What's Trump's Big Plan?

I’ve spent the last few days puzzling over Trump’s tumultuous regime. On the one hand, he’s making good on some of his main campaign promises on the domestic front. Certainly his deconstruction of the government funded infrastructure that pushed the unpopular DEI agenda on the country has gone over well. So too with the Dem use of the government as a slush fund cum money laundering scheme. As for the border security and illegal entry issues, no less than law prof Jonathan Turley—who virtually never addresses purely political matters—sees this as a big political win for Trump. On the downside, the country—prominently including Trump supporters—appeared to be quite unprepared for Trump’s tariff shock and awe. Worse, judging from his changes of tack, Trump himself may not have been prepared for what came next. Nor did his usual demeaning rhetoric help matters. However, what I find most disturbing in the tariff mess is the suspicion—voiced in this morning’s post—that behind the talk of reshoring our manufacturing base the real goal is to maintain the US as the hegemonic world superpower.

… the openly expressed views of Trump’s closest trade advisers. They want to tie trade policy into national security policy, keep the USD as the world reserve currency, and maintain the US as the single dominant hegemonic superpower—MAGA, ya’ll! IOW, the Trump Tariffs represent a way to strongarm the rest of the world into paying down the unsustainable US debt—and, maybe, reshore industries that are vital to the military. It’s a continuation of Neocolonialism. ... In the meantime, what does MAGA really mean for the rest of us? Brian Berletic describes Trump’s MAGA plans here:

Worst Case Scenario: Trump’s Tariffs Walling US Off Ahead of Wider World Conflict

In other words, Trump may not have been totally above board in selling his program to the electorate. Trump sold the tariffs as a way to throw a lifeline to the American working and middle classes, but the tariffs may actually tie into his foreign policy much more directly. Which raises the additional question, especially as posed by Brian Berletic, as to exactly what Trump’s foreign policy vision and goals are.

And so I spent hours this afternoon listening to Judge Nap and his guests, puzzling over why Trump’s means to his ends don’t quite add up. He claims to want to be “the peace president,” but when dealing with militarily vulnerable peoples—Arabs, mostly, of various sorts—he can be brutally ruthless. What Trump is doing to Gaza and Yemen runs very much contrary to the refrain of even those who are Trump critics—that they believe he sincerely wants peace. Most fundamentally, in presenting deals to foreign powers he persistently presents terms that most informed observers regard as non-starters. A ceasefire in place in Ukraine? Iran to disarm itself? And he accompanies these unrealistic proffers with implicit or even quite explicit threats.

That brings me to the question I’ve asked recently—what if the best way to understand what Trump is up to is to ask: What comes next? So, for example, is peace with Russia an end in itself, because it’s the right thing to do, or is peace with Russia more of a means to an end—breaking Russia off from China so that both can be subjected in serial fashion? Certainly Sergey Lavrov recently acknowledged that Russia is alive to that possibility and is on guard against it. In other words, for Trump, peace with Russia may well be just one step on a longer road, and the sooner that peace thing can be put behind us the better. The problem in this case, of course, is that Russia is somewhat in the nature of an immovable object. But suppose that Russia were as vulnerable as Gaza—would Trump be as patient with Putin then?

Interestingly, speaking of Gaza, I quoted RT just the other day in a lengthy article that posits that Trump’s grand vision for the world is very much focused on the Middle East:

Can Trump reshape the Middle East?

For RT it wasn’t a question of whether reshaping the Middle East was one of Trump’s aims—it was only a question of whether Trump would be able to pull it off. Seen in this light, Trump’s shocking brutality toward the Palestinians looks like the frustration of a guy with a huge plan who has encountered an obstruction that threatens to spoil it all or even just delay it—and he isn’t too scrupulous about how he eliminates that obstruction. Recall how Trump repeatedly, during the campaign, called on Netanyahu to have the Gaza operation “finished” by the time Trump took office. We all speculated on what Trump meant by that. It turns out that one thing it definitely didn’t mean was that Trump would cut off the weapons flow or force the Israelis to stand down. Rather, it appears now that Trump simply wanted the deck cleared for action on his reshaping of the Middle East.

So my latest working theory—and I’m not dogmatic on this—is that Trump has a transformative grand vision for the world, with the US at the center of it as the undisputed hegemon. MAGA. He’s determined to pursue this vision, and that may be the key to understanding some of his seemingly contradictory actions. It’s also at least part of the reason for why he’s in such a rush. Four years to transform the world according to your big plans? That’s quite a trick! No wonder Trump seems so frustrated at times and keeps pressuring people like Putin or the Iranians to step up the pace, or why he’s reportedly considering supporting a proxy invasion of Yemen.

I’ve assembled some extracts from Judge Nap talking with his guests. Try reading these with the above considerations in mind. One caveat. Virtually to a man, the Judge’s guests skew liberal in their politics—unlike me. I’m quoting them to make some points, not because I’m in total agreement with everything they may say otherwise.

The Doctorow interview focuses on Russian perceptions of Trump. From the Russian perspective the question they need an answer to is: Is Trump willing or even able to deliver? Is it just Trump personally, or is Trump unable to buck the powerful forces working against him? If it’s personal, and Trump’s abrasive rhetoric can be written off to inexperience on the geopolitical level or personal traits, that’s one thing. Perhaps it can be overcome. But if these problems arise from forces at work within the American ruling establishment, then working with Trump may be pointless. This type of uncertainty is not conducive to productive negotiations or deal making. The Russians, understandably, will be second guessing at every step of the way.

Doctorow: The problems that we see, that the Russians have identified very clearly in the last few days, [has to do with] Trump's ability and willingness to do what is necessary to put through his agenda. I think a lot of people here were struck by his wobbling and by his backtracking on his chaotically introduced tariffs that put in question his ability to negotiate.

Judge: Is Donald Trump perceived in Europe as being on both sides of these issues--a man of peace and a man of war at the same time?

Doctorow: Oh, there's very definitely a lot of confusion, and there's reason for the confusion. As I mentioned a moment ago, Trump's wobbling has caused a lot of uncertainty about where he really stands and how tough he's going to fight for the initiatives that he rolled out in the first days of his presidency. That remains the case--that is true in Europe, for sure. Look, there were all these indications that he's backing away from NATO, and then yesterday or the day before there's the announcement that, after all, America is sending 5,000 troops to the new forthcoming NATO exercises. So whether it is Neocons who are influencing him or other factors, he is not pursuing a clearly defined policy and he reverses himself--which is not good for him and not good for his eventual success.

The Blumenthal interview is interesting for the picture it paints of the Jewish Nationalist influence network that works throughout America’s NatSec institutions. That influence network appears to have shifted over to full attack mode in the time since Netanyahu’s visit to the White House.

Blumenthal: Iran is on the precipice of being attacked again by the Zionist axis of Israel and its American proxy. Iran has to respond this time. It has to respond with force. It has to do serious damage. It has to damage the world economy or it loses all strategic deterrence, it loses all strategic depth, and it faces existential collapse and regime change. That's where Israel wants to get it and all it takes is for Trump to foolishly pull the trigger. That would mean that after reducing the value of the dollar by 11% in one week through his botched tariff war on the world, Donald Trump will tank the global economy by initiating war with Iran. From an economic standpoint alone, it's apocalyptic.

Judge: Who is Daniel Shapiro?

Blumenthal: Daniel B. Shapiro, after his term as Obama's ambassador to Israel, stayed in Israel and raised his children speaking Hebrew, going to Israeli schools in Israel. He didn't want to come back to the US. He's currently at the Atlantic Council, which is NATO's unofficial think tank in Washington, supported by pro-Israel and Gulf interests, as well as the arms industry--basically just a moneywashing operation for the war state. But he also lobbied for the NSO Group at Tony Blinken's WestExec Advisors. The NSO group is an Israeli spying firm that has used its Pegasus technology to spy on thousands of human rights defenders, journalists, activists around the world. Daniel B. Shapiro--I think the reason you're asking me about him is he has emerged as one of the leading proponents, as a Democrat, of Donald Trump striking Iran. There's actually a lot of inertia coming from the Democratic side against an Iran deal. They do not want Donald Trump to get the diplomatic win.

Judge: Who is Phil Gordon?

Blumenthal: Phil Gordon is another one. He was Kamala Harris' top foreign policy adviser. He was advising her on foreign policy when she was vice president and was her top adviser when she was running for president. He has denounced Trump and called it foolish for Trump to go to these negotiations [with Iran] at all. From Shapiro's point of view he is just advancing the Israeli perspective as a US official, and that's just something we have to recognize. The State Department and Pentagon is honeycombed with what I would call Pollardites, after Jonathan Pollard--the Israeli spy who was sent back to Israel after he was released from a life term in in US prison on the private jet of Donald Trump's largest donor, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. These are people who advance Israeli interests first while operating as US national security officials, and they're burrowing from within. It's not anti-Semitic to say that because this is just a reality we have to face. It's a reality that I helped expose when I released leaked audio from AIPAC's most recent meeting this February in Washington, where the [former] top Middle East official as a civilian in the Pentagon, Dana Stroll, was appearing as an Israel lobbyist at this conference, and her presence was not even announced there.

Judge: Bernie Sanders--is he making headway in his national tour or is he not very credible?

Blumenthal: Oh, I mean, something's going on out there. The crowds are enormous. I feel the same thing that people in those crowds feel--just on a visceral, emotional level--about where we're going as a country. The people [in the crowds] feel abandoned by the Democratic party leadership. ... What do [the Dem leadership] all have in common, aside from being controlled by Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and being completely clueless to the suffering the economic suffering of the average American? They're also war mongering Ultra Zionists. Bernie--who was himself a liberal Zionist throughout much of his career--is now condemning Netanyahu in every speech possible and saying there should be an arms embargo on Netanyahu. He'll never say Israel--he wants to make it out that Netanyahu is some kind of bad apple. And he's followed by AOC, who has not exactly been on the forefront of challenging the genocide in Gaza. But they're being pushed by this grassroots surge in places like Idaho, in Red States where they're getting these stadium audiences.

I pointed out that a group of protesters appeared at Bernie's recent speech in Idaho with AOC. The protesters held out a Palestinian flag on one of the rafters, and they were swiftly removed and their flag was taken away by police. Sanders then made some statement about Netanyahu being a bad guy but Israel having the right to defend itself against terrorism--whatever that means--but if you look closely at the footage that was filmed near these protesters, first people started to boo them because they thought they were Trumpers or something. Then they realized they were Palestine solidarity protesters and the entire crowd--literally the entire crowd--started chanting, 'Free Palestine!' What's happening out there is there's this grassroots surge of people who want to shut down the special relationship, which is seeing children burned alive every day in their tents in the ruins of Gaza City.

A Pew poll shows that, for the first time, most Americans have a negative view of Israel--including most Republicans under age 45 and just far and away a wild majority of young supporters of the Democratic Party. What Bernie and AOC are doing right now is they're sheep dogging all of them back into the Democratic party. They're serving as a corral or gatekeepers and in 2028 they're all going to be asked to vote for President Gavin Newsom and Vice President Josh Shapiro.

Larry Wilkerson, a bit uncharacteristically, is restrained in his comments about Trump—whom he finds frankly baffling.

Judge: Do you think Trump is serious about negotiations with Iran? We know that Mr Witkoff, the chief negotiator, came back from the first round and said, 'Looks like we're making a lot of progress. They're going to have enriched uranium for their domestic purposes but none for military purposes.' And then he did a 180 after somebody whispered into his ear.

Wilkerson: I think this is--I hope it is, although it's clumsy and inexpert and almost awkward--an attempt to build more and more pressure and to keep the Iranians guessing, if you will. I don't think it works with the Iranians but I can understand how someone who doesn't know them at all--and that goes for Witkoff and Trump, in fact it goes for his entire administration--it's something that they might think would work. It's something that might work in a real estate deal in New York, for example. I think we're still serious and I'm hearing from my Iranian contacts that they're still serious and, for now at least, they're not paying much attention to the rhetoric, because they thought the first meeting showed potential. We're going to go back to Muscat, back to Oman, this Saturday. The Iranian foreign minister has been to Moscow, gotten debriefed I'm sure, and gotten advice from Putin and others--Lavrov, for example--and they're ready to go on. I just think this is more attempts to build pressure. The cacophony coming from the administration is not just a part of that. I think this is a very divided administration.

Judge: You mentioned that the Iranian foreign minister was in Moscow. Didn't he meet not only with President Putin but with President Xi?

In fact, the Iranian ambassador reacted to Witkoff’s 180 by stating that Iran would use the next meeting to basically hold Witkoff’s feet to the fire, to find out exactly what the US position is. He also flatly stated that Iran’s enrichment program was “non-negotiable”, although Iran was willing to take steps to allay fears. Thus, the idea of “pressuring” Iran seems counterproductive. Did Trump go into this with the preconception that Iran could be bent to his will, and then he could move on to Transforming the Middle East?

Wilkerson: Yes, and that was planned. That's got to send a message to Marco Rubio and Donald Trump and company. Maybe it goes in one ear and out the other, but others have to understand the significance of it. But it's also the Iranians speaking to those people with whom they dealt, diplomacy wise, on the JCPOA. It's not just the new developments with Russia and China pretty much backing Iran--to what extent we don't know, but at least the Russians have a sort of a security agreement with them--but it's also what they should do, because they were in the original group that negotiated the JCPOA.

Wilkerson: Trump befuddles me from time to time, if not all the time. He doesn't seem to have a sheet of music from which he's singing--he's just making it up as he goes along. There are some fundamental things he wants to do--I think ending the war in Ukraine is one of them. I don't know what he wants to do with regard to Southwest Asia and Gaza and Israel--because it's a disaster right now, a total disaster. Israel is falling apart and as it falls apart it's talking about taking on Iran, which is preposterous. So I don't know where Trump is coming from on all of these critical issues. Most of all I don't know where he's coming from on the biggest issue of all, and that is one that he put on the table himself--and Putin and Xi have willingly acknowledged they want to talk about--and that's this very dangerous nuclear arms race that we have started and are going to put $1.7 trillion dollars towards over the next seven or eight years.

Judge: They stopped Max Blumenthal at Dulles and the first question was whether or not he appeared on this program!

The interview with Mearsheimer starts out on a fascinating note. Mearsheimer contends that Netanyahu wants to spark a major, region-wide conflagration in the Middle East to serve as cover for the Final Solution of the Jewish Supremacy Project’s “Arab Problem.” Even though Mearsheimer agrees, as the discussion develops, that such a conflagration could lead to catastrophic Israeli losses. IOW, he believes Netanyahu would gladly sacrifice massive Jewish losses of life for the sake of his ideology.

Mearsheimer: My view is that the principal aim here--not the only aim but the principal aim--is to cause a region-wide conflagration, all for the purposes of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. To ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out of Gaza you need a major conflict. You need a major war, and that provides the cover for the Israelis to go to work on the Palestinians in Gaza. So I think they fully understand that there's no way they could take out Iran's nuclear capabilities for the long term--maybe for a year or two or three, but that's it. But the reason they want to do it, and the reason they want to do it quickly, is they see that there is an opportunity now to fully cleanse Gaza if they can create a region-wide conflagration involving the United States, where everybody takes their eye off the Palestinian problem. In other words, it provides cover.

The Judge plays a video of an exchange between Davis and Macgregor that directly addresses the possible dire consequences of any attack on Iran:

Daniel Davis: What nation on the planet can have their embassy destroyed in another country and have an assassination in their capital city on an inauguration, and not go to war with somebody? Yet that's exactly what Iran didn't do--because they don't have the power to do it. So that should tell you ...

Macgregor: Wait a minute, wait a minute! False! That's a fundamentally false statement! False, false, false! They don't have the power to go to war? You haven't looked carefully at Iran. Iran's arsenal of missiles is enormous--it could flatten Israel in a day! They have the power to go to war. They have chosen repeatedly to avoid war. And I've said this a thousand times: No one in the Middle East is interested in a war except Israel and the United States.

Judge: Agreed, Professor Mearsheimer?

Mearsheimer: Uh, Colonel Macgregor has said it a thousand times. I'm sad to say I've only said it 500 times, but there's no question that it's Israel that's driving this train. If you look at what happened in April and in October of last year, in both instances the Israelis tried to drag us into a war with Iran. And both the Iranians and the Biden administration did not want a war. And according to this New York Times story, here we are again. The Iranians obviously don't want a war and the Trump administration doesn't want a war. But who wants a war? It's the Israelis.

Judge: And the neocons around Trump.

Mearsheimer: Yeah there's no question about that.

As the two continue, notice that they both see the Middle East and Russia wars as completely connected. At least, that’s how the Neocons see it.

Judge: Well the neocons around Trump want the Ukraine war to continue, don't they?

Mearsheimer: Yeah, they're war mongers. There's no question about that.

Judge: So they would undermine Mr Witkoff's negotiations with Vladimir Putin, with Hamas, with the Israelis, and with the Iranian foreign minister. If they could they would undermine all of that. They want both wars. They want one to start and another to continue.

Mearsheimer: Absolutely.

Mearsheimer: In a very important way Trump has more or less sided with--let's call them--the "restrainers", the people who want to work out deals. But the fact is he brought into his administration all of these super hawkish Zionists and he also has been acting in a very hamfisted way, and the end result is he's been unable to execute in ways that satisfy his basic inclinations regarding both Ukraine and Iran. So he's in a really tough spot at this point in time.

Follow this next bit closely. Does Trump have a major incentive to end the war on Russia quickly? Clearly he does. Then why doesn’t he just walk away from it, if he didn’t start it and it’s supposedly not his war? Is it because he fears domestic political fallout, or is it because—in order to further his big plans—he needs a peace that will place Putin in debt to him? And so he keeps the war going until Putin buckles—just like he said he’d do during the campaign. IOW, Trump’s inclination is not for peace, per se. It’s for peace of a certain type. He knows he can’t fully pivot to confront China unless he can somehow do a deal to sideline Russia. And he’s determined to defeat China because his dreams of a MAGA global empire require that.

Mearsheimer: Look he's going to have to, in my opinion, bite the bullet at some point. Let's just talk about the Ukraine war. If he doesn't bite the bullet, if he doesn't side with Witkoff, if he doesn't go with his own inclinations, the war is going to go on and he's going to end up looking just like Joe Biden. He's going to end up employing the same policies as Biden and he's not going to end the Ukraine war unless it's ended on the battlefield. And he will be blamed for losing the war. So he has a deep-seated interest in ending this war as quickly as possible, but he's been unable to pull the trigger. He said on Air Force One on Palm Sunday night, "It's Biden's war!" He knows it's his war now. He's the president of the United States--how could it be otherwise?

Judge: What are the short and long-term effects of 245% tariffs on Chinese goods?

Mearsheimer: I think that there are going to be very few goods except the ones that Trump exempts. I think there's no question that the American economy is going to be badly hurt. I think there's no question that the Chinese economy is going to be hurt, as well. The question of which side is hurt more is an open question. If I had to bet I would bet ... that the Chinese will come out of this better than we will. I think we have done a lot of damage to ourselves in terms of dealing with the rest of the world, as a result of the way these tariffs have been handled, and I think it's going to cause Trump a lot of trouble on the home front. ... there are huge numbers of people who don't have a lot of money who are hurting, and expect to be hurt even more because of President Trump's policies. And most of those people voted for President Trump.

The Judge shows a TikTok video of a Chinese man addressing the American people on tariffs and more:

Chinese Male: They robbed you blind, and you thank them for it. That's a tragedy. That's a scam. That's why I'm saying this right now. Americans, you don't need a tariff--you need a revolution! For decades your government and oligarchs want ship your job to China. Not for diplomacy, not for peace, but to exploit cheap labors. And in the process they hollowed out your middle class, crushed your working class, and told you to be proud while they sold your future for profit. And yes, China made money, but we used it to build roads, lead millions out of property, fund healthcare, raise living standard. We reinvested in our people. My family also benefited from it. What did your oligarchs do? They bought yachts, private jets, and mansions with golf course driveways. They manipulate the market, dodge tax, and poured billions into endless wars. And you? You get stagnated wages, crippling healthcare cost, cheap dopamine, debt, and flag to wave--probably made in China. Well, they pick your pocket. For 40 years both China and the United States benefit from the trade, the manufacturing, but only one of us use that wealth to build. This isn't China's fault! This is yours! You let this happen! You let oligarchs feed you lies! Well, they made you fat, poor, and addicted. Now they blame China for mess they made. I don't think so. I don't think you need another tariff. You need to wake up. You need to take your country back. I think you need a revolution.

Judge: The one correction I would make is, we haven't spent billions on useless wars. We've spent trillions on useless wars. But take it from there Professor Mearsheimer. If that young man were your student in your class and he stood up and gave that minute and a half statement how would you respond?

Mearsheimer: I would tell him I basically agree with him. I think he's correct. And I think by the way that this is a message in large part that Trump made as a candidate before the 2016, 2020, and the 2024 election--it's what helped get him elected in two of those three cases. I think there are huge number of people in this country who feel exactly the way that Chinese gentleman feels about what has happened. I would note to you, on a subject that you and I disagree on, which is whether China can rise peacefully, I argued for a long time that China could not rise peacefully. I was always very perplexed that all sorts of very hawkish people in the national security establishment disagreed with me. They argued that China could actually rise peacefully. I remember when I had a debate with Zbigniew Brzezinski in the early 2000s on this issue. I remember I was sitting up on the dais and I said to myself, 'Why am I arguing that China cannot rise peacefully and Zbig--who's about five to 10 notches to the right of me--is arguing that China can rise peacefully?' The fact is that almost all the national security elites in this country were making huge amounts of money consulting in China and they had a deep-seated interest in having very good relations with the Chinese, and hardly any of them were willing to say that if we turn China into a really powerful country there could be serious problems. So I think in a very important way that the national security elite was not as interested with the welfare of this country as it was with their own personal welfare. The end result is a lot of people in the body politic figured out what was going on and they turned against the elite and they elected Donald Trump two out of three times.