“Personnel is policy” is one of the few Beltway clichés that rings true. In a government that employs 2.7 million civilian employees, a President with the best intentions will fail to implement his policies if his administrators drag their feet, let alone actively sabotage him. Republican presidents are always surrounded by hostile territory in the federal bureaucracy, but this is never more so than with Trump. And he has a particularly unusual problem: what to do with RATs (Republicans Against Trump) and #NeverTrumpers.

So far I have no major complaints. Trump has listed immigration patriot and Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, leading to shrieks from the ADL, Southern Poverty Law Center, and assorted other usual suspects [ Trump's Pick of Steve Bannon as Chief Strategist Sparks Backlash , NBC News, November 14, 2016]. At the same time, Trump picked the Establishment GOP chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff, saying he and Bannon  will serve as equals.

I’m no fan of Priebus, but he has been loyal to Trump. I suspect this means that Priebus will deal with the administrative aspects, while Bannon will focus on strategic and political advice. Other immigration patriots like Peter Thiel, Lou Barletta, and Kris Kobach have important positions the transition team. The heroic Stephen Miller, who wrote most of Trump’s greatest immigration speeches, may become chief of the Domestic Policy Council. Read more >>

owever Donald Trump came upon the foreign policy views he espoused, they were as crucial to his election as his views on trade and the border.

Yet those views are hemlock to the GOP foreign policy elite and the liberal Democratic interventionists of the Acela Corridor.

Trump promised an "America First" foreign policy rooted in the national interest, not in nostalgia. The neocons insist that every Cold War and post-Cold War commitment be maintained, in perpetuity.

On Sunday's "60 Minutes," Trump said: "You know, we've been fighting this war for 15 years. ... We've spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, $6 trillion--we could have rebuilt our country twice. And you look at our roads and our bridges and our tunnels ... and our airports are ... obsolete."

Yet the War Party has not had enough of war, not nearly.

They want to confront Vladimir Putin, Read more >>

The battle is won. But the war is just beginning. Let’s hope President-elect Donald Trump knows what he’s in for.

Reportedly, Donald Trump is already disappointing some of his followers by appointing villainous gnome Reince Priebus as his White House Chief of Staff. Republican National Committee Chairblob Priebus Read more >>

 

Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively at VDARE.com.

St Thomas Aquinas told us that one of the pleasures enjoyed by the blessed in Heaven was to contemplate the sufferings of the damned in Hell. Apparently if you get to Heaven there is a sort of balcony you have access to where you can stand and watch the sinners down below being prodded, scorched, and flayed.

Far be it from me to bandy theology with the Angelic Doctor, but I've always thought that divine justice should have a bit more charity in it than that. Whatever: Down here in the terrestrial sphere, there's no doubt that one of the pleasures of winning an election is seeing the torments of the losers.

One of the first losers out of the gate, on Wednesday morning, was the curiously named Steven Thrasher [Email him] of BuzzFeed. It's not the "Steven" that excites my curiosity, it's the "Thrasher." Mr. Thrasher is a homosexual; indeed, he basks in the glory of having received the 2012 Journalist of the Year award from the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. I know it's Neanderthal of me, but I can't help wondering whether "Thrasher" is an assumed name, meant to signal something to those in the know…but that's idle speculation on my part.

So here was Mr. Thrasher on Wednesday morning:

This is a terrifying moment for America. Hold your loved ones close.

People of color, women, Muslims, queer people, the sick, immigrants: all are threatened by Donald Trump. They need your love, your warmth, your support Hold tight to the ones you love, America. Hold tight to the ones you love living in black and brown and yellow and native skin. Hold tight to us, because we will have to face white people who think we are rapists. We will have to face a nation that wants to stop-and-frisk us. Hold tight to us, because mass incarceration is actually going to get worse, and more of our brothers and sisters are going to be disappeared … This is a terrifying moment for America. Hold your loved ones close, Guardian, November 9, 2016

It goes on—or thrashes on—for another six hundred words in the same vein.

Homosexualists were very much to the fore in this kind of hysteria, Read more >>

[Crossposted from Amren.com where you can comment.]

These two things happened the day after Donald Trump won the election:

• First, a  Washington Post reporter named Peter Holley called the American Renaissance office to ask–in dead seriousness–whether anyone from the Trump team had called us for policy advice.

Read more >>