"The budget should be balanced, not by more taxes, but by reduction of follies."I very seldom read the Straits Times. but last Wednesday I had a peek and what did I see - five anti-Trump articles! On American politics, the Straits Times is skewed to the left. Perhaps it has no choice as it publishes from syndicated news which are predominantly controlled by the liberal left. But five articles in a day is saying the obvious - the Straits Times is pushing anti-Trump sentiments to Singaporeans. That the Straits Times is the mouth piece of the government, it is very disconcerting that this is the sentiment in the corridors of power in Singapore. There is a breadth of fresh air, a new wind is blowing across USA, and Singapore Inc is unable to see the clarity of direction the Trump administration is bringing.
Cicero
How best to relate to Singaporean minds than to revisit the 1980 incident of how Lee Kuan Yew handled the SIA pilot revolt over pay. Lee carried a sledgehammer to the meeting with the pilots. He made it be known he was prepared to close down SIA and rebuild, but he was not going to let a bunch of pilots, especially the foreign ones, hold our national interest to ransom. The pilots backed off, the foreign trouble makers were sacked, and Lee won the day.
This is exactly the same situation President Donald Trump is in, but his problem is on a scale Lee would have been horrified. Trump carries a much bigger sledgehammer than Lee to solve a Herculean problem of a country driven to the brink of collapse by his predecessors, and held to ransom by un-elected Deep State bureaucrats, career politicians from the Democrat and some members in the Republican parties. Lee once remarked "the exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development". He was referring to Western style democracy, but some would have you believe Lee, who died in 2015 and never met Trump, fittingly described the latter's first presidency. Had Lee been alive today, he would on the contrary have seen the mess in US he predicted for what it is and laud Trump and his huge sledgehammer. The Straits Times articles tell me Singapore policy makers do not think highly of Trump and therefore unable to see the parallel of what Trump is doing to Lee and the SIA pilots.
Sir Gavin Williamson, a Conservative Party Whip in UK, coined the phrase "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating, wokerati" in 2016. He was mocking the Labour Party, the people on the Left who were out-of-touch elites more concerned with ideological purity than real-world issues. It is now a label the conservative Right puts on progressive or Left-leaning individuals. "Guardian" is a Left-leaning UK newspaper, 'tofu" is associated with vegetarianism (referencing activism on environmental issues) and progressive lifestyles, and "wokerati" is a portmandeau of "woke culture" and "literati". Woke culture is societal awareness and activism focused on social justice issues, especially those relating to race, gender and LGBTQ rights. Literati means a well-educated person. "Wokerati" thus is a sarcastic reference to a person entrenched in the woke culture. The Singapore silo of connected power people are certainly "Guardian-reading" and partly "tofu-eating" (the environmentalism part), but thankfully not "wokerati". However, the disdain for Trump reflects a preference for status quo with the likes of Biden or Obama, which translates to an acceptance of wokeratis.
For the past several years, roughly from Obama's rise, there has been a clash of two worlds in how information is pushed to the public. On the one hand is the legacy media, cable news, and social media platforms particularly Twitter before it became X, practically all owned by the Left. They have a progressive Left agenda that intensified into a Trump-hating mouth piece since 16 Jun 2015, when Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower in New York City to declare his candidacy for the 2016 election. There is nothing wrong with media publishing Left or Right opinions. However, there was an obvious coordinated effort at anti-Trump narratives in timing and messaging, sometimes the use of exact same rhetoric throughout all networks. That crossed the line from journalism to corporate ideological activism. ST's Wednesday issue carried the story of the opinions of five ex-Treasury secretaries who spoke not of fiscal matters, but the old talking head of democracy under threat. This seems much like the 51 ex-intelligence officials who interfered with the 2020 election by putting out the statement the Hunter Biden's laptop was a Russian hoax, done with malice since they know full-well it was not. Both were similar to the 18 scientists who signed off the report published in Lancet that the Covid-19 virus was zoonotic, the purpose was for Fauci to wave in the Congressional Inquiry to pooh-pooh the lab-engineered theory. And all three were similar to the 2018 Pulitzer Prize awarded to 9 journalists from Washington Post and New York Times, for the false report on the Russia-Trump hoax. We have now learnt that media talking heads did indeed hold regular sessions to coordinate their talking points, that Biden's White House participated and plotted the narratives, that USAID money flowed to these networks to sustain them and suppress conservative narratives. Almost all legacy media have been compromised in this manner, including distinguished names like Bloomberg and Reuters. It is an Information Suppression Complex.
On the other side of the isle, independent journalists have blossomed in the new digital world, publishing online news, podcasts or conducting unfiltered interviews. These independent journalists or talking heads could be Liberal or Conservative leaning. But it is the Right which have basically been driven by necessity to this new digital platforms for their conservative news. USAID, some dark money, Democrat operatives, and leftist pressure groups, all conspired to bring down these conservative platforms by suffocating them of advertising revenues. In the case of Alex Jones' Infowars, regarded as Enemy #1 by the Left, experienced attempted illegal bankruptcy process to physically take over his premises with private armed security guards
It did not take long before majority of the public sees legacy media, under the pretext of controlling misinformation, assumed for themselves the sole arbiter of Truth, and were actually themselves dispensing lies after lies, particularly in relation to Trump, the pandemic and the Russo-Ukraine war. The consequence is several legacy media of the Left are headed for the graveyard as their viewership plummets below the sustainable level.
The question is, how many of Singapore's "Guardian-New York Times-Washington Post-reading" elites who also take in their daily dose of CNN. MSNBC, CBS etc, pops into the sites of independent conservative journalists who are branded conspiracy theorists by the Left? How many pay attention to the likes of Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones (who, like Trump, has been proven right on so many issues and predictions), Glenn Beck, Charlie Kirk, Tom Fritton, Dan Bongino, James O'Keefe, Steve Banon, Bill O'Reily, Dinesh D'Souza, Edward Doud, and many others. In this clash of the two worlds of media, the Right has won. The Overton Window has shifted to the right. The Overton Window takes its name from Joseph Overton, one-time senior VP at Mackinac Center for Public Policy. This refers to "the range of subjects and arguments that are politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time". So whilst the narratives have shifted Right, Singapore Inc, as reflected in Straits Times reporting, are still stuck in the Left's fascist, misogyny, racist, totalitarian, Hitlerism, insurrectionist, convicted felon, populist, destroyer of democracy, etc, narratives of Trump.
Establishment type politicians, that basically means Singapore Inc, do not like disruptors. And Trump is the Mother of all disruptors. Trump must seem to them as Gargantua running through Washingto DC with his sledgehammer, smashing everything in his way. Yet what Trump has done in the past three weeks is exactly what he promised his voters. He is delivering everything he promised. In the home front this is essentially the clearing of the swamp of corruption, waste and spending abuse, abandoning the affirmative action of DEI and restoring meritocracy in hiring, restoring law and order by large scale deportation of illegal immigrants, starting with the criminal elements. Trump's popularity has soared in the past 3 weeks and he has polled 40% of black male support, a level unheard of. Obviously, the majority of Americans approved of what he is doing and Singapore Inc is misreading the situation completely.
Trump's dismissal of Federal public servants and suspension of funding certain agencies with whirlwind speed and on such a scale, has the Left in panic mode. They have no way of responding except to play delaying tactics by going to progressive judges in DC, of which there are many. As I write and before I can publish, America First Legal has uncovered damning evidence that federal Judge Jack McConnell, the Rhode Island judge who halted President Trump’s temporary spending freeze, has been deeply entrenched in a taxpayer-funded NGO called Crossroads Rhode Island — receiving over $128 million in government funding during his tenure. Judge McConnell just wanted the spigot turned on forever and ever. That, and instigating for protests, civil disobedience, violence, civil war, and even calling for assassination of Trump. All these from the very people who called Trump an insurrectionist.
Trump's dismissal of so many Federal employees must seem harsh to bleeding hearts. I want to put it across in a manner that Singapore Inc can understand the perspective, and there is no better way than to remind them of what Lee Kuan Yew said in 1984.
"Everything works, whether it's water, electricity, gas, telephone, telexes, it just has to work. If it doesn't work, I want to know why, and if I am not satisfied, and I often was not, the chief goes, and I have to find another chief. Firing the chief is very simple; getting one who can do the job better, that's difficult.'That was Lee emphasising on the importance of accountability and efficiency in public services. Lee Kuan Yew would have praised Trump for doing the same tough no-nonsense play he himself did, but in a much much larger and complicated theatre of the US, restrained by ridiculously complex legislation and activist leftist judges in the Federal Courts in DC. Unfortunately our current leadership in Singapore does not have the same eyeballs as Lee.
Lee Kuan Yew
Presidents come and go, all promising to do good on the campaign trail. As Putin once put it, after a newly installed president sits in the Oval Office, he will be visited by some men in black carrying suitcases when he will be told "no Mr President, you can't touch this, you can't touch that". Putin was not referring to an extraterrestrial visitation, but illustrating his own independence compared to US presidents who are beholden and restrained by un-elected career bureaucrats known collectively as the Deep State. On his exit from the White House in 1961, Eisenhower warned Americans of the Industrial Military Complex. Big fortunes are made by those connected in this complex which sets the tone for large scale corruption and influence on American politics in general and foreign policies particularly. We now have Big Pharma Complex and Big Information Suppression Complex. This has been exacerbated by many top level positions in these complexes and the Deep State being heavily populated by liberal-leaning executives. The alignment of leftist ideology of these complexes, the power drive of the Deep State and Democrats, and corporate profit motivation, is the nexus that facilitated the Obama and Biden White House to weaponise various mechanisms of control, whether legislative, enforcement arms or judiciary. It has also given rise to rogue agencies that are aligned to the Left, which find common ground with Democrats for exploitation for financial gains and covert activities that bypass Congressional supervision.
This is the Great Wall of Resistance that Trump faces. Facing resistance, conflicts, negotiating with Democrats in the House is par for the course and is what a democracy should be. Resistance from establishment Republicans is also healthy. It may cause instability within the party, but a party leader must have majority support baring which is a dictatorship. Resistance from bureaucrats is insubordination and that cannot be tolerated. Submission to the courts is the hallmark of a democracy guaranteed with the co-equal and separation of powers of the Judiciary, Legislature and the Executive. All things being equal, with a constitutional judge and non-partisan jury, the system is fair. But Trump faces activist Leftist judges and predominantly partisan leftist jurors in DC. This will be Trump's biggest roadblock that will hamper his work and provide cover for bad employees to destroy evidence of wrong doings while cases wind their way through the Appellate and Supreme Courts. As I write, internet searches in the DC are trending on 'criminal lawyers", "offshore banking" and "Bleachbit" which is an app to clean the computer. DC rats are lawyering up, trying to hide ill-gotten wealth, and scrubbing their devices to destroy evidence.
The leftist media, Democrats, and the public can criticise, lambast, or vilify Trump all they want. This is freedom of expression protected under the Constitution. Peaceful protest rallies are also protected. Of course Trump and the public too can turn the same loudspeaker against the other side. The noises from the Left have been extremely loud in reaction to the 3 weeks of whirlwind Trump brought to the White House. But I wonder if Singapore Inc takes note that the loud noises from the Left are all rhetoric, complaints against the processes, and personal attacks on Elon Musk and Trump. Not a single soul from the Left has addressed the waste, corruption, and financial abuses that Musk's DOGE has uncovered. I wonder if Singapore Inc also takes note that whilst the Left wrongly claimed for years that Trump is guilty of insurrection on 6 Jan 2020, Democrats such as the irascible Maxime Waters, Congress Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, full-fledged communist Jamie Raskin, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and some others, have called for outright violence and even to assassinate Trump.
Law abiding Singapore Inc will of course measure Trump on the constitutionality of his deeds as far as the home front is concerned. The last 3 weeks focus has been on DOGE and Homeland Security. Let's look at some of the issues and marvel at the hypocrisy of the Left.
First off, the claim that Elon Musk is illegitimate and has no authority to poke his nose into other departments or agencies, much less to terminate employees, is pure hyperbole. DOGE or Dept of Government Efficiency, is created by Executive Order to audit government with a view to cut waste, flush out corruption and stop financial abuses. It is a short term agency. DOGE will conclude its work and shut down by 4 Jul 2026. Presidents have the authority to create agencies and delegate certain executive powers to the agency head. These EO agencies are not created by Legislation and therefore do not come under Congressional supervision or overview. Many Democrats like Maxime Waters made a big deal out of this fact. But these hypocrite Democrats made no objection to the agencies created by Biden's EO. namely Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, American Climate Corps, White House Environmental justice Interagency Council, White House Office on Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation and White House Competition Council. There are many agencies created by EO of past presidents, all outside the purview of Congress, e.g. National Security Agency, Council on Environmental Quality, Peace Corps, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
All executive appointees hold office at the pleasure of the President. In many other countries, these appointments are co-terminus with the president, and when even not so, courtesy resignation is the norm to allow the incoming boss the freedom to select his team. Replacing these appointees are standard fare. Each incoming president replaces thousands of appointees. As regards other public employees, the Executive has authority to make changes it deems fit. Provided of course, whatever employment laws, regulations and contractual obligations there are, are observed. Other than on grounds of violation of such obligations, it is absurd that a leftist activist judge can rule Musk and Trump have no right to terminate employees. This is the kind of push-back Trump is facing. Can you imagine Lee Kuan Yew unable to fire a 'chief'?
Every one knows the US government is excessively bloated, is corrupt to the core, has a US$37T national debt, and runaway deficit budget every year. Shrinking government size and cutting down expenditure is nothing new. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton been there and done that. Clinton reduced the Federal workforce by 380,000! Tell that to the Democrats. The US is now in a debt spiral and it is critically incumbent for Trump to do something to save America and world financial markets from turmoil if the status quo of irresponsible fiscal management is not arrested. Given the extremely divided America and extremely un-cooperative and combative political foe in the Democrats, it needed an extremely strong Republican president to get the unpleasant job done. Trump is exactly the man for the season. The mandate from winning the popular vote and the trifecta has boosted Trump's confidence to use the big sledgehammer and steamroll his agenda. The accommodating and soft backroom wheeling-dealing model of establishment RINOs won't do in the face of fierce Democrats emboldened by 4 years of normalising weaponised judiciary and agencies to serve their progressive liberal ideology. Trump ran on the platform of bringing financial order to the government by common sense approaches or in the words of Cicero, "by reduction of follies.". DOGE is tasked by the Executive to audit the government with a view to cut waste, uncover corrupiton and financial abuse. As Trump puts it, if a president cannot call for an audit, they don't have a country anymore. Musk has said he is confident they are on track to save US$2T in 2025 with the waste they uncovered in 3 weeks.
There are three types of people who do not want the audit. The Guardian-reading, tofu-eating, wokerati, the corrupt who has benefited off the system, and the power-hungry. These folks do not want the taxpayers to know how their monies been spent. Is it a wonder corrupt Democrats are up in arms against the audit. Congresswoman Maxime Waters is angry that Musk is given unfettered access to all data on hundreds of thousands of personnel, and her Freudian slip "we don't know what he has on us." said it all. The fact is Musk and his team are bound to same privacy laws and regulations as all other employees. The hypocrite Democrats aren't interested in employees' privacy. Afterall, they applauded Biden employing 80,000 IRS agents to audit conservative taxpayers, didn't they? They want only to protect their own skin.
Democrats have no substance to complain and so their outbursts are rhetoric and mudslinging. They took juvenile potshots at Musk's youthful team of digital whizkids. It is obvious given the scope, time frame, scale and terms of reference, Musk team isn't going to audit like pedantic Chartered Accountants. I am pretty sure there are no accountants amongst them. It is likely they use big data analytics and AI to scan large data sets for anomalies such as improper payments or contract fraud, and track payment heads. It's not the age that matters. it's their performance. They have uncovered bombshell after bombshell of problematic spending in a matter of days. Hypocrite Democrats complain about Musk's whizkids but paraded a 15 year old Greta Thunberg around for a decade in their tofu-eating rounds. Trump has fired 17 Inspector Generals across various agencies so far. These are basically internal auditors. They have been at work for years and never uncover what Musk's team has flagged in 3 weeks. They have taken the case to court and I think they will win because 30 days notice as required by some legislation was not observed. Easily resolved. Here, take the 30 days pay, just no need to report for work tomorrow.
First order of the day for DOGE is USAID. It tells that Trump's people knows exactly what's going on in the corrupt system. People with good antennae have known for years the foulest stench in the air over the DC swamp is the funk of decades of financial abuse in USAID. This is the agency originally created by Executive Order of John F Kennedy in 1961 as US Peace Corps, tasked with using soft diplomacy through international humanitarian aid to promote US interests. It does not come under Congressional supervision. Over the years it has been captured by the CIA and State Department to use as their piggy bank for covert operations all over the world, often in rogue operations unbeknownst even to the president. In later years, the Obama and Biden regimes weaponised USAID to fund the Left's ideological activism both at home and internationally, often sabotaging foreign conservative governments. In the Information Suppression Complex, Biden weaponised USAID to go after conservative voices, fund leftist media including Reuters and Politico, and leftist NGOs as well as pressure groups. It has even gone so far as to grant one of the richest man in the world, George Soros, hundreds of millions of $ for his Open Foundation. In fact, Sorros and USAID worked often in the same subversive projects both in US and in the world. What DOGE has uncovered is abuse in both scale and numbers, in covert, ideological, and ridiculous projects. For example it funded the work of Victoria Nuland in the Maidan Revolutions in Ukraine, a farming project in Afghanistan which turned out to be a poppy farm, $20m to translate Sesame Street into Arabic for Iraq, transgender operation for some folks somewhere in Guatemala, etc. Billions of dollars have flown over the cuckoo's nest. It will take pages to list what Musk has dug up, and continues to dig up. Just to illustrate how Deep State has controlled the Information Suppression Complex, try using ChatGPT to give you a detailed list of what Musk has outed. It refuses to provide. The Democrats and Deep State are freaking out because Trump has turned off their spigot and transferred USAID over to be supervised by Marco Rubio's State Department. The fury of the Left is understandable.
DOGE will be moving into various agencies in due course. The pattern of fraud and abuse is becoming very clear. Use agencies that do not come under Congressional review, and illegally repurpose appropriated funds approved by Congress. For example FEMA, the agency tasked to handle natural disasters, transferred US$57m to NYC to pay 5-star hotels hosting illegal immigrants. Meanwhile Biden's Secretary Mayorkas declared FEMA does not have enough funds to assist Americans in North Carolina devastated by the recent tornado. Obama and Biden poured US$6.5B federal money into California's high speed rail project. The project started in 2010 and estimated to cost US$33B. It is far from completion and has already overrun cost by almost US$100B! It was supposed to include a connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco. As this part of the project is scuttled, Trump is demanding to claw back US$2.5B. In the last 2 months before Biden's exit, the Left rushed to farm out appropriated but not yet utilised funds for various environmental projects. The purpose for the rush is to prevent Trump laying his hands on them. In 2 months they rushed through contracts for billions of dollars of projects. With the scale of funding, the way projects were funded and the type of projects, it takes only seconds for the businessman in both Musk and Trump to know there is layering and round-tripping. Money goes out and some flows back to fatten some pockets. Ukraine President were given US$170B aid money. He said he received US$70B, the balance US$100B he has no idea. DOGE will soon visit the Pentagon which has failed the last 7 audits. With DOGE's big data analytics and the massive military spending, we can expect to find mind boggling financial shenanigans.
Just to get excited about the kind of Levathian fraud or abuse we are going to hear in the coming days, as we speak, DOGE has just uncovered US$1.9m of funds the HUD, the housing department, "misplaced". It got "lost" in the labyrinth of bureaucratic processes and systems. This reminds me of a story told by one developer long ago. One old money philanthropist (probably Tan Lark Sye) once donated a huge parcel of land in Singapore to the Malaysian Government. Being a donation it was carried in the Malaysian books at nominal 1 Malaysian Ringgit. At such a value, bureaucrats pay scant attention and soon the asset got 'lost'. A couple of decades later, the parcel of land ended up as the Gallop Estate, a private development of bungalow houses, each came with a swimming pool. From the mouth of the Malaysian small time developer, certain parties prospered tremendously. I recall this incident well as I was there throwing brochures for some home furnishing products.
American universities are where bright young minds go to get indoctrinated and often radicalised with Leftist ideologies. Only about 17% of the faculty are conservatives. Of the 83% Liberals, many are progressive ideological activists. I have always said Trump appearing on the scene in 2016 saved America. It forced all the progressives to come out of the woodwork before the country's demographics had shifted majority Liberal. In his second term, Trump knows just who to trust and who to fire in the federal government. But in the long term, Trump has to do something about their universities. The good news is, he intends to. All DEI programmes have been ordered cancelled on pain of loosing public funding if they persist. Trump has plans to shut down the Department of Education and transfer the responsibility back to states. American education has been messed up by the Federal Government. Cost of education per student in America is one of the highest in the world but it has been slipping in world ranking in the past several decades. When the faculty goes berserk championing progressive ideology and DEI instead of meritocracy, block out robust debates of different political persuasions, the outcome is academic standards deteriorate.
In US Federal fiscal management, there are appropriated and non-appropriated funds. Appropriated funds come from taxes and spent under Congressional approval and supervision. Non-appropriated funds and other revenues collected by various agencies set up under some legislation or Executive Order which governs how the money is spent. But these are outside of Congressional review. One such agency with significant non-appropriated funds is the USPS, the postal service. I can barely wait for DOGE to go audit the USPS. It is highly possible this is where Musk will unearth the evidence for the massive fraud in 2020 election. The USPS plays a pivotal role in the transportation of mailed-in ballot papers and have been caught with delivering hundreds of thousands of completed ballots under secretive circumstances across state lines into the swing states in 2020.
The whole idea of the Democrats to flood the country with millions of illegal immigrants is simple. Open the borders, let them in, spread them into red and swing states, and Democrats get enough votes to lock in all future elections. If you think these immigrants just wake up one morning and decided to walk thousands of miles north into the US, you are being naive. There is a huge logistics and organisation behind it. Now who could be behind all these, who could be funding these enterprises, I wonder. Sooner or later, DOGE will find the money trail. It is a huge industry - there are the transporters, the hotels, the catering services, the air tickets, the social services, the half way houses, the caring for unaccompanied children, the employment agencies, etc. All those who have spoken vehemently against the inhuman deportation are hypocrites who are benefiting off the system. The Democrats sit on white horses who talk of the illegal immigrants taking on jobs that Americans do not want are not saying what the party wants is to enslave and exploit the immigrants as loyal voting cheap labour in under-paid jobs. The Church of various denominations, through their NGOs, receive billions providing various services to the illegal immigrants. Pope Francis hypocritically condemns the deportation of the illegal immigrants while banning the same in the Vatican City. The female Bishop Mariann Edgar Buddle from Episcopal Migration Ministries, famously spoke in a recent National Prayer Service, pleaded to Trump who was present. to have mercy on the illegal immigrants. She is a hero if you do a Google search. But internet will not show you her ministry, the EMM. received US$53m funding from government in 2023 alone to resettle 3,600 individuals.
In summary, Trump is riding a wave of popularity from conservative, independent voters and increasingly even liberals are waking up to realising they are seeing evidence of Democrats weaponising federal funds, using agencies particularly USAID to stash slush funds to suppress conservative voices, promote ideological activism both at home and abroad, interfere with foreign governments' politics, support terrorist elements, spend on illegal foreigners instead of Americans who are suffering financially, and possibly line their own pockets. Trump has thrown the Democrats into total disarray, and entrapping them in a defensive corner, where their only defence are arguments that Musk and Trump's actions of outing fraud, cut waste and efficiencies in government, reduce federal spending, mass deportation of illegal elements, including hardcore criminals, are illegal. This is a suicide position and so they resort to ad hominems, attacking two billionaires Musk and Trump who are undertaking the toughest job in the land with no pay and risking their very lives. The Democrat brand is being destroyed and its going to take them many years to come back from.
About the only domestic policy of Trump that I think is illegal is stopping the birthright of citizenship. America's citizenship of jus soli meaning 'right of soil', is a right to citizenship to anyone born in the US. This is enshrined in the Constitution and Trump has no authority to change it.
In the Russo-Ukraine War, Singapore's ill-advised quick sanction on Russia now finds us unwelcome in BRICS and locked out of their economic summits. Of course, the likes of Grace Fu, Josephine Teo and Desmond Lee prefer to hobnop with the rich and famous in WEF Davos summits, and President Tharman wants his relevance on the world stage in Davos too. Singapore's dependence on global trade justifies the alignment of economic interests with the globalists, but not necessarily the ideologies. The rise of Trump signals the demise of the globalists. Trump's nationalist and anti-globalist stand on trade, and his lack of interest in the climate change hysteria, irritates Singapore Inc.Now Singapore has to deal with weakening globalists, a nativist Trump, and an unfriendly BRICS.
In US Federal fiscal management, there are appropriated and non-appropriated funds. Appropriated funds come from taxes and spent under Congressional approval and supervision. Non-appropriated funds and other revenues collected by various agencies set up under some legislation or Executive Order which governs how the money is spent. But these are outside of Congressional review. One such agency with significant non-appropriated funds is the USPS, the postal service. I can barely wait for DOGE to go audit the USPS. It is highly possible this is where Musk will unearth the evidence for the massive fraud in 2020 election. The USPS plays a pivotal role in the transportation of mailed-in ballot papers and have been caught with delivering hundreds of thousands of completed ballots under secretive circumstances across state lines into the swing states in 2020.
The whole idea of the Democrats to flood the country with millions of illegal immigrants is simple. Open the borders, let them in, spread them into red and swing states, and Democrats get enough votes to lock in all future elections. If you think these immigrants just wake up one morning and decided to walk thousands of miles north into the US, you are being naive. There is a huge logistics and organisation behind it. Now who could be behind all these, who could be funding these enterprises, I wonder. Sooner or later, DOGE will find the money trail. It is a huge industry - there are the transporters, the hotels, the catering services, the air tickets, the social services, the half way houses, the caring for unaccompanied children, the employment agencies, etc. All those who have spoken vehemently against the inhuman deportation are hypocrites who are benefiting off the system. The Democrats sit on white horses who talk of the illegal immigrants taking on jobs that Americans do not want are not saying what the party wants is to enslave and exploit the immigrants as loyal voting cheap labour in under-paid jobs. The Church of various denominations, through their NGOs, receive billions providing various services to the illegal immigrants. Pope Francis hypocritically condemns the deportation of the illegal immigrants while banning the same in the Vatican City. The female Bishop Mariann Edgar Buddle from Episcopal Migration Ministries, famously spoke in a recent National Prayer Service, pleaded to Trump who was present. to have mercy on the illegal immigrants. She is a hero if you do a Google search. But internet will not show you her ministry, the EMM. received US$53m funding from government in 2023 alone to resettle 3,600 individuals.
In summary, Trump is riding a wave of popularity from conservative, independent voters and increasingly even liberals are waking up to realising they are seeing evidence of Democrats weaponising federal funds, using agencies particularly USAID to stash slush funds to suppress conservative voices, promote ideological activism both at home and abroad, interfere with foreign governments' politics, support terrorist elements, spend on illegal foreigners instead of Americans who are suffering financially, and possibly line their own pockets. Trump has thrown the Democrats into total disarray, and entrapping them in a defensive corner, where their only defence are arguments that Musk and Trump's actions of outing fraud, cut waste and efficiencies in government, reduce federal spending, mass deportation of illegal elements, including hardcore criminals, are illegal. This is a suicide position and so they resort to ad hominems, attacking two billionaires Musk and Trump who are undertaking the toughest job in the land with no pay and risking their very lives. The Democrat brand is being destroyed and its going to take them many years to come back from.
About the only domestic policy of Trump that I think is illegal is stopping the birthright of citizenship. America's citizenship of jus soli meaning 'right of soil', is a right to citizenship to anyone born in the US. This is enshrined in the Constitution and Trump has no authority to change it.
"US has now willi-nilly - the image has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent. .... who, if anyone, any one country or region or bloc, can step in if US declines to protect the global commons and how effective, and against what resistance.''In my humble opinion, Singapore is on the wrong side of history on the Russo-Ukraine War, on the pandemic, and now on Trump. All three are related to the globalists and neoliberalists march towards their version of "end of history", which is a borderless one world government, with them in charge of course. (See my blog How Trump Stopped The Global Elites March To The End Of History.)
Ng Eng Hean, Singapore Defence Minister
In the Russo-Ukraine War, Singapore's ill-advised quick sanction on Russia now finds us unwelcome in BRICS and locked out of their economic summits. Of course, the likes of Grace Fu, Josephine Teo and Desmond Lee prefer to hobnop with the rich and famous in WEF Davos summits, and President Tharman wants his relevance on the world stage in Davos too. Singapore's dependence on global trade justifies the alignment of economic interests with the globalists, but not necessarily the ideologies. The rise of Trump signals the demise of the globalists. Trump's nationalist and anti-globalist stand on trade, and his lack of interest in the climate change hysteria, irritates Singapore Inc.Now Singapore has to deal with weakening globalists, a nativist Trump, and an unfriendly BRICS.
Singapore has been the best student in class in the WHO-FDA led world effort in Covid-19 management. I appreciate it is not an easy task to make national decisions in managing a pandemic in an environment of so much unknown and fear mongering. The government was dealing with peoples' lives. But one way or another, some decisions had to be made and I am sure decisions were made with due consultations and the best of judgements. What I am critical of is the government bought into the Western countries' pursuit of information suppression, killing off all alternative opinions or even scientific studies. With Biden's pardon of Fauci, which means admission of guilt on all accusations levied against him, MOF has to address the ramifications of its implications. The puzzle of why the pardon was back-dated to 2014 leads to reasonable suggestion the whole affair is tied to Obama. That was the year Obama put a moratorium on funding 'gain-of-function' research and Fauci, EchoHealth president Peter Daszak, and the scientist Ralph Baric, then outsourced their research to the Wuhan lab. Since the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, Ecohealth continued to receive USAID funding of US$60m. Now under Trump, RFK Jr as the new Secretary of HHS, and DOGE, the world may have a chance to finally find out the truth. Was the pandemic an engineered greatest humanitarian crime in human history?.
There is no doubt Trump is a disruptor. But change managers know that disruptors are beneficial when the system is inefficient, innovation or new ideas are needed, corruption or dysfunction is present, the public is not being served. These are times when a crisis change is required. Such is the chaos in US which faces the additional problems of financial crisis of a debt spiral with national debt of US$37T and a political opposition willing to go scorched Earth to retain power while the president is trying to save the country. Trump is trying to save America, the Democrats want to make sure that won't happen.
The lengthy discourse above on Trump's first three weeks, there is no doubt he is clearing Cicero's "follies". It is difficult to understand why any American should object to what he is doing. The question for us outsiders is, why should we bother whether the US recovers in strength? What Ng Eng Hean meant was he wants a strong American sheriff for the world. In the Biden years, Russia invaded Ukraine, Hamas attacked Isreal and started the crazy war, fatman of North Korea lauched a few missiles,.China increased military pressure on Taiwan, Iran conducted direct missile attack on Isreal for the first time, Houthis fired missiles into Israel for the first time, Houthis attacked commercial vessels, and Syrian civil war re-erupted. A new sheriff is in town and though it is not all quiet on the Western front, there is a chance for peace and the heat in Gaza has been lowered.
But looks like Ng wants a strong sheriff who is not a disruptor. And he wants a sheriff who is not collecting rent. He is searching for anyone, any country or bloc, who will take over the old 'liberator' US role of a sucker - be the sheriff and pay for everybody's bills at the same time. And finally, Ng talks of his 'global commons', which is the globalists' literati gibberish dish on the 'tofu-eating' table, the climate change, electric vehicles, eat insects, no farting cows, carbon tax, etc thingy called Agenda 2030. Trump sure disappoints in this department.
Before we embrace "Guardian-reading" speakers, we should reflect on this. Every US president that wants to dismantle CIA, the Federal Reserve, or the Military Complex, has met with unfortunate circumstances. Four have been assassinated. Here comes a man who threatens all these three untouchables, survived two assassination attempts on his life, battled all the political hits and persecutorial shits, to take on an unpleasant job with no remuneration, and promise to his people a mission to save his country tottering on the brink of collapse financially, from internal strife of the woke culture, and an invasion of 17 million illegal immigrants. He promised the world peace from strength, not war. In dismantling USAID and calls for peace, and lately, a call for a drastic mutual reduction of defence spending by Russia, China and the US, Trump seems to be the American president to finally abandon the Monroe Doctrine and Brezinski Doctrine. Both doctrines have underlined US neo-conservative geostrategic engagement with the world with American exceptionalism in covert imperialism over certain regions. The man deserves support, not disdain.
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