Say you are a business tycoon.
You just successfully completed a large-scale acquisition
and merger, bringing together multiple smaller companies
into one conglomerate. After the merger, you want to put
your own people in charge of everything. However, all those
smaller companies had their own executives - and, at least
for the short term - you need to keep many of them around
the keep things running. So, you keep many of those
executives around, and let them retain their own senior
staff. You even appoint one of them - the head of the
largest of the companies you acquired - to be the CEO of the
conglomerate, and he pledges to get all the departments
working together harmoniously.
After a transition period, some of them are doing fine in the new
conglomerate - but others are clearly causing trouble. In
fact, the one you appointed CEO is clearly a disaster. The
newly merged departments are working against each
other.
Furthermore, you have good suspicion he is dealing in insider trading -
nothing you can take to a prosecutor, but there is a lot of
circumstantial evidence building up. Worse, he is not only
doing his own dirty dealing, but it appears he may even be
leaking intellectual property to your competitors, helping
them take market share from you.
Clearly, he has to go - and go now.
Problem is, many of the senior employees in your conglomerate are
loyal to him. If you just fire him and put in your own
chosen CEO, you know you could get a lot of backlash from
disgruntled employees. And in your business, there is such a
small profit-margin that you really can't afford
anything at all that threatens performance. So what do you
do?
In comes the hatchet man.
The hatchet man is someone you bring in for sole purpose of
slashing the problems and shaking things up over a very
short period of time - but doing it in a way that deflects
any blame or blowback away from you. As soon as the problems
are hacked away, the hatchet man leaves - taking the ire and
resentment with him, and leaving you free to bring in your
new team for a fresh start.
This happens in the business world all the time. And Donald Trump
is a businessman. He knows this. He has lived this.
We've seen him do it on "The Apprentice."
We've read about it in his books. This is not a surprise
to anyone. Except for liberals and never-Trumpers.
Enter Scaramucci.
Liberals and never-Trumpers see the past two weeks as proof of a
Hitler-clown-circus spectacle, as evidence that Trump is
unhinged and our government is in the hands of madmen.
Anyone who understands the business world and Donald Trump
fully understands that what we just witnessed was a
perfectly executed hatchet man maneuver.
When Trump won the election, he essentially performed the
political equivalent of an acquisition and merger. He
brought together different political factions -
establishment Republicans, conservatives, tea party,
religious right, moderates, independents, cross-overs - into
one winning political coup. For some, it was a hostile
takeover - and if they were going to be dragged in against
their will, they would sure as hell resist.
This is where Reince Priebus came in.
Priebus, as the then-chairman of the Republican National Committee,
was hired as White House Chief of Staff to be a sort of
post-merger CEO. It was his job to bring all these political
factions together and get them to work harmoniously. But he
failed. Worse, there is ample evidence to suggest he not
only failed, but worked against Trump and the Trump agenda.
Look at the leaks. Look at all the chaos. Look at all the
bureaucracy continuing to work at odds with the president.
Priebus - and a number of other people around him - had to
go.
Back to Scaramucci.
Donald Trump has known for some
time that Priebus was a disaster. He was going to give him
his six-month trial period - that's a fairly common
thing in the private sector. After that, heads were going to
roll. But Trump himself doesn't want to be the hatchet
man. He needs to be able to lead after the bloodbath. So
what does he do? He turns to an old friend he has known for
many years - someone with nothing to lose, someone who can
step in with a hatchet and hack away, someone who can then
just walk away from it all and leave the slate clean. He
turned to Scaramucci.
So what does Scaramucci do? He comes in swinging. He fires a
few people to make a quick example. He tells others they can
"resign" right now if they want to - but if not,
they will be fired. Others see what is going on and just up
and quit of their own accord.
That problem CEO, Priebus? Oh, the new "structure" of
the organization puts Scaramucci in direct competition with
Priebus - and Priebus throws up his hands and says
"fine, I'm out of here." And Scaramucci does
it all in a way that is spectacularly visible to draw all
the fire from Trump critics.
So how does it all end? It ends with Trump putting in his new
CEO - the one he probably wanted from day one, but held back
- and the new CEO says "OK, Scaramucci - you are
no longer needed here."
Gen. Kelly now has a clean slate to start fresh - and Scaramucci
takes all the heat. Where the left and never-Trumpers see a
circus freak-show, realists from the business world see a
perfectly executed post-merger hatchet-man job.
The
political wonks see Kelly taking command as the first sane
thing to happen in this administration. They don't
realize they've been played, and played perfectly. And
soon we will likely see some other changes that move the
Executive Branch further towards what Trump has wanted from
day one. And then watch the real swamp-drainer get to work.
It sucks to be Hillary Clinton right now...
Oh, and Scaramucci? He gets a sweet deal out of all this - no
doubt, he and his friend Donald Trump talked it all out
first.
Scaramucci was already facing a nasty divorce that would result in the
liquidation of his business to divide assets. A little-known
law allows people who are legally required to sell a
business as a condition of employment in the Executive
Branch (to prevent conflicts of interest) to defer the taxes
on their profits from the sale.
Scaramucci was going to have to sell his company anyway due to his
pending divorce. Now he and his soon-to-be ex-wife just
saved $80 million in taxes. So don't think for a moment
all this was an unplanned mess that went awry. Scaramucci
and Trump knew exactly what they were doing.
All of this was planned - and foreseen. Not just by me, but by
others as well.
Scott Adams wrote before Trump was inaugurated that, to his
critics, the first year of Trump would be a play in three
acts:
Act One - Trump is literally Hitler.
Act Two - Trump is not literally Hitler, but Trump is
incompetent.
Act Three - Trump is not incompetent, but we don't like his
policies.
We've seen this play out. From election night up through the first
100 days, the left was out rioting and acting as though
Trump taking office was literally the end of Western
Civilization.
But
after 100 days, when Trump had failed to do evil-dictator
things like round up all the brown people and put the gays
into camps and force women to stay home and have babies, it
became farcical to continue the "Trump is Hitler"
narrative.
And so from that 100 day point up until now, it has been the
"Trump is incompetent" game. Look at all the
chaos. Look at all the leaking. Look at all the tweets. Now,
we begin Act Three. With Priebus out and Kelly in, things
will settle down. Pretty soon, all the left will have to say
is "we just don't like Trump's
policies."...Act Three.
And
once that happens, the left is dead. Because, Trump's
policies are policies that most Americans actually agree
with. We should put America first. Build back our economy.
Create jobs. Strengthen the military. Protect the border.
Outside a few densely-populated liberal strongholds like New
York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and - of
course - Washington, D.C., Americans in general agree with
all of this. So when all the left has to say is
"Trump's policies are wrong," the left will
literally be telling most of America, "you people are
stupid."
Trump will win 47 states in 2020. The left will be scratching
their heads and wondering what the hell happened. And
you'll be able to look back and say, "Hey, some of
us told you all this back in 2017."
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Truth or Fiction?
A friend sent this to me and I thought I'd post the whole thing here. Suffice to say, it's rather outlandish. It may be a good fable. Or wishful thinking. Or someone trying to be a wee bit too clever for their own good. But...it might just have some truth in it. What do you think?
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