Is Trump Flipping?
Some well-known conservatives are worried that President Trump is flipping on major issues:
1. General McMaster has fired all the publicly known foreign policy conservatives from the National Security Council.
2. Trump finally called Jihad accurately, reversing decades of pussyfooting lies; but now McMaster is going back to Jihadophile rhetoric.
3. Nuclear martyrdom regimes like North Korea and Iran are getting ever closer to Armageddon, and Trump seems to be helpless.
4. Israel and India are both historically threatened by Jihad, and are now alleged to be on the outs in the Trump White House.
5. Is he a Republican or not? By coming to an agreement with the Democrats in Congress, Trump seems to be switching party labels.
I can't read Trump's mind, but on policy questions we know he has been saying pretty much the same things for decades. So, his true beliefs probably haven't changed in just 230 days as POTUS. People who keep saying the same thing for 20 years don't flip on a dime.
So, what is he doing?
My guess is that this is the Great Trump Wiggle, and no, he hasn't put McMaster in charge of his mind.
Why wiggle? Because by now Trump has been assailed on the Media-Left for so long, that he's publicly flipping to give out Good Guy signals to the moral retards of the left. His own ideological supporters have also hemmed him in. When Trump feels stuck that way, he seems to like to do a double backwards somersault, and then see where the other pieces are falling.
If that's true, we are seeing a big tactical move, but not necessarily a strategic change. The long term objectives remain the same. We always have to remember that he's a businessman, and such people are pragmatic in their tactics. If one approach doesn't work, you try another one.
Plus, Trump has his early military school training and loves George Patton, who always pulled surprises when the enemy thought he was stuck. Having had two fabulously successful careers in hotly competitive businesses, this isn't the first time Trump has felt hemmed in by friends and enemies.
We also have to remember that Trump always plays a double game: One to capture the 24-hour news headlines, and one for real. Melania's high heels set liberal women and fashionistas into a stuttering uproar earlier this week. Meanwhile he was planning a move on DACA.
He does these things very fast, very flexibly, very unpredictably.
Notice how the leftomedia have suddenly calmed down after the Schumer deal? That move put the cowardly Republicans in Congress on notice: They don't have a strangle-hold on Trump.
On McMaster supposedly purging all the hawks on foreign policy, you have to remember that Bannon and Gorka are only one phone call away. They've supposedly been tossed out of the White House, but nobody knows the phone calls going on behind the scenes.
Sundance has made a brilliant case for Trump's strategic move on oil prices. After decades of eco-mongers sabotaging US energy production, Trump has flipped the anti-energy strategy on its head. Ecofanatics essentially made the United States dependent on the Saudis, and put the Kingdom in control of oil prices. Today, domestic production has roared back, and the world price is therefore dropping.
This threatens:
1. The Gulf states, including the Saudis and Iran.
2. Russia, a major natural gas exporter.
One result of accelerating US energy production was Trump's very successful wedge between the Sunni oil powers plus Israel (which is needed by the Arabs for military tech and intel, against the new Axis of Evil, which would be the Norks and Iran (which always secretly cooperate on missile and nuke development). China has been outed to the world as Kim III's enabler, and Trump is calling China's bluff.
If China turns against Kim, they can apply painful pressure on North Korea's nuclear program, which also deals a blow to the Mullahs of Iran. Both of those thug regimes are rushing to nukes and ICBMs, and the Democrats have kicked that smoking hand grenade down the road ever since Jimmuh Cottuh. Now Trump is holding the nuclear hot potato, and he is fielding maximum military threats against Pyongyang together with actual economic leverage through the price of oil, which the United States can now influence.
On the Jihad War against the West, you might remember that Obama, Bush I and II, and Bill Clinton never let the word "Jihad" pass their lips. They just paid blackmail, in one way or another. They looked helpless, and all the wolf-packs around the world were circling and drooling.
Which is why Trump's first strategic move was to rebuild US power, with re-industrialization, border enforcement, energy, and visible military shows of power.
With crazy-looking nuke regimes, you never know if they're faking it, and that's their strategy. So, Kim III has regular photo ops with scary missiles and big bombs. Kim could in fact attack us, now that the Norks have simply screwed us on their nuclear "treaty," negotiated by Maddy Albright under Clinton.
If Kim III attacks us, we have only a few options. Anti-missile systems are reasonably useful, but they can be overwhelmed by multiple simultaneous attacks. We therefore have to turn all the possible launch sites into smoking ash as soon as we are sure an attack is on the way. If any ICBMs are still launched against us, we only have minutes to destroy them in the (slower) launch phase, in mid-flight going out of (or into) the atmosphere, and near the targets.
This is the most frightening crisis since JFK and Khruschev's Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. But there are a few things to remember. One of them is that South Korea and Japan are much better armed than they let on. If Kim launches, he will be dead with seconds. Japan and South Korea also have US anti-missile systems and Aegis cruisers. So, there are a number of anti-missile attack points, as close to the likely flight path as possible.
A second major point is that Russia and China are just as vulnerable to North Korean missiles as Japan and Hawaii. Putin talks big, but he can't be happy to have crazy-talking folks with nukes within range of Vladivostok.
The Iranians could simultaneously attack Israel and its Sunni enemies, just as WWII Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in support of Hitler's armies in 1942. That may be why Trump just sold another enormous array of military hardware to the Saudis, who are tacitly cooperating with Israel on mutual defense, along with the other Sunni Gulf States. Together, the Sunni states and Israel have first-rate intelligence on the mullahs.
The rational bet is that this crisis is a major bluff from Kim, but that China and Russia will pull the leash on North Korea and Iran before putting themselves in danger. As Sundance points out, the strategic field has already been set by Trump's domestic energy expansion.
Lower oil prices put tremendous pressure on the producers. A real assault would also destabilize world currencies. China's economy is tasting the early fruits of prosperity, and it is not going to relish a return to misery and famine that would inevitably follow a conflict.
We are seeing a very, very nasty and dangerous crisis, no question about it.
The only good thing is that Obama, Hillary, Bill, and Jimmah are not in charge.