Intuition: If Kushner's out, good or bad?

On Facebook, Chuck Johnson from GotNews says, "Kushner looking at resigning over Russia probe". Johnson has proven to have reliable White House sources, e.g. on NeverTrumper Katie Walsh being a leaker (she got fired).

Kushner is not being investigated, let alone charged with anything or convicted. He tried to set up a diplomatic backchannel with Russia in order to deliver on Trump's campaign promise to "get along with Russia" rather than waste our political resources antagonizing them 25 years after the Cold War has died. He did not trust the standard channels for this task because they are all part of the Swamp that wants war with Russia.

The media themselves admit that he did nothing wrong and is not being charged with any crime -- it is simply part of the broader shape-shifting witch hunt against the Trump movement, especially the agenda item of "draining the Swamp".

In the comments to Johnson's Facebook post, many Trump fans are applauding in advance, saying "good riddance," etc. Similar comments are pouring in to Twitter posts that also mention a possible imminent departure by Kushner (e.g., replies to tweets by Jack Posobiec). Many on the Alt-Right have been crying for Kushner's head for months now.

So now that there may be some action taken on Kushner's status in the White House, test your intuition about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing for the Trump movement. Scroll down for the answer.

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Kushner leaving the White House would be bad for the Trump movement because he is a loyalist to the besieged President, because the context of his departure would be "Trump/Russia" and would therefore further feed that narrative and pour more blood into the water for Trump's attackers, and because his replacement would be far worse (the forces that push out a Trump loyalist are unlikely to push in a more committed Trumpian).

The limited track record so far proves this. NSC Advisor Flynn was not perfect, being a lobbyist for Turkey for awhile during the campaign, though not after the election. But he was in favor of detente and cooperation with Russia, against radical Islam, and in favor of restructuring and draining the swamp within the intelligence agencies. Plus he was a loyalist to Trump all throughout the campaign and after.

Flynn was pushed out as part of the Deep State witch hunt, and his replacement McMaster was a Pentagon boarding party member who is pushing for escalation in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Korea, who deflects blame from radical Islam and Saudi Arabia, who went over Trump's head to bring in fellow loyalists of warmonger Petraeus, who publicly blocked Trump's demand that South Korea pay for the THAAD anti-missile defense, and who has been leaking to the media (including the Israeli intel on the ISIS laptop bomb plot). This comes from Mike Cernovich's provably reliable WH sources.

Attorney General Sessions recused himself from the Trump/Russia probe, rather than nipping the witch hunt in the bud. His replacement in the matter, Rosenstein, is a swamp creature who allowed the appointment of a Special Counsel, which will open up the witch hunt into endless directions forever, and ultimately try to bring down Trump's people and Trump himself on procedural technicalities rather than substantive wrongdoing which isn't there. This Special Counsel, Mueller, is a swamp creature as former head of the FBI. Whether Rosenstein is better than Obama appointee Sally Yates, and whether Mueller did a better job than Comey, is irrelevant -- both are turns for the worse, compared to who we started with in power over the Trump/Russia probe, the populist and nationalist Trump loyalist, Jeff Sessions.

Trump responded negatively to both of these scalps being claimed by the Establishment, rightly so if you "trust Trump," as they furthered the witch hunt.

If Kushner leaves, it will likely follow the same pattern. People who are paying no attention to the shifting balance of power among the interest groups may be dreaming that if Kushner's out, then Roger Stone or Pat Buchanan or Ann Coulter or Based Stick Man will take his place. Wrong: it would likely be another Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, Reince Priebus, or Mike Pence, who have never been targeted in the witch hunt, or indeed ever had any hit pieces written against them. They are pro-Establishment and pro-Swamp, so they are not only in no danger, they are guaranteed immunity by the media and Deep State.

Your intuition should be honed by this earlier post on power dynamics reflecting group-level strengths, where individuals are mere representatives of the groups in play. War is a collective affair, not every man for himself. The struggle for influence at the highest levels of political power takes the form of a war, and so there is no such thing as a free-for-all clash of individual personalities inside the White House or DC in general. It is not a soap opera or HBO serial drama.

Some of the main power groups -- the Pentagon, oil / energy industry, Wall Street, pharma, media, education sector, and so on and so forth. Individuals have influence only to the extent that they are representing one of these power groups, and drawing on the unique leverage that that group has to wield over the other groups. For example, the Pentagon's control of the armed forces, or Wall Street and the Fed's control over the macro economy, are a hell of a lot of leverage to use in order to get their way in policy outcomes.

In that post and extensively in the comments, I showed that Kushner has no influence in DC, as he represents none of the power groups and therefore has no leverage to push back against those who do. His only status derives from being the son-in-law (not even a blood relation) to the President, but Trump himself does not represent any of the power groups either -- quite the opposite. Trump's only leverage is his immense base of supporters among the citizenry who he could mobilize for or against some item of business in Washington. Kushner has no resonance with Trump's support base, so he does not even have that piece of leverage to use for influence.

But General Petraeus' PR firm (funded by a Saudi media budget) has, through McMaster, put out a bunch of anti-Kushner hit pieces, painting a false picture of a deep ideological rift between Kushner and Bannon, who are in fact closer to each other than they are apart. The goal was to target the Trump movement, and drive a wedge between them and one of the few Trump loyalists in the government, Kushner, who could then be set up by the witch hunt and forced out. So far, that Deep State operation is running according to plan, thanks to the deeply paranoid and overly emotional strain within the Right.

True, we'd rather not have Trump's senior advisor be a member of the family who's also a liberal Jew from the New York metro. But so far, people are angry at him for who he is, rather than anything that he has done. Maybe they're also jealous that he's the one sleeping with Ivanka, and not them. But if he's working for Trump, he's working for Trump. If he gets ousted over the anti-Russian witch hunt, it is unlikely that his replacement would be better than him on nationalism and "America first".

Overly emotional people need to stop fixating on an individual personality they don't like, and look one and two steps down the line to see where his departure would lead, based on the group power dynamics.

If the Trump movement refuses to do this cool-headed analysis, another scalp will be claimed by the incipient Deep State coup.