Let others analyze how a convicted criminal who fomented an insurrection and was found civilly liable for sexual assault somehow won another presidential election. For instance, Amanda Marcotte, the senior writer for the Salon magazine, blames it on the “Cat Ladies” who have an “American death wish.” I spent a long time among them, but I have never seen a fellow American, male or female, who had a death wish; but this is not the issue here.
Yet, it seems that white women voters did not swarm around the woman candidate as much as that she hoped for. Apparently, new President-elect Donald Trump’s vice president pick J. D. Vance could not sufficiently scare the childless cat ladies. Next time, the Democrats, when they’ll pick up a woman as their presidential candidate, they’ll pay more attention that that woman looks less like a public prosecutor. Again, this is not the issue here. (But it is so attractive, I am not able to drop it!)
Back to other less sweet subjects! The president-elect is fast this time around to fill important government positions, and he picks his political consultant Susie Wiles to be the White House chief of staff. Wiles is said to have an immense influence on Trump and his 2024 campaign staff. Many credit the professionalization of the most recent Trump campaign to Wiles’ leadership.
Mr. Trump is a first-class boss in selecting his apprentices! He is also good at firing them. If you remember, he had picked up Reince Priebus (who was he anyway?) as his first chief of staff and ousted him in six months (with a Twitter message!) when White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci accused him, in an interview with New Yorker Magazine, being the source of many White House leaks. Trump then appointed the Marine Gen. John Kelly as his chief of staff. Yes, the same Kelly who recently said Trump fit “into the general definition of fascist.” John (The Turncoat) Kelly also confirmed to The Atlantic Magazine that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War II.
So, General, you are not coming back to the White House either as an appointee or as an invitee anytime soon! But Elon Musk, the largest contributor to the campaign coffer, seems to be very welcome either as the White House conjurer or as communications director (What? Anthony Scaramucci had no more merit than Elon has for this job!)
Another person with a guaranteed position in the next Cabinet seems to be the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. For the last four years, Mr. Pompeo not only put on more fat around his belly but also added “NeoCon” to his many other titles. Pompeo, who served in the administration of Donald Trump as director of the CIA, from 2017 to 2018 and as the secretary of state from 2018 to 2021, is the architect of the Trump administration’s many flip-flops on Iran. He is the first person who, in the words of Matthew Petti of the National Interest, pivoted back from “America First” and went “full neocon.” Patti doesn’t say, but we can assume that Mr. Pompeo swung from “America First” to “Israel First” when he clearly rejected the idea of a “two-state solution” for the Palestinians. “We are recognizing the reality on the ground,” he explained the reason why the one-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict would be better: “When the time is right, our vision will go forward.”
So, Mr. Pompeo seems to be the perfect candidate to end the “endless wars.” Will Trump, as he did five years ago, give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu full power to annex other peoples’ lands into Israel and ransack other peoples’ houses and farms in the occupied territories? For Trump’s continuation of the U.S. policy of unconditional support to Israel, Pompeo is the right man. Pompeo is also the person who invented the term “Maximum Pressure” for the policy to push Iran to give up its nuclear program. Rather than convincing the mullahs to change their mind, Pompeo’s policy had been a powerful incentive for Tehran to go nuclear.
Instead of asking the question of why Iran is trying to have nuclear deterrence and solving that problem, like his predecessors, Trump had too tried to resort to a palliative solution: keep Israel the strongest in the region. When he takes office on Jan. 20, Trump’s approach to Iran is likely going to be the same. Even if tries to be even-handed in the region, his 2020 drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s covert paramilitary operations, left very bad memories with the mullahs who would never allow President Masoud Pezeshkian to offer the U.S. an engagement plan.
Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, but he wants the U.S. to disentangle itself from foreign conflicts generally. However, if he chooses Pompeo as his secretary of state, the United States will continue its policy toward Iran that will make Iranian leaders develop a nuclear deterrent, and Hamas and Hezbollah will continue fighting against the Israeli occupiers. A policy that supports Israel unconditionally is a declaration of war on the Palestinians, Iranians and Lebanese. In this case, it would be foolish for Iran not to give up its capacity to enrich uranium. Israel, and by proxy the United States, are threatening Iran’s survival as a sovereign state as well as the existence of Palestinians.
If Trump really wants to end the endless wars in the Middle East, he should immediately stop dogging Israel so faithfully. But it looks like he will have enough endless wars with the American elites.