America First Policy Institute: Trump Think Tank or Trojan Horse?

 

Peter Navarro is the former Assistant to the President for Trade and Manufacturing Policy and author of Taking Back Trump’s America: Why We Lost the White House and How We’ll Win It Back.  He is sounding an alarm over Donald Trump’s scheduled speech to address the America First Policy Institute in DC [today 7/26].  Mr. Navarro’s article at AmericanGreatness is titled “Trump’s Think Tank Prepares to Betray Him,” and he names names, including Larry Kudlow and Kellyanne Conway.  Mr Navarro begins:

Don’t go, Boss! That’s my strong advice to President Trump as he prepares to deliver a speech in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday at his alleged “think tank,” the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). 

. . .

Arguably, the most dangerous AFPI fifth-columnist is former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. After the Boss left office, Jindal would insist “Trump was undone by his own predatory nature” and attacked the Boss for his “conspiracy theories and extra-constitutional notions.” Today, Jindal is aggressively pushing a “Trumpism without Trump” agenda.

That may well be AFPI’s broader agenda: Hijack the political attractiveness of Trumpism but replace Trump with an AFPI-anointed RINO. Here, it is worth remembering the Michael Dukakis bon mot: “a fish rots from the head up.” 

He concludes:

Memo to the Boss: Instead of legitimizing these grifters, why not demand they stop using the Trump good name to raise money to engineer their “Trumpism without Trump” coup. Alternatively, if this really is your think tank, bring in a John McEntee or Liz Harrington to run the place with the full power to fire and hire. Now that would be a real Trump MAGA policy institute.

Full article is here. 

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Lyin’ Ted Cruz: a Trojan Horse

Art credit: 123rf.com

Diana West is the author of The Death of the Grown-Up, a book I found provocative and persuasive (and alarming). The other day, she looked at the amicus brief filed by Senators opposing Pres. Obama's Executive amnesty (see earlier CTPP blog here, spotlighting Sen. Portman’s absence from the roster of Senators) and headlined her report:

Lyin' Ted: Fighting the Executive Amnesty His Finance Committee Point Man Champions

From Sen. Cruz’s website, The Headline:

Sen. Cruz Joins Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Case

Challenging Obama’s Unconstitutional Executive Amnesty

‘CONGRESS HAS NEVER GIVEN THE EXECUTIVE UNCHECKED DISCRETION

TO REWRITE FEDERAL IMMIGRATION POLICY’

Here’s some of Diana West’s commentary:

This is rich? This is chuptzpah? This is "mental"?

It's all of the above.

Ted Cruz, the man who will tell a different story to different audiences without the slightest decreasing of his furrowed brows, has just signed an amicus brief with 42 other GOP senators challenging Obama's November 2014 executive amnesty.

That would be the same executive amnesty that Houston global immigration superlawyer Charles C. Foster publicly supports. And that would be the same Charles C. Foster, profiled here, with whom Ted Cruz worked to craft Candidate Bush 43's immigration program in 2000; and whom Cruz recently called up to invite onto his presidential campaign finance committee as a fundraiser. 

Foster obliged, bringing the balance of the ex-Bush finance committee with him to Team Cruz.

This campaign seemingly of cross purposes is worth a serious double take. It's as if a candidate was championing Israel while a Hamas supporter was raising money for him; or passing himself off as an immigration patriot while some open-to-no-borders enthusiast was bundling bucks for the cause.

Sorry to say, this Cleveland Tea Party person cannot go along with Tea Party Patriots’ endorsement of Ted Cruz. He is indeed a Trojan Horse. 

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