When I awoke this morning I half expected news Donald Trump and Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto had challenged one another to a duel in the deserts of Sonora. Instead, it appears Mexico’s only concern over a wall the length of the border with the United States, is who is going to pay for it. Trump is not the mainstream target this morning, Clinton is.
Karl Christian Rove is what my Dad would have called a “ringer”, the man the big bosses go to when it’s time for the real competition to begin. A political consult and adviser since the time of Watergate and the Nixon presidency Rove has “the look”, that steely blue eyed gaze that bespeaks of intelligence and confidence. It’s the look of somebody who knows what you don’t, the air of confidence that us unmistakably certain. The man largely responsible for George W. Bush being elected, the young man who crisscrossed America in a Ford Pinto for Nixon, he’s not some trifling Clinton hack. Rove is one of the men behind the scenes who does the bidding for the real power in the United States, for the conservative right, right in the middle. Rove was a George H.W. Bush pick after Watergate, and today he’s the sharp knife sliding across the neck of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “Team Clinton’s Pathetic Excuses” cuts deep. The wound that is credibility is agape now, and on Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal!
At the heart of Clinton’s problems, the use of personal email servers instead of government ones festers a kind of running ooze. As more and more of these mails emerge, each “buddy buddy” deal the public learns of, drives another nail in the Clinton campaign coffin. Rove does the exploratory using Clinton’s less than brilliant campaign manager Robby Mook’s comments about 15,000 deleted emails and Mook’s pitiful explanations for Clinton’s actions:
“Mr. Mook’s comment goes to Mrs. Clinton’s intent. If she had felt that the rules were murky, she should have asked the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser to clarify, but apparently she didn’t. However, if her goal was to avoid disclosing her emails, then the last people she would have asked to weigh in would be the department’s impartial lawyers.”
Karl Rove is the guy who told us before the 2008 election; “Obama’s the Guy at the Country Club Holding a Martini Making Snide Comments About Everyone Else”. And isn’t that exactly who we put in the White House? The cool and arrogant smartass that chews gum and does his TD dance at the wrong times, the guy who brags about killing people with drones, who plays golf while Louisiana flood victims suffer, isn’t he slurping that Martini now? He is, and this time America is watching and listening. I believe this Wall Street Journal piece is the turning point. I believe Clinton is headed under the bus wheels, and here’s why.
The Rove article rips across Clinton’s “conflicts of interests” like a surgical scalpel. Emerging reports showing a former Secretary of State using her office as a business platform, this is the growing cancer beneath the skin of the Clinton Foundation. The hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into a supposedly charitable endeavor belie any semblance of philanthropy at all. Clinton is emerging as a thief and a liar, though few go so far as to say it. Rove comes close, but what is more important is the fact Murdoch’s famous newspaper prints it. Think about this. In a world where these billionaires control every message, what does it say when the Pied Piper does a U-turn? I think it says, the “home team” has weighed a Clinton presidency, and has found it to be too far a stretch. The Murdochs of the world are going to “plan B”, Donald Trump as the puppet on their strings.
Of course I could be wrong. Rove is after all, a sharp tool of the right. Or at least this is what we are supposed to believe. Deciphering “who is who” in today’s world is like solving ancient Minoan texts. In all likelihood, Trump and Clinton bat for the same team, as do vested political analysts. Anybody who still believes American’s have choices should read other Wall Street Journal pieces of late. Joseph Elstein writes about picking either candidate; “Trump or Clinton is like picking a plague—frogs or locusts.”And I believe this is Murdoch saying; “Time to back off a bit, the sheep are mewing a bit too loudly.” Further evidence the controlled media is backing up comes in the form of a TIME piece about Clinton. Reiterating Obama’s idiotic “American exceptionalism” diatribe, the former Secretary of State hammers Trump for telling the truth on American arrogance to the world. Forget that Clinton thumbed her nose at a weary world proclaiming how “perfect” we Americans are again, if TIME is pointing a fickle finger, Clinton’s is done as a Thanksgiving turkey. The world is incensed over the United States goose stepping all over other countries. Clinton addresses veterans like this:
“Maintaining our military and caring for our veterans should never be a partisan issue. Defending American exceptionalism should always be above politics.”
Today America’s mainstream media is doing an about face on Hillary Clinton for president. The LA Times, the Boston Globe, even CNBC seem to be parlaying for a potential Clinton meltdown. Health issues, the ongoing Clinton Foundation revelations, Clinton’s role in Arab Spring and the current west versus east crises, no candidate in the history of the United States has had such controversy. The Democratic National Convention highjacked? If Nixon had had such, he’d have been hanged by his neck on the White House lawn. Trump, no matter how blasphemous, is a lamb compared to the worst Clinton Americans can imagine. And billionaires cannot afford to be very wrong, very often.
I began this story with a crisp characterization of a brilliant and emblematic political character named Karl Rove. To end the story it’s appropriate to extend that characterization. Americans are becoming disenchanted with the elites, the psychopaths that have sucked our blood. Wall Street stinks to high heavens, and Washington is a snake pit now overflowing with vipers. Rove, for all his intelligence, is connected to the dirty tricks underground of America’s political elite. John McCain to the Reagan White House, he’s part of a “good cop – bad cop” game the rich and powerful have played for decades now. He’s been called an “evil mastermind” behind the Bushs and the Republican party, a master mind who despised Donald Trump only a few short weeks ago. Pay attention here.
After a meeting with Trump at the Manhattan home of the casino magnate Steve Wynn, Trump somehow went from “divisive idiot” to a real contender for president. Rove is the connection to the conservative money in America, and Wynn is the modern day version of Howard Hughes, a man inextricably linked to Las Vegas banker legend E. Parry Thomas. There’s no room in this summary for the underlying significance, just suffice it to say the other “money” in America is moving to Trump. In short, the real game is on now, and “odds” are, Hillary won’t survive once her media edge disappears.
Win or lose, Hillary Clinton is an icon in a way. She and her husband Bill Clinton are caricatures, political celebrities that benchmark just how far the American public is willing to go, just how much people will put up with. The fact she is in this election at all, it’s a testimony to how far we’ve sunk in accepting abysmal leadership. Obama is anyone’s presidential disaster, the Bush wars were even more transparent than his Nobel killing sprees globally. He bailed out Wall Street with our money, after they stole our money, and he survived in the White House. Clinton as Secretary of State helped ignite Arab Spring, Europe is in upheaval over US interests, and still our “exceptionalism” is a positive character trait? Meanwhile, Donald Trump seems harmless all things considered. We can easily imagine White House press conferences seeming like episodes of “The Apprentice” – with President Trump coming on to “fire” a press secretary. The world and America had rather have a president acting like a crazy president, than a shady opportunist everyone knows is controlled by the money lenders. I think Clinton is done, but I also think plan A and B were always in the cards.
Look for WikiLeaks to throw in the final raise bet, in an elite game of power.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
