by digby
The Daily Beast reveals who is the president’s most trusted economic adviser:
It is difficult to fully understand the Trump presidency without first understanding Lou Dobbs, the Fox Business powerhouse host and one of the main precursors to Trumpism.
It’s not just that President Donald Trump loves Dobbs’ show and his on-air style. It’s not just that the president asks West Wing aides and confidants if they’ve seen specific, recent segments of Dobbs’ program, or that Trump calls the cable-news personality semi-regularly to gossip or solicit counsel, or that he’s boosted Dobbs on his Twitter account. It’s not just that the president has sat for a friendly interview with Dobbs or that he is on a first name basis with “Lou.”
Indeed, much of this can describe Trump’s relationships with various other television personalities. What sets Dobbs apart is the degree to which the president views him as a political and populism godfather, the #MAGA Socrates to Trump’s Plato.
As such, Dobbs doesn’t get to just interview and socialize with the president, he is involved in some of the administration’s more sensitive discussions. During the first year of the Trump era, the president has patched Dobbs in via speakerphone to multiple meetings in the Oval Office so that he could offer his two cents, according to three sources familiar with these conversations. Trump will ask Dobbs for his opinion before and after his senior aides or Cabinet members have spoken. Occasionally, he will cut off an official so the Fox Business host can jump in.
Dobbs, these sources all independently recounted, has been patched in to senior-level meetings on issues such as trade and tax policy—meetings that featured officials such as senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, former top economic adviser Gary Cohn, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, trade adviser Peter Navarro, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
During the more intense days of the tax-bill push, Trump made sure to have his White House personal secretary get Dobbs on the line. And toward the conclusion of one memorable meeting, when the line was disconnected and Dobbs said farewell, Trump looked up, smiled, and simply told the room, “Love Lou.”
“He cherishes Lou,” a senior White House official told The Daily Beast. And the feeling is, evidently, quite mutual.
Lou Dobbs is a certified loon. But you knew that. And he is the source of a lot of Trump’s paranoid ramblings:
Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said it is “time to declare war” against the “deep state” he says is present in the FBI and Justice Department.
“It may be time to declare war outright against the deep state and clear out the rot in the upper levels of the FBI and the Justice Department,” Dobbs said Tuesday. “Yes, I said ‘the rot.’”
Dobbs is the latest in a series of conservative media figures to speak about the “deep state,” alleging that high-level officials in U.S. intelligence agencies are conspiring to take down President Trump.
“The FBI and the DOJ have broken the public trust by destroying evidence, defying oversight and actively trying to bring down the Trump presidency,” Dobbs said.
He’s not just an economic adviser …
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