Is Nothing Happening? Or is Trump is Channeling Sun Tzu?

By Brian C. Joondeph

I’m impatient, as I expect most American Thinker readers are as well. We have been promised a coming storm that will be biblical, or a Kraken released on Deep State conspirators. Despite Attorney General Barr acknowledging spygate as “one of the greatest travesties in American history,” there has not yet been a reckoning.

A mid-level FBI attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, pled guilty to falsifying a document which became one of the lynchpins of a FISA warrant on Carter Page and subsequent spying on Donald Trump and his campaign, but he has yet to be sentenced. His co-conspirators are writing books, teaching at prestigious universities, and bashing President Trump on cable news shows.

A presidential election was stolen, and Trump’s own executive agencies say ho-hum, roll over, and go back to sleep. The same FBI that sent 15 agents to investigate a garage door handle that Bubba Wallace claimed was a noose, can’t seem to find any reason to investigate a host of election irregularities.

Republican members of Congress, who happily rode Trump’s coattails to their elections, are telling him to “accept the results” and “move on,” oblivious to the fact that if they get their wish, their party will become as irrelevant as the Green Party. Media stalwarts that were once “fair and balanced,” have tilted to the left, becoming “unfair and unhinged,” rivaling the standard left-wing cable news gabfests.

Perhaps more is going on than I can see, but what is visible to 75 million Trump supporters, those who have endured ridicule and scorn for supporting their president, is that nothing is happening. This is Trump’s administration and he’s the boss. He hires and fires, just as he did in the real estate development world and on “The Apprentice.”

The buck stops with him. If nothing is happening, then that’s on him. Is he flailing away in a vain attempt to win a second term? After all that he has been through and overcome, not only to get elected in 2016, but also to stay in office for four years, accomplishing more in one term than most presidents do in two, is he about to lose it all to a senile grifter no more qualified to be president of the United States than a manager at a bowling alley?

At one level it sure seems that way. The clock is ticking with important electoral dates breezing by, getting ever closer to the final date of Jan. 20? On the other hand, President Trump may be playing a different game, one not obvious to most observers, certainly not the media or even his supporters.

Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general and strategist, author of a treatise on military strategy known as “The Art of War.” Trump is a fan, as this book which made his short list of “best leadership books.” Trump quoted Sun Tzu in this 2012 tweet, long before Twitter was fact-checking his every utterance and attaching warnings and disclaimers to each tweet.

Image credit: YouTube screengrab

Can Sun Tzu’s ancient wisdom and strategy explain the current apparent “nothing is happening” perception for those who, like myself, are becoming increasingly impatient over “all hat and no cattle” promises coming from Team Trump? Is Trump following the Sun Tzu battle plan? Look at some of his quotes.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

If Trump has a master plan, it’s safe to assume that few outside his small inner circle know anything about it. An example would be Secretary of Defense Chris Miller speaking to Vice President Mike Pence, thanking him for “his steady hand and leadership” during “some of the [most] complex military operations this country’s ever conducted.”

Why haven’t we heard of such operations? Or were they “dark and impenetrable as night”? And executed, like “a thunderbolt”? This is not faint praise. Pence is not a military guy, but Miller certainly is, a former special forces operator and commander. Miller was close to tears acknowledging Pence’s assistance and leadership. Something is happening.

All warfare is based on deception.

Trump is a master of chaos, with strategic media leaks and disinformation. Is VP Pence a white hat or a black hat? The SecDef says Pence is a white hat. Attorney Lin Wood says Pence is a black hat. What about the rest of Trump’s inner circle – Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone – friends or foes? Patrick Byrne calls them serpents. Trump hired them and keeps them on. Deception and confusion. Classic Sun Tzu.

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.

Trump tweets in one direction and signs executive orders in another direction. He complains about the GOP Senate while hundreds of conservative judges are confirmed by the same senate. He creates chaos then uses the opportunity to advance his agenda. Trump distracts the media with tweets and comments and while they are in meltdown mode, he is running circles around them.

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Has Trump gone to war against the Democrats and the left? Did he send in the military to reclaim American cities under siege by Antifa and BLM? Has he declared martial law, as the Twitterverse assured us he would? Or has Trump gamed this out, knowing electoral fraud was coming when he signed the 2018 executive order regarding election interference?

Has Trump already won, now waiting for the optimal time to go to war? The defeated left has been at war with Trump for six years, unsuccessful in their efforts to win? And finally,

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

As of yet, there has been no storm, no Kraken. Trump has followed the Constitution, making legal arguments up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court. What Vice President Pence does when it is time to again follow the Constitution and certify the Electoral College votes is to be determined.

Will a massive declassification of criminal and seditious activities subdue the Democrats? Will Trump win without a bloody battle? Time will tell.

At this point, it’s a binary choice. Either Trump is in over his head and will be dragged out of office. Or he is executing his plan, on his terms and timing, as he has done since his famous escalator ride at Trump Tower in 2015.

Trump knows the stakes for himself, his family, and America if Kamala Harris and Joe Biden get the keys to the kingdom and promptly hand them over to China. Want to bet against Trump? How has that worked out in the past?

Ponder these words from Trump’s inspiration, Sun Tzu,

He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.

Mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy.

He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.

Is Trump unprepared? Au contraire. Listen to Oprah interviewing him in 1988, more than thirty years ago. He looks younger but sounds the same as he does now, speaking of China, immigration, and electoral politics. Trump has been preparing for this moment most of his adult life.

Buckle up for an interesting few weeks ahead.