Trump: It’s the Institutions, Stupid!
To understand the pending Trump revolution, I look at his planned, stated attack against key institutions!
Just two weeks ago the Trump demolition of the Democrats in the US election seemed unimaginable. Now there’s an overwhelming volume of commentary and speculation about what follows. In winning the college and popular votes, the Senate and in the box seat to win the House of Representatives, Trump is positioned to implement his agenda in full. And even though he frequently talks in apparent rambling generalities, his agenda is, in fact, highly detailed.
In this Substack post I want to focus on one aspect of the Trump agenda—that is, his planned assault against embedded government institutions. These institutions could be said to be the structures that ‘run’ the woke establishment.
Trump seems to understand, like no other conservative Western leader of the last three decades-or-more, that personality and policy are not enough in the political and cultural battle. Whoever controls the institutions controls everything. Mostly, and we see this starkly in Australia when the Liberal/National coalitions (state and federal) obtain government, conservative governments think they can just be ‘better managers.’ They leave the institutions intact to the extent that the institutions manage the government.
This ‘reverse management’ happens because the institutions are either government departments themselves, or are funded by government or suck on the teat of government/taxpayer largesse. The ‘left, woke establishment’ understands this fact supremely. Its many decades of success have been built on institutional control. In the US, Trump is about to blow that up.
To some of the specifics! Trump is going to:
Close the USA federal education department.
Sack large numbers of federal bureaucrats from the security and law enforcement agencies who, he says, are spying on the US people for the purposes of corruption and social manipulation.
Establish independent monitoring systems of the intelligence and security services.
Ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs with the companies they regulate. This is particularly targeted at ‘big pharma’.
Move 100,000 Washington DC-based bureaucrats from Washington out into middle America itself.
These Items I think are just the start. The Democrat Party and its core establishment players seem to understand the enormous ramifications of these moves. They appear to be shell-shocked and almost terrified! This is perhaps because even though Trump can seem to talk in crazy riddles, he’s a proven ‘doer’. No mucking about!
I commented on this in July this year in my America Where Under Trump? Substack post where I simply quoted the Republicans’ (Trump’s) published election plan. To quote directly from the plan, it “… offer(s) a clear, precise, and USA oriented plan to stop the Radical Left Democrats’ Weaponization of Government and its Assault on American Liberty.” I listed the elements of that plan in dot point form in that post. It’s worth a scan if you want to understand where Trump intends taking America.
And there’s now more detail. On 8 November (2024) Trump released a 3 minute 30 second X post where he laid out his agenda to attack the ‘deep state.’ It’s full on. At the end of this article I’ve included my point form summary of Trump’s stated action plan.
The Kennedy factor
The justification for this deep state attack by Trump was effectively endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy when he withdrew from the Presidential race in August and endorsed Trump. Kennedy stated that the Democrat Party has abandoned democracy and has “…become the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag, and Big Money”. He pointed to a common bond with Trump when he says that the Democrat machine has used the same endless legal attacks against his candidacy as they have against Trump. I wrote this up in my Substack post Trump the loser. Really? Um! (August 28).
Kennedy promotes the idea that big pharma and big business are in a ‘conspiracy’ against US democracy. Further, Kennedy has an extraordinary take on the health crisis in the USA, laying blame on the political power of the food processing industry.
Also at the end of this Substack post, I provide the direct quotations from Kennedy where he lays out the US health crisis and its causes.
The electoral importance of Kennedy should be fully understood. To quote from The Australian (9 November 2024) “Trump is grateful to Kennedy, who was polling around 5 per cent as an independent, for joining his campaign, which potentially delivered Trump not only the electoral college but pushed the Republican leader’s vote share above 50 per cent.”
That is, Kennedy is credited for much of the Trump landslide win. And Kennedy is going to be rewarded. To quote Trump in his victory speech on election night referring to Kennedy: “He’s going to help make America healthy again, he’s a great guy and he really means it; he wants to do some things and we’re going to let him go to it …”
The Argentinian Milei factor
This week Argentinian President Javier (Chainsaw) Milei is meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. If there’s ever an institution-busting buddy for Trump, it’s Milei. He became President of Argentina in only December last year (2023).
Milei inherited an economy and population in crisis with official interest rates at 133 per cent and inflation at 25 per cent per month (yes, per month!)
Since his election Milei has sacked 70,000 public servants and closed 200,000 social welfare programs.
He devalued the Argentinian peso by 50 per cent, cut the number of government agencies by half and slashed fuel subsidies. His actions have taken government finances (income less expenses) from a $US120 billion deficit in December 2023 to a surplus in April 2024.
The result? Inflation has dropped to 3.5 per cent per month (from 25 per cent) and official interest rates are now 35 per cent (down from the 133 per cent).
What is Milei’s agenda? In a nutshell, he’s attacking the very institutions that have been the creators of the Argentinian disaster. No doubt he and Trump are set for a very chummy discussion when they met!
And Australia?
As Australia rides on the back of our minerals boom we remain ‘lucky’. But we are beset with parallel problems to the USA, such as the cost-of-living explosion, housing shortages and an ugly undertow of cultural, ethnic and religious division which seems purposely manufactured. There’s an overwhelming sense, accompanied by stark evidence, of elitists’ agendas seeking to control the great ‘unwashed’ of the Australian population.
No two countries are the same. Australia is not the USA. But where the USA goes, many follow! However, unlike in the USA with the Trump Republicans, there’s absolutely no evidence from the conservative political parties in Australia, federal or state, that they ‘get’ that there’s an institutional factor. They display fear of the institutions. There’s no evidence that they’d ‘do a Trump’. Instead, they appear to be dedicating themselves to seek government for the sake of government with the belief that they can simply be ‘better managers’! Good luck!
Trump Action plan on the Deep State (3 minutes 30 seconds on X)
Trump—I will:
1. Remove rogue bureaucrats.
2. Clean out all corrupt actors in the intelligence community.
Faceless bureaucrats prevented from targeting conservatives, Christians, etc.
3. Reform FISA courts (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts) which are so corrupt [FISA oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.]
4. Establish a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate, declassify and publish all documents on deep state spying, censorship and corruption.
5. Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with fake news to deliberately weave false narratives.
6. Make every Inspector-general’s office physically separate from the departments they oversee, so they do not become the protectors of the deep state.
7. Ask Congress to establish an independent monitoring system to continually monitor our intelligent agencies to ensure they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns.
8. Move parts of the Washington DC environment to other parts of the USA. 100,000 government positions to be moved.
9. Move to ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs with the companies they regulate. Eg, one specific target being big pharma.
10. Constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.
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The health of Americans
Today, two-thirds of American adults and half of children suffer chronic health issues. Fifty years ago, the number for children was less than one per cent.
In America, 74 per cent of adults are now overweight or obese, and close to 50 per cent of children.… In Japan, the childhood obesity rate is 3 per cent. … Half of Americans now have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.
There’s been an explosion of neurological diseases that I never saw as a child. ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, Tourette’s, narcolepsy, ASD, and Asperger’s. In the year 2000, the autism rate was one in 1,500. Now, autism rates in kids are one in 36 nationally, and 1 in 22 in California. The screening has not changed. Nor has the definition. The incidence has changed.
One in four American women is on an antidepressant medication. 40 per cent of teens have a mental health diagnosis. Today, 15 per cent of high schoolers are on Adderall and half a million children are on SSRIs.
So what’s causing all this suffering? I’ll name two culprits. First is ultra-processed foods. About 70 per cent of American children’s diet is ultra-processed — industrially manufactured in a factory.
The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food, medicine, and environment.…Poor and minority communities suffer disproportionately. Industry lobbyists make sure that most of the food stamp and school lunch program dollars are funding processed foods.
Eighty per cent of NIH grants go to people who have conflicts of interest. These agencies, the FDA, the USDA, the CDC, all of them are controlled by huge for-profit corporations. 75 per cent of the FDA’s funding doesn’t come from taxpayers. It comes from pharma. And pharma executives and consultants and lobbyists cycle in and out of these agencies.
With President Trump’s backing, I am going to change that. We are going to staff these agencies with honest scientists and doctors free from industry funding.
Great analysis, Ken.
Ken
The Australian conservatives are terrified of the institutions. Its fear that stops them doing their job. That fear is a consequence of political incompetence. In comparison Trump has shown a political talent of huge proportions.