The education of Donald Trump
[Originally published on Alex Krainer's Substack] On Monday, 28 July, I had the pleasure of joining the investigative journalist Patrick Henningsen on Danny Haiphong podcast for a chat about current events (at link). In discussing global geopolitics, the central concern is Donald Trump’s conduct of US foreign policy as well as doubts over his competence, integrity and even his sanity. For many, the high hopes of Trump’s second term have turned to a bitter disappointment as it seems that he broke nearly all the promises he made to his voters. It does appear to be that way, but I am not convinced that this is indeed the case.
So dumb, it can’t possibly be true…
Some of Trump’s shifting policy positions seem to make so little sense, I find it hard to believe they are genuine. One example was the Operation “Rough Rider” back in March, when he ordered the bombing of Yemen, “like nobody’s ever seen before,” of course. The operation’s objective was to disable Ansarallah’s obstruction of maritime traffic through the Red Sea. In that, it was basically the same operation as the “Prosperity Guardian.”
Operation Prosperity Guardian kicked off in December 2023, it is ongoing to this day, and it never achieved its objectives. Doing more of the same seemed too dumb to make any discernible sense, so I couldn’t help but wonder whether Trump ordered that operation for reasons other than what was publicly disclosed, but I can only guess at what those reasons were.
The fake war against Iran
Another example was the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on 21/22 June. Considering the operation’s low likelihood of success against the risks involved, the idea seemed so off the charts idiotic, I assumed that Trump wouldn’t go through with it, and in a few podcasts at the time, I said that either there would be no attack, or there would be a pre-arranged, WWF-style fake attack.
Ouch, that really hurts!
I said that we would know that the US attack was fake by Iran’s retaliation, if it was also a pre-arranged, WWF-style fake retaliation. That’s exactly what happened, and as such, it made sense: certain political constituencies in the US wanted the war and they had to be appeased, even though neither Trump nor the Iranians wanted a real war. The solution: give them a fake war.
By insisting that the attack was the most successful, most effective and most precise bombing raid ever conducted in history of the Milky Way galaxy, and that it obliterated - o b l i t e r a t e d - Iran’s nuclear program, Trump in fact obliterated the free world’s rationale for the war, whose true objective was regime change in Iran. There are other examples including Trump’s trolling of the Brits over the “rare earths deal,” which I detailed in the article, “Britain’s Ukraine Hustle.”
Delving into the Trump enigma
All these cases suggest that Trump and his administration probably have a better appreciation of their geopolitical challenges than they let on, and that they do have a definitive mission, as opposed to randomly shooting off the hip and changing policy and alliances from one week to the next. If that is the case, then what comes across as ineptitude (to put it politely) could be deception aimed at the administration’s political opponents.
On Friday, 11 July I joined @EMBurlingame for a chat on @CryptoRich podcast, much of which revolved around the dilemma of Trump’s policies, competence, sanity, etc. E. M. Burligame is a battle-hardened Green Beret and researcher focused on deep state and 5th Generation Warfare.
The Epstein betrayal
Our discussion, which turned out to be quite fascinating, opened with the hot button issue of Jeffrey Epstein and the list of his clients which, as we learned earlier this month, won’t be made public, contrary to Trump’s electoral promises. Many of his supporters now feel betrayed and deceived. However, I never thought that the list would really be made public, although I did expect that at least a few minor players would be outed and dragged through the mud to assuage the public.
Epstein, who almost certainly was, or is, an MI6, CIA or Mossad asset, spent many years developing his network of high-level contacts and building up control files on some of the most powerful men in the world. The purpose of going to all that trouble was that such kompromat can be an extremely powerful weapon in the hands of those who get to wield it. By making all the files public, the weapon would be rendered useless.
Few, if any people in the political arena would deprive themselves of such a powerful weapon in the name of justice or a sense of moral obligation. The success of Trump’s mission, whatever that mission be, largely depends on his political power. For all the chaos he and his government are creating and dealing with, their number one priority is solidifying their own power, and that battle is waged on their own home turf in Washington DC.
In that sense, the documents they obtained from Epstein’s magnum opus are extremely valuable. The disappointing aspect of this whole story was the way Trump went about breaking his promise, resorting to insulting deception and obfuscation. As far as justice goes, both for Epstein’s clients and for their victims, it was never a likely outcome, even if all the files were released.
The illusory justice in a two-tier system
To begin with, we have a two-tiered justice system in the West: if you are an insider, the justice system tends to be lenient and you have a good chance to walk free, no matter your offense. But if you are an ordinary person, you could face years in jail even for minor offences. Often, you don’t even need to be proven guilty: suspects are routinely pressured into plea-deals that still come with stiff prison sentences.
Jeffrey Epstein and his clients were all insiders. In 2021, Virginia Guiffre (Roberts) sought justice against her abuser and Epstein’s loyal friend Prince Andrew. After more than two years of legal proceedings, the case was settled out of court without a guilty verdict. Today, Prince Andrew is a free man, and Ms. Guiffre is dead.
Trump’s Sport of Kings
The particularly fascinating part of my discussion with E. M. Burligame was in his perspective on Donald Trump and his role in the system. As he put it, Trump is playing the “Sport of Kings,” which unfolds above the “Great Game.” The Great Game would be the domain of the “managerial class”: the statesmen, diplomats, military leaders, intelligence networks, media, etc. It entails fields like economics, trade, finance, politics, geostrategy and warfare.
What E. M. Burlingame called the Sport of Kings entails managing the managerial class: controlling those who run the Great Game without getting killed, overthrown, or having one’s family destroyed, compromised, or drawn into traps set by your adversaries. The risk for “kings” is that, if anyone close to power could articulate the case that the king is making bad decisions and failing at his mission, they will maneuver to sideline or eliminate him.
The king is especially vulnerable to those who are nearest to him and for that reason, much of what the king must do on a continuous basis amounts to very tough tests of loyalty. E. M. believes that Trump is indeed playing the Sport of Kings, but that this is lost on the public in “democratic” West as we no longer recognize the true nature of the relationship between the people and their princes. He thought that among today’s leaders only a few are adept at the Sport of Kings and named Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban (Hungary) and Aleksandar Vučić (Serbia).
Dumb like a fox?
In discussing Trump’s competence and sanity, E. M.’s perspective was again, unorthodox: Trump is at war, and this is the real war. Since wars are invariably waged by deception, much of what Trump does amounts to deception. One of the most powerful ways of deceiving your adversary is exactly by playing dumb. As a case in point, E.M. mentioned Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, the head of New York’s Genovese crime family from 1981 until 2005.
Vincent Gigante in his usual attire
For nearly two decades, Gigante evaded law enforcement by feigning mental illness, often wandering Greenwich Village muttering incoherently and wearing a bathrobe and slippers. This act delayed his prosecution until 1997. He was convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to murder. He admitted that his mental illness was a ruse in 2003. Gigante died on 19 December 2005, in a Springfield, Missouri federal prison. All this happened in New York City and Trump would certainly have been aware of the story.
What is Trump’s real war?
Trump would not be feigning mental illness (25th amendment), but if we’re charitable, he lacks eloquence and often comes across as well out of his depth on so many issues. If that’s his deception, what war would necessitate it? E. M. Burlingame believes that Trump’s mission is to dismantle the “superstructure” created over the centuries by the ruling oligarchy. That superstructure has resulted in a massive theft of commons, which Trump intends to reverse.
Whether this is true or not, the assertion was corroborated to me a day earlier, in another podcast discussion, with Susan Kokinda (link, 90 min.), a Michigan-based organizer, author, and political activist affiliated with Promethean Action and the Lyndon LaRouche PAC.
The ultimate battle against the global financier class
Ms. Kokinda is very active in the Michigan Republican party and shared something Donald Trump said at an event where she was present: he called on the attendees to join him in what he said would be the ultimate battle against the global financier class. Kokinda shared another few stories suggesting that Trump understands the layout of the fault lines and really does appear to be playing the Sport of Kings.
For example, she pointed out that in a recent cabinet meeting, Trump deliberately and repeatedly referred to US adversaries as “our so-called enemies,” and “people who are perceived to be our enemies.” My discussion with Susan Kokinda is linked above. The full conversation with E. M. Burligame, which ran about 80 min. is available on X, at this link. Whatever the naked truth of the matter is, it would appear that we really are living in an extraordinarily interesting time.
If Trump really is playing the Sport of Kings, and doing it skilfully, rather than being lost at sea, we should expect many unexpected surprises through the rest of his term in office, unless it is somehow cut short.
Trump and the underworld of New York
After drafting the above text, which I originally published in my TrendCompass newsletter, I received more feedback from Harley Schlanger who wrote me that one of Trump’s mentors in New York was Roy Cohn,
“… dirty lawyer who was instrumental in the functioning of the post-World War II Jewish and Italian mobs, who also at the same time had connections to the Boston Brahmins, e.g., the Kennedy Family.”
Schlanger explained that organized crime has been a central element of Wall Street’s power in that it provided enforcement muscle, money flows and international connections, including drugs and arms trafficking, assassination teams (Permindex/Gladio), a legal apparatus as well as the empire’s intel networks.
Roy Cohn emerged from that underworld to rise within the ranks of US party politics and legitimate government structures. He worked as a top aide to Senator Joseph Mc Carthy, serving side-by-side with the young Bobby Kennedy:
Cohn was a key background figure in the movement of mob money from drugs, prostitution, and real estate, etc., to Wall Street, with connections to the network which produced Michael Milken, and as central to the shift from direct financing of Wall Street Mergers & Acquisitions of the 1970s/early '80s, to the much-larger LBOs of the mid-to-late '80s, in which laundered funds were used through "junk bonds" as a transition from cash purchases to the "financial innovations" of the 1990s to today, including use of derivatives, etc., to keep the flow of funds to the growing debt bubble.
Harley Schlanger, who supports Trump, though sans TLS (Trump Loyalty Syndrome), crossed swords with Roy Cohn in Atlanta, Georgia, “when Emprise, a Buffalo-based organized crime operation tied to Cohn, tried to take over city parking lots and related city services to launder funds.” This was the money trust’s grab at collateral from the public domain to their own private use. Mr. Schlanger led the Atlanta City Council’s defence against Emprise’s predatory attack.
Cohn was also involved, along with Henry Kissinger and Robert Mueller in destroying the then presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. They were successful and sent LaRouche to prison when the scion of the Bush banking family and former head of the CIA, George Herbert Walker Bush became the 41st President of the US.
All these events, including the career and arrest of Vincent Gigante were unfolding in Donald Trump’s immediate temporal, physical and social environment. He was almost certainly keenly aware of them and probably learned a great deal about the power dynamics of the US swamp. Another fact we know is that Trump’s political mentor was Richard Nixon, himself the victim of that same swamp.
Gangster, not philosopher
In light of all this, I find it hard to take Donald Trump at face value. I believe that he probably understands a lot more than he lets on, that the shallowness - if not the vulgarity - of his public and social media statements are part of the Vincent Gigante-like deception, and that the policy positions of his government are only seemingly shifting with the political winds of the day.
As E. M. Burlingame put it during our conversation, to successfully negotiate the political challenges before him, Trump does not need to be a sage or a great philosopher. Instead, he needs to be a gangster. At least, he needs to be comfortable with that mindset, and that much does appear to be the case.
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