“Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?” Samwise Gamgee
JEFF CHILDERS HAS ANOTHER BLOCKBUSTER ON THE WAR BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL THAT IS RAGING OVERHEAD
IT’S THE SUNDAY PAYWALLED VERSION
I’LL POST IT IN THE COMMENT SECTION ( WITHOUT LINKS AND PICTURES )…YOU’RE WELCOME
America is surely at war. It is not a kinetic war, at least not yet. It’s a quiet war of headlines and narratives. But the stakes are equally high. We are all caught up in a Great Paper War, a war of bureaucratic battles and administrative assaults. The forces of good, Trump’s Team, are arrayed on the ridge, lined up against the Horde, a formidable alliance of the entire permanent federal bureaucracy, including the intelligence agencies, certain captive media, and parts of the military — all known as the “Deep State.” (Notably, I intentionally omitted the Democrat Party from this list. The Democrats do not control the Deep State; rather, the Deep State controls a compliant political party.)
This war may be fought with words instead of tanks, but it is no less existential. Ultimately, one side will prevail, the other will fall, and the Nation’s future will be decided—along with the scope of our collective freedom.
The battle began on January 20th, at noon, when President Trump took the oath of office. Like Washington crossing the Delaware under cover of fog, Trump’s forces arrived unexpectedly, taking the Deep State by surprise and scattering its forces in disarray.
We civilians stumble below, clueless as titanic monsters clash above. We hear the roars and see the flashes of destruction—a wall of scaly flesh, a burst of searing light, choking smoke drifting down. But from here, the full shape of the battle eludes us. We don’t know exactly what these monsters look like; we only glimpse enough to confirm that some immense conflict is raging overhead.
But we are starting to make out the outlines of a few parts. There are at least three reasons why Trump’s war plans are currently winning the field.
First, it is clear Trump’s war plans were kept tightly secret. Sure, Trump promised to “drain the Swamp,” but he never tipped his hand as to how he would do it, leaving the Deep State guessing.
For example, Trump never revealed that he had quietly repurposed an existing U.S. “Digital Services” agency into DOGE. On January 20th, the Democrats moved too quickly and fell straight into a trap. Without waiting to understand how Trump actually established his new efficiency agency, they hastily filed three pre-prepared lawsuits. These suits incorrectly claimed that DOGE operated illegally outside federal oversight. But their case fell apart in mere hours, shredding like damp tissue paper after it became embarrassingly clear that DOGE was, in fact, a federal agency.
Trump’s battle plans were several steps ahead even before the war started, leaving the Deep State at sea. They had to guess. With DOGE, they guessed wrong.
Second, Trump’s war plans are highly complex. We are starting to see how the different parts connect together, and its beginning to be clear, in some cases, why Trump’s team did certain things in a particular order. There are a lot of parts, and the parts are moving fast. Even if the Deep State does occasionally guess right, it might be too late.
Third, Trump’s war plans left the Deep State scrambling. Since the Deep State had no idea what was coming —since Trump’s team managed operational security so well— it had no defensive plan. It relied on long-standing defensive structures, which Trump is flying right over. The Deep State forces are scrambling to have an emergency meeting, like Ukrainian soldiers discovering that the NGOs took all the USAID money but never actually built the trenches and tank defenses.
It is especially hard to formulate a good plan in the middle of battle. But that’s the challenge the Deep State now faces. It must cobble together its defenses in the fog of war, unsure of the enemy’s location, strength, or armaments.
Finally, the Deep State has the advantage of sheer numbers—one of the legacy defenses it relied upon. But Trump’s forces appear to make up in quality what they lack in quantity. They’ve also hindered the Deep State by implementing communication holds, broad funding freezes, and seizing control of federal computer systems. And, of course, Trump’s team continues to outwork and outpace their opponents.
Now, let’s tackle yesterday’s news from the front lines.
In one of the critical early battles, President Trump sort of? not really? basically? pulled the plug on the Deep State’s overseas money laundromat disguised as a fancy meth clinic, a/k/a USAID. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a tearful followup story headlined, “End Appears Near for U.S. Aid Agency, Democratic Lawmakers Say.”
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The battle is nearly won. The battle seems nearly over. Yesterday, USAID’s once sprawling website was reduced to a single-page blog with a small handful of news items. Click! Flash! Honey, I shrunk the CIA’s crack house. And USAID lost its own separate web address. It’s now relocated underneath the State Department’s massive URL umbrella. Meanwhile, back at its DC headquarters, workers pulled down the agency’s signs, leaving pale, ghostly outlines where the letters used to hang.
Two USAID leakers told the Times “they were working under an atmosphere of fear and chaos, and that half of the agency’s workforce had been eliminated in the last week.” According to ABC, some workers were fired so suddenly that they winked out in mid-videoconference. And get this: three other USAID leakers complained that Gemini, Google’s A.I. program, was installed without notice on their email accounts. Now they think DOGE is monitoring them.
Brilliant! It doesn’t even matter whether DOGE is watching—the FEAR of surveillance will keep them in line.
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? In 2006, researchers at Newcastle University, led by diligent social science professor Melissa Bateman, conducted a simple but groundbreaking experiment establishing the “watching eyes effect.” They set up an honor-based system in a break room where employees could help themselves to drinks and leave money in a collection box. Above the box, they rotated posters every week—some featuring pictures of human eyes, others displaying flowers as a control.
When the poster showed eyes, employees paid nearly three times more for their drinks than when flowers were displayed. The implication? People’s behavior improves when they feel they’re being watched. This insight has since been widely applied—such as through fake “You are being recorded on video” stickers.”
? Back to USAID. It’s a guessing game. The most intriguing thing about Trump’s moves is what nobody knows. Neither the Deep State nor the media have any handle on Trump’s plan. Trump’s people aren’t talking. They are keeping the career bureaucrats in the dark, leaving everyone else —federal workers, journalists, and Democrat politicians— constantly playing catch up and guessing:
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This is Trump’s Secret War Plan: his opponents don’t know where he’ll strike next or how to counter. It could be anything.
“Lawmakers have argued Mr. Trump cannot unilaterally shutter the agency legally,” the Times explained, “as it was created by Congress and receives specific appropriations.” Note the clever wording. The Times isn’t saying Trump can’t do it legally. The Times said lawmakers argued that Trump can’t do it. That’s a subtle but important distinction.
And the truth is, they still don’t know. They know something is happening, but they don’t know whether he’s closing USAID or not. So they’re not sure what to argue against. They can’t sue him yet since they aren’t sure what law is being broken, if any. The recent freeze on foreign aid now seems deliberate: it was a calculated step to manage USAID’s radical downsizing. Freezing all the funds helped avoid embarrassing political chaos.
? One of the most unintentionally hilarious byproducts of the Battle for USAID is watching the media scramble. First, it faces the unenviable task of drumming up outrage over the possible closure of an agency that most Americans have never even heard of. Is it like Farm-AID? All media can do is trot out tragic tales of Zimbabwean schoolchildren losing free lunches.
As a result, every story about USAID’s impending doom must open with a long, dull explainer of what the agency actually does. And then, almost begrudgingly, the media adds a boilerplate paragraph admitting that yes, USAID does need reform. But not out of candor—rather, to preempt criticism. For every Zimbabwean lunch story, there’s a matching scandal of USAID funneling millions to actual terrorists. So the media concedes just enough: Sure, it needs some reform.
The Battle for USAID is almost over and the Deep State hasn’t decided on a narrative yet. That’s how fast Trump’s forces are moving.
How plan-less are Democrats? Consider another astonishing article appearing on yesterday’s same New York Times front page, headlined “‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump.” Just as I’ve told you. The sub-headline added, “More than 50 interviews with Democratic leaders revealed a party struggling to decide how to confront an aggressive right-wing administration.”
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In other words, they need to come up with a plan. “Elected Democrats,” the Times moaned, “appear leaderless, rudderless and divided.” But they are so uncertain about their footing that they are even fighting over whether Democrat voters might agree with Trump. “The lack of public outcry,” the Times explained, “has left Democrats debating whether liberals are simply tired of politics or whether they agree with more of Mr. Trump’s platform than they want to admit.”
The article was prompted by Thursday’s silly DNC officer elections. As the new DNC president, Democrats elected a mild-mannered white guy nobody ever heard of, Minnesota Democrat party leader Ken Martin, who reassured delegates that the Democrat party has the right message, don’t worry, they just need to fix the messaging.
In other words, the Democrat delegates voted for no change. Perfect.
Major party luminaries still disagree over how to defend against Trump’s War. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats can’t afford to go after Trump on every single issue. But the Times reported that last week, “a half-dozen Democratic governors pressed Schumer to be more aggressive in opposing the entire Trump agenda.”
Meanwhile, Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx.) admitted to the Times, “We have no coherent message.” If they don’t have a message, they sure don’t have a plan.
Trump won another minor battle yesterday. The Washington Post reported the story under the fearmongering headline, “Musk aides gain access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system.” What actually happened was, after pushing out the top Treasury bureaucrat who defied a presidential order and refused to turn over the passwords, the DOGE team finally got into the data.
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Democrats were left spluttering since, despite the alarming narrative —Musk gains access to sensitive data— it was all perfectly legal and not alarming. On Friday, for example, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Or.) sent a spluttering letter of protest to Secretary Scott Bessent. Ron’s letter complained, “I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”
In other words, nobody’s explaining anything to him, so Ron has to guess. And he can’t think of any good reasons.
Well, obviously, the good reason is that DOGE was tasked with saving money and improving efficiency. Treasury is where the money gets spent inefficiently. So. The question sort of answers itself.
The bottom line is that Democrats, never especially known for brilliance in their strategies, have no good arguments against DOGE getting the payment data. And all corporate media can do is run generalized misinformation, dropping dark, misleading hints that some kind of dirty work is happening at the crossroads.
Like Godot’s friends, Media waits impatiently for its handlers to supply a proper narrative, a smart narrative that will stick, a narrative that everybody can get behind. But like Godot, it isn’t coming.
? This morning, Elon bragged about DOGE teams working around the clock:
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See? Elon also framed Trump’s Deep State War in military terms, referring to “our bureaucratic opponents” who “are losing so fast.” And, haha, “optimistically” work 40 hours a week. Optimistically.
? Politico reported yesterday that up to 100 Education Department employees are being fired for attending a voluntary two-day diversity seminar called “Diversity Change Agent Program,” which violated President Trump’s executive order forbidding further DEI.
FAFO.
Newsmax ran a very encouraging story Monday headlined, “Pair Whose Videos Exposed Planned Parenthood Get Plea Deal.” The documentary filmmakers were being prosecuted by California’s Attorney General for their undercover recording of Planned Parenthood executives chugging white wine and cackling over how much money they were making selling baby body parts. The only thing missing was a black cauldron over a campfire.
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Believe it or not, it was cackling Kamala Harris who in 2016 launched weaponized lawfare against pro-life activists and journalists David Merritt and Sandra Daleiden, while Harris was California’s AG. Harris charged both journalists with 14 felony counts of unlawfully recording a conversation and one felony count of criminal conspiracy.
But now, nine years of political persecution later, but only one week after Trump’s Inauguration, California agreed to an easy plea deal with no felony charges and no jail time. “After 9 years of unprecedented political prosecution, putting an end to the lawfare launched by Kamala Harris is a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public’s right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts,” Sandra told reporters.
One week. And he didn’t even have to say anything.
???
On Friday, Business Insider ran a story headlined, “Donald Trump’s media and tech lawsuits seemed like a stretch. Then he won the election.”
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Lawsuit by lawsuit, Trump is clawing back what they took from him over the last four years. Last month, ABC (Disney) paid him $15 million. Last week, Meta (Facebook) agreed to pay him $22 million. This week, it was widely reported that CBS (Paramount) is considering settling Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit — leading to massive speculation over settling for how much?
Then BI asked the inevitable question:
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I know! How about all of them? How would progressives like them apples?
The article predictably bemoaned the loss of freedom of the press. If Presidents can intimidate media companies, the logic goes, then who will bravely hold the Administration to account?
Well, we just watched four years of the media not holding the Administration to account. So what good is it? Media consumed all its remaining scraps of credibility pushing harmful pandemic narratives and shaming innocent citizens for not wanting their stupid experimental shots.
Having made it clear we are its enemies, now all of a sudden media wants sympathy for being forced to pay for canceling Trump’s Facebook account. Um, no. We’re not sympathetic. We’re not even sure why sold-out corporate media hasn’t been forced into bankruptcy yet.
The corporate media should move over and make room for independent media.
???
So here’s where we are: The Democrats are crushed, leaderless and in chaos. Trump is winning the Great Deep State War, quickly, and the disorganized Deep State is in disarray, scrambling to hold onto key territory. Lawfare is ending right and left. Corporate media has encountered its Nemesis, which resembles a twelve-armed mechanical spanking machine.
This is what we’d hoped for, a hope against hope, one we barely dared name. As Samwise Gamgee asked Gandalf: is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?
It appears everything sad is coming untrue, faster than anyone ever thought possible. My goodness, what’s next?
DAMN!
In a few years, maybe a decade or two, after they have figured out what he’s doing, will they study all of this at West Point?
Is 47 really an orange reptilian ALIEN, along with Musk? Coming to us from Middle Earth?
I dare say not even the best companies in the world are run like this.
And think about planning an operation like this is such detail, WITH NO LEAKS !!
(while still golfing and getting shot at and holding rallies)
LOL…EXACTLY
The execution of the plan has been awe inspiring!
The lack of leaks is truly unbelievable as there are SO MANY moving pieces being coordinated at the same time.
That all are marching in sync is amazing to behold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hUbwUj6RNo
Put latest events into perspective.
Good reading, thanks for sharing!
Yes thanks for sharing this. I would have thought by now TPTB (London and EU) would have pulled the plug on the stock market by now but maybe it’s all in the timing. In slow motion but really – pin pull on 11/4, grenade blows 1/20.
Just as in his first term Trump is a strategist – everything in due time – I’m certain he knows ALL about that Helo pilot and the SCRUBBING of her history (and some family members’ online history). He’ll probably just let it simmer longer and let people figure it out on their own without pointing the finger (he’ll give us the told-you-so later).
Being somewhat of a Trekkie couldn’t help but think.
….a dish best served cold
– Khan