President Trump Act II – Attorney General Barr Act I.

I wrote “Between Obama’s Lines” from July 2013 to late 2014. Why it took me until 2018 to publish is another story, suffice it to say it had a lot to do with Donald Trump being elected.

Back then, Trump was on no one’s radar. There was no Fake News, no Mueller, no Comey, no investigation, no Uranium One, at least publicly. Mueller only surfaced in the FBI sting operation on Petraeus during the Benghazi cover-up. All I had was an off-the-wall feeling about Obama possibly being a Putin ally – Iran, Syria, Benghazi, Iraq, Medvedev’ mic drop, Ukraine, Crimea, Yemen. My knowledge of geopolitics was kind of basic, so I did some research. Actually, plenty of research, double and triple checking all the stories out there, trying to discern facts from conspiracies.

The bottom line was fairly simple. The Obama Administration had allowed Russia to take over most of the Middle East, trashing sixty years of Truman Doctrine. If I have to time this essential shift, I posit it was in October 2008, when Russia started retesting ICBMs one month before Obama’s election. Drilling down on Obama’s and Putin’s past, it may have indeed started much earlier.

When President Trump was elected, I had another hunch. His cozy rhetoric about Putin had to be a negotiating ploy. It turns out that his Administration, to date, has imposed more sanctions than ever on Russia, and its proxy Iran. It is also fighting in Yemen along with its allies, the Arab NATO, Israel, and Egypt, to prevent Russia from controlling not only the Strait of Hormuz, but also the Strait of Bab el Mandeb on the other side of the Peninsula. De facto, he is blocking Putin’s access to the Arabian Sea, i.e. the gateway to India and Eurasia. And that despite the Fake News, Mueller, Comey, etc.

Now that the Mueller circus is over for the most part, ready yourself for President Trump’s unconstrained Act II. His enemies, our enemies, know he has two years to win the Trifecta – Russia, China, North Korea. While Kim tries to play both Putin and Xi Jinping, these two want to conquer Eurasia, making them each other’s nemesis. If I have to bet, Trump will find a way to divide and conquer – maybe not fully by 2020, but enough to be granted another try. He’ll make a deal with Xi, who seems to be, short term, the least bellicose of the three, Kim will fall in line, and Putin won’t have neither the money nor the reach to pursue all of his goals. He’ll soon let go of Venezuela, and the Arab NATO, Egypt and Israel will push him back, or out of the Middle East, to the Urals.

In the meantime, the Honorable William Barr’s story just began. Act I was prefaced by the release of the Mueller report. I do not know the Attorney General, no more than I know the President, but here too I have a hunch – this is not his first dunk in the Washington cesspool, and he is here to drain what has become an uncontained toxic swamp. He knows the best way to do this is to pull the plug at the bottom, which is where he is going. Act II will depend on the assessment of the remediation work, and the 80-20 balance between political costs and benefits. Judging by the paradoxical outcry of the swamp creatures, which has replaced plain English, the swamp is likely larger than thought. Maybe it reaches as far as Team Obama/Clinton 2009 Russian Reset. Which would conveniently validate my own “Between Obama’s Lines” scenario, of course, to include what I missed, the Uranium One episode…

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