Chapter 282 The Reason
Satisfied with Trump's reaction, George continued the summary.
"We won't start with high-profile endorsements, but they'll go up in value along with the increase in your poll numbers. Your first endorsement will come from Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee."
When Trump heard that name, he knew that they weren't messing around at all. And that was just the first in a long line of endorsements to come.
"She'll officially endorse you at a rally in Iowa, which should be, I think, on January 19th. That's about three weeks from now, and a few days after the sixth republican primary debate," he continued.
"In February, which should be the month you start overtaking Ted Cruz in the polls, the New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, will start endorsing you after your wins—"
"Isn't he a candidate? And quite critical of me, as well," Trump interrupted. He wasn't sure if he had misheard something or not.
"Yes. He'll drop out of the race next month and endorse you along with former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer; Maine Governor, Paul LePage; and former Massachusetts Senator, Scott Brown." George gave him a look and continued, "In march Ben Carson will also suspend his campaign and do the same, but that'll be after Jeff Sessions...." He continued mentioning all the high-profile people who would be endorsing Trump to help increase his reach over a larger republican audience.
'They aren't fucking around at all' Trump thought. He realized that they hadn't been doing much at first because they were preparing for a big push in the beginning of 2016. And with them starting a rumor about Hilary Clinton's private email server—she was the democratic candidate the Rothschilds were supporting—there would surely be an investigation into it that would heavily impact her campaign.
The Morgans themselves had hedged their bets on the democratic side of the aisle as well, and gone with the same strategy of supporting someone nobody would have believed they would ever support: the independent senator of Vermont, Bernie Sanders. But that would be a battleground for others; Trump only had to concern himself with the republican primary election, where his most likely opponent would be the Rothschild-backed republican, Ted Cruz.
George continued his explanation of how the Morgans would be supporting Trump, who remained quiet throughout. He would ask his questions after the Morgan heir finished.
"About Fox... I don't think it'll be possible to get their support. Roger Ailes doesn't seem too keen on me, or my candidacy," he said. He was mostly sure that they might have missed that in all the planning, but he wanted to be completely sure.
"You don't have to worry about that. You know what they say, there's no such thing as 'bad press.' As long as your name is mentioned, I'm sure a branding expert like yourself knows what'll happen. If he tries to stifle news about you, we can just replace him," George answered. It was like he was talking about firing a normal factory line worker, not the chairman of a giant media conglomerate like Fox News.
That was when Trump realized the full scale of the power the Morgans held. They were in such a lofty position that they could just remove the chairman of a huge company like it was nothing.
"Can you tell me what you really want from me after I win? I need to prepare for it," he said. He knew they hadn't told him everything, but he didn't care. If their goals didn't align with his, he wouldn't hesitate to cut them down after he won; his victory was never in question in his own mind. If the Morgans wanted something too heinous, he believed he could even kick them to the curb and win the election without them.
Instead of George, Aubrey opened his mouth and said, "A decade or so before 9/11, we installed a puppet dictator in Iraq and armed him. Remember when Iraq tried to take over Kuwait? It was around then. Do you remember when a few years after 9/11, Saddam's regime was discovered to have weapons of mass destruction and we took him down? Why do you think we did that?"
"Because you had evidence backing the invasion?" Trump answered. He wasn't sure of his answer, though, as he was sure that the full story hadn't yet been declassified.
"That's what most of the world believes, but the truth is that we'd been working on making the invasion happen even before then. After 9/11, we needed to show that we still had the biggest stick, so we used that stick to beat down the Taliban.
"But that proved insufficient, so we needed to use the stick again. We chose to use it on Saddam. We manufactured all kinds of excuses, WMDs just happened to be the one that stuck. After all, why would we really care about backwards savages who only had their weapons pointed at themselves and their local rivals?" Aubrey paused, staring straight into Trump's eyes.
Trump was a bit surprised to be hearing all of this information. He was positive it was still classified, if it was even known to anyone at all.
"But that isn't all there was to it," Aubrey continued. "We needed a war long before 9/11, which was why we planted the seed named Saddam. We would harvest that seed later, regardless, but the attack forced our hand. Still, it was beneficial in at least one sense. The long peace had been making it difficult for us to justify maintaining such an enormous military-industrial complex!
"So we invaded Iraq under the pretense of looking for WMDs, then officially took Saddam down after our 'inspections' provoked a violent insurgency aimed at removing his regime from power. And that was only one of the conflicts we brewed in the region. We took down the Taliban, we took down Saddam, we dismantled al-Qaeda, and we took down Bin Laden."
Even after all of that, Aubrey hadn't answered Trump's question at all. "Why do you think I told you all that?" he asked. His habit was always to test people to determine their worth coming to action.
"Because the reason you're supporting me lies in the explanation," Trump confidently answered.
Aubrey believed that anyone who was smarter than a goldfish could have figured that much out. "And what might that reason be?" he asked.
"You need another reason to justify such a huge military budget. People won't ask why so much is necessary if we're fighting a war."
"Yes. We need wars to justify such a huge budget. And ones where we can exploit the targets afterward to benefit and enrich ourselves, too. Our targets need to be selected with care—weak enough to not cause too much damage, but strong enough to warrant our stay in their country for as long as possible under the guise of 'peacekeeping.'
"And not only that, they have to be rich enough to justify our initial... investment," Aubrey finished with a smile, as he was satisfied by Trump's second answer.
"So where's the next target? It can't be another country in the Middle East, and I don't recall any other enemies we can use. Or even anywhere that meets your requirements..." Trump asked.
"Eden-Esparia." Aubrey was speaking circles around Trump and leading him to a partially correct belief. Sure, he really wanted to plunder Eden and Esparia's riches, but that was only incidental.
What he really desired was to trample them for having the gall to stymie his first attempt. He had seen it as a blow to his honor and a personal affront to him.
