Do you remember this moment during the 2015 republican presidential debates when all of the candidates were on stage and leading control outlet Fox News (Bret Baier) purposefully asked the candidates:
…”is there anyone on stage, unwilling tonight, to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the republican party, and pledge to not run an independent campaign against that person. Again, we are looking for you to raise your hand now if you won’t make that pledge tonight.”
[The moment in video is here] The need for control is a reaction to fear. The question was intentionally constructed to create both an optic and a narrative Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and the republican party were purposefully shaping. Collectively the professional republicans were desperately afraid Donald Trump would run as an independent candidate.
I bring us back to that moment because it is the key to understand where we are even today. This was the core of the matter. This is the “trillions at stake” aspect. This is the economics of the thing as it first manifest.
Why did Donald J Trump stand against them all?
For many years before that moment, a small group of us had been outlining why it was urgent for MAGAnomics to take charge of the U.S. economy; because underneath both wings of the UniParty in Washington DC was a system that few understood.
♦ Prior to 2016, the United States Chamber of Commerce (U.S CoC), a private K-Street lobbying consortium, were the negotiators for every single trade deal done from the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
The U.S. government (USTR, POTUS and Congress) was the trade stakeholder who signed the agreements; however, the actual nuts and bolts of what the trade deal included, the terms and conditions, were negotiated by the US CoC.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce represented the corporate interests of their Wall Street clients. After all, the corporations paid the CoC and the business model of the CoC is dependent on the corporations.
This is the larger background for how decades of trade agreements ended up with offshoring, the Rust Belt, diminished domestic manufacturing, and increased corporate profits. This is the core mechanics of how a U.S. manufacturing economy was shifted to a “service driven economy.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was writing the trade deals. The CoC would then fund the politicians who would approve the trade deals. The CoC would also finance the presidential candidates.
When President Trump ran for office in 2016, his trade, manufacturing and economic policies were against the interests of the entire business network that controlled trade. The U.S. CoC poured money into Hillary Clinton’s campaign and their main GOP partner in the enterprise, Mitch McConnell.
When Trump won the election, he completely shut out the CoC from any involvement in U.S. trade negotiations. Trump literally put himself, Wilbur Ross, and Robert Lighthizer in control.
The CoC was apoplectic but powerless to stop this action. CoC President Tom Donohue could not even get an appointment to see President Trump in the White House.
The only thing the CoC and Tom Donohue could do was to fund anyone who would assist them in removing the existential threat that Trump represented. That’s what they did.
With the CoC removed from influence, President Trump, Wilbur Ross and Robert Lighthizer began the painstaking process of taking the Wall Street profit tentacles off U.S. trade policy.
In essence, President Trump put the interests of the American citizens back into the top priority of the U.S. govt, as it pertained to the biggest of all big picture items, the U.S. economy. That’s why in 2018 and 2019 the U.S. economy was on fire with growth.
All of that MAGAnomic background remained in place when President Trump retook control in 2025, and now we are starting to see the positive economic effects again resurface. However, that collective UniParty opposition still remains, albeit significantly diminished by the refusal of President Trump to move away from America-first policy.
The core of the opposition to all of President Trump’s actions, remains almost exclusively an outcome of the economics of policy the DC system no longer controls. It’s about the money. It will always be about the money. The division we are encountering in the MAGA ranks, is specifically driven by those same financial interests who opposed candidate Donald Trump a decade ago.
When it came to trade policy, economic policy, tariff policy and the confrontation with China, there was not one iota of difference between any of the 17 republican candidates in that 2016 election.
There was not one degree of divergence from the traditional corporate economic policy of the 30 years that preceded that moment on stage. Every one of the republican candidates aligned with the CoC message.
♦ CTH had previously identified our assembly as “The Last Refuge” specifically because there was no information space, no website, no organized group, no podcast, no functional assembly who understood the basic problem and simultaneously rejected the noisy pontificating baseline notion that our status was doomed to remain as a “service driven economy.”
We rejected that notion here. So too did Donald J Trump, and subsequently we championed him.
His intention in this MAGAnomic regard has never wavered, flinched or diminished. President Trump has focused on delivering real, actionable economic benefits due to a radically shifted policy approach toward jobs, trade and the underlying blue-collar economy.
As President, Donald Trump has never stopped being Main Street First in all policy outcomes.
What we are witnessing now with the division, derision and conflict goes right back to that original set of policy distinctions.
In 2016 we did not use the term “influencers,” but they existed inside every team for every republican candidate. Dick Cheney’s daughter worked for Ben Carson. Mark Levin’s son worked for Ted Cruz. The daughter of Fox News Executive Producer for Political Content, Bill Sammon, worked for Marco Rubio.
All of those campaigns and every person in the professional republican apparatus that worked inside those campaigns had one very unique thing in common, they all adhered to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce constructs of economic policy.
Not a single candidate ever mentioned China as a strategic economic threat until Donald Trump kept hammering it. Not a single Republican ever said economic security was national security, until Donald Trump made it core policy.
Remember this core difference when you see all of these voices who backbite, bitch, complain and protest that Donald Trump is not focused enough on American interests; it’s bullshit. It is all bullshit.
Not a single republican candidate ever cared about any of this stuff until Donald J Trump made it his mission in life to fundamentally restructure the economics of everything. This is still his primary focus, and if you watch him work you will see it unfold in the outcomes of every single policy, even the foreign policy engagements.
President Trump is delivering a global shift, a multigenerational shift, in the return of U.S. power and financial WEALTH to our nation. And, he’s unbelievably good at it.
MAGAnomics! The rest is just noise.
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By the way, regarding that Brett Baier video linked above…..interesting comments made in it by Rand Paul. Just a reminder……
Two-faced; like so many others who claim to be fiscal conservatives.
“Remember this core difference when you see all of these voices who backbite, bitch, complain and protest that Donald Trump is not focused enough on American interests; it’s bullshit. It is all bullshit.”
I will remember.
We all see the occasional passive aggressive comment here about how great things will be when Trump finally brings his focus back to the USA… gas is still too high, etc. They usually include the derogatory “Zionist” term in there somewhere as well.
For anyone legitimately confused as to how these fronts are all interwoven, keep reading The Conservative Frathouse 😉… we’re all students here. I used to be All Bush All the Time before this site.
I am Grateful he is our President , he won the last 3 presidential elections. People should be able to realize they are lucky to have this man represent us all.
This is why this is his THIRD TERM overall (1 corporate, 2 Republic)
Understatement of the day….where would we be without him? Goodness!
Luck has nothing to do with it. PDJT is a blessing.
Sundance one of your best writings in sometime. Not that your others are bad, they’re very informative but a lot of threads to follow and necessarily complex. The DC economic system and Trump’s America first policy is very simple and fundamental for folks to understand. It’s fundamental to our existence and fundamental to the decline in our once great American industrial base and most importantly the generations of Americans that for lack of a better word got ‘economically ruined’. Great piece, nail on the head, succinct and brass tacks explanation. Thank you.
“The DC economic system and Trump’s America first policy is very simple and fundamental for folks to understand.”
I usually link these articles to friends/family – this one I actually *pasted* so everyone would read as I actually felt same as you did!
rejected the noisy pontificating baseline notion that our status was doomed to remain as a “service driven economy.”
… also known as:
America doesn’t MAKE anything anymore
America makes pizzas and pole dancers
I had been fuming for years about America becoming a “service economy” . . .
and then there was “cursive” and I have been here since!
You’re so right…I can feel the patriotism from Sundance…goosebumps 🇺🇸🗽
I was in the Naval War College 1980 when John Kenneth Galbraith was guest speaker. My strongest impression at that time was that he made a major prediction that the US was going to shift from an industrial economy to service economy. He even said we were going to more eventually resemble Italy in terms of output. Tragically laughable…but the joke was on us. The country was saved when DJT came down the elevator in 2016. Thank you sir for your attention to this matter!
Galbraith also wrote an article in the ny times magazine in the 70s and stated that there were no problems that NYC couldn’t fix if the nyc budget was twice what it was. After that the nyc budget has since quadrupled and have more problems than ever.
JKG was a complete ass.
Absolutely! And I would suggest here that even this engagement with Iran…is America First policy, connects to everything else he is doing….including Venezuela and the others that are to come…..connects to the election fraud of 2020…..and many will not be able to see…or connect these dots until this becomes hindsight for them!
And it’s actually more about our real enemy….who has pretended through the years to be our greatest ally.
They do the same thing the rat repubs do! Pretend they are with us…while making deals against us in backrooms!
The home grown ones and whoever is paying them…
In my book, they are even more dangerous.
(No photos of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie I regret to say.)
I hope someone puts this meme of John Thune on his social media accounts.
Miss Betsy, the memes you post make me wish I had the money to put the memes on billboards all across DC, NVA and the hometowns of all the republicans who are working against their own voters.
I wish someone would, too, Blanche 👍🏻 👍🏻 👍🏻!!!!!
I think this applies to so many in the uniparty. Wouldn’t a billboard campaign against all of them be amazing?
I posted both memes on Facebook, My Story. Spread the word one way or another.
I care only about money.
The big thing people are not understanding, is that back in 1980 we gave in to Iran, because of our weak leaders, America before that was the Biggest Strongest Mightiest Nation in the world, our weak leaders have allowed our enemies to take advantage of America and the American people for almost 50 years because of “Their Fear” and “Their Weakness”. America was never ever a weak Nation, until Carter came along.
Iran had ZERO intentions to back down, and why should they, after 50 years or doing whatever they wanted, why would they really think this time would be different.
They failed to understand, Trump was already a Billionaire, Trump already had power, Trump wasn’t a politician, Trump was an American who remembers what the Real America was before our failed, greedy, weak leaders allowed Iran and others to destroy it!
Until I see an end to VISAs and an end to outsourcing, I will NOT be satisfied. Way too many Americans are still being displaced in American colleges/universities by foreigners. Way too many Americans are still being displaced in the workplace by foreigners. This must be stopped. It can be done similarly to the TARIFFs. Impose EXTREMELY HIGH TAXES on all companies displacing Americans with foreigners. Cancel all grants to colleges/universities displacing Americans with foreigners. (And while your at it, get government out of the college loan business.)
100% MORITORIUM on ALL IMMIGRATION/TPS/VISAs/and every other means, being use by both foreigners and corporate globalists, that provides easy access into our sovereign nation by foreigners.
I agree with what you say here -mostly. To wit, we should actually be dissuading our young women from attending college at all. And our young men should likewise be looking at various possibilities not limited to collegiate credentials. Mainly, it’s because we need more babies being born! And while we demolished Roe v Wade, that’s not nearly going to cut it, so long as we insist on living to ripe old ages of 79, 80, and longer.
Domestic obligations are the #1 reason we are in a debt spiral. And as it turns out, temp workers not only contribute to the economic engine, they also pay billions annually in federal income taxes. I’d like to see said worker programs gradually reduced AND simultaneously see citizen birth rates dramatically increase. Not that H1Bs alone are ever going to fill the gap. Still, We have to face facts: no one is going to give up their social security nor support even the suggestion of phasing it out.
And please tell me why someone who has paid in all of their lives to SS only to receive a mere pittance of what they paid in over 45 years why they should give up their SS. SS would be solvent and in good shape if the leches in our government could have never touched it.
Including the fraudsters!
If just 10% of SS taxes were invested in the S&P index SS woult be overfunded to the tune of $12 – $20 trillion depending on a nominal range fo annualized returns. Current funding is $2.8 T and looking to be completely broke 8 to 10 years. It has always amazed me how little faith our elected government has is our own economic capabilities that it won’t even invest in it. !
Thank you, Ramblinman, my sentiments exactly. That is what I would love to see on billboards all over the country !
President Trump is the man in the arena. We cannot spare this man, he fights for all Americans.
The title for the headline photo should read
Trump and the Trumpettes 🙂
God bless President Trump. But do not forget the snakes roaming throughout our home.
Being born and raised in a rust belt area of the country I have firsthand experience of the intentional destruction of US manufacturing by the CoC. These are the same people who happily put into practice the National Review article by Kevin Williamson, “White Working Class Communities Deserve to Die”. My father, God rest his soul, was a steel worker. Many of our relatives and family friends worked in heavy industry, the oil and coal fields. When I was a kid in the 60’s, made in America was the gold standard. Made in Japan was junk. Made in China didn’t exist. I wish my father was here to see this return to America First. May it be God’s will to continue to guide and protect President Trump and us from the evil that stalks this land.
NAFTA Newt hobbled small manufacturing essentially killing it off. Large manufacturing just moved their plants and voila the middle class destroyed.
The last vestiges of NAFTA will finally be swept away when the USMCA is replaced with separate bilateral trade deals with both Canada and Mexico.
Domestic manufacturing will take off.
Bush one was the one that pushed NAFTA. It was a Republicans initiative. Clinton only signed it because he won that election. It had bipartisan support.
Thank you, once again, Sundance, for this brilliantly illuminating dissection of history!
We’re all lucky to have this President, but we’re also all fortunate to have the Treehouse.
An attorney’s blog/post worth following:
[…President Trump isn’t “reacting” to the retirements. He’s orchestrating a succession plan. The retirements are the cover story; the bench rotation is the play. Here’s a chart showing all six. It’s absolutely fascinating:..]
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/its-me-thursday-march-5-2026-c-and
*** *** ***
(in case anyone wonders, the triple-3 asterisks are my way of “posting with a prayer”)
Right on! Our Great American President Donald J Trump delivers for the USA everyday.
MAGA!
“When Trump won the election, he completely shut out the CoC from any involvement in U.S. trade negotiations. Trump literally put himself, Wilbur Ross, and Robert Lighthizer in control.”
And the uni-party and the bureaucracy raised hell afterwards over it!
NBC running hit piece after hit piece today: an “opinion” poll shows 61% Disapproval of “Trump’s handling of Iran.” (It is never “President Trump.”
Of course, they find some “average people” in Michigan to express disapproval (“I didn’t vote for this, gas prices are going up already…etc.”)
There was also a claim that 1/3rd of those polled know nothing about the Iranian situation and actively avoid learning about it.
Mrs. Ausonius wondered whether we need another prime-time speech by President TRUMP on this and on Venezuela’s situation.
I said that it will not matter: the Media will claim that he still explained nothing, that he said things which he did not say, that he was lying, etc.
In a time of Mass Communication, the irony is that communicating The Truth is more difficult than ever before, and more people are therefore more misinformed than ever before!
The misinformed are legion. I honestly do not know how some people get in out of the rain.
“…and actively avoid learning about it.”
That is the core problem. There are tens of millions of people who choose to be willfully ignorant. They refuse to become informed no matter how easy the internet-age has made it to learn. They prefer to live in their comfortable world of lies.
Don’t watch it. Just theater and noise.
The CoC gave us John McCain and Mitch Romney, both of which took dives in the last weeks of their campaigns.
President Trump saw it all from the inside in his first term.
Then he had 4 years to formulate his plan, identify who would be placed in the various positions to implement that plan, some as fighters, some as investigators, some as trusted partisans willing to take fire and hold the line.
Then … prioritize? Nope.
Everything …. everywhere …. all at once.
Interesting times.
CTH right on target!🎯
Thanks very clear concise
Thank you Mr. President
and protest that Donald Trump is not focused enough on American interests
When such people say “American” they mean the ruling class oligarchy and nobility.
The corporations would have made more money if they had chosen not to hollow out America, but monopoly and political power are safer and more fun for their kind, so they set themselves in opposition to the rest of America instead.
The Bushes and Obama would have been better loved and the country more successful if they had chosen to represent America as a whole, but political power and monopoly are safer and more fun for their kind, so they set themselves in opposition to the rest of America instead.
They are what they chose to be. And we can see them.
They are what their donors pay them to be…
🐂 💩– it absolutely is!
I totally tune out the naysayers.
Sooner or later — entities financing the backstabbers will be exposed!
The UniParty traitors on our side of the fence would reign over the ruins. They still want the destruction of our country.
Thune/McConnell/McCain would rather have the Democrats cheat and win. We are still one election away from being the UK.
Sundance you are the best…
“All of that MAGAnomic background remained in place when President Trump retook control in 2025, and now we are starting to see the positive economic effects again resurface. However, that collective UniParty opposition still remains, albeit significantly diminished by the refusal of President Trump to move away from America-first policy.”
There are a lot of Democrat voters, not to mention swing voters, who would become solid Trump voters if they understood this.
That explains why there is so much made-up / irrelevant crap served up by the media.
Let’s pray that voters start to understand their own interests more clearly.
Fox is rolling out Brit Hume to torpedo republicans in the midterms.
Yeah that was also the fall of Meghan Kelly IIRC. Thank you President Trump for always saying it like it is and not pretending.
The quality of information I receive from this site is far above any of the other sites I read or have read in the past.
Today, I understand the actual function of the Chamber of Commerce for the first time in my life.
Thank you! And thank President Trump!
Fox meant to hurt Donald Trump with that raise-your-hand question, but the People saw someone who would stand up to the DC Cartel alone, if need be.
Caretel is the correct term!
That is what caught my attention. Then when he told Hillary that she would be in jail if he was president, I jumped off the couch, yelled out YESSS and was totally on board.
”he’s unbelievably good at it” – Bonus!
Thank you Sundance
I fondly remember that iconic photograph . . . Of course they “set him up” for it, but I guess it backfired. Because I immediately thought to myself: “I wanna vote for him!” 🤡
It is the most amazing thing to watch unfold and finally understand what he is doing. It’s just too bad more Americans don’t know about how it’s all working for their benefit. I will pass this along SD to everyone I can. Maybe there will be some new enlightenment coming to the masses yet.
“Now I can see,” said the blind man. An excellent summation of what has and is taking place, Sundance!
Yeah!!! Go Trump! 💪
Outstanding Sundance 💯🇺🇸🇺🇸💪.Thankyou,Thankyou
I’m not blaming Trump, but I want him to light a fire under Vance on the massive amounts of fraud in blue states. I want them to get the illegals and refugees out of here and eliminate Sanctuary counties and states! That’s why I voted for him! Election Integrity too! If Vance can’t do it, switch hats with Rubio on one of his jobs and let him do it. Watch the Islamization of our country disappear quickly!
“Remember this core difference when you see all of these voices who backbite, bitch, complain and protest that Donald Trump is not focused enough on American interests; it’s bullshit. It is all bullshit.
President Trump is delivering a global shift, a multigenerational shift, in the return of U.S. power and financial WEALTH to our nation. And, he’s unbelievably good at it.”
These lines, these lines right here are why Sundance is a treasure for reminding us. Made my day.
At the end of every day my only gripe is the apparent vaccine blind spot, I pray he sees through this to its core before he is out of time.
Per Sundance: “Remember this core difference when you see all of these voices who backbite, bitch, complain and protest that Donald Trump is not focused enough on American interests; it’s bullshit. It is all bullshit.” emphasis added
As I have said many times before, it’s all about:
Power and money
and
Money and power.
The best interests of American citizens, right, left, or in the middle, aren’t really much of a factor.
Politicians want to stay in power
Business interests commericial, governmental, or quasi-governmental, only want more money from the various levels of government.
Thankfully, President Trump is concerned about regular taxpayers.
SOS/DD
Donald Trump is the greatest president this country has had in a long, long time. But make no mistake the democrats hate him with such fervor, hatred I have never witnessed before, that I hope he lasts his full term. I have witnessed rabid, foaming at the mouth hatred from some of my extended family regarding Trump. The kind of hatred that beckons assassinations and/or death. Which is fomented by the liberal media and their very dangerous algorithms.
Looks like some of that hatred rubbed off on you, it is not Donald Trump, Trump. It is President Trump .And of course you stood there and listened to them, “I have witnessed rabid, foaming at the mouth hatred from some of my extended family regarding Trump”
That clip cements the quick thinking President. It showed many things. The rest of the crew were in lockstep in thinking Trump would win and they would fight against him. He believed he would win so he was comfortable and it gave him the platform to denigrate the rest. They just stood there stupefied.
Great article. Thank you, Sundance!
This is exactly why it must be Eric Trump in 2028!
Because I plan to win.
Because I plan to win.
Because I plan to win.
What a time that was, the early days of the campaign starting off with the escalator ride – then the “I don’t like heroes who get captured” moment – and also the day Candidate Donald J. Trump managed to find a path to that rally, just as he made a path to the nomination and then a path to dominating the Electoral College!
Thank you for the Memory Lane today!
It’s not Trump they’re going after….it’s us, the people…. Trump’s just getting in their way and doing a great job of it
And it really pisses the uniparty off👍🇺🇸
This is an excellent analysis by Sundance. Thank you for sharing your insights. You help all of us understand who is the greatest “OZ” behind the curtain.
What we are witnessing now with the division, derision and conflict goes right back to that original set of policy distinctions. In 2016 we did not use the term “influencers,” but they existed inside every team for every republican candidate.
Remember this core difference when you see all of these voices who backbite, bitch, complain and protest that Donald Trump is not focused enough on American interests; it’s bullshit. It is all bullshit.
^^^^ Which also goes for all the whiners yesterday who attacked me for posting a substack article written by Tierney News who called BS on a whole bunch of “MAGA” influencers who in their core are NOT full MAGA/American First. They are hanging on to Trump coattails and making lots of money.
Yah. BS to them and the whiners here who got triggered by the article, attacking me, as if I wrote it.
We are now in the phase of exposing the weak “MAGA” grifter “influencers” who will eventually lose their control/influence just like CoC.
Thank you for the reminder, and bringing it back to this Sundance.
I wish I knew of more rescources that spoke to this issue.
If anyone has recommendations, please share! 🙂