Just Saying Who's Trumping der Fuhrer?

[Richard Stanley]

Jared Kushner is the owner of the newspaper, New York Observer, as well as his family business of being a slumlord (as was Trump's father). The following is claimed by a former editor of the NYO, which one is free to discount as sour grapes. But only if they continue to delude themselves.

...
The former New York Observer editor has now claimed that Mr Kushner, the former publisher of the paper, informed her that Mr Trump did not believe the “birther” lies he was peddling.

“When I was the editor of the New York Observer, Kushner and I were going back and forth about how the paper should cover him,” Elizabeth Spiers wrote in a post on Twitter.

“I told Jared that I was particularly appalled by his father-in-law’s birtherism stance, which I viewed as cynical and racist.

“He rolled his eyes and said ‘He doesn’t really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it’”.

Ms Spiers, who served as the editor of the publication from early 2011 to late 2012, made the alleged revelation in order to prove to a right-wing blogger that Mr Trump was a “notorious liar”.

“Let's be clear he was talking about you, Doug,” she says. “Trump did not con Democrats; he conned – and is still conning – his base. So you have every right to your gullibility and I won’t try to deprive you of it, but personally, I’d rather know what the hell is going on”.

Ms Spiers, who is also the founder of Gawker, also claimed that a friend of the mogul-turned-politico once told her Mr Trump would “lie to you about what time of day it is, just for the practice”. ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jared-kushner-donald-trump-lied-base-stupid-voters-supporters-president-son-in-law-white-house-a7764791.html​

 

[Richard Stanley]

The following excerpted article from Salon discusses Erik Prince's big plans for Afghanistan, and presumably the model for further that that, if truly following the business model of the British East India Company. The BEIC model is what drove great wealth to England, more than anything else, before the collapse of the British 'empire' - ceded to the USA.

As the article discusses, while Jared Kushner was fumbling about, walking in plain sight of US intel agencies, into the Russian embassy to beg for money to save 666 Fifth Avenue, Prince was developing a real back-channel with the Russians. This is where the real money is to be made, not chump change Trump resorts. Likely Prince's interest is in letting the Russians in on the bonanza, as this will ensure a smoother operation going forward, rather than having the jealous Russians on the outside looking in.

This is a big deal in its own rights, but that Prince feels confident in taking this public says even more IMO.

...
Prince met at least several times with the Trump team, according to the multiply sourced reporting, including once on a train from New York to Washington, where Prince met with Peter Thiel associate Kevin Harrington, who would later join the National Security Council and be tasked with “strategic planning.” Prince is said to have advised Harrington, Flynn and others on the Trump transition team on the “restructuring of security agencies” and “a thorough rethink of costly defense programs.”

The account sounds innocuous enough as reported, but Prince’s recent appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” sheds considerable light on what the series of furtive discussions likely entailed. The appearance might have been an effort to generate public support for what Prince advocated in private. The man who reinvented mercenary warfare described to Carlson a vision for a corporate military occupation apparatus that makes his infamous Blackwater look modest, despite its capturing of $1 billion in contracts during the Iraq war and occupation. Prince proposed nothing less than the revival of the British East India Company model of for-profit military occupation, wherein an armed corporation effectively governed most of India for the extraction of resources.

Prince explained to Carlson how the almost 16-year-old war and occupation of Afghanistan is premised on a faulty model. “We’ve fought for the last 15 years with the 1st Infantry Division model,” he says. “Now we should fight with an East India Company model, and do it much cheaper.”

“So you replace a military occupation with the ‘American South Asia Company’ or something like that?” asks Carlson.

“Something like that, sure,” Prince replies. “If you look back in history, the way the English operated India for 250 years, they had an army that was largely run by companies — and no English soldiers. So cheap, very low cost.”

It was also “very low cost” to the English because the British East India Company funded itself by extracting wealth from the territories it occupied.

“It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century,” writes the author of “The Anarchy: How a Corporation Replaced the Mughal Empire,”William Dalrymple, “but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath.”

Prince knows this. The British East India Company was not simply a mercenary army like his Blackwater but an armed corporation that colonized like a state power. It was not merely a government contractor like Blackwater but an autonomous military and administrative entity sharing the worst aspects of both the corporation and the imperial state. So, Prince’s first innovation is to do away with civilian-military control administered by the Department of Defense and overseen by civilian, elected leadership, as is currently in place, and replace that apparatus with an armed corporation.

The second innovation is to denationalize the armed force projecting the corporation’s power. Americans are expensive. Blackwater personnel regularly received six-figure salaries for work in Iraq. Prince envisions a sweatshop-ization of the mercenary force, relying on the cheap labor available in the ravaged domestic labor market of war-torn Afghanistan. Loyalty is not cheap, of course, but Prince is imagining a project of colossal capitalization, likely far bigger than his Blackwater endeavor. The per-day base pay for Blackwater personnel in Iraq was somewhere in the neighborhood of $600, nearly 50 percent higher than the annual per capita income for Afghans. An Afghan might make more in a very short time fighting for Prince’s corporation than his countrymen make in a year.

But that deluge of Blackwater money enabling such outsized salaries came from Pentagon and State Department contracts during the mercenary firm’s days in Iraq. Where would revenue come from for what Prince now proposes? Resource extraction, just as the East India Company operated on the subcontinent for British stockholders. This is the third innovation Prince offers.

“There’s a trillion dollars in value in the ground: mining, minerals, and another trillion in oil and gas,” Prince says of Afghanistan. This would provide the revenue stream to replace government contracts. Prince’s firm would be self-funded, self-reliant, and thus autonomous to a degree more similar to a nation-state than a military contractor like Blackwater serving under a defense department.

The corporate rulers, Prince suggests, would even reorganize objectives away from the original mission — i.e., destroy the safe harbor for al Qaeda and other terror groups — and toward the prerogatives of profit. Prince critiques U.S. strategic aims in Afghanistan to Carlson: “Even the whole approach of placing bases U.S. bases was all done to control land and territory but not the arteries that make money.”

Prince’s plan to fund occupations by pillage would otherwise be simply an insane notion howled from the wilderness of policy thought were it not for Prince’s proximity to the president and Trump’s repeated assertion that the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil to recoup costs. Indeed in his first speech in his first full day in office, speaking at the CIA headquarters, Trump revived his campaign-season idea of taking Iraqi oil, even telling the audience, “maybe you’ll have another chance.” ...
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/03/erik-princes-dark-plan-for-afghanistan-military-occupation-for-profit-not-security/​

 

[Jerry Russell]

The British East India Company was not simply a mercenary army like his Blackwater but an armed corporation that colonized like a state power.

Where is Ghandi now that we need him again? But for that matter, how much has life for the average Indian improved since the British East India Co. ceased operations?

 

[Richard Stanley]

But for that matter, how much has life for the average Indian improved since the British East India Co. ceased operations?

Or how much has life improved for the average Chinese since the BEIC stopped imposing opium on them?

Is that really the correct question Jerry?

 

[Jerry Russell]

Is that really the correct question Jerry?

Aren't you also claiming that ultimately, the same set of masters are still running the show for their own benefit? Accordingly, perhaps the actual changes from a formal improvement in management style, could be less than one might expect.

 

[Richard Stanley]

OK, so you are arguing to our widest construction then. But then, are you trying to argue that Prince's proposal has merit (outside his circle)? Or what?

 

[Richard Stanley]

In the shadow of the London Bridge Sunni terror event this weekend, Global Agent Orange Leaks has been at the Tweets again. As a result, the husband of Trump adviso-liar, Kellyanne Conway, has decided to take up an interesting 'independent' role as Conway Twittery.

George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and one-time top contender of a key Justice Department job, took to Twitter Monday to criticize President Donald Trump for his morning travel ban tweets.

Trump tweeted several times on the proposed travel ban from six Muslim-majority countries, saying his Justice Department should not have submitted a "watered down, politically correct version" to the Supreme Court. The Justice Department has repeatedly tried to distance Trump's comments as President and during the campaign from its case looking to lift a legal ban against his executive order.

Later Monday, Conway said Trump hurt his case and made things difficult for the Office of Solicitor General, which argues cases before the Supreme Court.

"These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won't help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad." ...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/05/politics/george-conway-travel-ban-tweet/index.html​

What does this mean? Well, in light of my recent OT Samson analysis, we can see that Trump is indeed like Samson, in furthering the aim of globalism, via a faux-nationalist mantle. These are thus crypto-Globalists. As was the NT nationalist Saul, before he became the overtly globalist Paul.

While Trump puts on an overtly fierce battle for the sake of fooling his base, he does everything he can to make sure his efforts fail. This was why he pushed the House to pass their ObamaCare repeal in the manner that was done, while even being brazen enough to announce that other advanced countries had better, and much less expensive, health care via single payer mechanisms. Then he uses the resistance against him to further inflame his loyal and ignorant base, and he will do this again and again, until he completely exhausts them (and us).

 

[Jerry Russell]

But then, are you trying to argue that Prince's proposal has merit (outside his circle)?

No, my position is that running Afghanistan as a private armed camp and slave plantation is completely unacceptable. But, the question I'm asking is whether the institutions of modern colonialism are really so much better? Or are they lipstick on the same pig?

One might even imagine a progression, where a raw conquest (or re-conquest, in the case of Afghanistan) is first placed under direct military governance, and then transferred to corporate governance, and then finally administered by a colonial republic. As the instruments of propaganda and control become more effective, less overt brutality is needed to produce similar results.

Or, conversely, it might be that progressive reforms actually are a major public benefit. It's an empirical question and I'm honestly not sure of the answer.

 

[Jerry Russell]

I was looking for Trump / Game of Thrones cartoons, but he just doesn't really fit as King of Westeros. This image works better...

 

[Richard Stanley]

Very good, although for me it would have been a little better if Francis winked to The Donald and whispered: "Keep up the good work you naughty beast you."

 

[Richard Stanley]

The following excerpted article discusses the problems with James Comey's actions related to his recent Senate testimony. This fits with my suspicions that all this is Kabuki Theater, as Comey has displayed incredibly incoherent actions, including his late revelation just before the election about more Clinton emails.

The only thing I can argue against Turley's position is that regular FBI agents do not typically write '302' interview memos when the agents themselves and their jobs are the focus of the interview ... and the other party is the (dubious) President of the USA. And that the person interviewing them, as the dubious employer, appears to be engaging in criminal behavior. In most situations related criminal behavior voids such things as contracts or other obligations.

But, perhaps Comey's intent was to help mitigate the potential damage to Trump (regarding the red highlighted text)? Here Trump is portraying Comey as part of the liberal Deep State aligned in conspiracy against him. This framing is still working well for Trump's Brown Shirts.

Incredibly, the important issue is whether or not the intercepted conversations between Trump campaign officials (many now in the White House) demonstrate collusion with Russian officials and in the context that Trump and his slumlord son-in-law desperately depend upon infusions of hot Russian cash. The latter in a bid to save the 666 Fifth Avenue property.

...
Comey gave two equally implausible explanations. First, he suggested that he wanted to get the information to investigators. However, he knew not only that he was likely to testify but that these memos would inevitably be demanded by both congressional and federal investigators. Second, he said that he wanted to ensure the appointment of a special counsel. However on that Monday, many of us were saying that such an appointment was virtually inevitable. More importantly, he could have given the memos to investigators and properly laid the foundation for a special counsel.

The fact is that the leaking of the memos worked to the advantage of James Comey, not Robert Mueller. Comey was able to take over the narrative and news cycle after Trump had publicly belittled him and his record. Special counsels do not like leaks of this kind. It would have been far better for the special counsels (or Comey’s own former investigatory team and congressional investigators) to have the memos confidentially.

The greatest value of the memos would be to question Trump and other potential targets without their knowing of their existence. The memos could then have been used to establish false statements and pressure cooperation. Instead, Comey told possible targets, including Trump, about the evidence against them in the memos.

Donald Trump continues to show a remarkable ability to bring out the worst in people — supporters and critics alike. In this case, he was able to bait Comey with his tweets and cause Comey to diminish his own credibility. If the comments of Trump were grossly inappropriate, Comey’s response to those comments were equally inappropriate.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/337160-opinion-the-damaging-case-against-james-comey

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He has served as defense counsel in national security cases involving classified information and alleged leaks to the media.​

 

[Richard Stanley]

The following helps address the issue of whether Comey broke any criminal leaking law, or whether there is some ethical issue instead. As other commentators have also noted, there are different types of 'leaking', the only real legal liabilities being with those that are either classified or might contain classifiable subject matter. Comey has asserted that he purposely wrote the memos to avoid their being subject to classification.

Trump's asking all others in the one WH meeting to leave so that he could talk to Comey about the Flynn matter, and then later invoking the (family / no family) subterfuge for the dinner meeting is clearly an indicator of "conscienceless of guilt".

Trump is having difficulty hiring top lawyers for this matter and thus having to resort to his old slumlord hack lawyer, Kasowitz. Similarly, a few Republican leaders, like Ryan, are claiming that we should cut Trump some slack, because of his legal naivete, yet Trump may be the most litigious individual, ever, in the USA. Albeit, that Trump and Kasowitz seem to lose in court a lot. Amazingly, Trump was interested in naming Kasowitz's partner, Joe Lieberman, as Comey's FBI replacement, but apparently someone came to their senses that even this was too brazen.

...
Overall, Kasowitz is wrong to suggest the public record shows that Comey leaked the memos before Trump’s tweet. Comey’s associates, however, spoke with the New York Times before Trump’s tweet. While the earlier story is based on their recollections of what Comey told them, much of the same information is contained in a memo Comey wrote.

"Mr. Comey admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the president."​

Kasowitz did not use the term executive privilege. That applies when Congress wants information from the White House and the administration resists. Legal experts say that case law on executive privilege is thin, but under those circumstances, the principle can shield the release of certain details. There are caveats.

There is no privilege if unlawful actions are discussed. And while Kasowitz might suggest that Comey broke a law, there is no legal penalty, particularly for anything Comey did after he was fired.

"The case for applying the privilege is strongest when the president is discussing the exercise of one of his or her powers with a member of the White House staff," said Edward Imwinkelried, an expert in evidentiary law at UC Davis. "However, you can make a strong case for extending the privilege to a conversation between the president and a high-ranking federal official outside the White House staff, so long as the topic of the conversation relates to a subject on which the president has power to act."

Imwinkelried said that Trump and Comey’s conversations enjoyed some expectation that they wouldn’t be shared without permission, and that Trump was the holder of the privilege. But the protection is not absolute and that Trump might have waived it with his own statements.

Lisa Griffin at Duke University School of Law said Trump put that protection at risk.

"Where the president has already described conversations he had with Director Comey in his tweets or other public statements, then with respect to what has been disclosed, there is no longer any privilege," Griffin said. ...
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jun/09/fact-checking-president-trumps-attorney-after-come/​

 

[Richard Stanley]

This article, part of a new weekly series, discusses the things that the Trump administration is doing under the scandal radar. This first article discusses 5 different things, 4 of which are screwing his base of Brown Shirts. http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/06/09/five-policy-changes-trump-this-week-000455

1. The first of which is in undoing the Obama restrictions on the classification of workers vs. independent contractors, which leaves more people without employer paid health insurance and other benefits. Of course, Trump has mocked his base, at least twice, by telling them that Single Payer is a better system, which also frees all employers from the need to worry about paying insurance premiums. It also reduces the aggregate costs of health care by approximately 50% while also providing better outcomes.
2. The second is an agreement with Mexico, ironically under NAFTA, which screws the American sugar industry, and presumably its workers by extension.
3. Third is an end to third party damage mitigation agreements attached to legal settlements, such as occurred to Bank of America because of its criminal real estate lending practices.
4. Forth, allowing nursing homes to demand arbitration agreements to customers, usually already under pressure from life circumstances.

Of course, in a Randian world, all of this is good and Agent Orange Leaks will let it all trickle down on his pee-ons. This is the guy who hires foreign workers to staff his American resorts, and doesn't pay his contractors, ... because they all do shoddy work.

 

[Richard Stanley]

A scholar on Italian fascism compares Trump with Mussolini: http://www.salon.com/2017/06/10/historian-ruth-ben-ghiat-donald-trump-looks-like-mussolini-but-can-be-overcome/

Discussed are the various psychological techniques he employs to titillate his Brown Shirts, which I say are mostly studied and not innate.

 

[Richard Stanley]

As mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, Preet Bharara, being the recently terminated US Attorney for NYC, was important to the Trump / Russia matter because it is that US Attorney's office which typically handles the prosecution of such international matters, as opposed to the numerous other US Attorneys' offices spread across the nation.

President Donald Trump fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara the day after the prosecutor refused to return a call from him, Bharara said on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday.

Bharara said he viewed direct contact from the president to himself, as a law-enforcement official, to be an inappropriate breach of protocol and reported it to the office of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on March 9. “Twenty-two hours later, I was fired,” Bharara said.

Bharara’s account echoes the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that Trump contacted him directly by phone numerous times between the presidential transition and Comey’s own dismissal last month. Comey also testified about one-on-one meetings he had with Trump, some of which he said left him feeling uncomfortable

Bharara attended the Comey hearing.

“It’s a very weird and peculiar thing for a one-on-one conversation without the attorney general, without warning, between the president and me, or any United States attorney who has been asked to investigate various things,” Bharara said.

“In reporting the phone call to the chief of staff to the attorney general, I said it appeared to be that he was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship,” Bharara said.

Comey similarly told Congress he believed Trump wanted to establish a “patronage” relationship between them. ...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fired-prosecutor-says-he-refused-trumps-call-and-lost-job-the-next-day_us_593d450be4b0c5a35ca04e24
​

 

[Richard Stanley]

How is this for typology?

Me thinks they 'project' too much:

Delta Air Lines and Bank of America have announced that they are pulling their sponsorship of a Manhattan-based theater company's portrayal of Julius Caesar as a Donald Trump look-alike in a business suit who gets knifed to death on stage.

Atlanta-based Delta released a statement Sunday saying it was pulling its sponsorship from The Public Theater “effective immediately.”

“No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer's Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines' values,” the statement said. “Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste.” ...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-julius-caesar-play-sponsorship-20170612-story.html​

Tina Benko, left, portrays Melania Trump in the role of Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, and Gregg Henry, center left, portrays President Trump in
the role of Julius Caesar during a dress reheasal on May 21. (Joan Marcus / Associated Press)

 

[Richard Stanley]

One wonders just what the personal enrichment (via use of government office and prestige) threshold might be for Trump's ignorant supporters before they turn on him? Partisan psychology says that they will go to make extreme rationalizations before doing so.

Last month, an artist named Robin Bell projected the words, “Pay Trump bribes here” on the side of the new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. But apparently nobody needed the instructions. Kuwait, which had been planning an event at the Four Seasons in D.C., switched its National Day event booking over to the Trump International. Saudi Arabia reportedly spent $270,000 there during the transition and the first months of the Trump administration. Bahrian and Azerbaijan held events there. So did the Turkish government-linked businessman whose previous claim to fame was having hired former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for lobbying work. In April, Georgia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kaha Imnadze, stayed there. And just in case the president didn’t happen to notice him there — it is, reportedly, the only place in D.C. Mr. Trump has dined since taking office — Mr. Imnadze took to the president’s preferred medium of Twitter to sing its praises. “So far the best service I’ve seen in the United States!”

...
A few activists have attempted to sue President Trump to force him to divest more fully, at least from the Trump International, on the grounds that he has violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution (“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”) But it is unclear whether the courts will agree that they have the standing to sue.

The announcement Sunday by Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh and D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine has more weight. Both can point to direct harms (less business for government-supported convention centers in the two jurisdictions, as well as the potential threat both face from presidential retaliation, based on the concentration of federal jobs in the region), and a separate clause in the Constitution related to domestic emoluments gives states a stake that individual litigants lack. Messrs. Frosh and Racine argue that the suit is directly related to Americans’ confidence that they are receiving the president’s honest services, untainted by his personal interests. Crucial to that effort is obtaining through the discovery process copies of Mr. Trump’s tax returns, which he, unlike every president in decades, has refused to release. ...
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-trump-emoluments-20170612-story.html​

 

[Jerry Russell]

Trump's infrastructure plan has been announced. From WSWS.org:

Trump’s infrastructure plan was released late last month as part of his proposed 2018 budget. The vague proposal, which according to his administration will be worked out in detail by the fall of this year, will lead to the mass sell-off of public infrastructure throughout the country while simultaneously slashing the transportation budget.

The plan earmarks $200 billion over 10 years. Though there are no details yet, a Trump administration memo suggests that the bulk of the money will be given to states and local governments as incentives for privatizing public infrastructure.

Moreover, more than $200 billion will simultaneously be cut from the transportation budget. This will likely hurt, among other programs, Amtrak, the national passenger rail service, potentially shutting it down, and TIGER, a program that gives state grants to fund infrastructure projects.

Trump’s dubious plan will not repair or upgrade the decrepit and outmoded American infrastructure and transit systems. The proposal will force the public to pay new tolls and fees for basic transportation needs with no guarantees that the monopolies that control the roads will maintain them properly.

The true beneficiaries of Trump’s plan are a handful of financial parasites and corporate conglomerates that will rake in the cash from this unprecedented transaction. Everything about the plan stinks of a disastrous con job. Trump ran for president on the promise that he would bring $1 trillion in infrastructure spending to the decaying and broken infrastructure of the United States. It is notable then that his administration has essentially slipped this into the 2018 budget without any mention of it to the public. The deal is too rotten to show more publicly.

[....]

Because roads, highways, transit lines, and other infrastructure investments are expensive long-term investments, it is rare to be able to have any kind of competition between service providers in a region. Having two highways going between the same places would be unprofitable, not to say irrational. The result is that privatization of public infrastructure always means monopoly privatization, with one company in charge of necessary infrastructure. This monopoly allows the company to charge exorbitant fees or provide sub-standard service with no repercussions....​

 

[Richard Stanley]

Well it has been rumored for some time that this would indeed be the case for the infrastructure plan, with incentives provided to entice private capital to participate. The latter pretty much mandates such as usage tolls an/or fees. Oddly, the proposed Trump privatization of the air traffic control system is being touted as a conversion to a non-profit corporation basis, but then how to finance needed technical upgrades? Oh, yes, raise taxes on plane fares. Maybe they can outsource the controllers' jobs to India?

The underclasses will not be able to afford to travel, much less afford quality produce to eat, the latter unless maybe they return to the fields that is.

Considering the underlying slumlord business model basis of the Trump and Kushner empires, I'm not inclined think that the types who would aspire to become monopoly infrastructure magnates will be inclined to invest sufficiently in such as safety design margins and maintenance.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Despite all the promises, Trump screws his base once again, Rhetoric Uber Alles:

The New York Times reports that the Trump White House is about to put out an executive order on drug pricing, and it looks as if the whole thing were basically written by big pharma.

In other words, America, we've just been sold out on the price of drugs.

According to the report and similar reporting from Kaiser Health News and Politico, a draft executive order includes nothing to curb prices. Instead, drug companies would be in line to get more power to charge monopoly prices overseas and be allowed to give even fewer discounts to hospitals with poor patients. And the administration is promising to roll back regulations that pharma has complained about.

Nothing for the American people; everything for the American corporations.

This can all be traced back to a meeting President Donald Trump had with pharmaceutical CEOs back in January. There, he basically outlined that he would be doing everything that's in the draft executive order, but he also told executives, "You have to keep your prices down."

That was it. Then they all got in their private jets and flew back to their corner offices. That day, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index had its best day in weeks, gaining nearly 3%, as the market indicated that no one was afraid of the big bad Trump.

... [the details] ...

This toothless order is the result of asking some of the richest CEOs in America what to do about a problem they don't want to solve. And it settles something about the Trump administration. If you were hoping that the populist Trump from the campaign trail would keep some of the promises he made to his base, you can stop now.

Trump is not for his base; he's not for anyone. He's a corporatist, and he will continue letting corporations make decisions that his White House is either too lazy or too incompetent to make, to the detriment of Americans, whether they voted for him or not.
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-drug-pricing-executive-order-2017-6​