I’d Like to Solve? How Trump Won the Election, Why Russia is Involved, What will Happen Next, and a Light at the End of the Tunnel
The cast: Robert Mercer — shadowy financier, Ted Cruz — US Senator, perennial Presidential Candidate, archetype of the anthropomorphic reptile. Donald Trump — El Pendejo. Steve Bannon — United States Security Council Principle, Sr. White House Adviser, former Executive Chair of Breitbart News, former and final Trump Campaign Chair, Emperor Palpatine. Paul Manafort — business man, one-time Trump Campaign Chair, 80’s cell phone model.
In the beginning there was Mercer and Cruz. Mercer, who some may consider to be an ultra-conservative, knew a Cruz White House was his best shot at lower taxes, smaller government, and less regulation. But it didn’t work out, because everyone hates Ted Cruz. That he is a “nightmare of a human being” is one of the nicest things said about him.
But when god closes a door he opens a window, and conveniently Trump was surging. However, last spring there was a problem: Trump is the Pendejo that shames all other Pendejos. An unhinged clown like that could never win a US Presidential election. Impossible! When the tape of Trump on the bus surfaced there was no clearer harbinger of his demise; and everyone enjoyed a little Schadenfreude when the day before Cruz had seemed to (finally) swallow his pride and was dialing phones for the Trump Campaign. That was the pie Donald Trump fucked. Or so we thought.
Long before Trump was caught on tape admitting to serially sexually assaulting an untold number of women, Bannon was hard at work building Trump up on Breitbart.com. Not because Bannon gave (or gives) a fuck about Trump, I’m sure he is at best a nuisance. But Trump was good for clicks, all the major networks (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBC, EveryoneElse) were giving Trump tons of free airtime and he was top of everyone’s mind and tip of everyone’s tongue. And certainly Trump’s GFY attitude towards everyone from the media to the political establishment, physically disabled reporters, women who may or may not be menstruating - should that be any of his business to begin with - Muslims, etc., was perfect for the Breitbart crowd. And something was happening. All these people, many of whom had been left behind by post-millennia progress and who had never participated in politics, were taking note and becoming diehard Trump evangelists. The whole of media, from the daft to the venerable were focused on Trump; no one could escape it. And now all these shadows were still clicking on Breitbart while becoming real and showing up at rallies and promising to vote.
So just maybe Trump could win. And they had to at least try. Anyway, besides Cruz, who would do? The Jeb!’s of the world just could not be counted on and it was clear that attacking Trump on his own turf was innocuous at best and disastrous at worse.
“Well how ‘bout this,” one man says to another man in a room somewhere. “We bring it all to bear. We have money, millions of hyped up eyeballs that have, this is hilarious, been primed by the very tripe he’s been selling on TV for the last 20 years. wdyt?”
“It’s got to be worth a shot, what do we have to lose?”
I suppose it’s worth pointing out that Bannon is very smart, much unlike Trump, and quite wealthy, much like Trump. Remember Seinfeld? We’re all going to hell for those laughs. Bannon, if you read up on him and the material is easy to find, is a myopic old-school 1950’s conservative who thinks the US is going to hell in a hand-basket and he is hellbent on setting it, and anyone unfortunate enough to be caught within its confines, back on the noble path. And he is the only man who does not have to wear a tie when he goes to see Trump, or maybe when Trump comes to see him.
So they gang up. Mercer with his money and Bannon with his media (and money, independence, and crusade). They begin to put it all behind Trump. Around the same time Trump is miles away from Hillary in the polls, for some reason it just seems to be one clusterfuck after another. And he decides to make a change.
What happens next remains to be told. At some point one could speculate that Bannon and Mercer got involved with Manafort and the Russians. The Russians too had money, wanted to dismantle the “administrative state” of the US, but also brought to the table world-class, government-grade surveillance and propaganda resources. If the Russians had a widely read media outlet in the United States that just happened to have a fickle relationship with the truth they may even be able to broadcast directly to the citizenship of their greatest rival, and should they have friends in the US government all the better.
At any rate, if Bannon, Mercer, and the Russians ever did get together they would have considerable power, and it is not implausible that their motivations could overlap in some situations, like a manifest Venn diagram from the 7th circle of Hell (Hitler, for those of you keeping score, was from the 9th).
Lately, I have found it interesting that Trump attacks everyone, often without provocation. He perceives or hallucinates a slight or challenge and goes full-Cujo on the thing in the room moving the most. No one is safe. The most powerful people in the world have been minding their own business when Trump comes crashing through the fourth wall like a BSE-riddled eunuch-bull. Yet, to our cast, never a peep.
The Bannon/Mercer/Russia Trifecta is a given. It makes perfect sense for each of them to act the way they do collectively, in theory of course. But without a mechanism to actualize it all, why bother?
Somehow they convinced (or coerced) Trump into going along and playing nice. It’s not like Trump was dragged kicking to the quarry, he always did want to be King of America. But the unabated metastasis of Bannon and his cohorts paired with the unhinged nature of Trump leads me to think there is probably a bit of leverage involved, without or without golden showers. Regardless, Trump is playing by the home team’s rules. He gets what he wants, albeit with a few sleepless nights, and the Trifecta gets their mechanism. The best mechanism. Huge.
And so they sit in the highest seat of power, having effectively mobilized the audience and, with a little help from their Republican and Russian friends, curb-stomped their opponent.
Bannon knew the first “travel ban” would be blocked by the court and that there would chaos and protests at airports around the country. And that was perfect. Red meat for the base and a clear signal to non-Americans that for the next four years you could have spent half a decade getting your visa, be on a plane to America, and still be sent back to a country where you will likely be tortured and killed, and never mind the details of whether you surrendered your visa and departed Europe where you’d been in exile. In a word: GTFO (and stay out).
All this is not to say that there is a vast conspiracy. Or to say our cast were each all involved in all the conversations, in fact it’s the opposite. Four discrete groups of people (Breitbart and friends, Manafort et al, Russia, and Trump) were working independently on their own agendas and then began collaborating when the mechanism of Trump’s campaign and likely nomination pulled them together. In fact, if anything I think Trump’s knowing involvement with the Russian Connection is rather limited. He is more the figurehead that legitimizes his White House, and the patsy they push through the door first to “take all the arrows”.
At some point, a few people got a little too comfy, a little complacent, and they got picked up on phone conversations with Russian spies who were being targeted by the FBI/CIA. Unfortunately for our tragic cast, that all started back when Obama was in the Oval Office. And not on November 9th, but in the summer before. Barack Obama, 7th year President of the United States with total security clearance, control over his agencies, strong relationships with the executives of other countries, combined with his intelligence, temperament, education, and experience? If anyone can wield the sword of contemporary power with skill it’s him. I can assure he’s not in the Virgin Islands not giving AF while the world burns. And Hillary is not hiking upstate Vermont for lack of something better to do. Obama with his mojito, Hillary with some quiet time away where process servers would have to get out of their cars, both they watch the dominoes fall.
Best Supporting Actor was not in the title credits. James Comey, FBI Director, was around long before Obama and he’ll be around long after Trump. And there is a very good possibility he cares more about the United States, democracy, and decency than he does empowering the Alt-right and Vladimir Putin.
The “deep state”, or bureaucracy as it used to be called, has all it needs: irrefutable data, resilient in the redundancy of true, durable allies like Britain and Germany. I was heartened when Merkel just took Trump’s bullshit in stride; you could almost see the thought-bubble above her head: I know something you don’t know.
Trump will become the former El Pendejo, and the current Patsy, and be deposed, and perhaps humiliated by the leverage should it turn out to be blackmail. Those who knit-in the Russians will go to prison, and western liberal democracy will prepare, hopefully more effectively this time, to do battle with the next snake that slithers up from the sewer.
