Strategic Initiatives Group
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">When the Trump administration recently refused to acknowledge how Jews were the primary and specific targets of the Holocaust, it was White House deputy assistant Gorka who called the controversy over that decision as “<a href="http://forward.com/fast-forward/362482/trump-aide-sebastian-gorka-calls-criticism-of-holocaust-statement-asinine/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); text-decoration: none;">asinine</a>.” Perhaps it is no coincidence then that Gorka — who was born in London to Hungarian émigré parents — has repeatedly been photographed wearing a medal associated with the Order of Vitéz, an overtly anti-Semitic chivalric organization that collaborated with the Nazi regime during World War II.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><a href="https://mic.com/articles/168371/one-of-trumps-top-white-house-aides-wears-the-same-medal-worn-by-nazi-collaborators#.8byE4iH5V" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); text-decoration: none;">Writing for Policy Mic, Tom McKay offered</a> some additional context on the order’s founder, Miklós Horthy:</p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px 0px 0.5em; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); list-style: none; quotes: none; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 1rem; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;">Horthy, the Hungarian regent that [the order] supported, held a profound animus for the Jews of Hungary. “Concerning the Jewish question, for all my life, I have been an anti-Semite,” Horthy once <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005458" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); text-decoration: none;">wrote</a>. His government allied with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, enacted anti-Semitic laws, brutally cleansed Hungarian Jews, enslaved others in work details and collaborated with German authorities to deport them to death camps.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 1rem; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; line-height: 1.5rem;">“Many supporters of the Horthy regime were enamored by the Nazis and Hitler, and the ‘knights’ were especially so,” Balogh told <a href="https://lobelog.com/why-is-trump-adviser-wearing-medal-of-nazi-collaborators/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; list-style: none; color: rgb(255, 0, 0); text-decoration: none;">LobeLog.</a> “After 1948, one wouldn’t have bragged about his father being a ‘vitéz.’ Lately, however, especially since 2010, it has become fashionable again to boast about such ‘illustrious’ ancestors.”</p></blockquote></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Others, more hard-boiled, appeal to the powers-that-be that they believe actually run the country regardless of electoral results: </span><a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-671-50465-6" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">the Wise Men</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, the </span><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222863.The_Power_Elite" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Power Elite</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> or what I have called </span><a href="http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">the Deep State</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. These informal power groupings, </span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/01/11/the-deep-state-goes-to-war-with-president-elect-using-unverified-claims-as-dems-cheer/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">according to speculation</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, will attempt to gently but firmly pry Trump’s tiny fingers from the wheel before he sails the ship of state into an iceberg.</span></font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A third camp sees Trump as a lesser evil than the Deep State. Some of these voices are </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/world/americas/deep-state-leaks-trump.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">are more restrained warnings</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, while others, mostly Trump defenders on the right, </span><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/15/virgil-deep-state-bumps-off-general-flynn-whos-next-target/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">become nearly hysterical</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> in attributing the demise of Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser to the Deep State’s revenge against the president. This odd hypothesis has culminated in one of Fox News’ ankle-biters, Andrew (“Judge”) Napolitano, </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/02/23/andrew-napolitano-chickens-have-come-home-to-roost.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">depicting Trump and Flynn</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> as innocent snowflakes beset by the dark, remorseless forces of the state-within-a-state.</span></font><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As I have described in <a href="http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/02/17/another-pina-colada-and-hold-the-sanctions/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">greater detail elsewhere</a>, a far more reasonable case can be made that Gen. Flynn’s downfall was caused by his own reckless bad judgment and misleading of Vice President Pence rather than by the machinations of an invisible government.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is little evidence that America will be saved by concealed and powerful forces in the manner of the shadowy Caped Crusader rescuing Gotham City from the deranged Joker, or, alternatively, that the rough-hewn populist good guy Trump is in mortal combat with the Deep State. It is true that he ran as a populist against elite institutions: the power centers of the 1 percent — Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex — mostly supported his opponent. But his actions so far have strongly reinforced rather than weakened their position.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A glance at the membership of the president’s <a href="https://www.blackstone.com/media/press-releases/article/president-elect-trump-establishes-the-president-s-strategic-and-policy-forum" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Strategic and Policy Forum</a> shows they are flocking to his side, with masters of financial buccaneering like Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, along with Doug McMillon of retail giant Walmart. There is even an ex-governor of the Federal Reserve Board, Bush appointee Kevin Warsh. This is hardly a populist revolution of the kind preached by John Steinbeck’s Tom Joad.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s senior government appointments reinforce this impression: his Cabinet, filled with moguls from Big Oil, mega-banking, investment and retail, makes George W. Bush’s Cabinet look like a Bolshevik workers’ council. Even Steve Bannon, Trump’s “alt-right” Svengali, is an alumnus of Goldman Sachs, <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GS/history?p=GS" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">whose stock has surged 38 percent since the election</a>. The fact that America’s premier corporate raider, Carl Icahn, will be special adviser on regulatory reform, and that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was a Goldman executive for 16 years, does not inspire confidence that economic management will be different from that which piloted us into the 2008 crash.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysis-donald-trumps-revised-tax-plan" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">$6.2 trillion</a> in planned tax cuts are the Bush policy on steroids, and are potentially <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/how-much-did-bush-tax-cuts-cost-forgone-revenue" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">three times the magnitude of the 10-year cost of Bush’s cuts</a>. Because they are heavily targeted at the rich — <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2016/10/11/trump-tax-plan-gives-47-of-cuts-to-richest-1-new-analysis-finds/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">47 percent of the cuts will go to the top 1 percent</a> — they will exacerbate income inequality, which is already at its highest level since the 1920s. The tax-relief crumbs for low-income earners will be nullified or made worse by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/us/politics/andrew-puzder-labor-secretary-trump.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">an assault on the minimum wage</a>. Assistance to the poor and near-poor could be further eroded by a reduction in Medicaid benefits (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/25/opinion/the-quiet-war-on-medicaid.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">already in the works</a>, courtesy of Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican Congress). These actions will exacerbate the <a href="https://economicfront.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/the-devastating-transformation-of-work-in-the-us/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">ongoing trend toward jobs without benefits</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite their windfall from Trump’s tax policies, the rich will only be able to consume so many filet mignons, Sub-Zero refrigerators and Patek-Philippe watches before reaching satiation. The rest of their tax cut dividend will go into lifting the equities market to stratospheric levels or building palatial monuments in Glen Cove, Palm Beach or Palo Alto. Since the tax cuts will be much greater than Bush’s own prodigious fiscal mismanagement, the potential equities and real estate bubble could be a thing to behold. This is anything but a populist economic policy.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Candidate Trump’s criticism of the invasion of Iraq and promise of better relations with Russia also appealed to the growing populist backlash against the foreign policy elite’s practice of military intervention. He was regarded as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/opinion/sunday/donald-the-dove-hillary-the-hawk.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">less hawkish than his opponent, Hillary Clinton</a>, which led <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/20/jill-stein-on-war-trump-is-safer-than-clinton/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">some to regard him as the default peace candidate</a> of the two major-party nominees. One peace activist and former Democrat even said in correspondence to me that “[f]or my grandchildren, Trump’s my only realistic hope.” This premise was spectacularly mistaken and ignored what lay in plain sight.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump had always claimed, in line with conventional Republican dogma, that America’s military was <a href="http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/01/20/taking-oath-trump-pledges-restore-depleted-military.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">“depleted,” and that he would increase its budget to “rebuild” it</a>. No matter that this was a myth, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/09/this-remarkable-chart-shows-how-u-s-defense-spending-dwarfs-the-rest-of-the-world/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">DOD in 2016</a> spent, in constant dollars, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolas-j-s-davies/the-record-us-military-bu_b_8227820.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">comfortably more than the Cold War average</a>. And, sure enough, after the election defense stocks rose in the expectation that he would open the money spigot even wider. This expectation is bolstered by the fact that Congress is controlled by Republicans, whose reflex is to throw money at defense. The military-industrial complex, a core component of the Deep State, will grow even fatter, as his request for a 10-percent Pentagon budget increase plainly telegraphs.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After denouncing foreign policy activism, the president and his team are now on a collision course with Iran, threatening to tear up that country’s nuclear agreement with ourselves and five other world powers, engaging in bellicose rhetoric about <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politics/michael-flynn-condemns-iran-actions/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">putting it “on notice,”</a> and even <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/trump-puts-iran-on-notice-iran-calls-threat-useless.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">fantasizing a Gulf of Tonkin-like incident between US and Iranian warships</a>. His bluster about reinstating torture appears to have subsided — for now — but Trump is reportedly <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/reports-trump-administration-exploring-re-opening-cia-black-sites" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">considering reopening CIA “black sites,”</a> one of the Deep State’s sinister symbols.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump will not dismantle the extra-constitutional power structures that have grown more influential in the last decades of near-perpetual war, increasingly intrusive surveillance, financial deregulation and widening inequality. He will further entrench them. This has confounded those in the media, who once regarded him as a vulgar but basically harmless jackass who probably wouldn’t win but who in any case increased ratings and circulation, as well as those Americans desperate for silver linings who saw him a change agent that would shake up a polarized political system and slaughter a few sacred cows.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The powers-that-be probably never liked Trump’s vulgarity, but they had in any case a hedged bet during the campaign: Hillary Clinton, a firm friend of Wall Street, was denounced as such by an opponent who was an even bigger friend of the Street. It was a no-lose proposition.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/key-trump-adviser-has-disturbing-ties-anti-semitic-groups</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steve Bannon Builds a New Node of Power in the White House</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The former Breitbart chief has teamed up with Jared Kushner to set up a White House ‘Strategic Initiatives Group.’ Will it challenge the National Security Council for influence?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kimberly Dozier</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">KIMBERLY DOZIER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">01.31.17 8:05 PM ET</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s a new center of influence that’s quietly being built in the White House—and answers to two of President Donald J. Trump’s most influential, most controversial advisers. Counselor to the president Steve Bannon, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner—arguably the top two aides to Trump—have set up a brand-new body called the Strategic Initiatives Group, an internal White House think tank that answers to them, as well as to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, a senior administration official tells The Daily Beast. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The idea is not to make but to inform policy, helping guide a new president unfamiliar with the levers of power in Washington, D.C., and bridge the gap between the White House and industry, said the official, who spoke anonymously as a condition of describing White House deliberations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Less-charitable observers say the SIG is intended to be an alternative lodestar of power and influence to just possibly supersede the advice coming out of the traditional centers of influence like the National Security Council and the wider agencies of government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is how Bannon will watch Flynn,” said one person briefed on Bannon’s thinking, referring to retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the national security adviser. “That’s why he’s made sure he’ll be in every NSC meeting,” the source said, referring to a controversial presidential memo Trump signed over the weekend, slightly tweaking the NSC to give Bannon a permanent seat at the table.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The source said Bannon has been frustrated with Flynn’s immediate focus on counterterrorism and the campaign against the so-called Islamic State and al Qaeda to the detriment of wider issues like Brexit and the U.S. relationship with NATO.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They’re all getting along just fine,” countered another close observer, chalking up tension between the teams to the standard bedding-in process as they all learn how to translate the no-holds-barred tempo of a campaign into the strictures of policymaking and the confines of the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Bannon, Kushner, and Flynn have been working closely together for two years,” added another source who was part of the Trump transition, again speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive policy discussions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It may get crowded. Roughly 20 subject-matter experts will report to the SIG, said a person familiar with the matter, who had been briefed on Bannon’s goals for the body.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The senior administration official would not confirm that number, but said that 75-80 percent of the SIG’s manpower will be devoted to domestic issues like infrastructure, manufacturing, and cyber, and only a portion to foreign policy and national security.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are roughly 20 politically appointed positions in the NSC, working alongside the newly re-established Homeland Security Council. (The NSC and HSC had been merged under Obama. The total staff of the two bodies has been capped at 150, with most staffers on temporary assignment from other agencies.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The creation of the new body presents the possibility of three-way intramural wrestling for the president’s ear, between Bannon’s campaign-derived inner circle, Flynn’s fiercely loyal and mostly military NSC, and Vice President Mike Pence’s dyed-in-the-wool traditional GOP contingent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Republican administration members—every one of them vying for a spot in the new administration—tell The Daily Beast that this alternative node of power is one possible reason for the weekend of disarray over the executive order temporarily barring refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. In past administrations, such orders are discussed at the National Security Council’s Principals and Deputies Committee meetings, with the principals responsible for helping turn presidential orders into policy, and the deputies largely responsible for day-to-day crisis management.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You can’t have a principals and deputies process and then have this other cabinet,” said a former Bush White House staffer. “Your White House staff will craft an [executive order] and then the agencies involved put in place implementing instructions. They loop back around and get final blessing by the White House. There’s a process. So if this SIG starts spewing policy with no way to implement it, you’re going to have more and more incidents like this,” the former official said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A one-time member of the Obama administration goes a step—actually, several steps—further.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“To put it bluntly, this is truly crazy... Being a racist and misogynistic political adviser is one thing, but when that person controls domestic and national-security policy, it’s time to break glass because of emergency,” this former senior administration official said of Bannon. “I shudder to think what is next, once Bannon’s operation is fully staffed up.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GET THE BEAST IN YOUR INBOX!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Enter your email address</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By clicking "Subscribe," you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SUBSCRIBE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Longtime watchers and participants in the White House policymaking process from the Bush and Obama administrations say they’ve never heard of such a body, but that every president has certain people close to him or her that they run everything past, as former President Barack Obama had his David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Strategic Initiatives Group is run by assistant to the president Christopher Liddell, and includes deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka, who has worked closely with Bannon while writing for Breitbart, the website he used to run.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gorka is a controversial character himself, author of a book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, that argues the enemy is not, as the Obama administration saw it, “violent extremism,” but instead “the global jihadi movement, a modern totalitarian ideology rooted in the doctrines and martial history of Islam,” according to promotional material for the book. Gorka also faced a criminal charge for trying to take a gun through airport security, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House could not be immediately reached for comment on the status of the case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon, Gorka, and Flynn share a like-minded view on the perils of Islamic terrorism, with Gorka giving his first interview in his new role on Tuesday to The Counter-Jihad Report, a blog run by controversial activist Leslie Burt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We are at war with global jihadism,” he said. “The fact is, we know that ISIS has declared in English, in its publications, in its videos, ‘We will use the refugee streams and mass migrations to insert our jihadis into your cultures,’” he said, explaining the weekend executive order as a necessary evil to protect Americans from ISIS infiltration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gorka lamented that federal authorities vetting one of the San Bernardino attackers were prevented from examining her social media, which might have tipped them off to her views on militancy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The federal authorities looking into her visa application couldn’t look at her public Facebook pages! That was deemed an intrusion of privacy. That by itself tells you we have to review the system,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent days, Trump administration officials have begun to discuss the possibility of building on its controversial immigration policies by forcing overseas visitors to open up their social media contacts before they’re allowed to enter the United States. If Gorka’s comments are any indication, that’s a plan that may have originated from this new Strategic Initiatives Group.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div></div>