novembre 8, 2024 - 1:15pm
Un consultant politique au passé marqué par la fourniture de faveurs gouvernementales aux intérêts corporatifs et aux agents étrangers est sur le point de devenir l’une des figures les plus puissantes de la Maison Blanche.
Dans sa première grande décision de personnel depuis la victoire électorale de mardi, Donald Trump a annoncé que Susie Wiles serait son nouveau chef de cabinet. Wiles est une opératrice influente, ayant passé sa carrière dans les sphères de l’establishment républicain, de ses collaborations avec le représentant Jack Kemp à son rôle au sein des campagnes Bush-Quayle et de la candidature présidentielle de Mitt Romney en 2012. Plus récemment, elle a été, avec Chris LaCivita, l’une des stratèges en coulisses de la campagne réussie de Trump, rendant ainsi sa nomination attendue.
Cependant, ce n’est pas seulement son rôle dans la campagne qui pourrait susciter des inquiétudes parmi les partisans espérant que le président élu tiendra ses promesses de « America First ». En effet, Wiles est la co-présidente de Mercury Public Affairs, l’un des plus grands cabinets de lobbying des États-Unis. L’entreprise compte de nombreux clients dont les intérêts sont souvent en contradiction avec plusieurs aspects de l’agenda de Trump. Au cours de l’année dernière, son registre a inclus Kraft Heinz et Nestlé, fabricants de produits alimentaires ultra-transformés qui seront en désaccord avec les «réformes» promises de santé publique «Make America Healthy Again» des agences de santé publique. Selon des formulaires déposés auprès du Congrès, Wiles est directement enregistrée en tant que lobbyiste pour la société de tabac Swisher International sur des questions liées aux «régulations de la FDA».
La aliste des clients de Mercury inclut des géants tels qu’AT&T, Airbnb, eBay, Archer Daniels Midland, ainsi que de nombreuses autres grandes entreprises. Toutefois, c’est probablement le lobbying étranger de l’entreprise qui suscitera les plus grandes préoccupations.
Mercury représente actuellement l’État du Qatar, lla compagnie pétrolière nationale de Libye, et trois grandes entreprises chinoises : JinkoSolar, Hikvision USA et Alibaba. Ces entreprises ont été confrontées à des tarifs américains et à d’autres restrictions. Hikvision, en particulier, a subi des sanctions renforcées sous l’administration Biden, en raison d’allégations selon lesquelles ses caméras de surveillance sont utilisées pour violer les droits de l’homme et pour des fins militaires.
Les dépôts d’éthique révèlent que les lobbyistes de Mercury ont travaillé cette année sur le dossier Hikvision pour contacter le Département d’État et le Département du Trésor, probablement dans le but de lever certaines restrictions. Bien qu’il existe des milliers de lobbyistes à Washington, une entreprise disposant d’une ligne directe vers la présidence et d’une longue histoire d’influence sur la politique étrangère — en échange de compensations financières — concernant la Chine n’est en rien la norme.
Considérons le cas de ZTE, une grande entreprise de télécommunications chinoise considérée comme une menace pour la sécurité nationale en raison des craintes qu’il fournisse aux services de renseignement chinois un accès clandestin à des réseaux de communication vitaux à travers le monde. En avril 2018, l’administration Trump a agi pour freiner de manière décisive la croissance de ZTE en lui interdisant d’acheter des équipements fabriqués aux États-Unis. Cette action marquait le début d’une confrontation mondiale anticipée avec l’industrie des télécommunications chinoise.
En réponse, ZTE a engagé Mercury pour un montant de 75 000 $ par mois afin de revenir sur la décision. L’un des principaux lobbyistes de la campagne était Bryan Lanza, un ancien membre de l’équipe de campagne de Trump en 2016 qui travaille comme partenaire dans la firme. Les dossiers montrent qu’il a rapidement commencé à contacter des responsables de la Maison Blanche et des sanctions au nom de ZTE.
Lanza et Eric Branstad — le fils de l’ambassadeur de Trump en Chine, Terry Branstad — se sont également rendus en Chine le mois suivant. Cette réunion serait restée secrète si des responsables chinois n’avaient pas choisi de la rendre publique. La China Development Research Foundation, un groupe lié au Département du travail unifié du Parti communiste chinois et œuvrant à étendre l’influence politique de la Chine à l’étranger, a publié des photos de la délégation de Lanza de juin 2018.
Dans un geste qui a surpris de nombreux observateurs, Trump a tweeté en mai de cette année-là qu’il envisageait de reconsidérer les restrictions et qu’il négocierait un accord pour les assouplir. « Le président Xi de Chine et moi travaillons ensemble pour offrir à la grande entreprise de télécommunications chinoise, ZTE, une voie rapide pour reprendre ses activités », a-t-il écrit. « Trop d’emplois perdus en Chine. » En juillet 2018, le Département du Commerce est revenu sur sa position et a levé l’interdiction sur ZTE.
Pour certains proches de Trump, l’élévation de Wiles, qui a précédemment fait du lobbying au nom d’autres intérêts étrangers, y compris un parti politique nigérian, ressemble à un déjà vu. John Kelly, un ancien général du Corps des Marines, était une figure de l’establishment qui a également traversé la porte tournante et a siégé dans les conseils d’administration de plusieurs entrepreneurs de la défense. Il s’est ensuite retourné contre Trump, l’accusant d’être un fasciste qui gouvernerait comme un dictateur.
« Il faudra entre six et douze mois, et Trump réalisera qu’il se fait encore manipuler par son propre chef de cabinet », m’a confié un ancien membre de l’équipe de campagne de Trump, qui a souhaité rester anonyme. « Et ensuite, il tentera de corriger le tir. Mais d’ici là, vous savez, il sera trop tard. »
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SubscribeUniversities need to run their own campuses, which includes permitting protest activity and not permitting it. Given the interest, which I’m sure is genuine, taken by JD Vance in free speech, universities and organisations like FIRE should seek a meeting with the VP to urge him to tell Trump to calm down. Vance in turn should tell the universities to do their job in which case the President won’t be annoyed by occasional outrageous behaviour on campuses.
The constitution gives you the right to peacefully assemble. It does not give you the right to harass or disrupt the normal operation of a college campus. Universities can set rules as well as time and places for those that want to protest. No one has a right to cover their face at a protest
Yes – This is why many UnHerd readers and writers for that matter are Classically Liberal and nonpartisan… It’s not about who, it’s about what….
Where did the writer get the kooky idea there is free speech on American campuses? You toe the hard lefty line or pay the consequences in grades and hiring.
> if a protest devolves into violence and property destruction, you don’t have an “illegal protest”:
You’re it was first but mostly peaceful protest when it was for approved social justice causes. Of course when truckers were protesting about their livelihood being stripped from them then it was an “illegal protest” and “treason”.
Now that they don’t control all of the branches of government it seems that now these leftists really care about the freedom of speech. Go kick an egg.
Do we think the marches in London with Palestinian flags are protests ?
Do we think hammering on doors and using loudhailers to drown out speakers in Universities are “protests ” ?
I dont
At least in the UK universities are a heavily subsidised middle class perk that we can no longer afford. We need to return to a system under which only the most academically talented students are subsidised. The Desmond fodder can learn how to unblock a u-bend instead.
And this, Greg, is merely one more example of why the US Government should never have been in the business of funding Universities. Nor funding progressive NGOs that have been the ‘muscle’ behind progressive’s “Cancel Culture” cult-like movement. Nor should the government be providing any funding or vouching for any other quasi-governmental organization, such as Fannie and Freddie Mac that, coupled with Congress’s ‘Affordable Housing’ marketplace demands (in the 1990s), led banks/investment institutions to follow Congress’s demands and inevitably push America into the Great Recession.
Here’s hoping Trump clears up most of this by significantly reducing the size of the government so that, going forward, government officials that think they’re Emperors don’t tyrannize innocent Americans anymore. This has been happening for well over a decade, and too many organizations and Social Activists get their funding by suckling off the government teat (that’s racking up debt), rather than doing the hard work of learning how to be actual productive members of society.
It requires bravery or self interest to venture fully in to support for one side or the other in this existential war. There are rights and wrongs on both sides, on that of the protestors and that of the Zionists. Doxxing, imprisonment, assault, denying employment and racist harassment are part and parcel of the present university space. Higher education is no longer an island and students need to factor this in to their protests. Go full on and risk the consequences or complete one’s education. I did the latter in the seventies and don’t regret it for one moment. Then again I was not rich nor connected for future elevation by the participants. Keep it simple students.
This is conspicuously an issue affecting elite universities. Their students are pampered, privileged brats. Their endowments are scandalously large, reason enough to question why they should be subsidized by taxpayers at all. Few schools outside the Ivies and California have had significant problems dealing with differences of opinion on contentious issues. These schools have had because they have engendered an intolerant mindset and a lack of the true liberality they pretend to represent.
In the US it’s not just the elite universities, but virtually all of them.
As I understand it, experts agree that a protest staged by lefty students in which crimes are committed and property destroyed is called a “mostly peaceful protest.”
Experts also agree that any protest staged by “far-right” racist sexist homophobes ia called an “armed insurrection.”
I think this is largely a disagreement about semantics. What Trump calls an unlawful protest you want to call a riot. While I would agree that peaceful protests should be allowed, campaigns of harassment, death threats, and even physical assaults on conservative voices on college campuses have to stop, and I think yourselves and President Trump agree on that.
Hamas must be destroyed and Palestinians left free of their terror. Islam has no place in Western societies and all mosks must be closed. If Islam withdraws it stated intent to destroy Israel and It’s annihilation of the Jews then it may be seen as a peaceful cult. Until then, Islam is the enemy of the free world.
The right-wing free speech mob shuts up and sidles off, tail between legs, when their Israeli masters tell them exactly what the limits are to the ‘free speech’ they were fighting for…. smh
Remember guys, if it’s college kids protesting Palestinian women and children being bombed to a pulp by the IDF with Western-supplied weapons… it’s “iLLegAL pR0tEsTs”.
Trump is being forced into this position by his AIPAC handlers who know how bad it looks when every college campus in the country is rightly outraged over the genocide happening on livestream. The youth naturally recognize and are shocked by what they see. After being educated for a few years, reading Unherd, and watching Triggernometry, maybe they’ll be as smart as you fine gentlemen, and realize that Netanyahu is a good master, and that free speech is only free when it’s your side that gets to define it.
“And schools that attempt to comply are likely to crack down on both protected and unprotected speech. This is exactly what happened when the Obama and Biden administrations revise
d federal Title IX guidance,”
Oh to watch the Progressive waking up and smelling the coffee! Maybe, just maybe, the odd ‘liberal’ could and should have found the behaviours of the Obama and Biden administrations objectionable. Then they might be in a position to protest now. But they didn’t. And Middle America sees their objections now as trying to apply double standards against the president they elected.
There’s a good opinion piece on the NY post about this
Unlike this piece it’s straight to the point : Potus should not interfere with private institutions
That he has comes both as a relief and as a worry.
The headline news shouldn’t be Trump: it should be the governance of these institutions, accountability, equality in front of the law. That it has come to Potus to sort this shit out is regrettable. Unpleasant. Potentially dangerous.
Sure.
Only themselves to blame. Shame on them.
(Vague echo to the Ukrainian crisis ?)
Institutions that have accepted billions in taxpayer money are only nominally “private”. A solution is to do exactly as Trump threatens and fully return them to their private status. All of the schools in question are obscenely rich with endowments of stunning valuation, a fact all the more scandalous in view of how many of their students are buried under the weight of loans to pay their tuitions. Higher education has become a grift that dwarfs the Bernie Madoff scheme.
Violence and intimidation are not speech, much less protected speech.
Generally agree Greg. The problem is his definition of “protest.” What Trump is trying to describe as an “Illegal Protest” is not actually a “Protest.” He’s trying to make the case that using intimidation to monopolize public spaces can’t be tolerated.
Public spaces are by definition “inclusive spaces.” If one group takes over a space through intimidation they are creating an “exclusive space” and effectively censoring everyone else. Occupying a building is not a Protest, its more likely a Public Trespass that the universities are not enforcing out of fear. Its a category error.
Does that logic of occupying a building apply to January 6th then? i.e. was that occupation legal or not?
Obviously since many were indiscriminately put in prison for years. The question for you is whether the January 6th punishment standards should apply to Left Wing building occupiers?
And not just any old buildings – the occupation of US federal and state government buildings has been a proud centerpiece of Leftists movements – with bragging rights – for well over 50 years (i.e. since the 1960s). It was always considered ‘cool’ when Leftists did it (and, because of this, such acts rarely make the news anymore), but it’s considered ‘insurrection’ when those on the Right do it. I recall reading an article about the Left’s occupation of a US federal building that occurred merely months after January 6, with only a few news organizations reporting on it.
I say tolerating the occupation of any federal or state building was a bad idea from the beginning. It should have been binned, along with all of the bell bottoms and ‘flower power’ tee-shirts that quickly fell out of fashion, back in the 1970s.
Everyone’s in agreement that breaking the law is illegal.
People are worried that any kind of protest against Israel’s war crimes will be outlawed/made very ‘expensive’.
I suspect you’re part of the problem rather than the solution.
Well said, Mr. Bone.
“… when talking about arresting people for their expression, a little precision is in order.”
This is the problem with Trump. He says stupid stuff all the time. It gives ammunition to his enemies. Although I don’t think Trump is the great defender of free speech, he’s soooo much better than the previous administration.
“Stupid stuff”.He tends to say what an awful lot of people are thinking. And unlike most career politicians he’s not the least afraid of the wailing of his enemies. Why should he be? He’s wealthy, doesn’t even take his salary, this is the end of his brief career in politics, he’s survived everything the left has thrown at him (even multiple threats to his life), and he has the possibility of becoming the most consequential US president since Reagan. Not a bad way for a chap to wind down a life, I think.