Tensions Regarding President Donald J. Trump – OpEd

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

The relationship between President Trump and what is usually defined – with Soviet terminology – as the American “deep State” is increasingly complex and conflicting.The reason is easy to explain: Trump wants to avoid having tense relations with the Russian Federation, while the “deep State”, which is largely represented by the 17 US intelligence agencies, wants to restore tough and overall confrontation with Russia, as well as to avoid the materialization of the Russian Eurasian project with China, to regionalize China and finally shut in Russia between the Black Sea and Poland.

This is probably the first time a US President is systematically delegitimized by the media but, above all, indirectly, by the intelligence structures of his country.

The US intelligence is now part and parcel of the political game – a phenomenon regarding also other Western intelligence services – and it operates at intelligence and media levels with well-known techniques: misinformation, media manipulation, fake news, defamation, information destabilization and, we could say, a kind of psychological war against its own country.

The mechanism of the anti-Trump “deep throat” works as follows: an anonymous source, that is probably part and parcel of the President’s Administration, informs both the New York Times and the Washington Post – on alternate days, but with an obviously pre-arranged pace and scheme – of the true or alleged ins and outs and behind-the-scene stories of the President and his main aides.

At this juncture, the news is reported, reiterated and underlined by the CNN and the various national TV channels, thus hitting the headlines of all world media.

I am referring, for example, to the demonstrations staged during the inauguration of the Presidency on January 27, which – as reported by the Democratic media – were coordinated and global, with at least two million participants; to the demonstrations at the beginning of his campaign in mid-June 2016; to the anti-Trump protest in Richmond, Virginia (the former Confederate capital) of October 14; to the systematic and multiple interruptions of the then Republican candidate in Michigan in December, not to mention the attempt to assassinate Trump made on June 18, 2016, by Michael Steven Sanford in Las Vegas.

All signs of a plan orchestrated well before Donald J. Trump rising to power.

Therefore the classic defamation mix is used – even at the trivial aesthetic or symbolic level – so as to later destabilize the current US Presidency with manipulated news triggering real concern and alarm, but always with a precise paradigm in mind: Trump is a “friend of Russia” and hence a sworn enemy of the United States.

Therefore, one of the results of fake news is the creation of the symbolic link between “being friends of the United States” and hence being “enemies of Russia”.

Nothing prevents us from thinking that currently the old “military-industrial establishment” is planning an expensive rearmament, which some naïve people imagine to be a major stimulus for the US economy, only against the Russian Federation.

And this would also explain the continuing information and intelligence destabilization of Trump’s Presidency, which – on the contrary – thinks of a new relationship with Russia, starting from the stabilization of Syria and a new division of the world in areas of influence.

This is exactly the opposite of the strategic policy line of the Democratic candidate and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who had based all her foreign policy and many of her future proposals on overthrowing Bashar el Assad and hence supporting the whole Syrian-Iraqi jihadist galaxy, in strategic correlation with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

As already noted, however, there is an excellent relationship between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which have also correlated their oil prices and are negotiating the sale of Russian weapons to Saudi Arabia, which saw them working effectively in the Syrian conflict.

Nevertheless fake news which, according to a recent study, accounts for 35.8% of all North American political communication, has a very precise historical origin: the denial of the Shoah.

The negationist model with reference to the destruction of European Jews – just to use the title of an old and still useful book by Hilberg – has its own intrinsic logic: non-essential facts and phenomena are brought into the spotlight and a non-objective counterdeduction is developed between these facts and the historical facts, which are selected among the most favorable or harmless ones.

Initially the information manipulation does not deny, but trivializes and diminishes: for example, it is said that the victims of the extermination camps were not six millions – hence, with a sudden leap of logic, it is maintained that the Shoah did not take place.

From few victims to no one and from no one to a fictitious cause of the non-phenomenon, which replaces the real one because it represents a greater amount of “fundamentals”, of fake causes.

In the case of current fake news, however, a false deduction is made on the basis of true and partially true facts – then this deduction replaces the true and real one.

To do so, also the information “noise” is needed, that is, the continuous mass repetition of fake news – another implementation of Talleyrand’s old proverb: “Slander as much as you like, there will always be something left”.

A statement that can be also found in Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” made by Don Basilio.

The Soviet disinformation (dezinformatsja) was completely different: it hid dangerous intentions with benevolent and friendly traits.

It was counterfactual, too, but it did not distort facts, it simply created new and positive ones.

Just think of the propaganda in favor of the new CPSU Secretary of the time, Andropov, who was also Head of the CPSU First Central Directorate.

The new leader “loved jazz”, “read Goethe” and was obsessively defined as a “reformist”.

Even today, in the West, the word “reformist” is a primary instrument of psychological warfare, since it is never specified about which reforms we are talking.

Reverting to current times, in Trump’s case, fake news is immediately believed true because widespread hate is created deliberately against the US President, thus “making false news true”, which, however, fuels further rancor and resentment against Trump even when it is later found to be fake news.

Specialized websites, such as the Palmer Report, disseminate false, unchecked or unverifiable information, such as the actions of some attorneys against the President, which is reported by the media and hence serves as a Pavlovian confirmation of the hatred previously cultivated against Trump himself.

As Pavlov taught us, both hatred and love are “conditioned responses” and news, regardless of its being true or false, strengthens or diminishes the conditioning of a response or reflex, be it conscious or unconscious.

Incidentally, from this viewpoint, the Pavlovian theory of conditioned response is more useful, profound and exhaustive than the Freudian theory of “complex”.

However, the most politically relevant case of fake news is the recent visit paid by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to the US President.

In fact, on May 15, the Washington Post reported the unchecked news of Trump disclosing highly classified intelligence to the Russian Foreign Minister, who had met the Head of the US Administration accompanied by the Russian Ambassador, Serghiei Kisliak.

It is also said that Trump “compromised” an Israeli Mossad source by telling Lavrov that Isis-Daesh plans to use laptops and tablets aboard airliners so as to place miniaturized devices into them.

Other more reliable sources tell us that the highly classified information allegedly disclosed by Trump to Lavrov regards the new wide Israeli capabilities of intercepting signals and operational communications.

We also suspect, however, it is already known to Russia, at least by inference, considering the close contacts existing between the Russian forces in Syria and the Israeli military commands.

These new Israeli technologies would allow to monitor also the most secret and confidential military and intelligence operations.

Nevertheless you can feel the discretion, the coldness and the fear of the Israeli services, which are also afraid that the Russian Federation may leak some details of these new technologies to Syria or, even worse, to the Iranian troops operating in Syria.

In the future there is also the possibility of joint operations between the United States and Jordan towards the Syrian territory, considering that the United States does not show to be still satisfied with the new “ceasefire” areas in Syria managed by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Currently Russia looks at the US American plans for an offensive against Daesh-Isis with much skepticism – plans which are supposed to involve also the Kurds.

Therefore many US media have suggested that the intelligence services linked to the US ones no longer want to collaborate with the United States for fear of being “compromised” in their turn.

Obviously both Netanyahu and Theresa May respond to this hypothesis-fake news by reaffirming the solidity of the relations between their intelligence services and the United States.

Therefore the current tension between Trump and the US “deep tate” is very simple to explain: it is a civil war by other means.

At legal level, however, the US Constitution defines the President as the “Commander-in-Chief”, who can hence disseminate confidential information to anyone he deems useful.

Putin, who is an old executive of the Russian intelligence services, ironized on the matter – during a meeting held with the Italian Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, on May 17 last – by maintaining he could provide the US Congress with even the minutes of the meeting between Trump and Lavrov.

Other unchecked news, triggering suspicion and mistrust – as is often the case with fake news – regards the usual anonymous source disclosing to the New York Times that Trump “tried to obstruct and pervert the course of justice” by putting pressure on the FBI to stop investigating into the possible contacts with Russia of the former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.

If, in the past, a judge had accused the Head of the Confidential Affairs Office of the Italian Ministry for Internal Affairs, Federico Umberto d’Amato, of “talking to the Soviets”, he would have been laughed at.

With whom should a national security officer of such an important country speak?

With greengrocers?

You talk also, and above all, with the enemy, because it is with the enemy you must deal, not with the friend.

Hence currently a strange gnostic and puritanical theology looms large in the American mentality, in which any contact with what is considered to be “evil” is denied and forbidden a priori.

Anti-Machiavellianism – unless it is ironic like that of Frederick II of Prussia – creates monsters.

In all likelihood, this is the result – in the specific field of intelligence – of the “closing of the American mind” described by Allan Bloom in 1987.

Reverting to the FBI case, the same anonymous sources report that President Trump “hoped” the FBI Director would “drop the matter” as Flynn is “a good man.”

A different sense, but fake news always refuses nuances and always speaks using the present tense.

Or using the past tense.

Obviously if a US President tried to obstruct and pervert justice, he should be impeached – and this is exactly what the North American “deep State” wishes to achieve as soon as possible, namely making Trump end up like Nixon.

Too much money is involved in some political-military issues. The Saudi and Sunni world pay huge sums and it is worth recalling that Saudi Arabia’s funds to the Clinton Foundation are estimated at 10-25 million US dollars, while the “friends of Saudi Arabia”, co-funded by a local prince, have given another million and later additional 5 million US dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Kuwait, Qatar (the first funder of Isis-Daesh) and the United Arab Emirates have provided to the Clinton Foundation 5-10 million US dollars, respectively.

Hence the project that Trump is expected to announce on May 22 next (and this is not fake news) of an Arab-Muslim alliance among the 17 Sunni leaders and the United States would not be useless.

For the time being only the Egyptian President has not accepted the proposal of this new “Islamic-Arab NATO” and the clear goal is to pool the efforts of the whole Sunni world against Daesh-Isis and the sword jihad.

Iran also believes that this new alliance is essentially targeted against Iran and the Shiite regions and this, too, is certainly not an analytical mistake.

Reverting to Trump, however, it is hard for him to survive this line of fire of false, manipulated, partially true, malicious or ambiguous news.

For the first time, a great country like the United States destabilizes itself on its own to avoid a regularly elected President managing the political platform with which he won the elections.

As far as we understand, considering the current tensions, in all Western countries the old globalist and globalizing elites want to return to power soon.

As time goes by, the mechanism that generated Brexit, the electoral success of Marine Le Pen in France and of the so-called “populists” – a sloppy and inadequate definition that is also fake news in itself, considering the profound differences existing between countries and parties – as well as the obvious electoral manipulation in Austria, makes us really think that the time of survival for globalist elites is reduced to the minimum.

Hence the desire to act quickly, in all ways and by all means.

About the author:
*Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

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This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.