Before I get started on the list today, I want to point something out: it's been 2 weeks. The DT regime has been in power for a mere 2 weeks.
I hadn't planned on providing any analysis here because I'm not a political scientist and I am not an historian, but in both of my professional lives, as a theatre director and as a real estate agent, my everyday existence revolves around analysis. My brain just goes there. So if you have been keeping up and you are a bit overwhelmed by what all of these bricks seem to be building, I'll tell you one thing I definitively see:
We are provoking war with Iran, with Iraq and Syria by way of ISIL, and will likely be at war with Ukraine, and our only allies will be Russia, and by extension Turkey and the Assad regime in Syria.
Why do I say that?
- DT is alienating our traditional allies with his belligerent and sometimes entirely inappropriate phone calls with national leaders, threats of withdrawing from NATO, and trying to bilaterally negotiate trade deals with EU members.
- The executive order banning entry to the US by visa holders from 7 majority Muslim nations and which suspends ALL refugee programs has antagonized both Iran and Iraq to return the same ban. This means that he has no interested in working with Middle Eastern partners to fight ISIL. Given his penchant for asking why we don't just use nuclear weapons, he won't need translators, informants, and other native fighters. He has no interest in using intelligence to undertake strategic operations-- he just wants to drop the bomb.
- DT passed an executive order ramping up military spending.
- DT submitted an executive memo to the Pentagon requiring they submit a plan to attack ISIL within 30 days.
- Disgraced army general Michael Flynn, who is DT's security advisor, has made multiple islamophobic statements and states to the press that Iran is "on notice."
- DT refuses to condemn the increased military actions in eastern Ukraine by the Russian military in cooperation with Ukraine separatists.
- The US Treasury has lifted sanctions against Russia just enough to allow for the US to authorize certain transactions to the FSB, Russia's intelligence agency.
- Russia's Putin and Turkey's Erdoğan have joined forces to back Assad in Syria.
- We still, still, still do not know the full extent of DT's Russian financial interests or the White House team's relationship to the Russian government.
- The House of Representatives rolled back a requirement that oil, gas, and mining companies must disclose foreign payments.
- The newly confirmed Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is a former Exxon executive who struck deals with multiple repressive regimes, some against the advice of the State Department before being confirmed to run it. While he may have left Exxon, he still has plenty to gain by negotiating oil deals.
Why is DT doing this? Does he just hate Muslims, or is he playing on islamophobia to advance a strategy that will allow his Russian business interests to flourish with access to Middle Eastern oil or to hoard it so that American oil and gas companies can sell it to Eastern Europe? I don't think DT is an evil genius who wants to take over the world, nor do I think he is a "true believer" who is crusading against a religion he thinks is problematic. DT doesn't think that large-- he's simply a callous, greedy man who wants to line his pockets, pure and simple.
The US wanted a businessman to run the country like a business, and we have a ruthless wannabe robber baron who holds no allegiances, who doesn't pay those who help him build his businesses, and who has no problem declaring bankruptcy and abdicating responsibility.
The White House is absolutely preparing for a war, specifically to use our resources, our money, and the lives of those in our military in order to increase DT's wealth.