Stephen Lendman

Hold the cheers. Trump didn’t get super-rich by being a good guy. Billionaires make money the old-fashioned way, devious methods unavailable to ordinary people, including small businesses, operating by the rules, honestly and fairly.

His views on most issues are extremist, way over-the-top - like wanting a wall built on the US/Mexican border and having its government pay for it, along with TRUMPeting against Muslim immigrants.

He’s bad for America, real bad, maybe not all bad. Unlike most, perhaps all other presidential aspirants, favoring virtually unlimited military spending at a time America’s enemies are only ones it invents, Trump criticized wasteful war-profiteering, saying:

“I hear stories, like they’re ordering missiles they don’t want because of politics, because of special interests…because” defense contractors are big campaign “contributor(s).”

Trump is no peacenik, far from it. He supports unchallenged US military strength, saying he wants wasteful, fraudulent spending curbed.

He’s part of America’s money-controlled system - at the same time duplicitously railing against it, calling corporate giants “bloodsuckers,” controlling government through campaign contributions.

“Whether it’s the insurance companies or the drug companies or the oil companies, it’s all the same thing,” he said. They, Wall Street and war-profiteers decide everything.

Trump is part of the dirty system he criticizes. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be presidential material.

At the same time, his leadership as president, if elected, would likely differ greatly in style from any previous administration in memory - for better or worse.

He claims to want improved US/Russian relations. Whether he means it is another issue altogether. Campaign pledges are one thing, realpolitik another.

In mid-December, he said “I have always felt that Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other towards defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from mutual respect.”

Putin praised Trump during his annual yearend tour de force Q & A press conference, calling him the “absolute front-runner in the presidential race…very talented, no doubt about that.”

“He says that he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russia. How can we not welcome that. Of course, we welcome it.”

Trump called Putin’s praise a “great honor” from a “highly respected” leader.

Will his leadership if elected US president change longstanding anti-Russian hostility - ongoing for nearly a century, more strained now than during the height of the Cold War?

Campaign promises are made to be broken. Don’t expect Trump to break tradition if empowered.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.htmlRadio Network