The Devil Is on His Throne

And all is well in Hell.

Let’s take a moment to savor what looks to be Henry Kissinger’s final act. The man is 93 years old. At that age, most people are lucky to have enough energy for “Wheel of Fortune” and a few Facebook posts. Not Kissinger. These days, he’s playing the influence game against insiders who hadn’t even been born when he was Richard Nixon’s secretary of state.

[...]

When some Republicans questioned Tillerson’s closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kissinger defended the pick on “Face the Nation.” Kissinger helped soften the blow of Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s president in December before the Committee of 100, which advocates for the U.S.-China relationship. Before that, Kissinger winged his way to Oslo to urge his fellow Nobel laureates to give the next president’s foreign policy a chance. It feels like 1975 all over again. I’m half-expecting to read something in the tabloids about a Kissinger affair with a Hollywood starlet.

[...]

Officials with Donald Trump’s transition team tell me Kissinger has spent several hours since the election advising incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn and his team. He’s also putting his network in place. He recommended his former assistant, K.T. McFarland, to be Flynn’s deputy, and urged Trump to nominate Rex Tillerson, the chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil, as his secretary of state.

[...]

It’s nonetheless strange that Kissinger would have Trump’s ear. To start, he is the author of many of the policies Trump is hinting he will undo.

  Bloomberg

Trump has hinted lots of things. Come right out and said some other things. Is any of it believable? Trump is an evil megalomaniac. And not a smart one. He'll be hard to manage, but if they keep him busy watching his own image on TV and striking out at people who have personally insulted him, they shouldn't have any trouble running the world behind his back.

“Kissinger is apparently willing to advise someone who has publicly questioned the essential building blocks of the international system that Kissinger himself helped create,” Tim Naftali, a former executive director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, told me.

Of course he is. That would be the most important person to advise.

For all of his foreign-policy success, Kissinger is also an author of more dubious moments in Cold War history. He helped orchestrate the 1973 coup that toppled Chile’s elected president, Salvador Allende. Kissinger devised the strategy to bomb North Vietnamese Army positions in Cambodia, something he kept from Congress.

Only Dick Cheney remains outside the swamp. Or else he's well hidden. Be watching for him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.