Is Trump Draining the Swamp?

Donald Trump is still over a month away from taking office, but we can already get a sense of how things will be.

I have no illusions that Trump is a libertarian or even sympathetic to many libertarian positions.  With that said, there are many things about Trump that libertarians can cheer.  We can start by cheering on the fact that he was elected and Hillary Clinton wasn’t.  This shows there is a shift in public opinion and a healthy distrust of the establishment.

I am very realistic about the chances that Trump will be able to make significant changes.  If he can expose some of the lies out there, along with having a less interventionist foreign policy, then I think we can celebrate.

Since the recounting of votes in certain states failed miserably for the establishment, now they are going with a big fat lie that the Russians hacked computers and threw the election in favor of Donald Trump.

On the extremely remote chance that this were true, who could blame Putin and Russia for doing this?  Hillary Clinton, during her campaign, was playing war games with Russia while the two countries have nuclear missiles pointed at each other.  Clinton was part of the establishment trying to overthrow Assad in Syria and further kick down the Russians.

While I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton or the establishment players want a nuclear war (because they themselves likely wouldn’t survive that war), it is still dangerous to play these games that could easily lead to an “accident” that leads to an all-out war.

With Trump set to take office, the CIA is making up stories about Russia without providing any evidence other than hearsay.  CIA officials are a bunch of liars.  If there is anyone honest at the CIA, they are likely put on lower level projects.  The CIA is probably the most corrupt and evil organization within the government.

If top officials from the CIA say anything, you can almost assume that the opposite is the truth.

The most likely reason that these emails were sent to Wikileaks is because there was a Democratic insider with a conscience.  Perhaps somebody got into a higher position of power, but considered himself to be a Democrat just because he believed in government welfare, global warming, or other causes.  But maybe the person, while misguided, was honest and wanted to expose the rotten corruption of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic establishment.

Regardless of what happened, I think Trump needs to address this whole issue more formally and try to nip it as soon as possible.

Trump seems to be opposing the CIA, which liberty lovers should see as a positive sign.  I see parallels between John F. Kennedy and Trump.  I know this will bother many Democrats.

While Kennedy also had his moral indiscretions with women, I believe he was a good man in the sense that he generally wanted to be truthful to the American people.  At the very least, he said he wanted to rip up the CIA into a thousand pieces.

Of course, we know how that turned out.  And I firmly believe that the CIA and other insiders (probably Lyndon Johnson) planned his assassination.  For this reason, I hope Trump is being very careful.  I hope he trusts his Secret Service people.

Just based on this whole showdown with the CIA, I think Trump really does want to take a swing at the establishment.

In terms of Trump’s cabinet, I think it is a mixed bag.  Again, I am under no illusions that Trump is a libertarian, so I didn’t expect libertarian appointments.  Trump has put in some Goldman Sachs people, which isn’t good, since Goldman Sachs is the face of the financial establishment.

Still, I think libertarians should be somewhat optimistic.  Trump is picking people for his cabinet that most people have never heard of.  This is positive.

If Trump had picked Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, or John Bolton as his Secretary of State, then I would have thrown my hands up and given up on him.  Since he picked somebody that we don’t know, this is as good as we should have expected.

It was also reported this past week that Trump spoke with Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News.  Napolitano is a libertarian.  If Trump nominates him to the federal bench, that would be reason to cheer.  If by some miracle Trump nominated Napolitano to the Supreme Court, then we can really celebrate, even if the Senate does not confirm the appointment.

Overall, it is nice to see somebody who is potentially honest taking the presidency.  I don’t know if the insiders will simply keep Trump out of the loop on some things.

Trump is going to have trouble draining the swamp.  There are hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats working for the alphabet agencies who make up the thousands of new pages of rules and regulations every year.  This is a major piece of where our liberty is lost.

Still, if Trump can make a dent, and also sway public opinion to further distrust the establishment and its media, then this is all for the better.  The swamp may not be drained, but the scum in the swamp can at least be exposed.  This situation was hard to imagine just a few years ago.  We live in interesting times.

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