SWAMP WATCH – New Edition!

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

President elect Donald Trump is moving swiftly to appoint people to key leadership positions in his new administration, and it appears that he is giving preference to those who supported his Operation Warp Speed military campaign in 2020, and who reportedly received his COVID-19 shots, and encouraged others to get them also.

Here is a quick video summary so far.

Trump Struck a Deal with the Senate

Image source.

President elect Donald Trump visited Washington D.C. today, to ensure that the new Senate Majority leader would be the man he wanted, and would assure him that the Senate would approve the people he wanted in his administration, by agreeing to “recess appointments”, allowing him to install his own appointees without using the Senate confirmation process.

This was published earlier this week:

Trump demands Senate Republicans allow recess appointments as they elect new leader

Washington — As Senate Republicans prepare to vote Wednesday on new leadership for the upcoming Congress, President-elect Donald Trump is already weighing in with demands for the new majority leader regarding his Cabinet.

After a decisive victory in the 2024 elections, Trump is returning to the White House with a GOP-led Senate at his side. Senate Republican leaders are expected to ease the way for the president-elect’s agenda and his Cabinet and judicial nominees.

Trump has made it clear that he’d like his nominees to be installed immediately, suggesting that he may want the option to bypass the Senate’s advice and consent role entirely.

Perhaps the biggest factor remaining in the leadership race is whether Trump himself weighs in on the candidates. On Sunday, he stepped into the conversation, demanding in a Truth Social post that anyone seeking the position as leader “must agree to Recess Appointments.”

Recess appointments enable a president to temporarily install nominees without the Senate confirmation process. Trump argued in a post on social media that without recess appointments, “we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.”

The Constitution’s Recess Appointment Clause grants presidents the ability to “fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate.”

The maneuver is considered to be a way to make swift appointments during the Senate’s absence, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, which notes that recess appointments have also been used for political reasons — for instance, to make an appointment on a temporary basis for an individual who would not be confirmed by the Senate. (Source.)

This news thrilled the MAGA crowd, because they saw it as a chance for Trump to get more “MAGA” people into his administration who would not otherwise have been able to be confirmed by the Senate, such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

They were positive that Trump was going to make sure Senator Tim Scott was going to get that position, because Elon Musk and RFK Jr. told them so.

Well, it didn’t happen.

Much to the dismay of the MAGA crowd, Trump apparently wanted Senator John Thune instead, and he is now the new leader of the Senate.

Here’s how the pro-Trump ZeroHedge News reported it:

RINOs Keep Senate As Thune Beats Rick Scott To Replace McConnell

President Trump’s mandate just got a little more complicated, as longtime never-Trumper John Thune (R-SD) was just elected Senate majority leader, setting the stage for him to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the longest-serving GOP leader who has held the top spot for the past 18 years.

Thune, the Senate GOP whip and the #2 ranking member since 2019, largely managed operation of the Senate floor since McConnell suffered a concussion in 2023.

As Axios notes, Thune’s win “is a victory for the post-Trump establishment,” as he’s “not a natural, true-believer Trump guy like Rick Scott and his supporters are.”

Several of Trump’s most prominent supporters, including Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and RFK Jr. had endorsed Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) in the race.

John Cornyn, an underdog to Thune, ended up finishing in a close second.

Needless to say, things just got more complicated for MAGA… (Source.)

All of this is unfolding today as I write, so I have not had a chance to see how the MAGA folks are going to frame this one, but you can be sure that they will believe that Thune is pulling this off by himself, defying Trump, and he will become the new enemy of the MAGA folks who will now blame him for everything Trump cannot deliver and that he promised in his campaign lies.

That’s because they don’t understand how Washington D.C. actually works.

They foolishly believe that the “elected” politicians in D.C. are there to represent their constituents, but in fact they are there to make deals, and become rich and powerful.

This is actually a brilliant political move by Trump, no doubt orchestrated by Susie Wiles, so that if they actually don’t want someone approved, they can just let Thune handle it.

Is it a coincidence that the House race has still been up in the air until today, with some Democrats stating just a couple of days ago that they still saw a “path to victory” to take control of the House, but now today, about the same time that Thune was voted in as Senate Majority Leader, everyone seems to be calling the House race now admitting that the Republicans will remain in control?

Because now it doesn’t matter that the Republicans control both the House and the Senate, as they now have a backstop in the Senate with Thune.

Trump has a LOT of people to pay back for getting him elected, and now he can get rid of the ones he actually doesn’t like and doesn’t want, by throwing up his hands and saying: “Sorry! The Senate won’t approve you.”

Look for Pete Hegseth of Fox News, who has been named as the Secretary of Defense, to be the first one thrown under the bus this way, as I seriously doubt that the Pentagon and military industrial complex will let this guy get into that position.

Trump Saving the Last Two Picks for Last Because They will be so Controversial?

Scott Bessent, founder and chief executive officer of Key Square Group LP, at an interview during the Republican National Convention (RNC) near the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. Former President Donald Trump tapped JD Vance as his running mate, elevating to the Republican presidential ticket a venture capitalist-turned-senator whose embrace of populist politics garnered national attention and made him a rising star in the party. Photographer: Vincent Alban/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Source.

Two cabinet positions that have yet to be filled will possibly be the most controversial appointments by Trump.

One is the Secretary of the Treasury, where Elon Musk and others in Silicon Valley are hoping to get someone who is friendly towards cryptocurrency.

Of course, “friendly towards cryptocurrency” is probably defined differently by Wall Street Billionaires than by Silicon Valley Billionaires.

Wall Street may be said to be “crypto” friendly, because they want to make money off it, but not as a currency, but as an asset.

Larry Fink would be a perfect example, who is making $MILLIONS if not $BILLIONS by getting the SEC to approve his cryptocurrency ETFs.

Elon Musk and others in Silicon Valley want to replace banks with Fintech and cryptocurrencies.

The leading candidate at this point to become the Secretary of the Treasury is Scott Bessent, a Wall Street hedge fund manager.

The MAGA folks will certainly not like this guy either. Here is his bio from Wikipedia:

Scott Bessent (born 1962) is an American investor and hedge fund manager. He is the founder of Key Square Group, a global macro investment firm.

In November 2024, after Donald Trump won the US presidential election, Reuters reported that Bessent was being considered for the position of Treasury Secretary by the incoming Trump administration.

Bessent was born in Conway, South Carolina. He attended Yale College, graduating in 1984.

While at Yale, Bessent wrote for The Yale Daily News, was president of Wolf’s Head Society and treasurer for the class of 1984.

Bessent resides in Charleston, South Carolina. Bessent is a supporter of Donald Trump and was a co-chair at a Republican fundraiser for the former President in Palm Beach, Florida.

Bessent and his husband, former New York City prosecutor John Freeman, have two children. (Source.)

So a gay Wall Street hedge fund manager who has two children with his husband, who are obviously trafficked from their biological parents, because regardless of what you read in the media two gay men cannot produce children, and who is a Yale graduate.

It is hard to imagine anyone more “swampy” than that!

And then there is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, where Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is the darling of the MAGA crowd, is expecting to be appointed.

But the corporate media is already casting doubt that this appointment will come true, stating, among other things, that he could never pass FBI clearance for such a job.

However, even if Robert F. Kennedy does get some kind of position in the Trump White House, does anyone seriously believe that ANYONE who is part of the Kennedy family is NOT part of the “Deep State”??

Last year when I saw that RFK, Jr. had met with former CIA director Mike Pompeo, as Kennedy revealed in a Tucker Carlson interview, I suspected that he was being vetted for any government position, since he was still running for president at the time.

Here is a clip that appeared recently of an interview where Kennedy talks about a “strange dinner” he had with Pompeo, Hillary Clinton, Boris Johnson, and others. (Can you get more “swampy” than that??)

As you watch this, notice how he does not respond to the question asked as to who arranged this meeting, as he tries to convince the audience that Mike Pompeo is now actually a “good guy” who wants to clean up the CIA, because he didn’t do it the first time when he was the director of the CIA.

Donald Trump is filling the Swamp back up, and now he has the correct leader in the Senate to block any appointments he really does not want, and only made to pay back people who supported him during the campaign, but have no real chance to have any kind of meaningful position in his administration.

MAGA!