A Constitutional Coup? Donald Trump and the Unthinkable

Below is an article that was circulated by my friend and comrade Moshe Machover.  I don’t agree with most of it and it would be very difficult to get the electoral college to vote against a Trump Presidency.  Nonetheless there is no doubt that people in the United State Establishment are thinking the unthinkable and that this heralds an unprecedented war against the legitimacy of the Trump Presidency.

Trump and his anti-Semitic adviser Steve Bannon from the alt-Right Breibart News

The CIA has been telling it that the Russians intervened to secure Trump’s election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s computers.  You may remember that the appalling Deborah Wasserman-Schultz, the Zionist Chair of the DNC was busy secretly fixing the Democrat’s Primary Elections when they were supposed to be the referee holding the ring.  When it came out they cried that the Russians were responsible.  If the article below is correct, then it could have been anyone.

Unfortunately Bernie Sanders didn’t take the opportunity to say that as the elections had been fixed, he would have been standing as an Independent.  What is interesting is the current spat between Trump and the CIA and the siding of much of the Republican establishment, McCain and others, with the CIA and Democrat senators like Charles Schumer.

Sanders bottled the chance to break the Democratic establishment

There is no doubt that large chunks of the US establishment are extremely unhappy at Trump’s election and given that Clinton won the popular vote by some 2.8 million votes, it wouldn’t be a surprise if there was a constitutional challenge to the legitimacy of a Trump Presidency.  I will say no more.

Tony Greenstein

Jewish demonstration against Steve Bannon being invited to address the far-Right Zionist Organisation of America luncheon

The "Elite" Coup Of 2016

By Moon Of Alabama

December 16, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Moon Of Alabama" -

·                     There is an "elite" coup attempt underway against the U.S. President-elect Trump.

·                     The coup is orchestrated by the camp of Hillary Clinton in association with the CIA and neoconservative powers in Congress.

·                     The plan is to use the CIA's "Russia made Trump the winner" nonsense to swing the electoral college against him. The case would then be bumped up to Congress. Major neocon and warmonger parts of the Republicans could then move the presidency to Clinton or, if that fails, put Trump's vice president-elect Mike Pence onto the throne. The regular bipartisan war business, which a Trump presidency threatens to interrupt, could continue.

·                     Should the coup succeed violent insurrections in the United States are likely to ensue with unpredictable consequences.

The above theses are thus far only a general outlay. No general plan has been published. The scheme though is pretty obvious by now. However, the following contains some speculation.

The priority aim is to deny Trump the presidency. He is too independent and a danger for several power centers within the ruling U.S. power circles. The selection of Tillerson as new Secretary of State only reinforces this (Prediction: Bolton will not get the Deputy position.)  Tillerson is for profitable stability, not for regime change adventures. The institutional Trump enemies are:

Shallow & insubstantial - Clinton lost because of her vacuous establishment politics not because of the Russians

·                     The CIA which has become the Central Assassination Agency under the Bush and Obama administrations. Huge parts of its budgets depend on a continuation of the war on Syria and the drone assassination campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. Trump's more isolationist policies would likely end these campaigns and the related budget troughs.

·                     The weapons industry which could lose its enormous sales to its major customers in the Persian Gulf should a President Trump reduce U.S. interference in the Middle East and elsewhere.

·                     The neoconservatives and Likudniks who want the U.S. as Israel's weapon to strong arm the Middle East to the Zionists' benefit.

·                     The general war hawks, military and "humanitarian interventionists" to whom any reduction of the U.S. role as primary power in the world is anathema to their believes.

The current CIA director Brennan, a leading figure of the CIA torture program and Obama consigliere, is in the Clinton/anti-Trump camp. The former CIA heads Hayden and Panetta are public Clinton supporters as is torturer king and former CIA deputy director Michael Morell.

Israel's wild West Bank settlers celebrate Trump's election

 It is thereby no wonder that the CIA is leading the anti-Russian campaign. Its task now is to implant the idea in the U.S. public that Russian intervention skewed the U.S. election towards Trump. The purpose is the delegitimization of the Trump victory in the eyes of the media and public but even more so in the eyes of the electors within the electoral college.

The CIA is heavily supported by the same mainstream media that pushed for Clinton during the election. (These are, not by chance, also the same media that pushed the CIA's earlier "Saddam's Weapon of Mass Destruction" campaign.)

The Democratic partisan and Harvard law Professor Lawrence Lessig is pushing the electors and offers them free personal legal support. He says the electoral college vote is now close.

Could 37 Republican electors, put there by voters in their states to vote for Trump, be convinced to move from electing Trump to abstain or vote for someone else, Trump would miss the needed 270 votes. The whole election of the president would then by kicked up to the House of Representatives.

Should the electors vote for Trump there is still a possibility that members of the House and the Senate could officially question that vote and cause delays or Congressional probes and legal challenges.

Here are the detailed general proceedings and specifics for the electoral college as explained by the National Archives and Records Administration.

Though neoconservatives have no genuine support within the U.S. electorate they have a strong hold on significant parts of Congress and the relevant MSM commentariat. Many leading neoconservatives and war hawks like Robert Kagan, Max Boot and the Washington Post editorial board came out for Clinton during the campaign. Clinton even ran campaign advertisements with Republican Congress luminaries like Lindsay Graham, Sasse and Flake.

The House and the Senate majority may well be on the anti-Trump side if push comes to shove. But whatever the outcome there surely would be intense legal challenges and I expect the case to go up to the Supreme Court.

As an alternative to legal shenanigans Trump's inauguration could be delayed by Obama's order to the intelligence community to create a formal review of Russian intervention in the election by January 20. That is not by chance the official inauguration date! The selling point:

By ordering a “full review” of allegations of Russian into the 2016 election process, President Barack Obama is essentially asking the IC to make an analytical judgment about the validity of the election that will place Trump in the Oval Office.

A "compromise" in Congress could be to wait for the Intelligence Community's analysis and then discuss it before certifying Trump as president. That would end up with no result as National Intelligence Estimates are notoriously vague. Meanwhile the Vice President-elect would sit in as acting President:

If the President-elect fails to qualify before inauguration, Section 3 of the 20th Amendment states that the Vice President-elect will act as President until such a time as a President has qualified.

If the congressional or legal process around the Trump election gets delayed, that may be a state for a long time. The ruling Washington blob or borg could well live with an acting President Pence while Trump would have no official say in any government business. (Could Clinton then become acting VP or qualify as the new president?)

The media intervention on the anti-Trump side is heavy.

But first keep in mind that there is no public evidence, ZERO, that Russia indeed had anything to do with the DNC or Podesta or other leaks and the publication of emails by various outlets like Wikileaks.

Craig Murray assures us that he knows that these were not hacks but insider leaks and that he knows the leaker(s). Indeed he now tells us that the emails were handed over to him during a visits in Washington. Former intelligence officials including the technically very knowledgeable former NSA official William Binney concur that the hacking story is false.

All we have heard or seen so far are hearsay rumors and allegations of evidence. To me as experienced IT professional the case is technically laughable just as Murray explains here. If the claimed hacks occurred at all the alleged methods were so common that anybody could have done these. There is not even one claimed fact yet that is technically halfway acceptable as evidence that "Russia did it".

But still the NYT runs a big package of pieces telling us that "Russia did it" based on the non-factual CIA rumors and unprofessional IT assertions by Crowdstrike, the self-promoting IT security company the DNC hired and paid. Before that the Washington Post published major claims of Russian interference by anonymous officials. NBC News now tops that with "intelligence officials" saying Putin himself ran the hacking campaign. Authors of the story are the long time insider hacks Bill Arkin and Ken Dilanian known for clearing his stories with the CIA before publishing. The next story will tells us that Vladimir Valdimirovich himself was punching the keyboard.

Many news outlets and editorials follow these "leads".

Part of the scheme the Clinton campaign has worked out was explained by a former opposition research consultant to the Democratic National Council, the Ukrainian-American Alexandra (aka Andrea) Chalupa, in this thread:

Andrea Chalupa ‏@AndreaChalupa Dec 11

1.) Electoral College meets Dec. 19. If Electors ignore #StateOfEmergency we're in, & Trump gets elected, we can stop him Jan. 6 in Congress

2.) If any objections to Electoral College vote are made, they must be submitted in writing, signed by at least 1 House member & 1 Senator

3.) If objections are presented, House & Senate withdraw to their chambers to consider their merits under procedures set out in federal law.
...

Editorials and op-eds in the major papers are pushing the scheme along. Just for example from a long list A.J. Dionne in the Washington Post:

The CIA’s finding that Russia actively intervened in our election to make Trump president is an excellent reason for the electors to consider whether they should exercise their independent power. At the very least, they should be briefed on what the CIA knows, and in particular on whether there is any evidence that Trump or his lieutenants were engaged with Russia during the campaign.

The New York Times editorial laments about Trump ridiculing the CIA fairy tales it promotes.

Many people who have voted for Trump would be disgusted and outraged if or when Trump will be denied his office. Many of them are armed and would protest. Violence is ensured should the coup succeed.

Trump selected four former generals to joins his cabinet and staff. Should the troubles escalate we might be roughly in for a scenario as laid out in the 1992 military paper: The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 (pdf) by Charles J. Dunlap.

Donald Trump - Brexit in the United States

Clinton andTrump = 2 poisons - Strychnine and Arsenic 

Why do the pundits and pollsters always get it wrong?

It wasn't that difficult to get it right early

Way back on May 27^th I predicted that  Donald Trump would win the US Presidency.  It was clear that his crude economic nationalism coupled to his racism and chauvinism, had everything going for it compared to the lacklustre field of candidates he faced in the Republican primaries who all conveyed the same message.  As the election progressed I had little doubt that Trump was on course for victory, the ‘locker room’ tape notwithstanding. 

You have to wonder what they pay pundits like Jonathan Freedland for.  It seemed obvious that Trump was appealing to the disenfranchised and disillusioned working class.  If one ignored the crude racism and sexism then there was something else that marked Trump out from the rest of the Republican pack.  That something was his crude nationalism that expressed itself as hostility to the effects of globalisation on the voiceless and disillusioned working class of America. In Britain the same movement threw Britain out of the European Union.

Goldman Sachs in human form -   she cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination

Under neo-liberalism it has been easy to export jobs to Asia, Mexico and anywhere else where labour is cheaper.  Under the Democrats and Barak Obama, US multinationals could sit, like Apple, on hundreds of billions of dollars whilst refusing to invest this in jobs.  Neo-liberal economic policies have resulted in an utter catastrophe for millions of American workers. 

Let’s look at the figures.  US median household incomes by 2015 were below the levels in 1999. At their lowest point following the crisis, in 2012, US median household incomes were more than 9 per cent below their 1999 peak level. The US population has suffered more than a decade and a half fall in incomes. 

This has been accompanied by a massive rise in income inequality and the falling share of incomes received by the great majority of the US population. This trend began with the introduction of neoliberal ‘Reaganomics’ in the 1980s. The share of total US incomes received by the bottom 80 per cent of the US population fell from 56 per cent in 1967 to 49 per cent in 2015. Over the same period the share of total incomes received by the top 20 per cent of the population rose from 46 per cent to 51 per cent.

In monetary terms, the total income of the top 20 per cent of US households in 2015 was $5.1 trillion while that of the entire bottom 80 per cent was only $4.9 trillion. The total income of the top 5 per cent of the US population in 2015 of $2.2 trillion was over seven times that of the bottom 20 per cent of the US population of $0.3 trillion. See Wave of reaction sweeps Trump into White House

This rise in income disparity, like that under Tony Blair and New Labour in Britain, explains the social and economic basis for the political move to the right amongst the American white working class just as in Britain it resulted in the heavy support for Brexit in the industrial heartlands of the North, which Thatcher and Blair together hollowed out.

Yet for Jonathan Freedland of that once great newspaper, The Guardian, it’s all down to one man, Donald Trump.  In Who is to blame for this awful US election? Freedland asks ‘Who is to blame?’ before providing the answer: ‘The list is so long, from the Republican party to the media, from the pollsters and data nerds who got it so wrong to the Clinton campaign team that took onetime Democratic bastions for granted, including Clinton herself, who for all her strengths was a flawed candidate.’

If Bernie Sanders hadn't been cheated out of the nomination he might be President now

Freedland informs us that ‘the US’s search for Obama’s successor has been a horror show, revealing – and dredging up – a stew of racism, misogyny and casual violence bubbling below the surface of American life. Eight in 10 US voters say the campaign has left them feeling disgusted, according to a CBS/New York Times poll last week. Not dissatisfied. ... The blame for this belongs to one man. Donald Trump has fought a presidential campaign like no other.’

And this is what passes these days for incisive journalism.  There was a time when the Guardian employed someone like Victor Zorza, its East European columnist who alone amongst analysts predicted the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.  Even Hugo Young, looking back, was capable of incisive criticism of Thatcherism.  You only have to think of John Palmer, the Guardian’s thought provoking European editor or Richard Gott from South America, Victoria Brittain or its brilliant Middle East correspondent, David Hirst.  The only journalist that it employs today with any talent is Gary Younge.  Owen Jones may be on the left, for the moment, but his superficiality and lack of depth which is what marks him out.

Today the Guardian is just another neo-liberal newspaper for whom Jeremy Corbyn is the main target.  If Freedland and his fellow writers had even a spark of original thought they might realise that Corbyn like Bernie Sanders is a left-wing reaction to globalisation, neo-liberalism and neo-conservative foreign policy.  Just as the Guardian supported Clinton, the corrupt representative of the Democratic leadership in the USA so it has given consistent support to the equally bankrupt Right of the British Labour Party.

Having cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination through the corrupt manipulations by the Democratic leadership under Deborah Wasserman-Schultz, they failed to see Clinton’s personal and political flaw.

Blaming the pollsters for getting it wrong is like blaming the weatherman for inclement weather.  Sure Michael Fish failed to predict the hurricane in 1987 but he wasn’t responsible for it!  It is a mark of the superficiality of what passes for Guardian journalism that Freedland cannot think beyond reflex spluttering at Trump’s crude racism and sexism. 

Even this might be convincing if the same Freedland didn’t act as a one-man apologist for an Israeli government whose members either compare Palestinians to animals or declare they are sub-human (Rabbi Eli Dahan) or who, like Miri Regev, the ‘Culture’ Minister compared African refugees (termed infiltrators like Palestinian refugees trying to slip back into the country)  to cancer and when people complained, apologises to cancer victims for having compared them to refugees!  Netanyahu, who recently declared that Arabs living outside the ‘Jewish’ state were wild beasts makes Donald Trump seem positively liberal.  Opposition leader Isaac Herzog declares that the Israeli Labour Party was not an ‘Arab lovers’ party.  To those who still don’t understand, ask whether ‘nigger lovers’ is acceptable or indeed ‘Jew lover’.

Hilary Clinton lost because in the face of Trump’s economic nationalism, his opposition to the free trade agreements, his pledge to repatriate jobs back to the USA, she trumpeted her competence.  People understood that the impoverishment of the working class of America had taken place on the Democrat’s watch.  Obama Care has become unaffordable for many at the same time as he has pursued policies which have increased wealth disparity in the USA.   Clinton was Goldman Sachs in human form.   As Trump said in one of his better put-downs Clinton had experience but ‘bad experience’.

Rania Khalek, a Palestinian from the USA, tweeted that the majority of Syrians she was in contact with wanted Trump to win because Syrians would be less likely to die from being bombed under his reign.  That is also why Trump is not the villain of the pantomime.  Outside the USA, Clinton would have been even more dangerous.

Of course having ridden the tiger Trump is not going to be able to reverse the tide of globalisation.  This means that in order to maintain his popularity we can look forward to a period of greater racism, deportations and attacks on the left and human rights.  Despite his isolationist policies I very much doubt that there is going to be any reduction in the bases that the US maintain in 120 countries or a scythe taken to the US’s over-sized military budge.

What we can do though is ensure that the politics of neo-liberalism are defeated in Britain and in the Labour Party in particular.  Although Freedland and the Guardian don’t see the connection between the politics they advocate and the political result, thousands of others have woken up.

Tony Greenstein