenter of the global outbreak. Even more surprisingly, its political elites had been especially hard-hit, with a full 10% of the entire Iranian parliament soon infected and at least a dozen of its officials and politicians dying of the disease, including some who were quite senior. Indeed, Neocon activists on Twitter began gleefully noting that their hatred Iranian enemies were now dropping like flies.
Let us consider the implications of these facts. Across the entire world the only political elites that have yet suffered any significant human losses have been those of Iran, and they died at a very early stage, before significant outbreaks had even occurred almost anywhere else in the world outside China. Thus, we have America assassinating Iran’s top military commander on Jan. 2nd and then just a few weeks later large portions of the Iranian ruling elites became infected by a mysterious and deadly new virus, with many of them soon dying as a consequence. Could any rational individual possibly regard this as a mere coincidence?”
https://www.unz.com/runz/is-the-tide-finally-turning-on-covid-as-an-american-biowarfare-attack/
The painfully obvious Israeli hit-job on Iran (different genetic signature to the Wuhan strain) is the least discussed and researched, and yet the most blatant proof that this whole event was man-made. The timing of the Iranian release suggested a plan, or at least a contingency looking for an opportunity.
Look, another obese man in make-up.
There simply aren’t enough of them around
Trump should run for the Senate next year and take McConnell’s seat whicch is full of spineless turtle.
Yesterday, Judge Amero dismissed the Garland Favorito case in Fulton County, GA. This was yet another blow to the audits and once more, another judge who was until this juncture supposed to be fair and impartial, caved to the cabal through whatever means they got to him. It is clearer, and clearer, each and every day that the Great Reset a.k.a. NWO is in full swing and the 120+ years of planning since the days of Cecil Rhodes, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and a whole lot of other banksters in both London and America see their plan coming to fruition.
It is in the wide open now that there is no rule of law in America, there is no longer even a semblance of fair elections and, the tech corporations, set up as fronts for the CIA and other deep state organizations are running the show. This is why I can hardly watch the Warroom now with Bannon and the cheerleading for the “MAGA movement” and all the other bullshit. The bastards will keep pumping the morphine into the patient (America) until the final deeds are done.
The question is; do we go down in a whimper, or not?
Schlicter always provides a kill switch in his writing where he pukes up a phrase that tells me; enough of this shit, I can stop reading now. Here’s today’s example: “Pompeo would make a fine president.” Just what we need, a fat W Bush.
Pompouso is an uber swamp creature.
Schitty Schlichter and his “Vote Harder” bullshit …. yay, what a valuable contribution!!
/S
But his book, “Indian Country” is a good read.
There’s no accounting for taste, I’m told.
Vote harder, that’ll fix it!
Kurt has missed one big thing about Pompeo that should permanently disqualify him for any position of power and trust. Pompeo was appointed CIA Director by Trump. Like so many of Trump´s personnel choices, this one was a stinker. And Trump was warned, so he has no excuses.
Pompeo had a golden chance to purge the Agency of liberal Democrat lizards and fawning Obama yes-men. He had a chance to bring in good, patriotic Agency officers from the shitholes they are usually assigned to and have them reform the Agency. He could have split off the leftist cesspool of the Directorate of Intelligence (the soy boy and pant-suited feminist analysts, like the little creep who sparked one of the Trump impeachments) and dumped those losers somewhere far away, where their ignorance and liberal bias would not harm national security. He could have put a stop to perverts, incompetent women, and pushy minorities gaming the system to get ahead of the white men who do the real work in the foreign field of the Agency (90 percent of it, at least).
He could have put an immediate halt to the hiring of foreigners for positions in our most sensitive government agency, and other intelligence agencies as well. By the way, this is a disaster waiting to happen. CIA is now filled with pseudo-Americans who are far more loyal to their countries of birth or tribes than they are to the USA. The truth of this will be revealed in coming years as their spying for foreign powers is exposed.
He could have energized our pathetic counterintelligence and counterespionage capabilities to deal with the above (among other things, such as the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, etc.).
He had an opportunity to downsize and rationalize the Agency, clearing out deadwood and focusing on our core missions.
He could have immediately reversed the treason committed by John Brennan, canceled every one of this orders and had his henchmen frog-marched to the gate of Langley. He didn´t.
He could have started rebuilding the true heart of the Agency, the Directorate of Operations – the Clandestine Service – and put DO officers firmly back in charge. Now we have wide-bottomed women who never served a day overseas or who proved so useless they were dragged back to headquarters to be diversity counselors.
He did none of these things. And to top it off he put Gina Haspel in charge when he left. Strange to say, Gina was actually respected by many DO officers – until she got her feminist hands on power and stuffed every senior position with ball-busting, dingbat cunts.
Pompeo walked into the snake pit that is CIA headquarters and the jackals there took his measure in a split second. He was low hanging fruit, a child, a hapless Gomer Pyle to be rolled like a drunk.
One more thing. Please spare me your conspiracy theories about the CIA if you have not served in that organization. No, CIA “agents” are not prowling around your local Walmart. The CIA is a FOREIGN intelligence agency. It is far smaller than you think, as far as actual field officers are concerned (20 times smaller than the number of FBI agents). The FBI, the DOJ, and your state and local law enforcement and state´s attorney offices are the real threat to you and me, not the CIA.
Most CIA employees are sitting on their butts in northern Virginia. A few others are scattered around in other facilities in the U.S. A horde are on permanent vacation in the great capitals of Europe, sipping latte, reading the newspapers. and leaving the office at 3 o´clock. That leaves a few hundred across the rest of the globe actually doing their jobs and contributing to our national security.
For those who wish to abolish the CIA, go right ahead. Won´t affect my pension. But be careful what you wish for.
John Kennedy also thought he would make a few changes in .gov. Didn’t go so well for him and provided a valuable lesson for anyone else who had ideas.
CIA is an anti-American/Christian, Marxist controlled criminal scumbag operation and always has been. The dirt is so deep on these criminals that entire cities could be covered and passed off as high plains plateaus. Only backstabbing, avarice-driven shitbags need apply .
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html
So maybe Trump was just the controlled opposition all along? Do you have a better explanation for these terrible appointments? Just exactly what reality came after Trump’s 1/6 rally? Was it just a stupid, vain stunt to garner more attention, or did it change the election results? I submit the outcome was predetermined to do exactly what it actually was-a black op.
Trump is a do nothing big mouth fool tool of the ptb. Pompeo is even worse. Trump didn’t do shit for 4 years but leave State,DoJ and DoD in the hands of the deep state. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt by saying that. Maybe I shouldn’t.
They were the deep state before Trump got into office. But he did bring awareness to just who the deep state is and helped start the drain the swamp meme.
Problem is, as CTH/Sundance has pointed out, the deep state has turned into the 4th branch of government.
Watch Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Michael Flynn, who knows all of it.
Trump is too old right now, let alone a few years from now. He repeats words and had his chance.
None of the people mentioned are worth a dam and I’m not sure who I would vote for, or if I will even bother to vote. Whoever is the President will go along with this reset BS and destroy what’s left of our society.
“Pompeo would make a fine president.”
What is Kurt smoking? Yes, just what we need, another Spook as president. Hey, remember when Pompeo announced that they had a list of US politicians who were in Beijing’s pocket? I wonder what happened to that list…
It doesn’t matter who runs as long as Dominion Systems is still tallying the votes.
And unless Trump comes out strong AGAINST the vax mandates, he’s toast anyway.
Yeah trump who bent over like a bitch to Mengele and the coronahoax psyop Father of the clot shot All boomers need to retire and let the following generations oversee and deal with the coming collapse the boomers created
Kurt doesn’t get it. The rural vs. city-state fight will not be resolved at the national level. “Lesgo Brandon”
Of course he will! His purpose now is to split the Right and to ensure that no real opposition can win in 2024.
Let’s see. Putting on my uber-duber optimistic “voting matters” hat, Trump would be better positioned as a future Texas governor than president. At least he would have a legislature, that maybe just maybe, help him get a border wall built. I think Texans would prefer AG Paxton as the next governor though.
Pompeo 24 = Jeb! 16