Update (10:35 PM):
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The Democratic Party is all Establishment. By Establishment I mean the dominant economic, political, and social elites who hold power and influence in a society—the entrenched authority that maintains the status quo and resists change, controlling key aspects of business, government, education, media, and cultural production. The Establishment is out of touch with the broader population’s needs or desires (for example in Springfield, Ohio). The Establishment is a collective force that protects its own interests at the expense of the people.
The Establishment is globalists. The proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is an expression of globalist ambition. While the Democrats are all in, the Republican Party is split between the Establishment and the populist-nationalists. Trump represents the return to constitutional republicanism and classical liberal principles. Reclamation of our founding is antithetical to globalist ambitions. Ryan Wesley Routh, who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump yesterday in Florida, was on the side of the Republican Party he perceived was Establishment, correctly with Nikki Haley, wrongly with Vivek Ramaswamy. This is how he could support the Republicans but loathe Trump.
Trump is a populist-nationalists who doesn’t want the proxy war with Russia. That’s why the Establishment says he is Putin’s stooge. If you don’t understand this split then you won’t understand the assassin’s support for the Republican Party while parroting Biden-Harris talking points. We saw the same thing with the first assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks was a registered Republican. But what kind of Republican? Establishment Republicans hate Trump because Trump is not Establishment. They have endorsed Harris-Walz because the Democratic Party is Establishment. Even Dick Cheney has come out in support of Harris-Walz.
It’s remarkable people haven’t figured all this out. I’ve been writing about this years on Freedom and Reason. We are in the midst of a great realignment. Realignment turns on the actual bifurcation point in a grand historical struggle between transnationalism and nationalism. The attempts on Trump’s life represent the effort to cut off the head of the populist-nationalist movement that represents resistance to globalization—open borders, the transnationalization of corporate power and its governance and legal structures, fusion with China and the entrenchment of authoritarian and technocratic control.
The Establishment wants things the way they were from January 20, 1989 to January 20, 2017. They thought Hillary Clinton would win the White House in 2016 and they could continue dismantling the American Republic and entrenching the corporate state. They rigged 2020 to get the project back on track. They thought they could delegitimize Trump before 2024—lawfare and all the rest of it. They haven’t been able to, so they’re turning to desperate measures.
The first assassin cannot tell us who he worked with, who prepared him, because he’s dead. But we know a lot about the second one. We can see he is aligned with the Establishment. He wanted the proxy war against Russia to continue. He was in Ukraine working with the Azov Battalion. Newsweek is reporting that Routh told The New York Times in March 2023 about his effort to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine. He told the Times that he spent several months in Ukraine in 2022. A Semafor report published on March 2023 cited Routh as the head of the International Volunteer Center (IVC) in Ukraine. The Associated Press reported that Routh was convicted in 2002 of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. He saw a Trump victory as the potential end of the transnational project. When he parroted the Establishment rhetoric about Trump representing a threat to democracy, this is what he meant.
Was Routh a CIA asset? Ian Carroll has made some observations worth your attention.
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