Is The Key To MAGA Getting Out From Under AIPAC's Thumb

AIPAC’s thumb—or whatever else AIPAC uses to exert control over their regime in America. Yes, Jewish Progs exert enormous influence over American regimes—have done so since WW2—but their influence isn’t as unified and lockstep as the Jewish Nationalist movement centered in AIPAC. For example, in my view Jewish Progs would never have considered launching a witchhunt across America to weed out from universities and corporations anyone who disagreed with the Prog agenda. Sure, brand opponents of the Prog agenda as White Supremacists or Neonazis, hint at Anti-semitism, but empower Jewish organizations to finger people for deportation? Make Philo-Zionism the test for fitness for public office? Well, YMMV. Maybe it’s just different flavors of Jewish Nationalism: Tikkkun America vs. Israel First, with various shades and blendings of the two clear tendencies. Anyway, AIPAC seems different in its aggressive intel work for Israel.

Two articles came to my attention late last night. The first was by Jeffrey Tucker, republished at Zerohedge (to whom, kudos, they’re not in the WH press pool). Tucker addresses what I regard as perhaps the most fundamental initiative that Trump 2.0 has undertaken—because it underpins all else: The legal initiative to establish Chief Executive control over the Chief Executive’s government.

Tucker lays this out very clearly, albeit in my opinion a bit negatively. What I mean is, he expresses disappointment at what he considers the slow pace of this initiative. He thinks that the SCOTUS should speed things up and is especially disappointed at the “procedural” character of the increasingly frequent positive rulings.

I tend to disagree. As for the slow pace, I have one word: Tariffs. The US constitutional order is like a super tanker—you don’t turn it on a dime, and you need to keep a sharp lookout for dangerous underwater rocks before you execute a change of course. But, as for the “procedural” nature of some of these rulings, just because the word “jurisdiction” appears in an opinion doesn’t mean that the ruling is “procedural”. Sometimes when an appellate level court tells the lower courts that they lack jurisdiction, that can be a very substantive constitutional concept—it tells the courts to butt out out of matters that pertain to the Executive, not to the Judiciary. And the more appellate decisions along those lines that come down, the quicker the process will go. Roberts is trying to avoid the look of a top down judicial revolution in favor of an organic restoration of constitutional order that, as much as possible, avoids what might look like sweeping reinterpretations.

Nevertheless, Tucker’s overview is worthwhile

The Supreme Court Must Clarify Presidential Power

... The kind of power that Trump is deploying right now—here we leave aside the issue of trade and tariffs—is mainly about the ability of the president to be in charge of his own executive branch.

You might think that we have settled law and precedent that could decisively offer the answer. Incredibly, we do not. The rise of the administrative state with more than 400 agencies and millions of employees with the power to make regulation and law is not something that has been clearly adjudicated by the highest court.

Why not? Mostly because presidents have not really set out to offer a comprehensive challenge to the power of the agencies. Trump is arguably the first to make a forceful claim to be in charge of the agencies. He and his staff knew for sure that this claim would be subject to litigation and likely rejected by lower courts. But they also believed that forcing the Supreme Court to intervene was worth the risk.

So far, the highest court has generally sided with the Trump administration against lower court attempts to restrict the power of the elected president over executive agencies. …

What Tucker is leaving out here is what’s known as “regular order”. The process of judicial review is supposed to move up through the appellate courts so that the “highest court” doesn’t get bogged down with correcting obvious mistakes or arrant nonsense at the lowest level, the district courts. This is, in fact, happening—with some assists from the SCOTUS during the past week. Each of these rulings will decide multiple lower court cases. It’s happening. Some issues revolve around Executive Orders—Trump is forcing the courts to take up fundamental issues of the Separation of Powers. Others—like the deportations—revolve around Executive actions that also draw in other basic legal issues, like habeas corpus. But the transformation appears to be on track. When it’s complete any president will have clearly defined and quite powerful authority over the Executive agencies. What’s important in this is that, heretofore, Congress has had much of the authority over the agencies, through the power of the purse strings and of oversight. The result has been a loose alliance between the Legislative Branch and the Executive agencies, with the Chief Executive neutered in important respects—such as control over the Intel Community.

OK, you may be wondering at this point what Trump’s push to gain control over the Executive agencies has to do with Jewish Nationalist control over much of our government. Fortuitously, AIPAC is here to explain that to you. It has to do with the de facto Agency - Congress alliance, and the tendency for presidents to appoint to agencies people who have strong ties to Congress—it tends to ensure quicker and less painful confirmations, but it also undercuts Executive authority. Trump is a sort of AIPAC poster boy for this.

AIPAC leader boasts of special ‘access’ to top Trump natsec officials in leaked audio

During an off-the-record panel, AIPAC’s CEO detailed his organization’s grooming of Trump’s top national security officials, and how his group’s “access” ensures they continue to follow Israel’s agenda.

This is a fairly lengthy article by Max Blumenthal. I’ll try to excerpt the key parts, but I strongly urge you to follow the link:

The Grayzone has obtained audio of an off-the-record session from the 2025 Congressional Summit of AIPAC, the main US lobbying arm of the state of Israel. Recorded by an attendee of the panel discussion, the audio features AIPAC’s new CEO, Elliott Brandt, describing how his organization has cultivated influence with three top national security officials in the Trump administration – Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Director Mike Waltz, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe – and how it believes it can gain “access” to their internal discussions.

These three are just three examples. If you think Jewish Nationalists don’t exercise influence on a far broader scale you’re smoking stuff that still isn’t legal in all states.

Joining Brandt on the panel was Dana Stroul, formerly the highest ranking civilian overseeing Middle East issues in the Biden administration’s Department of Defense. Stroul made it clear that defending Israel’s strategic imperatives from within the US government was a top priority, arguing that Washington should deepen its “mutually beneficial” special relationship with its “strong partner” in Tel Aviv.

…, she and her fellow Israel lobbyists fretted about the impact of the post-October 7 war on public support for the self-proclaimed Jewish state. She was particularly troubled by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ attempts to force votes on military aid packages to Israel which, in her view, should never be debated in the open. Another unidentified AIPAC panelist worried that pro-Palestinian academics could eventually influence AI knowledge systems, leading to a dangerous shift in national security policy unless they were decisively suppressed.

The Congressional Summit was permeated with anxiety, as AIPAC leaders told rank-and-file members to hide their badges when they left the Marriott Hotel for fear they would be confronted by anti-genocide protesters. Other than a handful of sessions, such as a keynote address by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, the conference was strictly off-the-record.

With the cameras off, AIPAC leadership provided unusually candid details of their activities. In one revealing admission, Brandt explained how he and his lobbying organization groomed the future CIA director and other top Trump officials as pro-Israel assets.

AIPAC’s “lifelines” on the Trump national security team

Elliot Brandt was promoted to Executive Director of AIPAC in 2024, making him one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. Though he is largely unknown to the American public, Brandt has spent around three decades building relationships on Capitol Hill. This was the key, he suggested, to cultivating the future leaders of America’s national security state as loyal servants of Israel.

Referring to Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, his National Security Director Mike Waltz, and Elise Stefanik, whose nomination to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations was suddenly withdrawn to preserve the GOP’s majority in the House of Representatives, Brandt explained to AIPAC members, “Those three people have something in common: they all served in Congress.”

After relying heavily on pro-Israel donors to fuel their campaigns for office, “they all have relationships with key AIPAC leaders from their communities,” said the AIPAC CEO. “So the lines of communication are good should there be something questionable or curious, and we need access on the conversation.”

Brandt’s comments corroborate Representative Thomas Massie’s claim that each member of Congress is expected to answer to an “AIPAC person.”

The AIPAC director’s reference to his organization’s “access” to presumably internal national security discussions contains ominous echoes of past espionage scandals in which AIPAC employees were accused of forking classified information over to Israeli intelligence. In 2004, for example, the FBI arrested a Pentagon researcher named Larry Franklin, who had provided classified documents related to Iran to two AIPAC staffers, Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen, who then delivered the information to Israeli intelligence. That December, the FBI raided AIPAC’s offices and seized a computer belonging to Brandt’s predecessor, Howard Kohr. (In the end, Franklin received a slap on the wrist from the government while Weissman and Rosen were fired by AIPAC.)

In his remarks to the AIPAC Congressional Summit, Brandt also pointed to CIA Director John Ratcliffe as an important point of contact. “You know that one of the first candidates I ever met with as an AIPAC professional in my job when he was a candidate for Congress was a guy named John Ratcliffe,” he recalled. “He was challenging a long time member of Congress in Dallas. I said, this guy looks like he could win the race, and, we go talk to him. He had a good understanding of issues, and a couple of weeks ago, he took the oath as the CIA director, for crying out loud. This is a guy that we had a chance to speak to, so there are, there are a lot – I wouldn’t call them lifelines, but there are lifelines in there.”

Top Pentagon veteran comes out as Israel lobbyist

Dana Stroul works as director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a neoconservative think tank that was originally founded as the research arm of AIPAC. Stroul previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the Biden administration’s Pentagon, presiding over policy toward Iran, Syria and virtually every other issue of importance to Israel.

...

Like the other AIPAC panelists, Stroul was consumed with anxiety about Israel’s image among the American public. ...

“What do I worry about? I think everyone who’s a supporter of this relationship needs to be wary of the manner in which sometimes it’s not going to be about – Israel is going to be about congressional versus legislative tussling, but Israel is going to be caught in the crosshairs. And I’m worried about that with these executive holds,” Stroul proclaimed.

I’m worried about it with things like the [Bernie] Sanders joint resolutions of disapproval, ... The point is to not have to debate every time.”

Fear of a pro-Palestine AI system

…

AIPAC did not respond to The Grayzone’s request for comment about statements made during the off-the-record panel.

As you can see, it took decades of patient, self effacing, work for the Jewish Nationalist movement to arrive at this degree of control over America—because the US government is, after all, about controlling America. Governing America, if you will. Now that control can be flaunted. And anyone in public office who protests that AIPAC is an Agent of a Foreign Power will be quickly hounded out of public life—if they ever make it that far.

Even Trump—whose entire brand is that of the macho man who says and does whatever happens to be on his mind, and kowtows to no one—has to tread very carefully on those rare occasions when he wishes to follow a non-approved policy. That type of occasional and minimal freelancing by the only US official elected by We the People at large comes at a price—full obeisance on most matters. So, for example, when Trump decides that maybe shutting down the Strait of Hormuz in the middle of multiple international crises might not be the best thing for America, he has to couch his wish to avoid that in terms of hair raising threats to obliterate entire nations.

My idea is that if Trump succeeds in gaining control over the Executive agencies, future presidents who have not been fully purchased by the Jewish Nationalist movement might be in a position to exert a greater degree of independence to act in America’s actual interests, in the interests of We the People. I know that seems like a long shot, but it’s at least a possibility. This article, which delves a bit deeper into the Pew Research poll that I highlighted yesterday, explains why that is at least a possibility (excerpts).

Most Americans Now Have Negative View Of Israel - Under-50 GOP Support Craters

While the Trump administration earnestly redistributes billions of dollars of American wealth to Israel, that country's immensely-destructive war in Gaza appears to be taking a growing toll on its support among Americans. … In a finding that will cause the greatest alarm in Israeli government offices and at US-based pro-Israel organizations, there's now a huge generational divide within the GOP ranks.

Remember what I wrote above, that Trump’s tariff misstep was a self inflicted mistake that he really can’t afford when he’s dancing gaily along a cliff edge in geopolitics? That’s why. In 2024 Trump got 46% of the “youth vote”, compared to 36% in 2020. With fully half of Trump’s youth voters sharply disagreeing with his Philo-genocide rhetoric and policies, that places Trump on shaky ground going forward.

Extending back several years, support for Israel had started to sharply polarize along major-party lines, with Democrats' affinity for Israel plummeting while GOP support held relatively steady. In the Pew survey's most striking statistic of all, disdain for the State of Israel among Republicans under age 50 has soared 15 points in three years, which could signal that support for Israel is poised for a bipartisan decline for years to come. …

…

Pew also found interesting distinctions among views held by Americans as divided by religious affiliations. One of the key pillars of Israeli political influence inside the United States is white evangelical protestants, and 72% of them accordingly view Israel favorably today. Non-evangelical protestants are net-negative on Israel by a small 50% to 47% margin, while Catholics take a dim view of Israel by a more substantial 53% to 43% spread. 73% of Jews are favorable, but a quite-substantial 27% give a thumbs-down to the self-declared "Jewish state."

Source: Pew Research

Here’s another interesting take from this data set. Traditionally, Jews have regarded vibrant Christian faith in public life as “bad for the Jews”, and the rise of religious indifferentism among Gentiles, therefore, as a positive development to be encouraged. Yet here we see 69% of the “religiously unaffiliated” cohort with a negative view of Israel. Woops!

Pew's survey didn't probe the factors driving rising negative views of Israel, but it's safe to say the major shift springs from Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza. Beyond the war per se, the exposure of that war's horrors on social media platforms has also been decisive in our view, with Americans having access to raw portrayals of the bloodshed and suffering, including reporting from alternative and foreign media outlets that shines a light on the high civilian death toll, destruction of hospitals, mass-displacement from homes, hunger and disease.

…

Ironically, many of the most damning social-media glimpses into the Israeli Defense Forces' conduct of the war have come from IDF soldiers themselves, who've shared photos and videos of themselves gleefully destroying entire neighborhoods in Gaza, maliciously smashing shops, destroying personal property, and weirdly dressing up in women's underwear left behind in the homes of fleeing Palestinians.

And there’s quite a bit more. The point is, Trump’s constant threats of global warfare in support of Jewish Nationalism puts him in some degree of danger—politically existential danger, if not the sort of “great danger” he claims Iran will be in if Iran doesn’t kiss his tuchis. And yet his drive for legal legitimization for Executive authority may hold promise for the future.