Trump and the Hatchet Man Maneuver

By NURIT GREENGER
The Jerusalem Post

Trump is a master of the Executive Suite and knows how to play the game for keeps. When he took on Reinhold “Reince” Priebus, an establishment figure, it was the proverbial ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ But Anthony Scaramucci was absolutely a brilliant move!

Apparently, Liberals and never-Trumpers are so isolated in their political circles that they have no concept how things work in the real world of business and corporate America. For example, they completely fail to grasp the concept of the “hatchet man.”

Hatchet, explain:

Say you are a business tycoon. You just successfully completed a large-scale acquisition and merger, bringing together multiple smaller companies into one conglomerate. After the merger, you want to put your own people in charge of everything. However, all those smaller companies had their own executives – and, at least for the short term – you need to keep many of them around the keep things running and the blending progresses. So, you keep many of those executives around, letting them retain their own senior staff. You even appoint one of them – the head of the largest of the companies you acquired – to be the CEO of the conglomerate, and he pledges to get all the departments working together harmoniously.

After a well-oiled transition period, some of them are doing fine in the new conglomerate, while others are clearly causing trouble.

In fact, the one you appointed CEO, is clearly a disaster. And the newly merged departments are working against each other. Furthermore, you have good suspicion he is dealing in insider trading – nothing you can take to a prosecutor, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence building up. Worse, he is not only doing his own dirty dealing, but it appears he may even be leaking intellectual property to your competitors, helping them take market share from you.

Clearly, your appointed CEO has to go – and go now.

The problem is, many of the senior employees in your conglomerate are loyal to him. If you just fire him and put in your own chosen CEO, you know you could get a lot of backlash from disgruntled employees. Knowing that in your business there is such a small profit-margin, you really can’t afford anything at all that threatens performance. So, what do you do?

In comes the hatchet man.

The hatchet man is someone you bring in for sole purpose of slashing the problems and shaking things up over a very short period of time – but doing so in such a way that deflects any blame or blowback away from you. As soon as the problems are hacked away, the hatchet man leaves – taking the ire and resentment with him, leaving you free to bring in your new team for a fresh start.

This is what happens all the time in the business world. And Donald Trump is a businessman. He knows how this works. He has lived this time and time again. We’ve seen him do it on “The Apprentice.” We’ve read about it in his books. This should not be a surprise to anyone. Except for liberals and never-Trumpers who live in their own bubble.

Here enters Anthony Scaramucci.

Liberals and never-Trumpers see the past two weeks as proof of a Hitler-clown-circus spectacle, evidencing that Trump is unhinged and our government is in the hands of madmen. Anyone who understands the business world, and Donald Trump fully understands that, is what we have witnessed was a perfectly executed hatchet man maneuver.

When Trump won the election, he essentially performed the political equivalent of an acquisition and merger. He brought together different political factions – establishment Republicans, conservatives, Tea Party, religious right, moderates, independents, cross-overs – into one winning political coup. For some, it was a hostile takeover. So, if they were going to be dragged into it against their will, they would sure as hell resist.

 Reince Priebus fired CEO

This is where Reince Priebus [CEO] came in.

Priebus, as the then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, was hired as White House Chief of Staff to be the sort of post-merger CEO. It was his job to bring all these political factions together and get them to work harmoniously. But he failed. Worse, there is ample evidence to suggest he not only failed, but worked against Trump and the Trump agenda. Look at the leaks. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the bureaucracy continuing to work at odds with the president. Priebus – and a number of other people around him – had to go.

Back to Anthony Scaramucci…

Donald Trump has known for some time that Priebus was a disaster. He was going to give him his six-month trial period – that’s a fairly common thing in the private business sector. After that, heads were going to roll. But Trump himself doesn’t want to be the hatchet man. He needs to be able to lead after the bloodbath. So, what does he do? He turns to an old friend he has known for many years – someone with nothing to lose, someone who can step in with a hatchet and hack away, someone who can, after the hacking, just walk away from it all and leave the slate clean. He turned to Scaramucci.

Anthony Scaramucci

So what does Scaramucci do? He comes in swinging. He fires a few people to make a quick example. He tells others they can “resign” right now if they want to – but if not, they will be fired. Others see what is going on and quit of their own accord.

That problem CEO, Priebus!? Oh, the new “structure” of the organization puts Scaramucci in direct competition with Priebus – and Priebus throws up his hands and says “fine, I’m out of here.” And Scaramucci does it all in a way that is spectacularly visible to draw all the fire from Trump critics.

So how does it all end up? It ends up with Trump putting in his new CEO – retired Marine general John Kelly – the one he probably wanted from day one, but held back – and the new CEO-White House chief of staff says “OK, Scaramucci – you are no longer needed here.”

General Kelly now has a clean slate to start fresh – and Scaramucci takes all the heat. Where the Left and never-Trumpers see a circus freak-show, realists from the business world see a perfectly executed post-merger hatchet-man job.

The political wonks see General Kelly taking command as the first sane thing to happen in this administration. They don’t realize they’ve been played, and played perfectly. And soon we will likely see some other changes that move the Executive Branch further towards what Trump has wanted it to be from day one. And then watch the real swamp-drainer get to work. It sucks to be Hillary Clinton right now…

Oh, and Scaramucci? He gets a sweet deal out of all this – no doubt, he and his friend Donald Trump talked it all out first.

Scaramucci was already facing a nasty divorce that would result in the liquidation of his business in order to divide assets. A little-known law allows people who are legally required to sell a business as a condition of employment in the Executive Branch (to prevent conflicts of interest) to defer the taxes on their profits from the sale.

Since Scaramucci was going to have to sell his company anyway, due to his pending divorce, now he and his soon-to-be ex-wife just saved $80 million in taxes. And don’t for a moment think that all this was an unplanned mess that went awry. Scaramucci and Trump knew exactly what they were doing.

All of this was planned – and foreseen – by all those who understand this game.

Before Trump was inaugurated, Scott Adams wrote that, to his critics, the first year of Trump would be a play in three acts:

Act One – Trump is literally a Hitler.

Act Two – Trump is not literally Hitler, but Trump is incompetent.

Act Three – Trump is not incompetent, but we don’t like his policies.

We’ve seen this play out. From election night up, through the first 100 days, the Left was unhinged, out rioting and acting as though Trump taking office was literally the end of Western Civilization.

But after 100 days presidency, when Trump had ‘failed’ to do evil-dictator things like round up all the brown people, put the gays into camps, force women to stay home and have babies, it became farcical to continue the “Trump is Hitler” narrative.

And so, from that 100 days point and up until now, it has been the “Trump is incompetent” game. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the leaking. Look at all the tweets. Now, we begin Act Three. With Priebus out and Kelly in, things will settle down. Pretty soon, all the Left will have to say is “we just don’t like Trump’s policies”. Act Three is in play.

And once that happens, the Left is dead. Because, Trump’s policies are policies that most Americans actually agree with. We should put America first. We must build back our economy; create jobs; strengthen the military; protect the borders. Outside a few densely-populated Liberal strongholds, like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and – of course – Washington, D.C., in general Americans agree with all of Trump’s plan. So, when all the Left has to say is “Trump’s policies are wrong,” the Left will literally be telling most of America, “you people are stupid” ‘Deplorable”?

In 2020, running for his second term, President Donald Trump will win 47 states, just like Ronald Reagan did. The Left will be scratching their heads and wondering what the hell happened, while some may become Trump’s Democrats. And you’ll be able to look back and say, “hey, some of us told you all this back then, in 2017”.

Remember, the goal is: put America first!

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http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/Think-With-Me/Trump-and-the-Hatchet-Man-Maneuver-504661