If trump was the establishment, why did the military disobey his order to withdraw from Syria.
I mean this honestly. To me the establishment means being able to influence the ruling class. Despite trump's presidency, in several important policy points, where he clearly stated his policy, his rules were violated by a seemingly out of control bureaucracy.
The us diplomatic staff to Syria was caught bragging that the army had left 900 troops without informing the president. How is that establishment. Quite clearly, someone else is in charge
I don't know, you'd need to ask him. My guess is that he was informed that it would be infeasible and dangerous to pull out all of the troops immediately, and took that I to account.
The major complication here is that trump had a pattern of lying and blistering to the American people. But given that the trump white house is on record that hundreds of troops would remain in Syria indefinitely, and that there was no specific withdrawal timetable, I have a hard time seeing how this was them disobeying his orders. Do you know the order he actually gave the military, or are you assuming the simplified speech was the extent of it (when it's clear that his actual orders, thankfully, had more nuance)?
Edit: I looked further into this, is appears to be not that the military lied to trump, but that a trump appointee lied to trump. Which like, still bad, but not a conspiracy by anyone except trump's own staff. Perhaps he should have hired better people, or perhaps he just didn't care.
He was still lied to. Any decisions he made were based on lies.
> Perhaps he should have hired better people, or perhaps he just didn't care
The problem is the bureaucratic class.. ie those qualified to run these things all have similar views, regardless of party.
Trump did not share those views yet still had to pick from them. The american people also don't have those views, or at least a large percentage of them don't. This myopic perspective amongst Al the bureaucratic class is what people call 'the deep state'.
A president that wants to get rid of this ought to embrace the unitary theory of the us executive and start making decisions and managing the various departments himself. for example, if a president believe hi predecessor bribed a foreign country, he can simply ask the other country to investigate, and has whatever foreign policy levers he has to get compliance, like us aid.
Unfortunately, when you do that, the ruling class doesn't like it and then they try to impeach you.
I mean that's what happens when there's a single party running Washington DC, but most people don't see it.
> The problem is the bureaucratic class.. ie those qualified to run these things all have similar views, regardless of party
This begs the question.
> Unfortunately, when you do that, the ruling class doesn't like it and then they try to impeach you.
This reads as unfounded conspiracy. Your thesis is that impeachment by republicans was both a real threat to trump, but still failed, as a threat to step in line? Why are they still clinging to him as head of party then?
> Why are they still clinging to him as head of party then?
Where have you been? They're not. At least not the elected ones.
Trump is broadly popular with the voters and with a select few republican office holders that you end up hearing about a lot because the gop voter base loves them. The establishment gop.. not so much.
I mean the head of the RNC is Romney's niece . Do you think she really likes trump? Or Mitch McConnell, current highest ranking republican.
I have no idea if any of them "really like" trump or not. I do think they're catering his support, which is what matters. Clearly he has power in the republican establishment, enough that all these powerful people you mention can't get rid of him.
So either the establishment supports him, or he's more powerful than the establishment and they're forced to support him. Anything else and he'd be gone.
> I do think they're catering his support, which is what matters. Clearly he has power in the republican establishment, enough that all these powerful people you mention can't get rid of him.
Because they want his endorsement to be voted into power.
Look, if the GOP voters get their way and remove every so-called 'RINO', and install Trump supporters, I will agree that Trump has become establishment. But until then, it's obvious he wasn't. When he had both branches of government with Paul Ryan as speaker, he still couldn't get his agenda through. Both the GOP house and the dem house stopped his agenda in various different ways.
Consider the border wall. This is incredibly popular amongst his base. The same base that voted Paul Ryan and his ilk into the house. And did they continue this agenda? No. They actively prevented it. Trump was -- his entire time in office -- a lone ranger. I don't see how this is even controversial.
Contrast this with Bush, who did have periods of GOP dominance, in which he got everything he wanted pushed through (his wars...). Or look at Obama with Obamacare and the dem house.
See, but this line of reasoning doesn't make sense, I can apply the same argument to get the conclusion that Biden isn't "establishment", because many of his policies aren't getting done, despite on paper Dem control of the house and senate. This would make...Joe Manchin the "establishment", I think, and everyone else in the democratic party, something else.
Having autocratic control of the government and policy isn't what makes you establishment or not, because politics is complicated. It's also not clear what "establishment" we're talking about now. The decision to ban trump was derided by pretty much everyone on the right, even the people you've called "establishment" GOP politicians. So if Ryan is "establishment", and Google was acting against Trump and Ryan when they banned him, which "establishment" were they working with?
The most frustrating thing about the Trump admin was the number of people on the left that didn’t realize he was fighting the GOP every single step. So much for “the enemy of my enemy”.
This was obvious to me from Reince Priebus on. McConnell and Graham played their parts until they didn’t have to anymore.
I mean this honestly. To me the establishment means being able to influence the ruling class. Despite trump's presidency, in several important policy points, where he clearly stated his policy, his rules were violated by a seemingly out of control bureaucracy.
The us diplomatic staff to Syria was caught bragging that the army had left 900 troops without informing the president. How is that establishment. Quite clearly, someone else is in charge