Influence

The audience will note the following......

This Substack is definitely not the biggest, but it pound for pound it punches well above its weight when it comes to influence. I would never divulge the names of any subscribers (unless they personally ask me to or if they let me use it for promotional purposes), but this is the third White House that will have paying subscribers of this Substack. This time around I might have to give a group discount.

Long-time friend of this Substack, Darren J. Beattie, has just been named to a senior role in the US State Department:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will appoint Darren Beattie, a speechwriter in President Donald Trump’s first term, acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, two people briefed on the plans said.

Beattie has been a vocal critic of broad swathes of American foreign policy and represents a dramatic step away from the establishment Republicanism Rubio long embodied: In a widely-circulated essay on the site he founded, Revolver, Beattie compared the “color revolutions” that Western democracies backed in Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s to “the coordinated efforts of government bureaucrats, NGOs, and the media to oust President Trump.”

Darren has upset many people over the years with his brash approach to debate and discussion:

Beattie’s appointment will send another signal that the new administration is rooting itself deeply in the new right.

“Darren personifies the America First Right — smart, tough, relentless — with a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude. He made Revolver a major player in the frontal attack on the Deep State,” the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said in a text message. “As important as his agency will be in the building at ‘Foggy Bottom’ , the symbolism of his hire by POTUS screams: ‘We Don’t Give 2 F****x’ for convention.’”

The media figure Tucker Carlson called Beattie “decent and genuinely smart” in a text message.

You can read the best interview that he has ever participated in by clicking this link:

I am tracking the big shakeup taking place in the foreign policy blob, where things are changing by the hour.