Briefly: Did Jeffrey Sachs Shed Light On Trump's Thinking?

Late yesterday afternoon Judge Nap featured a session with Jeffrey Sachs that held out tantalizing possibilities for those of us—and who isn’t?—who are trying to come to grips with what Trump is up to these days with his many and provocative public statements. This followed mere hours after my post expressing deep disquiet regarding Trump’s “hellish” threats directed at the Middle East.

Here’s how it worked, for anyone who missed it:

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Does Trump Want Peace?

The session begins with a video of Professor Sachs speaking—he’s at the Cambridge University Student Union and he’s talking about the US Deep State in historical perspective. That perspective is to shed light on current events. I’ve done a transcript of that portion, but I’ll give away the punch line—this video was linked at Truth Social by none other than Donald J. Trump. Now, we already know that Trump in the past was an outspoken critic of our fraudulent forever wars, but I think it goes without saying that he wouldn’t lightly draw attention to what Sachs is saying—all of what Sachs is saying—without acquainting himself with the contents. So:

Sachs: It's a game. This is the Deep State and they have their wars, and every war has been phony. Some wars the American people are basically never told about--for example the war in Syria. You may actually hear from grownup reporters--who are lying through their teeth or ignorant beyond imagining--that, 'Oh, the war in Syria, yes, Russia intervened in Syria.' Well, do you know that Obama tasked the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government, starting 4 years before Russia intervened? What kind of nonsense is that? And how many times did the New York Times report on Operation Timber Sycamore, which was the presidential order to the CIA to overthrow Bashar al-Assad? Three times in 10 years! This is not democracy. This is a game, and it's a game of narrative.

Why did the US invade Iraq in 2003? Well, first all it was completely phony pretenses. It wasn't, 'Oh, we were so wrong--they didn't have weapons of mass destruction [after all].' They actually did focus groups in the fall of 2002 to find out what would sell that war to the American people. Abe Shulsky--if you want to know the name of the PR genius. They did focus groups on the war! They wanted the war all the time, they [just] had to figure out how to sell the war to the American people, how to scare the shit out of the American people. It was a phony war. Where did that war come from? You know what? It's quite surprising. That war came from Netanyahu, actually. You know that? It's weird, and the way it is, is that Netanyahu had, from 1995 onward, the theory that the only way we're going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them--that's Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The guy's nothing if not obsessive. He's still trying to get us to fight Iran--this day, this week. He's a deep, dark, son of a bitch--sorry to tell you--cuz he's gotten us into endless wars, and because of the power of all of this in US politics he's gotten his way. But that war was totally phony. So what is this democracy versus dictatorship? Come on--these are not even sensible terms!

Judge: That of course was Professor Jeffrey Sachs at the Cambridge Student Union. Why do I run that? Because that was posted, a reference to it was posted, on Truth Social by the President Elect of the United States [Donald J. Trump].

Now that—linking to Sachs calling Netanyahu a “deep, dark, son of a bitch”—is remarkable even by Trumpian standards. I can’t actually think of any reason why Trump would do that other than that he really believes it. Sachs himself argues that that isn’t the action of a guy who wants to get America into another crazy war. The big question is this: How far does this reveal the inner Trump? Sachs is clearly on solid ground when he argues, in the discussion that follows, that Trump—in the portion of his remarks that were clearly made for the benefit of the Russian leadership—is now openly recognizing that Russia has legitimate security interests in their “near abroad”, and explicitly so in Ukraine. Doug Macgregor must certainly be smiling today.

How far we can extrapolate to the Middle East is another matter, and yet …

Trump’s link to Sachs’ remarks either directly preceded or followed hard on the heels of Trump’s statements about bringing “hell” to the Middle East. Can we say that Trump was signalling that we should take his rhetoric with a grain of salt? But a PR savvy guy like Trump has to understand the dangers of positioning himself out on a limb. By the same token—on the other hand—adopting by link Sachs’ characterization of Netanyahu as a “deep, dark, son of a bitch” who is ultimately responsible for instigating most of our forever wars certainly places Trump out on a limb with regard to the The Israel Lobby.

As so often with Trump, we’ll need to wait and see. Nevertheless, this is definitely grist for the speculative mill.