Trump’s Picks: Andy Puzder for Labor

Trump’s Cabinet is rapidly going from bad to worse:

“President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name fast-food executive Andy Puzder as labor secretary, according to people familiar with the decision.

Mr. Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants Holdings Inc., the parent company of the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s burger chains, has been a vocal advocate for cutting back regulations he says have stifled growth in the restaurant industry, which represents 10% of the American workforce. …”

Who is Andy Puzder, the CEO of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.?

“As part of his cockeyed plan to help working Americans, President-elect Donald Trump has promised to roll back most of President Obama’s regulations in his first 100 days in office. Many of those rollbacks will go through the Labor Department, which under Obama has been implementing a slew of pro-worker rules and executive orders. As Trump fills his cabinet with controversial and, in some cases, preposterous figures, worker advocates anxiously await to see whom Trump will tap for the labor secretary post.

Perhaps the worst-case scenario for low-wage workers would be Andy Puzder, the millionaire CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the fast-food burger chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, and a harsh conservative critic of Obama. In his frequent op-ed and cable news commentaries, Puzder has championed every aspect of right-wing trickle-down economics. Rolling back taxation and regulation for the rich and corporations will lift the economy, he’s argued, as will getting rid of all those minimum-wage hikes. …”

Reince and Pence are stuffing Trump’s cabinet with extreme conservatives.

Why is this a problem? It is a problem because DeVos for Education, Price for Health and Human Services, Puzder for Labor and Pruitt for the EPA are going to antagonize and energize the Left on all these other issues – public education, healthcare, labor and the environment – which are not our priorities.

Trump ran for president as a populist nationalist on a few issues. He ran as a conventional conservative on many more issues. As I said yesterday on Twitter, I am afraid that Trump is going to squander his political capital by immediately doing a bunch of controversial things that please conservatives. Maybe he will pass a huge tax cut or get into a long drawn out fight to repeal Obamacare. Before we know it the 2018 midterms will be upon us and all these conservative victories will cost us the Senate.

Then it will be aw shucks, I am sorry, but there isn’t much that I can do about trade or immigration because we don’t control Congress anymore. It will be like the Obama administration which disappointed Hispanics, but in reverse. Obama promised them he would pass comprehensive immigration reform, but instead he squandered his first two years by picking a huge fight over healthcare that handed the House to the Republicans. That’s what I am increasingly afraid is going to happen.

The worst case scenario is that President Trump and the Republican Congress immediately pass the huge tax cut and repeal Obamacare while kicking the can down the road on replacing it. Surrounded by hawkish advisers like General Mattis, Trump makes a major mistake and stumbles into a brand new war with Iran, and thereby repeats every folly that led to the repudiation of George W. Bush.

Anyway, what is clear from the last few Cabinet picks is that Trump is picking a fight with the Democrats … on education, on taxes, the environment, labor and healthcare, but is shying away from one on immigration. He is also failing on his promise to #DrainTheSwamp by putting bigtime donors like Tom Ricketts in the Cabinet.

Perhaps I am overreacting, but maybe not? Maybe the rest of the Cabinet will soon look like the Mitt Romney Cabinet. Maybe Mitt Romney himself will be Secretary of State. Maybe the next four years will be consumed with fights over labor and environmental regulations and everything we hoped to accomplish will get put on the backburner?

Note: Before you defend this, ask yourself the following question: does the Cabinet look more like the Trump Cabinet we were expecting, or the Ted Cruz Cabinet? I would say it looks far more like the Ted Cruz Cabinet across the board.

About Hunter Wallace 12378 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

45 Comments

  1. For those advocating fascism, this cabinet should be very reassuring.

    The white Establishment taking back America.

    These people are capable of using the Deep State to war down our Enemy. I wouldn’t want to find myself on their Enemies List.

    • Yeah for 4 years until Biden runs and wins. Picks like this will be item #1 to use during Biden’s coming campaign.

      It just doesn’t get anymore anti-labor than this pick. Wall st. is thrilled right now.

      • He’s self immolating. There is no way he wins re election if the entire campaign is 180 degrees from this sort of pick.

        Union workers did not vote for greedy deregulation.

      • Perhaps they aren’t planning on allowing elections?

        I’m not offering a value judgement, just a hypothesis.

  2. Don,t panic yet. USSR was destroyed by people who served it all their lives. On the critical august days in 1991 we were saved not by dissidents but by high ranked KGB and Army officers who refused to use violence and defend USSR at all.

    Barely 2 years before in 1989 there were bloodbath in China Tiananmen Square and uprising was ended so we expected the worst and we were saved by people who we thought are our most evil enemy.

          • you know I could care a less about that. Look at my avatar – does it look like I care about 15 minimum wage for Blacks?

            I can be pro-labor and be against a 15$ minimum wage.

            The guy also happens to be for open borders as well.

      • Staying quiet helps you to get to the position where you have power to do something. It needs iron nerves but it works.

        “”….Do you really think coloreds working at Burger King deserve to start off at $15 an hour?….””

        Yep. When they will vote for pro white candidate it is very cheap price to preserve white race. When liberals get power then they will kill more than 15 pro white persons per hour.

        “”..Blokhin initially decided on an ambitious quota of 300 executions per night…””
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin#Role_in_the_Katyn_massacre

        It makes 37.5 kills per hour. Do you really want that colored folk votes liberals to when you have opportunitty to buy liberal supporters, do it. We did not, liberals got power and we had 73 years of madness and ca 50 million victims.

        Fighting with liberals, every method is good.

        • When the communist took over power in the Spanish civil war they killed the police also,similer to the Katyn massacre.

          This is a brutally honest book on all the killing and torture of the Spaniards and the looting of spain.
          “Red Domination in Spain” ministry of Justice 1946

  3. I think your fears are well founded Hunter: The most important issue, immigration, gets put on the back burner and forgotten. Trump said the first thing he’d do is repeal and replace Obamacare, not “build the wall”.

    But let’s not freak out yet. Let him take office first and remember that no matter what he does he’s surrounded by enemies. I never expected anything more from Trump than to serve as a stop gap which could buy us some time.

  4. I’m shaking my head at this pick….another one…..

    This is going to make blue collar workers who voted for Trump jump for joy I’m sure……

    No wonder the DOW is going up up up.

  5. On a side note, Carl’s Jr is good, but like Chick file á, you don’t get much food for what you pay.

    • Thing is, a lot of those Mexicans with skilled trades get payed top dollar. Without insurance and other benefits, strait pay is cheaper. They’d pay you 20-25$ an hour too, if you dropped your insurance and benefits, and they didn’t have to keep up on taxes or report to OSHA. That’s where the costs are, after wages.

    • Have faith, madam. Trump is going to rule his Empire from his world headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. That way he won’t be distracted or corrupted by all the court intrigues going on in Washingcoon. He knows what he’s doing.

  6. Yes, it’s an overreaction. But I could be wrong.

    If he’s anything like the Karchers, he’s a solid choice.

  7. No, you’re not overreacting. Aside from Bannon, can you name one pick where you were able to say, “Hell yeah! This guy/gal isn’t just another mouthpiece for the establishment”?

      • Trump to me was superior to Cruz only in his likeliness to beat Clinton (the Gaddafi killer). I never thought of Trump as a Paul or Buchanan.

      • That’s two. But Sessions will end up being neutered in the same way Bannon is neutered. They’ll be defending themselves from accusations of racism so much that they’ll be attacking people like us as much as the Leftists in order to stay relevant in Trump’s administration.

        If we have to include Carson—I won’t because he’s just a token pick—then that would be three.

        That’s it. It’s business as usual if you’re a guy like Karl Rove. He might hate Trump’s banter and Tweets and brash outbursts, but he probably loves his Cabinet picks so far.

  8. I know it’s really early, but the people he’s picking don’t seem much like George Wallace, but a lot like Ronald Reagan first years. You have the same kind of billionaires who think they’e over taxed and regulated, the same kind of army hard asses who want to increase defense spending 2 or 3 hundred percent, so they can micro manage the planet, and climate change deniers running the EPA. Having a de- facto oil company executive running the EPA is kind of like having Captain Ahab running The Save the Whales Foundation.

  9. If you want the Pollyannaish, rose-colored glasses, glass half-full interpretation of these picks, go visit Sundance at the conservative treehouse. Sundance historically is right more often than wrong when it comes to nuts and bolts Republican/Democrat analysis. However, I’m no longer sure how reliable he is because he has basically transformed himself into an uncritical Trump cheerleader at this point. It’s an alternate pov through for what it’s worth.

    • Yes he has become like Bill Mitchell. Every Trump move is part of some master plan. I am not buying it. I heard the same shit years previous about other candidates like Bush for example.

  10. Already the media is proclaiming that Trump is showing his hostility to the working man. Of course they would criticize him no matter what he does, but these cabinet picks are lending an air of credibility to their claim. Now, if Trump comes through with the wall and the renegotiating of NAFTA and other trade deals, then his working class base will be pleased and he can forget about the media and union bosses.

  11. If it’s anything like Aussie border protection and politics, immigration laws, our case the boats, yours is the wall, these policies should come first, and get the ball rolling on it. Should be the first thing Trump does in his 100 days.

    These conservative picks are antagonistic, as long as the wall is being built, self-deportation, 3 million deportations promised start taking place… Then the narrative will shift from the muh conservative values, that the leftist enjoy dribbling about, to shrieking of the evil enforcement of immigration law and the wall.

    Trumps big beautiful wall. That helped him win bigly, if he’s clever like he seems to be, he’ll play up the immigration card.

  12. I think you’re too anxious to embrace populism because you want to promote an alternative to vanguardism. But I’d counter that vanguardism isn’t the problem as much as incorrect stances on the Jewish question. This doesn’t mean that the Jared Taylor approach is right either, but I’d argue that it’s better to avoid the issue than to commit some of the errors than wns makes (such as apologizing for bad non-Jews, not aiming to destroy the US state but just to purge it of Jewish influence etc. not seeking to utilize non-whites in rational ways, because “Jews are promoting race mixing.”)

  13. I think you’re too anxious to embrace populism because you want to promote an alternative to vanguardism. But I’d counter that vanguardism isn’t the problem as much as incorrect stances on the Jewish question. This doesn’t mean that the Jared Taylor approach is right either, but I’d argue that it’s better to avoid the issue than to commit some of the errors than wns makes (such as apologizing for bad non-Jews, not aiming to destroy the US state but just to purge it of Jewish influence etc. not seeking to utilize non-whites in rational ways, because “Jews are promoting race mixing.”)

  14. Most of the Senators up for re-election in 2018 are Dems. Trump would have to fuck up really bad for the Dems to take control of the Senate in 2018.

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