The Dangerous Deception Called The Trump Presidency 

By F. William Engdahl

The project called the Trump Presidency has just two months before its formal beginning. Yet already the hopes and fantasies of much of the world are making him into something and someone Donald Trump most definitely is not. Donald Trump is yet another project of the same boring old patriarchs who try again and again to create a one world order that they control absolutely, a New World Order that one close Trump backer once referred to as universal fascism. Ignore the sometimes fine rhetoric in some of his speeches. Talk is cheap. If we consider rather the agenda that’s taking form even in these very early days of cabinet naming, we can see that Donald Trump is the same agenda of war and global empire as Obama, as Bush before him, as Bill Clinton and Clinton’s “tutor”, George H.W. Bush before him. There is no good side to what the world is about to experience with President Trump

‘Ladies and gentlemen, It’s Showtime!’ Today we give you Donald Trump. He will tell you just what many of you want to hear. Trump the showman will tell you he will make America great again; Trump will say he will ship at least 3 million illegals back across the Rio Grande; Trump will introduce a bill to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization; Trump will bring jobs back to America from China and other low wage countries; Trump will sit down with Putin and work out some kind of a deal to calm things down; Trump will scrap the Iran nuclear deal of Obama…

Often during this election campaign, which was more a Hollywood “D” grade movie than any honest debate of policies and ideas candidate Trump made statements that resonated with the “silent majority” of not only so-called blue collar workers, but also the disenfranchised middle class whose earnings have been declining in real terms since the 1970’s. Trump, like an earlier actor-President named Ronald Reagan, has a talent to make himself sound sincere.

Is Trump a Grassroots Revolution? 

We should not imagine for one second that the Patriarchy– those loveless old men like David Rockefeller or George Herbert Walker Bush or unnamed others– were so overwhelmed by the political genius of candidate Trump emerging from every scandal more powerful than before, that they were surprised, out-foxed, and just groaned and let it happen.

The Trump Presidency has been planned in minute detail by them and their think tanks. Quite simply, had they continued the policies that Hillary Clinton represented–war and confrontation against Russia, against China, with Color Revolution destabilizations of any and all political leaders who opposed them whether Ghaddafi or Mubarak or even Putin–they saw they were losing power over huge parts of the world, essential geopolitical power.

When a President of the relatively tiny American former colony fears not to openly attack by name an American President as “son of a whore,” and declare in China his Philippines’ “separation” from the United States, when one country after the other comes closer in economic and political cooperation to Russia, to China and to their growing Eurasian economic cohesion around the One Bridge One Road Eurasian infrastructure great project, it was clearly time to install a Plan B President.

That Plan B is casino mogul Donald Trump, a political tabula rasa, a power-possessed person with a blackmail potential that will keep him on program for them, an alpha male who is quite gifted at being able to make people fear.

If we were to use conventional psychological definitions I would say the word sociopath fits: “Antisocial personality disorder characterized by a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the culture.” Narcissism would be another apt term: “Extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one’s own talents and a craving for admiration…” Read his own autobiography and his descriptions of his earlier antics with mob lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, at the cocaine-snorting Studio 54 and look more closely at his actual life history, not only what he dismisses as “locker room talk” eleven years ago with Billy Bush. He is definitely no JFK or Charles de Gaulle, not even close.

I state clearly my conviction, and please recall this as Trump Presidency policies unfold after January 20, 2017 to see if I am correct or not: Donald Trump was put into office to prepare America for war, a war the banks of Wall Street and the US military industrial complex are not presently in a position economically or industrially or otherwise, geopolitically, to win. His job will be to reposition the United States for them to reverse the trend to disintegration of American global hegemony, to, as the Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz Project for the New American Century put it in their September, 2000 report, “rebuild America’s defenses.”

To do that preparation, a deception strategy that will fatally weaken the developing deep bonds between Russia and China will be priority. It’s already begun. We have a friendly phone call from The Donald to Vladimir the Fearsome in Moscow. Russian media is euphoric about a new era in US-Russia relations after Obama. Then suddenly we hear the war-mongering NATO head, Stoltenberg, suddenly purr soothing words to Russia. Float the idea that California Congressman and Putin acquaintance, Dana Rohrabacher, is leaked as a possible Secretary of State. It’s classic Kissinger Balance of Power geopolitics–seem to ally with the weaker of two mortal enemies, Russia, to isolate the stronger, China. Presumably Vladimir Putin is not so naïve or stupid as to fall for it, but that is the plot of Trump’s handlers. Such a strategy of preventing the growing Russia-China cooperation was urged by Zbigniew Brzezinski in a statement this past summer.

Because he’s been selected (and not by us dear voters) to play a definite role–to shift tactics of global domination according to the basics of the 1992 Bush-Wolfowitz Doctrine–preempting any nation or group of nations in Eurasia from challenging American Sole Superpower hegemony–the selection of his Cabinet and key policy advisers, is vital. Here we can already see the outlines of the cast of characters who have been chosen to fill out the theater play called Trump Presidency, and the emerging new plot for reconfiguring the Sole Superpower strategy.

The dramatis personae 

As of this writing, several key positions have been named. It includes three-star General Mike Flynn to be the President’s National Security Advisor; it includes Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas to be Director of Central Intelligence; it includes Jeff Sessions to be US Attorney General and it includes Stephen K. Bannon in a newly-created post as White House “Chief Strategist” and Senior Counsellor to the President.

In this article I’ll look closely at Mike Flynn, the former 3-star general who will be the all-important Trump National Security Advisor, sitting in the White House. Normally perceptive bloggers and analysts have greeted the Flynn appointment with cheers of joy. They cite his opposition to US covert support for ISIS and Islamic terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra; he is on record that the 2003 Iraq invasion was a “strategic mistake.” Moreover, Flynn is opposed to stirring up war with Russia and instead calls for waging war against ISIS and other radical terrorist organizations. In fact Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency when Flynn opposed the Obama decision to prioritize the anti-Russia war over the anti-Jihad war, and called for cooperation with Syrian President Assad to that end. 

Flynn’s position on war against ISIS and presumably also against the Muslim Brotherhood so beloved by Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration, is not one of a man of peace. Rather it is one of a cold, calculating military professional, a military professional who favors working with the Likud of Netanyahu to advance the global agenda of war.

Flynn’s statements on Assad and ISIS and Iraq must be interpreted not in a vacuum but in light of a military intelligence specialist who sees that the decades-long CIA and Pentagon policy of training Muslim Brotherhood and other fanatic Muslim-origin terrorists to wage surrogate wars of empire have backfired badly. Not only the CIA’s July 15 failed coup using networks of Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen, but rather every CIA-backed Jihad war from Secretary of State Clinton’s war against Mubarak, against Gaddafi, against most of the Islamic world to try to impose US-backed Muslim Brotherhood terror regimes loyal to Washington, has failed. The gross effect has been to drive much of the world away from Washington and their constant proxy wars.

An intelligent military strategist would say it’s time for another plan. This is what Flynn is about. He will advance a shift in Washington policy away from using Muslim Brotherhood and allied terror organizations towards more intimate restoration of full cooperation with Israel’s right-wing Netanyahu Likud government.

Walid Phares, Donald Trump’s adviser on terrorism, and Middle Eastern Affairs, told Egyptian media in comments reported by Ben Shapiro’s conservative US blog, The Daily Wire, that Donald Trump will back efforts to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, something the Obama Administration vehemently refused and prevented Congress from doing. 

Anyone familiar with my latest book, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy, will know I am in no way a friend of the Muslim Brotherhood who have been in a dark alliance with the CIA since the 1950s. Yet reality is not simplistic as in, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend…” Walid Phares, Donald Trump’s key adviser on terrorism and the Middle East, is also a Senior Fellow of a small very pro-Netanyahu think tank called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies? 

The Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, was created in the wake of September 11, 2001 by a former Republican National Committee communications director, Clifford May, in order to, as it declares on its website, “promote pluralism, defend democratic values, and fight the ideologies that drive terrorism.”

The notable point about the FDD, whose Senior Fellow, Walid Phares is guiding President-elect Trump on the Middle East and terrorism, is the money trail behind it. It was founded and financed by a group of US billionaires closely tied to Benjamin Netanyahu and his Israeli geopolitical agenda. The donors include the notorious Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas and Macau gambling casino mogul who according to the Israeli press gave the Trump campaign $25 million in the closing critical days. Other FDD financial backers include Jewish American with a long history of funding pro-Israel organizations: Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot; whiskey heirs Samuel and Edgar Bronfman; Wall Street billionaire speculators Michael Steinhardt and Paul Singer, and Leonard Abramson, founder of US Healthcare. 

No surprise then that the main Washington think tank called on to testify against the Obama agenda of coming to a nuclear deal with Iran and lifting sanctions was the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who testified 17 times against the Iran plan. FDD’s executive director, Mark Dubowitz, even helped design the sanctions regime on Iran and its oil sales that was put in place in 2010.

In addition, most other positions of the FDD echo those of the Netanyahu regime in Tel Aviv. Toby Dershowitz, who spent 14 years as AIPAC’s communications head, is the FDD vice president for government relations and strategy. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was described by John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago professor, as “an agent of the Israeli government with a stranglehold on the United States Congress with its power and influence.” Trump was a featured speaker at the March 2016 AIPAC annual meeting. 

Mike Flynn and Mike Ledeen 

Now we return to the anti-Muslim Brotherhood National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn. Flynn, along with CIA director-designate Mike Pompeo, agrees that the Obama Iran nuclear deal should be scrapped and calls Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, a position dear to Netanyahu’s heart.

Flynn also wrote a book together with Michael Ledeen. One doesn’t co-author a book with just anyone. I know. It has to be one whose thoughts are in full harmony with yours. Michael Ledeen is today a Freedom Scholar at, now isn’t this interesting: the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Worth noting, financial investor, Jim Rickards, also is on the Board of Advisors of the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and former CIA Director James Woolsey, rumored being considered for a top post with the Trump project, is one of four members of the FDD Leadership Council.

This year, 2016, Ledeen co-authored a book with NSC Director-designate Mike Flynn titled, Field of Fight: How to Win the War Against Radical Islam and its Allies. The ties between Ledeen and Trump NSC director are clearly not casual.

Years ago Ledeen–who was implicated in the illegal Iran-Contra arm for cocaine dealings of G.H.W. Bush and his CIA Old Boys network during the Reagan years — wrote a doctoral dissertation which I once saw, today almost impossible to find. It was titled “Universal Fascism,” and dealt with the applicability of Italian fascism of Mussolini to a global model, a fascist one world order if you will.

Michael Ledeen, who prefers to be in the background, is perhaps best characterized as a Godfather of the neoconservatives. He has shaped the policies of the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and others of the US war faction.

In 2003 just as the Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz war on Iraq was underway, Ledeen gave a speech titled, “Time to Focus on Iran — The Mother of Modern Terrorism,” for the pro-Netanyahu Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) in which he declared, “the time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon.” To “free” Iran, Syria and Lebanon back in 2003, almost a decade before the US war against Assad, Ledeen declared that Iraq, Iran and Syria should get their “freedom” through a US-led “total War.”

According to reports of those near the cabinet selection process of president-elect Donald Trump, two people have decisive influence on who is being selected—Trump’s 35-year-old politically inexperienced son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Mike Flynn. Trump has even asked those two to sit in with him on those highly classified Presidential briefings. 

Winston Churchill once said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” It is already clear that the project of the Trump Presidency, to prepare America for a new war, is already being well attended by a bodyguard of lies.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”