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The palace coup is on, to replace Trump by Pence.
Eric Zuesse
Barack Obama is stepping forward to assist the newsmedia in replacing the political neophyte Donald Trump by his long-established neoconservative Vice President, Mike Pence, who would become the President if Trump is either impeached or otherwise removed from the Presidency.
The top ‘hawkish’ or neoconservative newspaper is the Washington Post, whose “Global Opinions” writer Josh Rogin headlined on March 5th, “Vice President Pence is quietly becoming a foreign policy power player” and he wrote with apparent pleasure that, “Inside the White House, Pence is in the room during most of the president’s interactions with world leaders. He receives the presidential daily brief. As head of the transition, he was instrumental in bringing several traditionally hawkish Republicans into the top levels of the administration’s national security team, including Director of National Intelligence-designate Dan Coats, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.” Earlier, on February 22nd, the newspaper’s general Opinion Writer, Dana Milbank, had bannered, “Trump should try acting a bit more vice presidential” and closed by saying, “Never forget. Pence’s genuine response is what heals — not more banalities from” Trump.
And the Democratic Party seems virtually united in favoring a quick replacement of Trump — which means a Presidency soon by Pence.
A few news-reports tell the story of this domestic U.S. coup-in-the-making:
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EXCLUSIVE: Barack Obama’s close confidante Valerie Jarrett has moved into his new DC home, which is now the nerve center for their plan to mastermind the insurgency against President Trump
• Obama’s goal is to oust Trump from the presidency either by forcing his resignation or through his impeachment, a family friend tells DailyMail.com
• Jarrett has moved into the 8,200-square-foot, $5.3-million Kaloroma mansion to work closely with the former president and Michelle Obama
• Jarrett lived in the White House, dined with the Obamas, and helped shape his domestic and foreign policies
• Obama cannot use his West End office, a post-presidency perk, for political purposes
• ‘He’s coming. And he’s ready to roll.’ former Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday about the former president’s reentry into the political scene
By LEON WAGENER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 15:12 EST, 1 March 2017 | UPDATED: 19:17 EST, 1 March 2017
[Click onto the URL above for the rest of this astounding news-report, of the first-ever instance of a departing U.S. President actively trying to replace his elected successor by that successor’s Vice President: Mike Pence. Because that’s who will become President if Trump gets overthrown, as the plotters (and Obama is only part of a very well-funded team on this) intend.]
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March 02, 2017, by ‘Bernhard’
Obama Ordered Abuse Of Intelligence To Sabotage Trump Policies
In its last months the Obama administration ordered the intelligence agencies to collect and distribute information of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. This to prevent any change by the Trump administration of the hostile policy towards Russia that the Obama administration instituted. The intent was also to give the intelligence services blackmail material against the Trump crew to prevent any changes in their undue, freewheeling independence.
The above is reported in a little discussed New York Times piece published yesterday. The reporting angle captured in the headline is biased to set the Obama efforts into a positive light: [the headline is] Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking. … [‘Bernhard quotes key excerpts from it.]
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The public news-reports about suspected Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign had started back in the summer of 2016, and was trumpeted obsessively by neoconservative ‘news’media such as The New Republic. Trump fired his campaign manager Paul Manafort when the reports of lobbying activities on behalf of the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, stirred such suspicions about Trump. However, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Tony Podesta, was not fired after the AP headlined on August 17th, “AP Sources: Manafort tied to undisclosed foreign lobbying” and also noted (which America’s ‘news’media never obsessed about, but only about the involvement of Trump’s campaign manager, and so this headline was itself an example of such one-sided ‘reporting’, but this passage in that confusingly-written news-report was definitely not, and so it received little pick-up in the rest of the press):
Manafort and business associate Rick Gates, another top strategist in Trump’s campaign, were working in 2012 on behalf of the political party of Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych. … The nonprofit, the newly created European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, was governed by a board that initially included parliament members from Yanukovych’s party. The nonprofit subsequently paid at least $2.2 million to the lobbying firms to advocate positions generally in line with those of Yanukovych’s government.
That lobbying included downplaying the necessity of a congressional resolution meant to pressure the Ukrainian leader to release an imprisoned [on a corruption-conviction, but the AP was hiding that fact, and also was hiding the fact that that CIA-backed politician, Yulia Tymoshenko, was infamous for her skimming off government contracts] political rival. … The European nonprofit paid the Podesta Group $1.13 million between June 2012 and April 2014 to lobby Congress, the White House National Security Council, the State Department and other federal agencies, according to U.S. lobbying records.
The nonprofit also paid $1.07 million over roughly the same period to Mercury [identified in this incoherently written ‘news’report as nothing but a “Washington lobbying firm” and with no person’s name attached to it] to lobby Congress. Among other issues, Mercury opposed congressional efforts to pressure Ukraine to release one of Yanukovych’s political rivals [that person, Tymoshenko, who had been convicted of corruption] from prison.
One former Podesta employee, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a non-disclosure agreement, said Gates described the nonprofit’s role in an April, 2012 meeting as supplying a source of money that could not be traced to the Ukrainian politicians who were paying him and Manafort.
In separate interviews, three current and former Podesta employees said disagreements broke out within the firm over the arrangement, which at least one former employee considered obviously illegal. Podesta, who said the project was vetted by his firm’s counsel, said he was unaware of any such disagreements.
A legal opinion drafted for the project for Mercury in May 2012, and obtained by AP, concluded that the European Centre qualified as a “foreign principal” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act but said disclosure to the Justice Department was not required. That determination was based on the nonprofit’s assurances that none of its activities was directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or subsidized by Ukraine’s government or any of the country’s political parties.
The Podesta Group’s CEO, Kimberley Fritts, said the two lobbying firms had coordinated on the legal conclusion that disclosure was not necessary to the Justice Department.
“If counsel had determined FARA was the way to go, we would have gladly registered under FARA,” she said in a statement to the AP. She said the nonprofit provided a signed statement affirming its independence from Ukraine’s government.
People involved in the lobbying project offered contradictory descriptions of how it came about.
Podesta told the AP his firm worked closely with the nonprofit and with Gates simultaneously. But Podesta said Gates was not working for Yanukovych’s political party and said Manafort was not involved.
“I was never given any reason to believe Rick was a Party of Regions consultant,” said John Ward Anderson, a current Podesta employee who attended the meeting, in a statement provided by his firm. “My assumption was that he was working for the Centre, as we were.”
Gates, in contrast, told AP he was working with Manafort and that both he and Manafort were working for Yanukovych’s party.
Pointing to Manafort’s involvement, Weber told AP that Manafort discussed the project before it began in a conference call with Podesta and himself.
The director of the European Centre, Ina Kirsch, told the AP her group never worked with Manafort or Gates and said the group hired the Washington lobbyists on its own. She said she had met with Manafort twice but said neither Manafort nor Gates played a role in its lobbying activities.
The center has declined for years to reveal specific sources of its funding.
The Republican site, “The Daily Caller,” tried to overcome the rest of the ‘news’media’s obsession against Manafort-Trump in that instance, and headlined “Shady Foreign Lobbying Effort Implicates Trump AND Clinton Campaign Chairmen”, and indicated that there was no reason to be obsessing only on the campaign manager for Trump, but this effort or call for editorial balance had no impact upon the rest of the ‘news’media, either Republican or otherwise.
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The American aristocracy, who own and employ the nation’s ‘news’media (of both Parties), couldn’t tolerate Trump’s saying that there was no reason for re-starting the Cold War; and they’re still trying to defeat him, even though Trump had capitulated on this matter very soon after he became elected to the Presidency and chose a national-security team that was dominated by Cold-War hawks. It’s not enough for him to cave to the aristocracy; they demand he grovel to them, or else he’s out entirely. Obama will be well paid by them in his campaign to replace Trump by Pence.
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To keep up-to-date on the ‘news’media’s latest successes in their drumbeat to portray Trump as being ‘Putin’s fool’ if not as ‘Putin’s agent’, I consider to be the best website — basically to be that propaganda-campaign’s most-skillful cheerleader — Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire. However, there is no denying that Trump is a fool (of the U.S. racist aristocracy itself, of which he himself is a member), even though he’s more intelligent than was his liberal opponent, Hillary Clinton — whom the aristocracy had overwhelmingly championed (largely but not entirely on account of her ceaseless support for U.S. military invasions and for the entire U.S. military-industrial-imperial complex). Well, that’s some ‘democracy’ the U.S. has — corrupt through and through. It’s a two-Party, one-aristocracy, ‘democracy’ — and Obama, now pumping for Pence to replace Trump as soon as possible, is already bidding to serve as its leader, once again.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
The palace coup is on, to replace Trump by Pence. was originally published on Washington's Blog
Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/03/palace-coup-replace-trump-pence.html
