There clearly is a good deal of malign foreign intervention occurring in the 2016 presidential election, but it is not coming from Russian President Putin and his intelligence services. It is coming, rather, from Israel, and it is being executed through that country’s legion of disloyal U.S. citizens, be they Israel-Firsters, Neoconservatives, AIPAC’ers, or that steadily filling sty of war-loving foreign policy gurus and general officers that hate Trump.
First, the Russians. The idea that the Russians are the only ones who stole the DNC and Podesta e-mails and gave them to Wikileaks is a hoot. Of course the Russians stole them — that is what all intelligence services do and should do — and the Russians also no doubt have the entire body of Hillary Clinton’s pre-bleach-bit e-mails, as do the Iranians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, all the EU governments, the Saudis, the Israelis, and, really, any savvy teenage computer jockey. The three e-mail collections now in the hands of foreign governments are there because the DNC, John Podesta, and Hillary Clinton did not put an even marginally effective safeguard on their e-mail files.
But neither the Russian nor any other government would waste its e-mail hauls by giving them to Julian Assange or Anonymous; indeed, both hacking organizations are fully capable of stealing the e-mail collections off their own hook. No, foreign governments would save them for use in controlling a President Clinton by threatening to release them after her election, a form of ruthless shake-down that Hillary would no doubt recognize and admire. This simple fact makes nonsense of the argument that Russia stole the e-mails to prevent Clinton from becoming president. Clinton and Podesta are proven and dependable commodities for the Kremlin. Each has done Moscow’s bidding for pay, and that behavior, at least on Clinton’s part, would be guaranteed to continue if she is elected, given Mr. Putin’s possession of her e-mail.
Russian intervention is a bogey that has driven James Carville publicly insane, but Israeli intervention is a hard and long-standing fact. While the Israeli government has been properly silent about the election, its fanatic supporters in the United States have been trying to destroy Trump and elect an anti-American — like themselves — felon, traitor, and tyrant as the next U.S. President. Oh, they dress up their opposition to Trump in the glad-rags of “principle” — he gropes, swears, evades taxes, etc., etc. — but no one should be fooled by this faux mix of moral righteousness and indignation. No, they hate Trump because of two words, namely “AMERICA FIRST.”
You see, these disloyal Israel-First U.S. citizens have spend decades and billions of dollars — in the form of campaign contributions and other kinds of rewards-for-politicians — on effectively suborning much of the bipartisan governing elite, the media, the military, and the federal civil service so that each always acts in Israel’s foreign-policy interests, and almost never in the foreign-policy interests of the United States.
When Trump said he would pursue a foreign policy of America First, the Israel-Firtsers suddenly envisioned that long-past-due day when the FBI would be dismantling their network of high-level, U.S. citizen espionage agents; when their subversive organizations would be required to register as agents-of-a-foreign-power; and perhaps even when veteran FBI and Intelligence Community officers would testify under oath before the Congress, describing what they know about how disloyal Israel-Firsters hurt the United States, a truth that many of those officers believe their fellow citizens also ought to know.
Most of all, the Israel-Firtsers knew that “America First” would mean the end of the U.S. government’s heretofore supine willingness to go to war on behalf of a country that is of no national-security value to the republic — indeed, it is an acid that erodes that security — and against an Islamist enemy who attacks America primarily because the U.S. government, under both parties, supports all-things Israel, as well as every two-bit Arab tyrant who can offer bribes disguised as campaign contributions, gifts to help build presidential libraries, or arms contracts.
The difficulty of speaking the truth about Israel-First’s anti-American malignity is obvious to all. Given that fact, I thought I would end this piece by offering readers the chance to decide for themselves. There follow below citations for a series of articles that have been published by leading Israel-Firsters, Neocons, pundits, professors, and other of their associates during the past 14 days. Note the steady increase in their venomous and panicky tone as Trump’s campaign picked up political momentum, and especially since the FBI began taking another look a Hillary’s unmistakable criminality.
The theme of each article is two-fold: (a) Donald Trump is an unprincipled, crude, and genuinely bad guy, and (b) Hillary Clinton is a flawed but far preferable alternative for the presidency, notwithstanding that she is a liar, a felon, a self-confessed traitor, a war lover, an aspiring tyrant, a spendthrift intending to bankrupt the republic, and a deadly enemy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Also making these flaws tolerable is the fact that the Israel-Firsters know that they own Hillary, her husband, and their party — and many senior Republicans — because they have been on the take from Israel First for decades and will do its bidding no matter how many interventionist wars are required or how many dead or maimed U.S. soldiers and Marines result.
For the writers below these are minor flaws and vastly better than the havoc and political impotence that would ensue for Israel-Firsters, their subversive networks, and their ability to serve their country of first affection, if Mr. Trump wins and implements a policy of America First at home and abroad.
So have a read, and see what you think. And remember, the writers are so viciously anti-Trump not because of who he is and how he speaks, but only because the disloyal Israel-Firsters are so palpably and quite correctly terrorized by that clear, simple, historically resonant, and enormously popular phrase “America First.”
- Thomas L. Friedman, “Donald Trump Voters, Just hear me out,” 2 November 2016.
- Michael Gerson, “My Reluctant and Strategic Vote for Clinton,” 1 November 2016.
- Gabriel Schoenfeld, “Expose Trump’s enablers: How many people who should know better are making it easier for him to lie to the American people,” 31 October 2016.
- Michael A. Cohen, “FBI director James Comey should resign,” 31 October 2016.
- Benjy Sarlin, “The Vengeful World of Donald Trump, and Why It Matters,” 31 October 2016.
- Damon Linker, “Clinton Scandal Nothing Compared to the Plague of Trump,” 31 October 2016.
- Jonathan Chait, “Republicans’ Age of Authoritarianism Has Just Begun,” 30 October 2016.
- Howard Fineman, “James Comey Just Unmasked Himself,” 30 October 2016.
- Mort Zuckerman, “The Intolerable Donald Trump,” 30 October 2016.
- William Kristol, “A Populist-Nationalist Right? No Thanks,” 30 October 2016.
- Dana Milbank, “Mr. Comey’s Dangerous October Surprise,” 29 October 2016.
- Eli Lake, “Don’t Let the FBI’s E-Mail Surprise Swing the Election,” 28 October 2016.
- Gabriel Schoenfeld, “Comey’s letter is not a bombshell: Donald Trump is still unfit, and we’re unlikely to learn anything new about Hillary Clinton’s email error,” 28 October 2016.
- Dana Milbank, “The Bricks in Trump’s Wall of Shame,” 28 October 2016.
- Alan J. Lipman, “The narcissism of Donald Trump’s candidacy,” 28 October 2016.
- Harold Myerson, “Dems Get Out the Vote; GOP Suppresses It,” 28 October 2016.
- Thomas Friedman, “Trump is the enemy of all that’s great,” 26 October 2016.
- Dana Milbank, “The Lap Dogs of Democracy Who Didn’t Bark at Trump,” 25 October 2016.
- Yoni Applebaum, “Trump’s Gettysburg Address Attacks Faith in Government,” 24 October 2016.
- Michelle Goldberg, “The Anguish of Being a Republican Woman in Age of Trump,” 24 October 2016.
- Noah Feldman, “On Nov. 9, Let’s Forget Donald Trump Happened,” 24 October 2016.
- Laurence Tribe, “Donald Trump’s Dangerous Nonsense,” 23 October 2016.
- William Kristol, “Donald Trump: The Loser,” 22 October 2016.
- Jonah Goldberg, “Aren’t Trump’s Supporters Living in a Bubble, Too?” 22 October 2016.
- Roger Cohen, “Donald Trump the anti-American,” 22 October 2016.
- Dana Milbank, “Trump Can’t Just Be Defeated. He Must Be Humiliated,” 22 October 2016.
- Michael Cohen, “Trump Undermines the Legitimacy of Our Democracy,” 21 October 2016.
- Charles Krauthammer, “My vote, explained,” 21 October 2016.
- Paul Krugman, “Why Hillary Clinton wins,” 21 October 2016.
- Jonathan Cohn, “Trump Disqualified Himself from the Presidency,” 20 October 2016.