First Podcast and Newsletter for this Year

As I wrote these notes on what I wanted to say for this week's podcast, Donald Trump is selecting his choices for his administration and cabinet. He is not going with some old favourites but instead, possibly going with some newer, more radical people.

So far, he has picked Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, to be his new chief of Staff, Tom Homan to be his border czar, A former ICE director, and Elise Stefanik, a republican congresswoman from New York to be his UN ambassador.  Only time will tell us how they and the others coming soon will play out.

The latest for Defence Secretary may be Florida congressman Mike Waltz. A former Army special forces soldier. He has experience as an operator so knows combat first hand. The only trouble is, he is another serious war hawk that wants to go to war with everyone.

The latest news as I wrap this up for recording, is Trumps pick for Secretary of State. Florida Senator Marc Rubio, another war hawk, and Director of Homeland Security, Governor Kristi Noem, of South Dakota.

If these people have any influence on foreign and domestic policies, we are going to think genocide Joe was a choir boy by the time they are finished with the United States.

I am sure that we will hear a lot more about Trumps picks in the weeks to come. I did read a small story about Biden inviting Trump to the white house this week to talk to him about continuing to support the war in Ukraine at all costs. I don't see Trump agreeing to that. There is no financial benefit for the U.S. or Donald Trump. The bigger question is whether Trump will play nice or spit in genocide Joe's face, figuratively speaking.

Donald Trump is, as everyone is saying, very unpredictable. He is also cagey like a predator. He broadcasts his more popular thoughts that he thinks people will like him for all over the media but springs the surprises on an unsuspecting world at the last minute. He is famous for that as we know all too well from his last presidential term.

I liken Trump to a Mafia Capo. A Don, who wields his power like a cudgel and expects the world to bow to him and his wishes.

Everyone is writing in the news media about why he suddenly won the popular vote and the electoral college in a near blowout. There are lots of guesses but I don't see too many mainstream news channels or independents actually asking the blue collar workers and the poor why they voted for him. Especially the Latinos, which that voting bloc probably carried the day for Trump in a lot of ways.

What snippets I am reading show that it was the democrats elitist attitudes that pissed off all of the voters who are struggling from paycheck to paycheck every week. They witnessed the disdain for the Arab vote, the message that whatever Joe Biden's policies were, they would remain the same. From the support for the genocide in Palestine to the unwinnable war in Ukraine. The disdain for the working class who are seeing their jobs go overseas more and more, and the immigration policies that don't address their concerns.

Biden's economics are a failure. He did try to set up a few things but the Green New Deal did very little for the average blue collar worker. His fights with China over advanced chip technology are not helping the workers in the U.S. or Taiwan. These people can't afford to wait years for all of that to kick in. They need results now. Kamala Harris didn't have any new plans and they could see that. The American voters voted for a radical change that Trump promised them. It’s that simple.

Unfortunately, the loudest offer of change was in the form of Mafia Capo, Donald Trump. The Green Party had a peaceful offer on the table but the uniparty political system in the U.S. shut them down hard, just like they always do. Much like the democrats shut down Bernie Sanders in the past.

Will the U.S. suffer from voters remorse in about a year from now? If history is any kind of teacher, the answer will be a yes. But it's too late now. The United States is stuck for the next four years once again. Even if Donald Trump doesn't finish the term for health reasons, J.D. Vance is more than happy to step up and continue to run down field with the ball. Since he has the advantage of youth on his side, we can expect a much livelier run down the field towards the goal of more money for the rich and little for the working class.

No one truly knows how things are going to turn out starting next year. And that is what is worrying people across the globe right now. Is Donald trump going to pull the plug on Ukraine as Zelenskyy is thinking? Putin says he doesn't care one way or the other as he is not changing his strategy. He could care less about Trump. As evidenced by this latest story from the Washington Post.

RT new from Russia confirmed that the story from the Washington Post about Donald Trump's calls to the Kremlin to try and stop the war were false. The calls never happened. This is why the western news media is in so much trouble these days about everything.

Printing false narratives and outright false stories about the war in Palestine, Ukraine, Covid, bird flu outbreaks and so much more.

The Israelis are ecstatic over this Trump win. They are dancing in the streets and shooting grenade launchers into buildings in Gaza to celebrate. The soldier in question is supposedly going to be investigated but the world already knows the outcome of any investigation of one of their own.

Were the Maccabi football fans celebrating the Trump win when they trashed Amsterdam last weekend? There is a lot of controversy about that around the world now. Mostly because of all of the social media footage that refuted what the western mainstream news reported. Especially from the UK. Sky News and the BBC from England are getting raked over the coals for their obvious biased reporting, just like certain US news outlets.

This is what is making people crazy. All of this open support for the genocidal Israelis in the west. The average, everyday people see this and want it to end. This is why governments are crashing down around their heads.

Trump won in part because he is telling everyone that he will stop the war in Ukraine on day one. Germany's coalition government has crashed and is now burning over their support for Ukraine and Israel. France is on the edge of suffering a similar fate.

The European Union is starting to fracture badly because of all of this. Eastern Europe is moving away from Brussels more and more with Hungary and Slovakia leading the pack. Italy and Greece are sitting on the edge watching as they do their best to manage their own internal crisis. Spain is doing the same.

Turkey is playing both sides for now but, given their tense relations with the EU, they are likely to drop out of NATO and side with the BRICS bloc within a couple of years. For now, they are playing in the middle by supporting both as long as it continues to be financially advantageous for them until the west tells them they can't do that anymore. The west may force them to make a choice between NATO or BRICS. Turkey will most likely side with Eurasia and hook up with the BRICS bloc if such an ultimatum were issued.

If Turkey does that, NATO can kiss those forward bases and seaports goodbye. Imagine if NATO were to lose access to Incirlik Air Base or access to seaports to repair their naval ships? What if the Turks gave all of that access to the Russians and other BRICS aligned countries?

In the middle east, no one knows what Trump is thinking yet. Will he continue to unconditionally support Israel? Will he go after Iran? Again, his history suggests yes to both but, I am seeing some news stories that may say otherwise. There are reports that Trump is adverse to wars. He prefers favourable financial deals rather than spending money on weapons and military offensives.

The smart money is betting that he will support Israel as long as they agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. He will then allow Israel to continue its apartheid behaviour as long as there is money to be made. Such as a deal between Israel and the Saudis, which has stalled because of the wars. Trump Corp. stands to make billions from such a deal, if they can get everyone to sign off on it.

Trump would then standby while Israel continues to ethnically cleanse Palestine, piece by piece. First, north Gaza for the oil underneath, off shore and new settlements. The West Bank for expanding settlements. Southern Gaza as a last piece just because they can control things better that way. Then western Syria, northern Jordan, the Sinai of Egypt?

With Trump, Israel will get what it wants eventually. Which is the ancestral lands they are claiming right now. Donald Trump and his family will make billions out of it all. Either directly through his corporations or indirectly through the fossil fuel industry and other corporate entities who will pay him for the access.

Trump was close to this the last time he was president. You have to know that he has been working behind the scenes the last four years to set this up ahead of time. Wait and see.

I have said this over and over again on this podcast. Donald J. Trump doesn't do anything that won't make him a profit. Not that he hasn't failed in those endeavours throughout his life but every decision he makes is focused on one singular thing. How will this decision make me richer?

Being president again is going to be more of the same only this time, he has a better plan.

Will he go after those whom he thinks has wronged him? Absolutely, he is after all a wannabe Mafia Capo. No one disrespects the Don and gets away with it. He will do his best to make public examples of those on his list. This includes any media outlets he thinks have maligned him in the press. Although a republican has come out and told the media that there is no so called, 'hit list'. I guess we will find out next year.

Trump has said he will make the Attorney General's office his personal enforcer and sue everyone he attacks into oblivion. He will send his personal wing of the FBI after the states attorneys who convicted him or have cases ongoing and so forth. His personal FBI will be sent after anyone who even so much as thinks about maligning Trump publicly in any way. Don't take my word for it as these statements are part of the public record now.

Social media platforms may be regulated for unauthorised speech to the point that the allowed platforms might as well be state owned. Musk will be only too happy to conform and Zuckerberg will be too afraid to buck the system. Everything else will have to either comply or lose their U.S. users. Like TikTok may end up someday soon. The U.S. supreme court has already ruled that he is virtually untouchable while in office so it is apt to get ugly.

I don't think Donald Trump actually thinks he will turn the country over to fascism. He just wants it to become something in his image. If that is a fascist oligarchy, so be it. He wants to fix what he thinks is wrong by using strongarm tactics. Much like Adolf Hitler did in the 1930's. Is this on purpose? I don't think so. He wants what he wants and doesn't want to put a label on it. He doesn't see himself as another Hitler or the U.S. as a modern version of the Weimar Republic. He sees the United States as a tool to satisfy his huge ego.

In some small kernel of his brain, he probably imagines himself as the king of the world. As president of the richest country in the world, for now, he sees himself as the ultimate deal maker extraordinaire. The one man in the whole world that everyone has to listen to and abide by or he will find a way to financially punish them. He tried that the last time he was president and he has learned a little since then.

The difference this time, is that the largest countries (by GDP) aren't going to be bullied by the U.S. anymore. Russia stood up to him before and so did China. Now, they are both in much better positions to stand up to the U.S. even more than before.

The other question no one in the media seems to be asking. Will Trump replace the top generals in the pentagon with loyalists who will do anything he asks? There has been some speculation on that in the last few months but it is all quiet right now and that could be very scary.

We already know what Trump thinks of the generals who told him no in his last term and we also know how he doesn't like to be told no by anyone.

Will he install generals and admirals that will support him if he decides to go after Iran and start a global war? Iran has already told the world what will happen if they are attacked by the west. If it's just Israel in another paltry attempt, they will just respond in kind. But if the U.S. supports a major attack that attempts to take out Tehran and the Iranian military assets, Iran will unleash Armageddon by shutting down the middle east oil industry, therefore shutting down most of the world.

China won't allow that and neither will Russia. Are Trump's military advisers willing to allow that to happen, even if they are loyalists? I don't see Trump allowing the global economy to shut down over the loss of middle eastern oil.

In domestic U.S. news, I have a new article from Thom Hartmann that gives a very good outline of what's coming for people in the United States starting next year.

ICE raids on homes, businesses and everything in between. The first targets will be people of Hispanic origin. Then they will come after anyone from Haiti and Africa. Then it will be all peoples of Chinese origin. Especially of Trump ramps up the cold war with China.

As Thom says in his article, green card holders and naturalised citizens will get caught up if ICE shows up and the targets don't have their documents right to hand when they show up. So that means that immigrants had better carry their green cards and citizenship papers with them everywhere they go starting next year. Although, if there are any over-zealous police in the crews, documents in hand may not mean anything.

If anyone ends up in a camp, they will have to prove their right to be in the U.S from behind a barbed wire fence with armed guards on the perimeter. Welcome to Trump's new world order. With his current picks for domestic policies, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see this taking place. The last time the U.S. had camps like this was back in the 1940's when Japanese and German citizens were put in camps.

Like everything else right now, I guess we will have to wait and see what Trump does.

The political situation is so bad in the U.S., that other countries leaders are warning their people not to be like the United States. I don't think that is a reputation that the U.S ever thought they would have to live down. Of course, Donald Trump and his loyalists could care less about whether the U.S. has a nice reputation overseas as long as other countries do as their told. That is the message being given by the Mafia Don, Donald J. Trump and his crew. Do what we tell you or we will sanction or punish you somehow.

Life is going to become very interesting over the next four years. Is everyone around the world ready as the United States tries to set out and change the world order once again?