While headlines continue to trumpet the latest events surrounding Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, the focus on the soap opera that is the Mueller investigation has taken attention away from one of the most important issues confronting the nation, one that is bubbling under the surface and of which most Americans are not even aware. And that is the fact that President Trump is increasingly unable to control his own executive agencies, if he even has any control over them at all anymore.
In early August, US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) traveled to Moscow to meet with President Putin. While there, Paul hand-delivered a letter from President Trump to Putin. That in itself is odd, as delivery of messages of that sort is really something that should be done by ambassadors. Right there we have an indication that Trump cannot trust his ambassador to do his bidding.
And who is the US Ambassador to Russia? He is none other than Jon Huntsman, one of the establishment darlings fawned over by the mainstream media during the 2012 Presidential campaign. Huntsman’s resume is as establishment as they come. The son of a billionaire businessman, Huntsman has been a government bureaucrat his entire career. After being appointed a deputy assistant secretary in the International Trade Administration only two years out of college, Huntsman went on to become one of the youngest US ambassadors in history, being named US Ambassador to Singapore at the age of 32.
With a stint as Governor of Utah and as US Ambassador to China under President Obama, plus his Presidential campaign in 2012, Huntsman has a reputation as a moderate Republican. What’s more, he served for four years as the chairman of the Atlantic Council, one of the most hawkish anti-Russian think tanks in Washington, DC. In other words, he’s not the ambassador you want to have if you want to improve relations with Russia. But for the deep state, he’s perfect.
The deep state wasn’t happy with President Trump’s end-around, so it retaliated by deciding to place even more sanctions against Russia while Senator Paul was in Moscow. The State Department unilaterally decided that the Russian government was behind the alleged nerve agent attack against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, and placed more sanctions against Russia as a result. That seemed to take Trump by surprise, but he didn’t do anything to keep State in line. It appears that he has been increasingly encircled by his advisers and that his executive branch appointees will openly take actions that defy him because they know he is powerless to stop them.
Regardless of your opinion of Trump, it should be chilling to every American that the US government is essentially being run today by nameless, faceless bureaucrats who have no accountability whatsoever. They set their own agendas and pursue their own goals, no matter how destructive those might be to the American people. The foreign policy, military contractor, and intelligence community establishments that form the deep state continue to push the US to the brink of war. If we find ourselves in the future fighting Iran, North Korea, or Russia, it won’t be because of President Trump doing anything, but rather because his power as President has been rendered impotent by the apparatchiks who staff his administration.