Boy howdy, Maria Bartiromo has the big picture of the 2015/2016 political weaponization of the intelligence apparatus exactly right. In this interesting interview with Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham both Bartriromo and Graham discuss the scale and scope of the 2015/2016 effort to stop Trump.

Interestingly, in a shift of tone, Senator Graham outlines what this surveillance operation means when contrast against the structures of our constitutional government.

.

Traditionally Lindsey Graham would bury any issue adverse to the institutions of the DC administrative state. So there’s two possibilities here: (A) Graham has fundamentally changed his outlook toward the dangers of the institutions within government; or, (B) Graham is doing a full ‘Castellanos‘ and embracing the controversy in order to control the risk to the administrative state with intent to protect it. [The latter is tradition]

The best way for DC to protect itself from the mob’s approach is to lead it themselves. The modern GOPe club has used this defense sending agents to the front of the grassroots anger in order to control the outcome. [Fast-n-Furious, IRS targeting, Benghazi, etc.]

♦When the common sense Tea Party movement formed in 2009 and 2010 it contained a monumentally frustrated grassroots electorate, and the scale of the movement caught the professional republican party off-guard.

♦When Donald Trump ran for the office of the presidency in 2015 and 2016 he essentially did the same thing; he disrupted the apparatus of the professional republican party.

The difference between those two examples is one was from the bottom up, and the second was from the top down. The commonality in the two forces resulted in the 2016 victory.

It took a few years for the heavily armored old guard of GOP to formulate a plan to retain their control. In the example of the Tea Party, the republican power structures moved in 2011 through 2014 to co-opt the vulgarian movement and impede their disruptive influence. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the forefront of those power moves. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} The basic issue for the GOP was retention of power.

McConnell and crew tamped down the fire. A few years pass and the issues that spurred the Tea Party movement remained unresolved. In 2015 Donald Trump taps in to that exact same Tea Party frustration toward the control authority within one-half of the DC UniParty; again, the professional republican apparatus was disrupted.

From the first moment candidate Trump announced his platform positions; from the very first poll *after* those platform positions were announced; Donald Trump was leading the republican field in every-single-poll from August of 2015 through today. Center stage throughout 2015 and 2016 and President of the United States as an outcome therein.

Yes, the “movement” rebranded and now MAGA wins the presidency.

However, think back to the 2015 instructions from republican insider Alex Castellanos as he described how the RNC could eliminate the disruptive influence of Donald Trump:

[…] “The best way to do it is how Brutus killed Caesar. Get real close, snuggle up, and shiv him in the ribs”… (link)

For the past two years it’s been a never-ending game of whac-a-mole as each of the establishment minded embeds surfaces at different times. Within the dynamic, the one commonality within the internecine conflict inside the Trump administration is the establishment GOP -vs- Trump MAGA.

It’s like having an independent MAGA administration that contains establishment terror cells. Each cell acts independently, but each cell also acts based on a common objective: retain the UniParty.

When you think about the actual structure of the National Republican Party -vs- the state party machines; it’s enough to make you wonder if the mid-term outcome and lack of structural fight was not part of this dynamic. After all, “their” party was taken over by a new MAGA base and a new pragmatic political leader, Donald Trump.

The same UniParty dynamic is visible in the way the FBI/DOJ and aggregate intelligence community were weaponized against Donald Trump – with Democrats and Republicans participating in the unlawful processes. Now, in the downstream consequence phase, we see a UniParty defense approach to block Trump from revealing what happened.

I’m not sure people fully completely understand this dynamic within “spygate”. It was not a targeting operation by democrats; republicans were just as complicit. The ongoing goal to eliminate candidate and president Trump is *not* partisan.

I hope Senator Lindsey Graham has encountered something that has fundamentally changed his core sense of identity. I truly hope that is the case. However, in the modern era of DC politics I cannot reference an example where the outlook of the individual, the guiding principles, changed inside a politician.

Check the audience at 01:25 (look fast):

.

CTH has been in this modern-era conservative battle for a long time. We have the GOPe battle scars, and a thousand points of betrayal to reference.

The genuine Tea-Party/MAGA movement has the same ideologies and objectives. It is the ‘Monster Vote’. It is also the most important political movement in our lifetime. However, we will not promote ‘hope-porn’ and fantasy proclamations amid sudden appearances of political altruism.

We fight for DC change; we support our President, and we accept the battle-space as it exists; not as we wish it to be.

Proceed with cautious optimism…