Report: Trump Chief of Staff Ensuring ‘Exposure to Populist Nationalism Now Close to Zero’

The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Tony Lee

President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly and his Never Trump bureaucrats and globalist minions are ensuring that Trump’s “exposure to populist nationalism is now close to zero,” according to an Axios report that details how Kelly is isolating Trump from the concerns of working-class Americans of all backgrounds and parties who got Trump elected.

Since former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon left the White House, Trump has caved on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), reportedly is thinking about staying in the Paris Climate Accord, has palled around and made deals with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and supported increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Axios noted “who is around President Trump matters much more than with most presidents, because of his impulsiveness, lack of ideology and willingness to make snap decisions.”

“So if you wonder why President Trump has been willing to seriously entertain — and in one case so far, execute — policies that would’ve been anathema to Campaign Trump, it’s partly because of the feedback loop built by Chief of Staff John Kelly and the process adhered to by the national security team before briefing Trump,” Axios’ Mike Allen wrote in his Tuesday AM newsletter.

Allen further pointed out that Kelly and “Staff Secretary Rob Porter pick and choose what information gets to Trump and who’s allowed to weigh in, that’s supreme power.” Kelly’s deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, is also a globalist bureaucrat who has no idea about what concerns Trump’s coalition of working-class Americans and what got Trump elected in the first place. She now symbolically occupies Bannon’s office.

More from Allen’s report:

Trump’s willingness to publicly entertain an immigration deal that doesn’t include funding for the wall would have been unimaginable to Campaign Trump or Travel Ban Trump.

No administration official we talked to at the time thought that Trump was being sincere when he originally said he’d be open to staying in the climate deal if more favorable terms were offered to the U.S. On Sunday, Trump officials were on the shows saying exactly that.

Trump’s decision to raise troop levels in Afghanistan is testament to the power of a unified, controlled info flow to Trump. National Security Adviser McMaster, SecDef Mattis, CIA Director Pompeo, SecState Tillerson, et al. were all on the same page and they kept showing Trump — with highly detailed and planned presentations — why it’d be a disaster if he presided over a troop drawdown like Obama in Iraq.

He also notes that “Trump’s instincts were strongly against adding to troop levels — he really didn’t want to do it.”

“Part of the reason he kept veering was because he had Steve Bannon in his ear,” he continued. The former White House Chief Strategist who had a whiteboard in his office with Trump’s campaign promises on it worked, as former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, “24 hours a day” for Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that enabled him to shock the world in 2016.

According to Allen, with Bannon gone from the White House, “it’s easier” for Trump’s team of globalists, Democrats, and Never Trump saboteurs to “shape Trump’s perceptions on certain issues. Some Trump decisions — that would have been surprising in the past — are the natural result of the highly controlled information he sees and voices he hears.”

Axios also noted that after Trump’s decided to make a deal with Schumer and Pelosi on DACA, he enjoyed the “positive media coverage and coherent reinforcement from his top aides.” It goes without saying that Trump probably did not receive Breitbart News’ John Binder’s superb reporting on illegal immigration and DACA, which is much different than the DREAM Act, that could have better informed Trump.

Breitbart News’ Neil Munro also pointed out that Kelly ensured that Trump “was literally surrounded by amnesty boosters the night he agreed to give away a huge, expensive and unpopular amnesty in exchange for an empty bag of ‘border security’ promises.” Kelly seated Trump next to Pelosi and Schumer and ensured that Marc Short, who used to run the Koch brothers’ pro-amnesty group and worked for “Gang of Eight” Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) presidential campaign, was also at the dinner.

As Ann Coulter, one of the most loyal Trump supporters who has been a fearless and fierce champion of Trump’s agenda (memo to Trump: Dance with the one that brung ya!), recently told hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel B. Pollak on Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125, Trump ran on an America-First agenda but “suddenly Goldman Sachs and Rubio staffers [and their fellow Never Trumpers] are running everything” in the White House.

“He ran on, well, immigration, immigration, immigration, trade, and not starting any more wars. And we basically have Bush/Clinton out of this guy – because who’s he hiring? People who want to go to war constantly,” Coulter, the best-selling author of Adios, America, said on Breitbart News Sunday. “What was that idiotic bombing in Syria about? At least we got him to back away from starting yet another pointless war. The human meat grinder in Afghanistan. Why do we even have troops in South Korea? He’s not doing the reaching out to Russia. And immigration is a bipartisan issue. Who does it hurt most of all? African Americans.”

With Trump surrounded by those who are hostile to the agenda that got him elected, Bannon and other economic nationalists like Sebastian Gorka are now supporting candidates who will go to Washington to support Trump’s agenda. Gorka and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be going to Alabama on Thursday to campaign for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore against establishment Republican Luther Strange before Tuesday’s runoff. Axios highlighted the absurdity of the situation: “A month ago, Gorka and Steve Bannon were working in President Trump’s White House. Now they are preparing to go head-to-head against the president to support an anti-establishment candidate who is loathed by the same establishment that originally loathed Trump.”

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