{"id":44380,"date":"2016-07-27T10:08:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T14:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=44380"},"modified":"2016-07-27T10:09:11","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T14:09:11","slug":"trump-policy-will-unravel-traditional-neocons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=44380","title":{"rendered":"Trump Policy Will Unravel Traditional Neocons"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>Trump&#8217;s divergence from the conventional Republican platform is generating indignant punditry from neocons and neoliberals alike<\/em><\/h3>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>MICHAEL HUDSON<\/p>\n<div class=\"page-thumb\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-page-thumbsize wp-post-image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unzcloud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/shutterstock_390130231-600x399.jpg\" alt=\"Gino Santa Maria \/ Shutterstock.com\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" \/><\/p>\n<h5 class=\"caption\">Gino Santa Maria \/ Shutterstock.com<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry\">\n<p>SHARMINI PERIES, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TRNN: It\u2019s the Real News Network. I\u2019m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, just after the Republican National Congress wrapped up with its presidential candidate, Donald Trump, Paul Krugman of the New York Times penned an article titled \u201cDonald Trump: The Siberian Candidate.\u201d He said in it, if elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin\u2019s man in the White House? Krugman himself is worried as ludicrous and outrageous as the question sounds, the Trump campaign\u2019s recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering, he says, just what kind of hold Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins.<\/p>\n<p>Well, let\u2019s unravel that statement with Michael Hudson. He\u2019s joining us from New York. Michael is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroyed the Global Economy. Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K45-9oimA9w?feature=oembed\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>MICHAEL HUDSON: It\u2019s good to be here, Sharmini. It\u2019s been an exciting week.<\/p>\n<p>PERIES: So let\u2019s take a look at this article by Paul Krugman. Where is he going with this analysis about the Siberian candidate?<\/p>\n<p>HUDSON: Well, Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and they\u2019re terrified that they\u2019re losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century the Republican Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that. Reversing the whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons.<\/p>\n<p>Until his speech, the whole Republican Convention, every speaker had avoided dealing with economic policy issues. No one referred to the party platform, which isn\u2019t very good. And it was mostly an attack on Hillary. Chants of \u201clock her up.\u201d And Trump children, aimed to try to humanize him and make him look like a loving man.<\/p>\n<p>But finally came Trump\u2019s speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he\u2019s making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he\u2019s not destroying the party, he\u2019s building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n<p>So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear, roll back military spending. We can spend it on infrastructure, we can spend it on employing American labor. And in the speech, he said, look, we don\u2019t need foreign military bases and foreign spending to defend our allies. We can defend them from the United States, because in today\u2019s world, the only kind of war we\u2019re going to have is atomic war. Nobody\u2019s going to invade another country. We\u2019re not going to send American troops to invade Russia, if it were to attack. So nobody\u2019s even talking about that. So let\u2019s be realistic.<\/p>\n<p>Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy. Not only did Krugman say that Trump would, quote, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy at the expense of America\u2019s allies, and he\u2019s referring to the Ukraine, basically, and it\u2019s at\u2013he\u2019s become a lobbyist for the military-industrial complex. But also, at the Washington Post you had Anne Applebaum call him explicitly the Manchurian candidate, referring to the 1962 movie, and rejecting the neocon craziness. This has just driven them nutty because they\u2019re worried of losing the Republican Party under Trump.<\/p>\n<p>In economic policy, Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP trade and corporate power grab [inaud.] with Europe to block public regulation. And this was also a major plank of Bernie Sanders\u2019 campaign against Hillary, which Trump knows. The corporatist wings of both the Republican and the Democratic Parties fear that Trump\u2019s opposition to NAFTA and TPP will lead the Republicans not to push through in the lame duck session after November. The whole plan has been that once the election\u2019s over, Obama will then get all the Republicans together and will pass the Republican platform that he\u2019s been pushing for the last eight years. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement with Europe, and the other neoliberal policies.<\/p>\n<p>And now that Trump is trying to rebuild the Republican Party, all of that is threatened. And so on the Republican side of the New York Times page you had David Brooks writing \u201cThe death of the Republican Party.\u201d So what Trump calls the rebirth of the Republican Party, it means the death of the reactionary, conservative, corporatist, anti-labor Republican Party.<\/p>\n<p>And when he wrote this, quote, Trump is decimating the things Republicans stood for: NATO, entitlement reform, in other words winding back Social Security, and support of the corporatist Trans-Pacific Partnership. So it\u2019s almost hilarious to see what happens. And Trump also has reversed the traditional Republican fiscal responsibility austerity policy, that not a word about balanced budgets anymore. And he said he was going to run at policy to employ American labor and put it back to work on infrastructure. Again, he\u2019s made a left runaround Hillary. He says he wants to reinstate Glass-Steagall, whereas the Clintons were the people that got rid of it.<\/p>\n<p>And this may be for show, simply to brand Hillary as Wall Street\u2019s candidate. But it also seems to actually be an attack on Wall Street. And Trump\u2019s genius was to turn around all the attacks on him as being a shady businessman. He said, look, nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. Now, what that means, basically, as a businessman, he knows the fine print by which they\u2019ve been screwing the people. So only someone like him knows how to fight against Wall Street. After all, he\u2019s been screwing the Wall Street banks for years [inaud.]. And he can now fight for the population fighting against Wall Street, just as he\u2019s been able to stiff the banks.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s sort of hilarious. On the one hand, leading up to him you had Republicans saying throw Hillary in jail. And Hillary saying throw Trump in the [inaud.]. And so you have the whole election coming up with\u2014.<\/p>\n<p>PERIES: Maybe we should take the lead and lock them all up. Michael, what is becoming very clear is that there\u2019s a great deal of inconsistencies on the part of the Republican Party. Various people are talking different things, like if you hear Mike Pence, the vice presidential candidate, speak, and then you heard Donald Trump, and then you heard Ivanka Trump speak yesterday, they\u2019re all saying different things. It\u2019s like different strokes for different folks. And I guess in marketing and marketeering, which Trump is the master of, that makes perfect sense. Just tap on everybody\u2019s shoulder so they feel like they\u2019re the ones being represented as spoken about, and they\u2019re going to have their issues addressed in some way.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes\u2013he also in that sense appealed to, as you said, the Bernie Sanders people when he talked about the trade deals. You know, he\u2019s been talking about NAFTA, TTIP, TTP, and these are areas that really is traditionally been the left of the left issues. And now there\u2019s this, that he\u2019s anti-these trade deals, and he\u2019s going to bring jobs home. What does that mean?<\/p>\n<p>HUDSON: Well, you\u2019re right when you say there\u2019s a policy confusion within the Republican Party. And I guess if this were marketing, it\u2019s the idea that everybody hears what they want to hear. And if they can hear right-wing gay bashing from the Indiana governor, and they can hear Trump talking about hte LGBTQ, everybody will sort of be on the side.<\/p>\n<p>But I listened to what Governor Pence said about defending Trump\u2019s views on NATO. And he\u2019s so smooth. So slick, that he translated what Trump said in a way that no Republican conservative could really disagree with it. I think he was a very good pick for vice president, because he can, obviously he\u2019s agreed to follow what Trump\u2019s saying, and he\u2019s so smooth, being a lawyer, that he can make it all appear much more reasonable than it would.<\/p>\n<p>I think that the most, the biggest contradiction, was you can look at how the convention began with Governor Christie. Accusing Hillary of being pro-Russian when she\u2019s actually threatening war, and criticizing her for not helping the Ukrainians when it was she who brought Victorian Nuland in to push the coup d\u2019etat with the neo-nazis, and gave them $5 billion. And Trump reversed the whole thing and said no, no, no. I\u2019m not anti-Russian, I\u2019m pro-Russian. I\u2019m not going to defend Ukrainians. Just the opposite.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s obvious that the Republicans have fallen into line behind them. And no wonder the Democrats want them to lose. All of that\u2013you\u2019ve had the Koch brothers say we\u2019re not going to give money to Trump, the Republicans, now. We\u2019re backing Hillary. You\u2019ve got the Chamber of Commerce saying because Trump isn\u2019t for the corporate takeover of foreign trade, we\u2019re now supporting the Democrats, not the Reepublicans.<\/p>\n<p>So this is really the class war. And it\u2019s the class war of Wall Street and the corporate sector of the Democratic side against Trump on the populist side. And who knows whether he really means what he says when he says he\u2019s for the workers and he wants to rebuild the cities, put labor back to work. And when he says he\u2019s for the blacks and Hispanics have to get jobs just like white people, maybe he\u2019s telling the truth, because that certainly is the way that the country can be rebuilt in a positive way.<\/p>\n<p>And the interesting thing is that all he gets from the Democrats is denunciations. So I can\u2019t wait to see how Bernie Sanders is going to handle all this at the Democratic Convention next week.<\/p>\n<p>PERIES: All right, Michael. A lot to continue discussing there. I thank you so much for joining us today and look forward to a report next week.<\/p>\n<p>HUDSON: Yes, good to be here at this exciting time.<\/p>\n<p>PERIES: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.unz.com\/mhudson\/trump-policy-will-unravel-traditional-neocons\/\">http:\/\/www.unz.com\/mhudson\/trump-policy-will-unravel-traditional-neocons\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trump&#8217;s divergence from the conventional Republican platform is generating indignant punditry from neocons and neoliberals alike<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}