Here’s Your Ticket to the Fever Swamp

I was cruising around the Web this morning and saw this headline at Haaretz:

What does this tell you about far-right Bannon affiliates? And why must we pay attention to these people? From the article:

The driving force behind the campaign has been far-right blogger Mike Cernovich, who started sharing links to a website called, McMaster Leaks, which is devoted to attacks on McMaster, on social media.

The website featured a brazen anti-Semitic caricature depicting McMaster and retired General David Petraeus, who is considered close to a number of senior NSC officials – as two puppets being controlled by Jewish billionaire George Soros, who himself is being controlled by “the Rothschilds,” the famously rich Jewish family of bankers. After the caricature was mocked on social media, the website edited it, replacing the word “Rothschilds” on the top of the pyramid with the word “Saudis,” but keeping in Soros depiction in place.

Yet McMaster, according to his rivals on the far-right, isn’t only being controlled by the Rothschilds – it turns out he is also “hostile to Israel,” according to articles that have been published in recent days on Breitbart, the far-right website formerly edited by Bannon, and on the Conservative Review. These articles, quoting “administration officials” and a Facebook post by Israeli journalist Caroline Glick, accuse him of such “sins” as opposing an Israeli request to include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Trump’s visit to the Western Wall during his visit in Israel earlier this year.

It’s one thing to be anti-Semitic, but to be anti-Semitic but also, apparently, a knee-jerk Zionist requires a scrambling of mental processes possibly unparalleled in modern political history. Well, except perhaps for the so-called patriotic Americans who periodically call for secession. Or this crew:

I bet the guys with the Swastikas would tell you they are pro-Israel, too.

This is also from the Haaretz article:

McMaster, it should be noted, was the Trump administration’s most senior representative and speaker earlier this year at the Israeli embassy’s annual Independence Day event. He was warmly received by the crowd and gave a speech in which he expressed the administration’s strong support for Israel, and promised to always safeguard the Jewish state’s security interests.

Okay, so the United States harbors a very twisted whackjob Right. It has always been among us, I suspect. It’s just that lately the whackjobs have been getting jobs related to national security. The reason the whackjobs are targeting McMaster is that he’s finally been allowed to clean house at the National Security Council, “re-assigning” some people who were of the Michael Flynn-Steve Bannon-“Hail Vinland!” persuasion.

From “The War Against H.R. McMaster” at The Atlantic:

McMaster has cleaned house at the NSC over the past few weeks. Via his deputy Ricky Waddell, he fired director of strategic planning Rich Higgins last month over a memo Higgins wrote alleging a deep-state conspiracy against President Trump. McMaster then dismissed two top officials brought on by the previous national-security adviser, Michael Flynn: the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East, Derek Harvey, who was fired last week; and the senior director for intelligence programs, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who was let go on Wednesday.

McMaster wanted to fire Cohen-Watnick last April, but apparently Bannon blocked that firing. Cohen-Watnick was involved in the flap about Susan Rice requesting the “unmasking” of certain Americans whose names showed in intelligence reports because they were talking to foreign entities under surveillance.

… But McMaster’s show of force has set off alarm bells among Bannon allies in the pro-Trump media sphere, who favored Flynn and regard the national-security adviser as a globalist interloper. Other White House officials have in the past been targets of theirs—Priebus was, for example—but the vitriol against McMaster has been notable for its speed and intensity. …

… It’s come from all corners. Breitbart News, the website Bannon controlled as executive chairman before joining the Trump campaign, has produced a flurry of negative stories about McMaster over the past two days, accusing him of “purging” dissenters and kowtowing to “holdovers” from the Obama administration. Fox News host Sean Hannity has tweeted about McMaster, saying he might need to go. Radio host Laura Ingraham has also weighed in, tweeting that “Obama holdovers at NSC or State Dept who are leaking shd do real time for these leaks. Why has McMasters fired actual Trump supporters?” The Daily Caller published an interview with two former NSC officials attacking him, accusing him of undermining the president’s foreign-policy agenda. Circa, a site owned by the conservative Sinclair Broadcasting company, published a letter Thursday that McMaster sent months ago to his predecessor Susan Rice, in which he informed her that she could keep her security clearance. It’s a standard letter, but it has caused a furor in light of the ongoing controversy over unmasking.

So far, Trump is standing by McMaster, as are the non-Bannon White House faction — Ivanka, Jared, and I assume new chief of staff John Kelly. We’ll see how long that lasts.

12 thoughts on “Here’s Your Ticket to the Fever Swamp

  1. I hope they rip each other to shreds. McMasters might seem like the one who you’d favor to come out on top in the internal struggles of that snake pit.. But once he buddied up to Trump, he’s become damaged goods. If he lacked the sense from the get go to not know what Trump is, then it’s obvious there is an impairment of his critical thinking faculties.
    Who in their right mind would ever consider taking a subordinate position to an unmistakable and proven pathological liar? You don’t need no Holy Bible to convey that understanding. Common sense and life’s experience should be sufficient to know that you just don’t go there. Red flag, flashing lights and danger Will Robinson written all over that maneuver.

  2. This is really interesting. Thank you. “It’s one thing to be anti-Semitic, but to be anti-Semitic but also, apparently, a knee-jerk Zionist requires a scrambling of mental processes possibly unparalleled in modern political history.” So well stated.

  3. Sadly, I can imagine waking up 50 years from now, and seeing that snazzy psychedelic swastika USA USA flag flying from the capitol. It reflects how twisted up these people are.

  4. Now you hear words like cosmopolitan. Once the word bourgeoisie was used. It is the same old anti intellectualism, cultivation of the ignorant. It is an old hatred. Exploiting resentment

  5. “Anti-Semitic Zionist”

    Sure why not they love the state hate the jew, not unlike how pro-lifers love the fetus hate the child?

    “I hope they rip each other to shreds”

    I agree Swami, people like to think the “generals” will save us from Trump, I say anyone who would even consider a position in Trumps administration is bound to be bad.

  6. Israeli journalist Caroline Glick, accuse him of such “sins” as opposing an Israeli request to include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Trump’s visit to the Western Wall during his visit in Israel earlier this year.

    Caroline doesn’t seem to get it. Doesn’t she realize that Netanyahu’s presence would only serve to upstage Trump’s performance of piety and solemnity. Not to mention how it would detract from the debut of purity of Ivanka’s public embrace and confirmation of Judaism.
    Who needs Netanyahu around when you’re in the midsts of a public performance showing your humble relationship with God.. And aside from that Netanyahu would probably bring along that pit bull wife of his and there’s no telling who she might bite.

  7. I used to think it was virtuous of those who would, out of a sense of sacrificial patriotism, work for Trump to serve as a buffer between the nation and what disasters His Idiocy, lacking any effective constraints would surely cause to be visited upon us.

    But all of them — McMaster, Kelly et al, have thus far proven themselves to either be there as willing toadies just to have the job and/or because they are true believers in the far right wingnuttery Trump represents.

    In any case, whatever befalls them they deserve.

  8. From what I have heard, there are certain Christians who believe that the state of Israel is a precondition for the second coming of Christ and the battle of Armageddon (Har Megiddo, an actual place). These people could actually be anti-Semites (Christ killers!) and pro Israel.

  9. “… and I assume new chief of staff John Kelly.”

    If so, Bannon (as usual) is positioning himself well:

    “While White House chief strategist Steve Bannon became an ally of Priebus, he’s made it known that he’s happy to see Kelly elevated to chief of staff rather than Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council.

    “Bannon feared Cohn could be primed for the post if Priebus was ousted, according to a White House aide and a Bannon ally. The ally said Bannon believes that installing Kelly was a loss for the “White House Democrats,” meaning Cohn, Kushner and Ivanka Trump, because it meant that Cohn was not lined up for the job.

    “Still, Kushner and Ivanka Trump are said to be supportive of naming Kelly as chief of staff. “Looking forward to serving alongside John Kelly as we work for the American people,” Ivanka Trump wrote Monday afternoon on Twitter. “General Kelly is a true American hero.”
    http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/31/kelly-scaramucci-trump-chaos-241183

  10. America is a once promising garden, now overrun by weeds, poisonous mushrooms, deadly spiders, and vipers.

    I need to get out.
    But it’s too late, and I’ m too old, poor and broken…
    So, I guess I’ll fight.
    On the days I’m able to, that is…

  11. I simply cannot understand or respect the so-called heroes, people of integrity and good reputations agreeing to work for this administration. If they do not have the common sense to recognize Trump for what he is or if they are delusional enough to think they can change things, then there is something wrong with them and it only makes matters worse.
    I am afraid this country is on a decline which we will not be able to pull out of. Even if Trump leaves, we get Pence and if Pence is somehow implicated in the Russia thing and gets tossed also, we get Ryan. No wonder I’m depressed.

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