Money Can Buy

Las Vegas

Breitbart, on Trump’s visit:

On trade negotiation, he warned that Mexican, Chinese, and Iranian negotiators were much smarter than our own, particularly picking on Carolyn Kennedy, Obama-appointee to the Ambassadorship to Japan. He said that Obama’s appointees were getting killed in the field of negotiation, and that he could do a better job. “I know people… horrible people… you wouldn’t want to have dinner with… but they’re great at what they do [negotiate]”.

He has used that line a few other times before, and I’m sure he used it again this afternoon in Phoenix. (*)

If there’s some sort of political calculation in saying that our trade negotiators are just plain dumb and theirs are smarter, then I’ll yield.  But it’s not true:  The issue here isn’t intelligence, it’s corruption.  Our trade negotiators could all have 200 IQs and the other sides’ all come off the short buses, but it wouldn’t matter if “our” politicians that appoint and deploy “our” negotiators are all bought and paid for corporatist crony capitalist whores.

Evidence that Trump knows I’m right:

In a clear attack against the political establishment, including Republican candidate Jeb Bush, he said, “Every single person who gave Jeb Bush and Hillary money has something lined up, and it’s not necessarily and probably not at all to the benefit of [the American people]. Special interests, lobbyists, donors, they all get something.” He told how his own personal wealth would mean he didn’t owe donors anything – he pointed to Jeb as an example of where a candidate or president could be steered by the money men and women behind him.

One more interesting tidbit:

Trump spoke of how Tea Party supporters have been disparaged for years: “The Tea Party has such power and they always get trivialized… that’s what’s happening with me.” He mentioned later on that his comments are only ever half-reported. He focused particularly on the mainstream media which claimed he said, “the American Dream is dead,” without adding the next sentence he said at the time – about his plans to make it bigger, stronger, and better than ever.

Trivialized, yes.  But it’s more than that.  Like I wrote here yesterday, the TPM (Tea Party Movement) is basically a soft nationalist movement without anyone in it knowing that they’re soft nationalists, but they think they can get their unbeknownst-to-them soft nationalist agenda by bouncing off of lamestream conservatism and/or taking over the Republican Party.  All that has accomplished so far, and probably ever, is to empower corporatist whores like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.  If the TPM knew itself better, it wouldn’t be wasting time with either lamestream conservatism or Republican electoral politics.

(*) – Trump’s first choice of a Phoenix venue, which he had to change because of high ticket “sales,” (I think tix were free), was the Arizona Biltmore.  Which piqued my ears, because my late granduncle retired to Phoenix and lived in a neighborhood just a bit to the southwest of the Biltmore.