Trump’s Picks: Rick Perry for Energy

December 13, 2016 Hunter Wallace Politics 77

Jesus Christ.

Donald Trump has picked Rick Perry to be Secretary of Energy. He denounced Trump as a “cancer on conservatism” in the primaries. In his most famous moment on the national political stage, Rick Perry couldn’t remember the Department of Energy which was one of the three departments he wanted to eliminate:

“Donald Trump has selected Rick Perry to be energy secretary, according to two sources directly involved in the transition and selection process.

He had been summoned to Trump Tower for a meeting Monday to discuss the position after having been contacted over the weekend. The meeting was only finalized on Sunday. …

“The third agency of government I would — I would do away with Education, the –Commerce…Commerce and, let’s see. I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry — oops,” he said.

Later in the debate, Perry remembered, “It was the Department of Energy that I was reaching for before.”

Secretary Rick Perry … this pick is symbolic of how I feel about the Trump Cabinet.

1.) On the one hand, I don’t really disagree with Rick Perry on the specific question of energy policy, so I don’t have much to complain about on that front. This happens to be one area where I more or less align with the conservatives. I support fracking, coal mining, offshore drilling, etc. Perry might do a good job here.

2.) On the other hand, the Cabinet suggests that a “conservative-populist” coalition is really going to be conservatism in practice, and that we are returning to the status quo ante of a populism that is “tethered” to conservatism, which is to say, a fake populism of symbolic token gestures that energizes conservatism. The Cabinet is now severely unbalanced and some of these picks (Cohn, Puzder, Bolton) are raising eyebrows.

There was some buzz this morning that Trump is thinking about nominating Carly Fiorina for Director of National Intelligence. It’s getting hard to believe that we have just experienced a populist nationalist revolution when names like Gary Cohn, Andy Puzder, Carly Fiorina, John Bolton, Rick Perry, Nikki Haley, Todd Ricketts and Betsy DeVos are the ones which are being rolled out by Trump Tower.

The bottom line is that thanks to Reince the Trump Cabinet looks more like the Ted Cruz Cabinet or the Marco Rubio Cabinet than what we were expecting. Carly Fiorina is another name which will add to that overwhelming impression.



About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
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77 Comments

  1. When he pulled that about face on Clinton, I was impressed at
    how shameless he was. The Goldman Sachs pick was a big F.U. to the
    Alt-Right and Rick Perry, well he’s just trolling now.

    Have you seen Trading Places? I’m reminded of this scene in particular:

  2. It’s starting to look like, rather than deporting illegals, Trump’s first order of business will be to round up the alt Right.

    Which is something the Left has been saying for a while now.

    • Wait till that anti-Semitism law comes into force. They’ll be closing Alt-Right websites like they’re Twitter accounts.

      • He always said he’d be the Jew’s best friend. With these anti-Semite and anti-Free Press bills going through, he will certainly have the chance to prove that.

        Not sure how we can hold his feet to the fire after Congress has shut down the internet.

        • He’s not going to get re-elected without nationalist support. I don’t think he knows enough about politics to really get it.

      • I view the latest “Shut it Down” attempt as an indication of anti-White desperation. If our memes and presence were not being effective why try to silence them?

      • Not having heard of any prospective ‘anti-semitism’ law, Mr. Jackson, I did a search and could not find anything.

          • Thank you, Mr. Jackson. I did the search, read the link, and can say that it is pretty sickening.

            My opinion is that my daddy’s folk can ‘stamp out anti-semitism’ by getting right with The Lord and by doing right by other people – NOT by repressing people who are outraged at their excesses.

            As a Tarheel of half Jewish blood, I can say that I had zero idea of this stuff, (pre-internet days)the first 40 years of my life.

            Since then, I have been amazed/disgusted/embarrasst to find out that North Carolina has been under heavy Jewish attack my whole life; that, in fact, when anything happens to subvert and supress Tarheel culture, my daddy’s folks either seem to be at it’s forefront, behind it, and or subsidizing it.

            And now folks are supposet to be muzzled shut?

            I think the only solution to this is to heed Prime Minister Natanyahu’s call for all Jews to return home to Israel, for, if they don’t another disastrous chapter in Jewish history is brewing, and justly so.

            There is only but so much Usury and Usurpation a people can take.

  3. My friend, I do believe you’re overreacting to the cabinet choices. Now is not the time to go negative on Trump (and I know you’re not going full-negative… been following you on twitter, so I think I have a pretty good idea where you’re at on all this). It’s exactly what the Leftists want, which is why they try to push “Trump betrays his supporters” stories at every turn. The man has not even been inaugurated yet. The time may come to go full negative on the Trump presidency, but that time is surely not now. You’re a somewhat visible figure on the alt-right– don’t give the left what they want.

    Yes, I don’t particularly like a couple of the selections– Nikki Haley, for instance, though I do think it’s rather humorous that she’s been appointed ambassador to the UN, an organization that is likely to have a tumultuous relationship with Trump. But to complain about someone like Mnuchin is to live in a false reality. Mnuchin is exactly what– and who– Trump promised: he led the Trump campaign’s finance team and was the only name anybody mentioned for Treasury for months. No one could have possibly been caught off-guard by that one: we all know Trump is Jew-friendly anyway (a depressing fact, but a fact nonetheless). Trump just so happens to be tacitly pro-White as well, which is why we’ve rightly latched on to his candidacy. But he’s not anti-Jew, and we all knew this all along.

    The main issue with the negativity towards the cabinet picks is this: who else is there? Like, you keep talking about how Trump is moving away from “populist nationalist” politics, but I ask you.. where are the populist nationalist politicians? Or businessmen? Or public figures?

    Who, specifically, should Trump be appointing to these positions?

    There are two and only two names that we’ve all wanted to see involved: Jeff Sessions and Kris Kobach. That’s it. That’s the list. We were granted our wish with Sessions, and it’s a damn shame Kobach didn’t get Homeland Security, though the guy who did get it– Gen John Kelly– has said some very promising things on the immigration front and seems to be sort of a best-case outside of Kobach. The same can be said for the new Sec. Of State, Tillerson– I mean, this is EXACTLY the sort of guy that Trump promised– a non-politician, ruthless dealmaker type who can better represent the business interests of America abroad. And he seems to be angering the leftists, so that’s promising. Wilbur Ross is another who fits Trump’s mold exactly, and I absolutely love Tom Price for EPA because it’s going to put a huge dent in the “climate change” grift. Gonna need that wall and infrastructure money from somewhere…

    So, again, who should he be naming to these positions? You could say a guy like Steve King or Rohrabacher maybe, but those guys fit the same mold as the current picks in many ways, in that they could just as easily be in the Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush cabinet. I mean, look– Trump ran as a Republican. Of course he’s going to fill some positions with existing Republicans, and it will be the same when he appoints judges and so forth. Could anybody have reasonably expected anything different???? That’s my whole issue with the alt-right criticism of these cabinet selections… there’s never a better alternative list of names put forward, because that list doesn’t exist.

    I’m just glad Romney was left out in the cold. And hopefully the report about Kobach being named deputy HLS are true… we’ll see

    tl;dr I know… but thanks for what you do and keep up the good work. This site deserves more accolades than it gets for the spot-on election coverage over the past 9 months.

    • Let’s run through this:

      1.) Trump is making some major decisions (handing out positions of power, not merely giving a campaign speech) right now that will shape the nature of his administration. Therefore, it reasonable to start grading him. He is bringing on board people who are going to hire a bunch of other people in all the various departments they are charged with running.

      2.) We’re nowhere close to going full negative here. Worried, yes. I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude though. We will know much more after the first 100 days. If Trump appointed someone GOOD like Jeff Sessions, I would be covering him more positively. We were all delighted with Jeff Sessions and Steve Bannon, but we were never going to be happy with the likes of Rick Perry or Carly Fiorina or John Bolton.

      3.) These recent Cabinet picks are the work of Reince, Pence and Kushner. If the reporting is true, the president of Goldman Sachs was picked for National Economic Council because he is a FRIEND of Jared Kushner. Also, we know that Reince as Chief of Staff is pushing hard to stack the Cabinet with his allies and other establishment cronies and is probably blocking other potential nominees.

      4.) I wrote a post about the Mnuchin pick. I believe I said at the time that he is less known for his Goldman Sachs work than for being a longtime Trump associate. I also pointed out he was the campaign’s finance chairman. What disturbs me most about Mnuchin is that he thinks deregulating Wall Street should be at the top of Trump’s agenda even after the catastrophic crash of 2008.

      5.) Sessions for Attorney General, Barletta for Labor and Kobach for Department of Homeland Security would have been a much more balanced Cabinet in our key areas of concern. Instead, we have Sessions and everyone else is a CEO, a general, a Wall Street insider, a conventional Republican, a huge donor or an establishment crony.

      6.) Here are the five most alarming picks:

      – Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs. Remember two months ago when Trump’s closing argument of the campaign was about globalist bankers who had looted the working class.

      – Betsy DeVos, a top Republican donor. Trump spent months hammering Jeb Bush and other candidates for being puppets of the donor class.

      – Todd Ricketts, another top Republican donor whose family financed the leading #NeverTrump Our Principles PAC. He gets rewarded with a Cabinet position.

      – John Bolton, the king of the neocons, who is reportedly going to be Deputy Secretary of State. That hasn’t been confirmed yet, but Trump ran against everything John Bolton stands for in the campaign and now it seems he is being rewarded because Sheldon Adelson wants his guy in the State Department.

      – Andy Puzder, the CEO of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., who is one of the most anti-worker CEOs and biggest corporate cheap labor and amnesty cheerleaders in the United States. Trump won the election by appealing to the White working class and put that guy in charge of the Labor Department. It is a fox guarding the henhouse scenario.

      7.) It’s not that I didn’t expect Trump to pick Republicans or conservatives. I fully expected he would pick some of them, but what has happened is that it is Sessions who has the lone populist/nationalist seat at the table in what appears to be a typical Republican pro-business administration. He has picked a bunch of extreme people while passing over many names like Sheriff Joe, Lou Barletta, Kris Kobach, etc.

      8.) Trump didn’t even pick the conservatives who were most well known for supporting him: Christie, Giuliani, Huckabee, Gingrich. I have issues with all of these people, but what does that say? It says on some level that Trump doesn’t think he needs them anymore.

      At the end of the day, this could still work out. It could be all peachy. All these cucks and globalists who have been picked for the Cabinet could advance Trump’s agenda. Then again, there is a real chance they are going to pursue their own agenda and that is going to have a cumulative impact that we are not going to like.

      By picking Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, and Tom Price, Trump is picking his battles … and he is going to rile the Left up on areas like taxes, the environment, education and healthcare. There is a danger here that Trump will end up advancing the usual conservative agenda, stir up a huge battle with the Left (just like Obamacare from 2009-2010) and that our agenda will be placed on the backburner.

  4. Alright, alright, I confess to having an eternal soft spot for Rick Perry. He’s just too genuine and country for me not to like, at least on a gut personal level.

    You said it yourself, he’s good on the subject Trump chose him for.

    Re: the Goldman guys, here’s what I know. Say what you want about Goldman Sachs, but they are the BEST! They are the creme de la creme of my industry, the finest minds. And I’m confident they will have those skills put to work for us IN THE FRAMEWORK of Trump’s goal to maximize jobs and wages for Americans.

    They’re wearing different hats now. They are fully aware which policies maximize returns for investors and which drive up compensation for our workers. Let’s chill and see what the end product is before we get too concerned about what was said in the primary or whether various team members are circumcised or not.

      • I would suggest you either have faith in Trump, or you don’t.

        Sure, if these cats cook up a plan that does nothing on free trade, disrespects our borders and sovereignty, and generally writes policy that acts as if nothing happened on November 8th but a vote to continue the status quo, you will have every right to be furious.

        But they will be given an assignment: to formulate policies that further Trump’s priorities and not their own. Don’t underestimate the powerful incentive of knowing who can fire you if he doesn’t like your work. Do you really think Trump is unwilling to fire them if they come back to him with a Rubio agenda?

        • All we can do is wait and see.

          I’m going to wait and see how the first 100 days turn out. I’m just saying that I doubt all these cucks and globalists are going to do a volte-face and advance our agenda.

          • I don’t claim to have a crystal ball, and I’m really not trying to be anything but realistic in our expectations given what we “know” about Trump.

            I just see no reason to despair until there is an end product to despair about. Reagan had people who weren’t allies in his administration too, but no one doubted it WAS the Reagan White House.

          • Was there some big racial awakening and defense of White America that kept it from collapsing under the weight of the brown hordes that I wasn’t aware of? Did Reagan institute something like that?

            Fuck Reagan! Fuck Conservatives!

          • Look dude, hold your fire, we have the same goals. I’m not interested in arguing with you about Reagan, you’re missing the point.

            The point is, regardless of the agenda of Reagan’s moderate rivals he allowed to serve in the cabinet, it was REAGAN’S agenda that got implemented, not theirs. I’m arguing these cabinet choices will further Trump’s goals, not their own. That’s all.

          • You’re arguing that Trump is grooming these wild animals, essentially domesticating them and turning them into harmless little pets who don’t piss all over the carpet and tear up the furniture when you let them out of your sight. I wish I didn’t have enough life experience to know better. I wish I could believe in Santa Claus again, because everything seemed much more simple and fun when you could just believe in things that weren’t true.

            It’s my opinion that Trump is the one being groomed and conditioned. No Racial Renaissance came from Reagan. Nothing will come from Trump. He will be NeoCon in less than 2 years.

          • I’m sorry, that doesn’t add up. The man could earn billions, fuck models, and play golf the rest of his life, all by playing nice and acquiescing to globalism. He didn’t have to burn $80 mil of his own cash and handicap his ability to do any new business for himself for a minimum of 4 years, just to gain power for the sake of principles he didn’t really believe in, or to subsequently be brainwashed out of them when he already had the system figured out.

            Maybe your cynicism is justified, but I’d just as soon wait.

      • Basically, Mr. Griffin, JunkBond is telling you what I have been telling you : you cannot effectively run the The Jewish financial engine of The New England Government without the help of expert Jewish racketeering minds.

        Trump will direct them, and they will do his bidding.

        If not, they will be fired.

        Have some faith.

      • Hunter I said this at the beginning and I will say it now. DONALD TRUMP was is and will always be a STEPPING STONE ie Means to an End. The collapse of the US of JEW A is nigh

  5. The second Trump officially takes office, the gloves come off. Everyone he has elevated into his administration will be given a platform and future political relevance; and almost everyone he’s selected is a person who should have been chewed up and spit out in a truly Nationalist/Populist Revolution. What does it matter if these people will answer to Trump if Trump slowly shifts on all of his hardline campaign promises? He’s surrounding himself with people that won’t stop him when(not if) he starts backtracking and getting wishy washy on the major issues that got him elected. Quite the opposite, actually. These people will push him to make those bad decisions and reassure him that backtracking and “evolving” his stances, yet again, will be the best course of action.

    I was skeptical when I saw how Trump was touting the brilliance and superstar status of Priebus, even though Priebus probably had less to do with Trump’s Populist support than others. Now I know why he was verbally fellating Priebus in front of an audience.

    Trump was a stepping stone. Stepping stones are meant to be stepped on. They do you no good if you aren’t stepping on them.

      • Nice to see Leftist Faggots cant stay away from us. I’d like to know how you’re going to oppose us when your faggot wrists are too limp to hold a firearm? Niggers? ROFL Jews? Again a race of cowards backstabbers and faggots

    • Exactly what Ann Coulter warned about, they are all weak links.

      Who are the National-Populists that Trump should pick, thought? What are the options available?

  6. It’s possible Trump feels very vulnerable right now with basically a low level simmering attempted coupe being waged against him since Nov 9th (Trump Riots, Jill Stein recounts, Russia fixed propaganda, electoral college members being intimidated, media freakouts, and his voters being literally beaten in the streets) and feels he need the RNC in his corner and is appeasing them. Running to the general also suggests this.

    • Yes, and not a bad move in general. Slowly squeeze (he potentially has 8 years) and let the other side overreact and make mistakes (eg the CIA Russia thing and the attack on the 1st Amendment).

      We, this movement, has work to do that has little overlap with the government (except on immigration). We don’t necessarily need to hang on Trumps every move.

    • No way. If he felt vulnerable he would have chosen Romney and other safe picks for the cabinet. His choices are all over the board…or seemingly so.

  7. This is good for Texas.

    Perry spoke favorably about secession, thereby moving the overton window.

    Greg Abbott continues that traditional by his push for a convention of states.

    And who would a populist energy sec be? James Howard Kunstler?!

  8. We have to remember Trump is surrounded by enemies, people hostile to him and hostile to our race. The usual suspects have been hounding and harassing him every day since Nov. 9th. We don’t know if he’s cutting these deals freely or under duress. I will suspend judgement until he actually takes office and begins to show his real hand.

  10. Let’s dispel this notion once and for all ( had to use that line just once) that Trump is mean spirited and vindictive.

    It’s becoming more and more obvious that he is trying to build a coalition and make peace with even his harshest critics in order to gain their support and build a coalition.

    Perception was that he is a misogynist so he appointed a number of females to high positions.

    He has also chosen people who are respected by Evangelicals who voted for him in very high numbers.

    Personally, I would rather see him squash Romney, Haley, Ryan and their ilk like bugs, but he wants to do what he thinks is best for the country.

  11. The Department of Energy should be done away with, along with the EPA, HUD and the Dept of Education – for starters. Maybe that’s Trump’s long-term goal? If so it would explain why he’s choosing such underwhelming candidates to head those agencies.

  12. Didn’t Rick Perry say if he was elected, he’d do away with the Dept. of energy?

    Now he’s going to head it?

    Drainin’ the swamp!

    LOL

  13. This is how I will judge the Trump presidency:

    Border Wall – 50%
    Deportation of Illegal Immigrants – 20%
    Trade – 20%
    Everything Else: 10%

    A border wall will do much to secure the border, curb illegal immigration, and indicate that America will no longer be an open border nation. Without that then all else is lost.

    • This is a good paradigm, I’ll weigh in:

      Wall + Deportation = 99%
      Staying out of evil wars 1%
      Everything else 0%

    • Mine would be:
      Ending and reversing illegal immigration by any means he chooses–40%
      Ending the warmongering, aggressive, nation-overthrowing (((foreign policy)))– 40%
      Jobs and trade reform–20%

    • Nope. The Trumpenfuhrer just demanded the names of individual shysters, working on “climate change”. The Dept of Energy Grifters REFUSED.
      They will be CRUSHED

  15. Keep this in mind about Trump: He has no compunction against firing those who screw up or who try to undercut him or who are not standup people. If Perry or others do him wrong or fail to follow Trump’s ideas to make America great again, they’ll be fired in an eyeblink. Trump is the boss. Period.

  18. The interesting thing about Trumps picks is how many of his picks are against the stated purpose of their appointed agency. Perry called for ending the energy department. The EPA guy has a is an anti-environmentalist. The labor guy is anti-labor.

    • ‘Perry called for ending the energy department.’

      Precisely why he is the perfect appointee.

      He will dismantle their loony policies.

  19. It would be nice to be wrong but I’m usually right. It’s my view that Trump is using the alt right in the same way that Obama used the anti-war movement and dumped it shortly after. It’s an appeal to get votes, but like you said, a fake populism that energizes conservatism.

  20. The TrumpenReich Transition Team just “requested” that the Dept of Energy Shysters to provide the names of the con artists working on “climate change”. The Dept of Energy scam artists REFUSED. This is going to be fun.

  22. One of the problems of nationalism for the elites is that it is too mediocritist.

    In the globo age of professionalism and expertise, the talented and powerful seek out the best.

    And the best isn’t contained in any one nation. If anything, most people of any nation range from above-average to average to below-average. Nothing special. While some groups may generally be more talented than other groups, even the most talented group isn’t filled with geniuses. Anglos are smart people, but most Anglos are just average. Even if Anglo average is above-average compared to other peoples, it’s nothing really special.

    In our age of global competition, the super-skilled in many areas — finance, biology, medicine, engineering, computers, entertainment, astronomy, physics, chemistry, etc — have no time for anything but dog-eat-dog competition in their fields. And that means total concentration on the very best in their fields. Since there is no guarantee that the BEST people will be of their own kind, they attract and end up working with the BEST of other races and cultures. They are obsessed with working with the best and superior talent. Companies seek the best and brightest from the world. Research labs want the best. They prefer smart foreign talent to dumb national talent. It’s like sports teams recruit the best regardless of color since a team that only recruited whites will lose to teams with faster blacks.

    So, even though nationalism is often associated with ‘supremacism’, Professionalism is also supremacist and elitist in its own way. Even though meritocracy is open to all peoples, it only favors the talented among the various groups and excludes everyone else. It is the supremacism of raw talent.

    Since the super-talented and smart are in it to win, win, win & defeat the competition and since their edge is based on raw talent regardless of race or nationality, there is little incentive or time for the elites of various fields to identify with or feel much concern for the hoi polloi of their own kind.

    In our professional-centrist world, the elites identify mainly with talent and ability.

    To them, nationalism means a burden and a drag requiring them to identify more with th eless talented of their own kind than with the best and most talented from all over the world. It’s like Yao Ming was pissed when he had to go back to play for the National Team. In the NBA, he was playing with the very best. But when he had to play for the National Team, he griped that he was playing with mediocre Chinese players. He did it out of nationalism, but he found his true calling and excitement in the NBA, the elite basketball organization. For him, nationalism meant loyalty to mediocrity whereas globalism meant his elevation to the very top of the sport.

    So, even though the elites attack nationalism as a ‘supremacist’ and ‘exclusive’ ideology, they disdain it for its populist-mediocritism and intra-inclusionism.

    Elites prefer inter-inclusionism over intra-inclusionism. Intra-inclusionism means the elites should favor and ‘include’ their own kind over others EVEN IF the national talent isn’t as good as foreign talent. Intra-inclusion is exclusive of foreign talent, even the best.

    But then, inter-inclusion, while inclusive of the best of foreign talent, is often exclusive of national talent since it favors best foreign talent over inferior national talent. Either way, there is some kind of inclusion and exclusion.

    As Derbyhshire wrote, inter-inclusion can be damaging not only to nationalism of the host nation but to other nations from which the talent is taken. When West attracts the best of non-western talent, non-West suffers brain drain. It incentivizes the smart people of the Non-West to dream of coming to the West than using their talent to fix and build their own nations. Also, when the best of non-west come to work in the West, they lose connection to their own nations, cultures, and identities.

    In the end, the Zionist model is the only good one for all nations. Israel is open to working with talent from all over the world, BUT the main priority of Israel as a national and political entity is to serve the identity and interests of ALL Jews first and foremost whether smart, average, or dumb. While Israel does goes for some degree of inter-inclusion, its priority is still intra-inclusion in social institutions, culture, and politics.

    It’s fitting that the Jewish story begins with Abraham. Though Moses later presented the laws and David later inspired as political leader, the Jewish people exist in the first place because of the idea of family ties, blood ties, and ethnic inheritance that goes back to the Covenant of the pud before God. Before there is the laws and politics, there must be ethnos of the pud and poon before the Lord. And that element, more than the laws of Moses or political skills of David, is the real basis of Jewish identity that has survived for 3,500 yrs.

    Laws are abstract, and indeed the laws of Moses came to be adopted by non-Jews as well. And even though kingdoms are grand, political systems are come and go, as David’s heirs soon found out. But the ethnic lineage of a people must be maintained if a culture and history are to survive through space and time.

    ===============

  23. “On the other hand, the Cabinet suggests that a “conservative-populist” coalition is really going to be conservatism in practice,”

    Where is Trump going to find National-Populists for these positions? Really, what are the options?

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