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In early December, the name of a candidate to be the science adviser to the president began percolating in Trump Tower: David Gelernter, the reclusive Yale University computer scientist known for his dripping disdain for the liberal intellectual elite and for surviving an attack by the Unabomber.

Gelernter had no connection to Trump or his top political aides. And he would be an unconventional choice for the post: The 61-year-old professor is neither a physicist nor biologist, as is typical for the post, but a pioneering technologist credited with predicting the rise of the Internet.

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But Gelernter has long been friendly with Peter Thiel. He regularly attends an annual conference of iconoclastic thinkers that the Silicon Valley billionaire hosts on the French Riviera. So it was on Thiels recommendation that Gelernter sat down at Trump Tower with the president-elect, his chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Thiel himself four days before the inauguration. The meeting followed a prior discussion between Gelernter and senior transition officials.

Gelernters potential elevation is just one small sign of Thiels growing stature in Trump world. He was a near-constant presence throughout the transition: Working with a staff of four to six aides from an office in Trump Tower, Thiel dispatched associates from his investment firms to help staff agencies across the government. Their reach extended from the Department of Commerce to the Pentagon and eventually to the White House, where one of his closest aides, Kevin Harrington, was recently elevated to the National Security Council.

Once Election Day came and went, Peter Thiel was a major force in the transition, said a senior Trump campaign aide. When you have offices and you bring staff with you and you attend all the meetings, then you have a lot of power. At the Presidio, the old Army fort in San Francisco where Thiels investment firms are housed, many of his employees have taken to calling him the shadow president.

The notion is not entirely absurd. If Steve Bannon, the presidents chief strategist, is one ideological pillar of the Trump White House, Thiel, operating from outside the administration, is the other. Bannons ideology is a sort of populist nationalism, while Thiels is tech-centric: He believes progress is dependent on a revolution in technology that has been largely stymied by government regulation.

Thiel is a contrarian by nature, and his support for Trump was a signature long-shot bet that is paying big dividends in terms of access to and influence on the new administration.

Trumps surprise victory in November also gave Thiel a renewed faith in the possibilities of politics, and he has worked around the clock to push friends and associates into positions that will give them sway over science and technology policy, an area he believes has been routinely neglected under previous administrations.

That helps to explain why Jim ONeill, a managing director at Thiels venture capital firm, Mithril Capital Management, is now being considered to run the Food and Drug Administration. ONeill served at the Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration but has no medical background. He has argued that drugs should not have to go through clinical trials to prove their efficacy before they are sold to consumers.

The fact that Jim is even in consideration for the position is astonishing, said one Thiel associate. Its legitimately an outrageous coup for Peter to be able to put somebody at that high a level of government.

Trae Stephens, a longtime Thiel colleague who oversaw the Defense Department transition, raised the eyebrows of officials as he traipsed through the bowels of the Pentagon asking questions about the government procurement process. Stephens spent several years at Palantir, the Thiel-founded data-mining company that brought a successful lawsuit against the government taking a sledgehammer to the Pentagons rigid procurement process. A federal court ruled in October that the company could bid on a $206 million Pentagon contract it would normally have been prevented from competing for.

Inside the Pentagon, Stephens focus, according to two sources familiar with the conversations, was on how one might restructure the DODs procurement operations to save money.

Stephens inquiries were unusual, thats why people mentioned it to me, said one of the sources, a former high-level Pentagon official.

The lawsuit, Palantirs lawyer said in the wake of the October ruling, wasnt just about the companys bottom line; it was aimed at making it more appealing for innovators to do business in the nations capital. Stephens did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to Thiel and his team in Trump Tower, a handful of Thiel associates also took on critical posts in the Trump transition, with Harrington, now at the NSC, working to fill positions at the Department of Commerce; and Mark Woolway, a Thiel colleague from his PayPal days, doing the same the Treasury Department. Others slated to take on important roles in the administration such as Josh Wright, who is likely to run the Justice Departments antitrust division have come with Thiels imprimatur.

A spokesman for Thiel declined to comment for the story. A senior White House official would say only that Peter has been a very prominent supporter of the presidents and we are grateful for his support."

An aligning of outcasts

The openly gay, 49-year-old tech entrepreneur and the 70-year-old real-estate magnate have little in common on the surface. But the two share qualities that have made Thiel a valued adviser in Trump world, particularly as the politicians who supported Trump during the campaign Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani have slowly fallen away.

Both Thiel and Trump are outcasts, Thiel in liberal Silicon Valley, where his libertarian politics have set him apart; Trump in the world of New York real estate, where his outer borough bombast made him an object of derision. Both are distrustful of elites and conventional wisdom.

Thiel is a devotee of the Stanford literary critic and philosopher Ren Girard, most famous for his theory of mimetic desire the idea that people learn to want the same things, which eventually causes conflict. In a 2011 interview with The New Yorkers George Packer, Thiel said he was troubled by how disturbingly herdlike people become in so many different contexts, and that he has always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.

There is no better or more recent example of that than Trumps candidacy, which upended every law of politics the so-called experts thought held true.

Old-fashioned political connections, forged in Manhattan boardrooms and sleek Silicon Valley office spaces, also helped ease Thiels ascension in Trumps orbit. His initial connection to Trump came through the presidents son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Thiel is a longtime investor in the health care startup founded by Kushners brother, Josh and Thiel and Jared Kushner had extensive conversations in the spring of 2016 about whether he would become a delegate for Trump in Californias Republican primary.

Thiel went public with his support for Trump in May at the urging of Kevin Harrington, a longtime principal at Thiel Capital with whom he has as another Thiel employee described it a sort of mind meld. Not only did Thiel serve as a delegate for the GOP nominee, but he delivered a prime-time speech on his behalf at the Republican National Convention and contributed more than $1 million to his campaign.

His high-profile demonstrations of support thereafter won the attention and affection of Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump.

Thiel is immensely powerful within the administration through his connection to Jared, said a senior Trump campaign aide.

The Trump campaign bible

Campaign aides also say that Thiels 200-page treatise on startups, Zero to One, served as something of a bible among Trump campaign staffers. Leafing through the book, which encapsulates some of Thiels iconoclastic views, its immediately apparent why Trumps aides were receptive to it. Thiel argues that savvy marketing is as important as a decent product; that its better to be bold than to be inconsequential; and that technology rather than globalization will shape the future.

The book originated in a class Thiel taught at Stanford, and Blake Masters, one of his students who became his co-author, was at his side during the transition, conducting interviews with candidates for various administration posts. Also along for the ride: Michael Kratsios, Thiels chief of staff, and Charlie Kirk, a 23-year-old wunderkind who blew off college to start a grass-roots organization dedicated to training young conservatives in the art of persuasion and plugging them into the right networks.

Thiels most visible involvement in the transition came during a fleeting moment in mid-December when he organized a summit that brought some of the countrys top technology executives, from Apples Tim Cook to Googles Larry Page to Trump Tower for a meeting with the president-elect. Cameras captured him entering the gold-paneled elevators in the lobby, and, shortly thereafter, Trump gently petting his hand as the tech executives and a slew of reporters looked on in astonishment.

Few remarked at the time how surprising his presence there, and his involvement in the transition, actually were. Thiel has for years pooh-poohed politics. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms, he wrote in a 2009 essay published by the libertarian Cato Institute, in which he argued that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology.

In Zero to One, Thiel argues that technological progress stalled in the 1970s in part because of to the growth of entitlement programs and the explosion of the regulatory state. His venture capital firm, Mithril Capital, pours money into companies that are leveraging technology in new ways. It, too, has deepened his belief that government regulation is impeding technological advancement.

The result, he writes, is that the country and the world has seen change without progress.

The government used to be able to coordinate complex solutions to problems like atomic weaponry and lunar exploration. But today, after 40 years of indefinite creep, the government mainly just provides insurance; our solutions to big problems are Medicare, Social Security, and a dizzying array of other transfer payment programs, he writes in Zero to One.

Life extension technology, in which he has a deep interest, is but one example. My own guess is that I will live to age 100 to 120, so Im frustrated that the technologies arent going as quickly as they should because of government interference, he told the libertarian magazine Reason in 2008. He expounded on that view in a 2015 interview with The Washington Post in which he aired his concern that the FDA is too restrictive, that pharmaceutical sales are way too bureaucratic, and that government is filled with people who are nimble in the art of writing grants who have squeezed out the more creative.

Removing those hurdles is precisely what Thiels friends and associates across the government will be looking to do, with an eye to bringing about a Thielian world in which people live to 120 years old on libertarian islands in the middle of the ocean, if they so choose.

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Donald Trump's 'shadow president' in Silicon Valley - Politico

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. They should have known better. The college kids, crammed into the back-right corner of an overflow ballroom here at the Gaylord National Resort, should have recognized that the props being distributed to them were, in fact, miniature Russian flags. But as the president of the United States strode onto the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, theyand scores of other attendees nearbywhipped them proudly overhead. And why wouldnt they? After all, the flags carried the ultimate seal of approval, with regal golden letters scrawled across their middle: TRUMP.

It was a pranka wildly successful oneperpetrated by liberal troublemakers attempting to draw attention to Russias odd relationship with President Donald Trump and members of his campaign. Within moments, CPAC officials spotted the flags and deployed staff members to confiscate them from the confused youngsters. It said Trump on it, and it was red, white and blue, Zachary Jenkins, a member of the College Republicans at Marshall University in West Virginia, told me afterward, a sheepish look on his face. So I just assumed it was OK.

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It amounted to little more than an embarrassing bit of publicity. And yet the incident highlighted, somewhat hilariously, conservatisms blind spot in the age of Trump. Jenkins and his friends likely would have realized the flags were foreign, and wouldnt have waved them, had they not been branded with his name; likewise, conservatives would ordinarily oppose protectionist, cronyist, big-spending, debt-accumulating policiesif they werent signature stances of the new Republican president.

To spend three days at this years CPAC, the annual right-wing carnival of politics and culture, was to witness an ideology conforming to an individual rather than the other way around. The presidents counselor, Kellyanne Conway, set the tone Thursday morning when asked to assess Trumps impact on the conservative movement. Well, I think by tomorrow this will be TPAC, she said. The moderator laughed and so did the audience members, but it wasnt a joke: Anyone searching for a brand of conservatism independent of the new president would have walked away sorely disappointed.

After a three-day celebration of Trumpism, the announcement of the straw poll results on Saturday afternoon told the whole story. A full 86 percent of attendees approved of Trumps job performance so far, compared with just 12 percent who disapproved. More consequentially, on the question of whether Trump is realigning the conservative movement, 80 percent agreed and only 15 percent disagreed. Both statistics were met with cheers inside the main ballroom.

In many ways, Donald Trump is the conservative movement right now, Jim McLaughlin, the Republican pollster who conducted the survey, told CPAC attendees. And the conservative movement is Donald Trump.

To some extent, everyone expected to see Trump remake the Republican Party in his image; he became its leader upon clinching the presidential nomination last July and solidified that status for at least four years on November 8. But Trump was not supposed to bend conservatism to his willat least, not this quickly. Certainly, he has thrilled the GOP grassroots with certain decisions, such as signing executive orders aimed at deregulation, beginning a crackdown on illegal immigration and nominating an originalist in Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. But he has also done other thingsfacilitating a deal with Carrier in Indiana that smacked of crony capitalism; bullying private corporations and individual citizens; declaring reporters the enemy of the American public; asserting a moral equivalence between the U.S. government and Vladimir Putins that would typically put any politician in the crosshairs of the right.

Trump, however, has encountered scant dissent from his partys ideological base. So he came to CPAC not to pay homage to the traditions of conservatism, but to bask in the supremacy of his own movement, one that he and his allies believe will supplant the outdated orthodoxies peddled for decades by the very people who greeted him like a conquering hero on Friday morning.

In his meandering 48-minute speech, Trump did not once use the words liberty or constitution. He did not invoke the name of Ronald Reagan, the last Republican president to address CPAC during his first year in office, and to whom he was incessantly compared throughout the week. He made no reference to government, in terms of keeping it small, limited or otherwise. And the only time he uttered the word conservative was in reference to his triumph at the ballot box. Our victory was a victory ... for conservative values, Trump declared.

Then, in a stroke of strategic and rhetorical genius, the president conflated those conservative values with his own. The core conviction of our movement, Trump told his standing-room-only audience, is that we are a nation that will put its own citizens first. The crowd ate it up.

To Trumpand to his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who appeared on a Thursday panel alongside chief of staff Reince Priebusthis means pursuing an agenda of economic nationalism that, among other things, restricts trade, subsidizes certain domestic businesses and borrows and spends large sums of money to spur job growth and wealth creation. None of this is remotely compatible with the modern conservative movement, which has been defined to a large extent by its adherence to the principles of free trade, free markets and fiscal restraint.

It wasnt just the ubiquitous deification of Trump that was so jarring. It was the degree to which his worldview was accepted, championed and cheered by conservative speakers and attendees with no obvious connection to the new president. Consistently, anti-trade rhetoric drew the loudest ovations, especially when packaged as part of a broader assault on globalism, a particular hobbyhorse of Bannon and the Breitbart crew.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, CPACs governing body, swore he wasnt worried about the appearance of Trumpism subjugating the traditional right. Trump voices that are added to CPAC are wonderful because it will help us win, he told me. We have to have more people. We can be a very pristine conservative movementand be very small and make no difference.

The push for intellectual and ideological diversity is commendable, save for the inconvenient reality that it was nowhere to be found. Over three days of speeches and panels and seminars, nary a negative word was directed at the president or his policies. And with the exception of a few collegiates handing out free market buttons, there was no pushback on a nationalist platform that not long ago wouldnt have been welcome at this very gathering.

Only a year ago, CPAC attendeesthe majority of whom supported either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubiothreatened a mass boycott of Trumps scheduled speech. He ultimately cancelled his appearance, and conservatives in attendance roared with approval whenever one of the speakers lambasted the man who, to their great dismay, had emerged as the Republican presidential front-runner.

Miniature Russian flags with Trump's name on the flag were passed out at CPAC. | Tim Alberta/POLITICO

Last year we were talking about a walkout if Trump showed up, and this year its all Trump all the time. It has completely changed, said Dominic Moore, a University of North Carolina student who attended CPAC for the first time in 2016 and backed Rubio in the GOP primary. Last year the Make America Great Again hats were few and far between. Now theyre everywhere. Last year the speakers were attacking him and now everyones done a full 180. Theyre all on the bandwagon. Everything has changed.

Few seem to think thats a bad thing. In conversations with dozens of attendees, only a handful expressed qualms at Trumps takeover of CPACand most of those were conservative political consultants who asked not to be quoted for fear of reprisals from Republicans they do business with. I met several first-time attendees, such as Ohio University student Johnny Paszke, who came explicitly to show their support for Trumpand dismissed questions about the presidents ideological mooring. I think he is a fairly liberal conservative, Paszke told me with a shrug. Thats OK. (When I asked Paszke what it means to be a fairly liberal conservative, he said Trump will never be as far-right as Cruz, who appeared at the conference Thursday.)

And then there was Margaret Howell. When Trump took the stage Friday morning, I glanced over and noticed her, standing several feet away inside the media pen, with tears of joy running down her cheek. It was overwhelming, she told me afterward. He really inspires people. It turns out Howell works for Right Side Broadcasting, the pro-Trump livestreaming network, and was formerly a reporter for InfoWars and the Kremlin-backed RT television network. She, too, was a first-time attendee. I was never inspired to come to CPAC prior to Donald Trump, she confessed. Why would I be?

Its a fair question. For most of its history, CPAC, which debuted in 1973, promoted an intellectually exclusive and ideologically insular worldview known as movement conservatism. Even as it gradually expanded its philosophical tentallowing pro-LGBT groups; inviting an atheist speaker; absorbing the young, libertarian supporters of Ron and Rand Paulthe gathering still reflected a set of political sensibilities that were broadly within the Republican mainstream. CPAC organizers kept their distance from the likes of Bannon and his Breitbart.com, which attacked Republicans on the center-right and preached a provocative populism that many in the movement considered a threat.

That seemed a distant memory this week. Even before the conference convened, Schlapp was under fire for inviting Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right cage-rattler with no serious claim to conservatism. He was ultimately disinvited after video surfaced of him making approving remarks about pedophilia, but the conference nonetheless had a decidedly unfamiliar feel. Bannonwho made a point of caustically thanking Schlapp for finally inviting him to CPACwas prominently featured and made headlines by promoting his vision for economic nationalism and the deconstruction of the administrative state. Breitbart was a sponsor, its logo slapped conspicuously across the main stage. And the upstart news outlets brand of conservatism drove the proceedings in dominant fashion, dictating everything from the panel topics to the headline speakers. (Notably, while Trump and his administration allies were given plum slots, there were no speeches from longtime CPAC favorites such as Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.)

It all contributed to the distinct and growing impression that conservatism, rather than expanding to make room for Trumpism, is being swallowed up by it altogether.

Politics is an evolving process. You cannot simply say, Im a Reagan Republican and I will never move from my positions, Luis Fortuno, the former Puerto Rico governor and an ACU board member, said when I asked about Trumps influence on conservatism. Conditions are different today than they were 25 years ago. And we must evolve.

Its one thing for a movement to organically evolve toward smarter, more advantageous policy positions; its quite another to surrender its ideological foundations in the face of political headwinds. This distinction is at the heart of Trumps relationship with the right, as conservatives navigate the fine line between cooperation and capitulation.

Overall, Im keeping an optimistic outlook, said Matt Batzel, executive director of American Majority, a grassroots group that ran activist training sessions at CPAC. But we have to be vigilant. Everyone whos part of the conservative movement has an obligation to speak out so that one person doesnt fundamentally transform conservatism.

This idea of keeping conservatism sovereign from Republicanism, to check its excesses from a place of principle, was of paramount importance to CPAC devotees in the aftermath of George W. Bushs presidency. Schlapp, who served as White House political directorand who saw relatively little resistance on the right as Bush doubled the national debt and dramatically grew the federal governmentknows better than anyone the danger of the conservative movement deferring to a Republican president.

My guess is there will be some rocky moments, he said of Trumps alliance with the right. My job as the head of a conservative organization is not to be his cheerleader. My job as the head of a conservative organization is to stand for our values.

After CPAC 2017, however, its unclear whose values hes referring to.

When I asked Jenkins, the flag-waving Marshall University student, whether he thought Trump is a conservative, he grinned. I think Trump is redefining what it means to be a conservative.

Tim Alberta is national political reporter at Politico Magazine.

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'The Conservative Movement Is Donald Trump' - POLITICO Magazine

BBC News

Nigel Farage 'has dinner with Donald Trump' BBC News Nigel Farage had dinner with US President Donald Trump and some of his senior advisers on Saturday. It comes days after the former UKIP leader addressed American conservatives at a conference. He joined Mr Trump for a meal at the Trump International ... Farage joins Trump at Washington hotel for 'dinner with the Donald'The Guardian Nigel Farage spotted 'gatecrashing' dinner with Donald Trump in President's Washington DC hotelMirror.co.uk Nigel Farage dines with Donald Trump and Ivanka in WashingtonTelegraph.co.uk all 124 news articles »

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Nigel Farage 'has dinner with Donald Trump' - BBC News

President Trump will be well-prepared for whatever Democratic lawmakers throw at him during his first address to Congress Tuesday, Republicans say as the political world gears up for a prime-time speech the White House is promising will be focused on the renewal of the American spirit.

If there were to be a big Joe Wilson moment from the Democrats, Id expect Donald Trump to be ready, hes certainly shown a proclivity to break from the Teleprompter, Trumps campaign co-chairman in Massachusetts, state Rep. Geoff Diehl, told the Herald, referencing the infamous moment Wilson, a longtime South Carolina congressman, shouted, You lie! at President Obama as he addressed Congress about his health care plan in 2009.

Thats a real possibility, but Id hope decorum rules the day, Diehl said. I think were at a point where civility has been at a minimum ... I would think that at such a critical juncture, where health care (and) the economy are at the upmost importance that the presidents speech will be listened to attentively and responded to accordingly.

The White House, which has said Trumps address will be a forward-looking one about the renewal of the American spirit, is preparing for a tough crowd that Democrats are stocking with immigrants and foreigners as part of an effort to put a face on those they say will be hurt by his hard-line stance on immigration.

Among the attendees invited by Democratic lawmakers will be an Iraqi-American doctor who discovered elevated levels of lead in the blood of many children living in Flint, Mich., a Pakistani-born doctor from Rhode Island and an American-born daughter of Palestinian refugees.

I want Trump to see the face of a woman, the face of a Muslim and the face of someone whose family has enriched and contributed to this country despite starting out as refugees, said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), whose guest Tuesday will be Fidaa Rashid, a Chicago immigration attorney.

And though inviting immigrants and foreigners may send a clear message to their constituents, Diehl said any outbursts or interruptions would only damage the Democrats political brand.

It will be at the Democrats peril to try to turn against what is an important address, not only to Congress, but to the American people, he said.

New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, a co-chairman on Trumps campaign, agreed, and said he expects the president will be ready for whatever the Democrats have planned.

Im sure if theyre booing him or not clapping for him, hell just carry on as usual without losing a beat, Baldasaro said. He has been calling them out ever since he started his campaign and if they do anything at the address, I expect he will call them out right then and there.

But Democratic strategist Scott Ferson said he doesnt expect representatives of his party to use the high-profile moment to vocally chide the new commander in chief.

I dont think this is the time to do that, Ferson said. Here we are saying hes not living up to the dignity of the office. I think it would be odd for Democrats not to stand up, on the floor of Congress, to the dignity of the joint session. That would be very disappointing.

Despite their political differences, Diehl, Baldasaro and Ferson all said they hope Trump hits a more optimistic tone than he did in his inauguration speech.

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump ready for prime time - Boston Herald

Behold the echo chamber. Here is Gateway Pundit two days ago:

Here is Herman Cain this morning:

Here is Donald Trump shortly afterward:

The strangest thing about this is that...it's true. I'm not really used to that from Trump. I guess accidents do happen, though.

Now, it's also meaningless, and not just because Trump hasn't actually done anything yet. The deficit bounces up and down monthly depending on how much the government happens to spend and how much tax revenue it takes in. For example, take a look at the following chart:

The month of April is shown in blue. Let's make that into its own chart:

Impressive! During Obama's presidency, he turned around America's finances. We went from a deficit of $80 billion in 2010 to a surplus of over $100 billion in his final year. Why didn't the mainstream media ever report that?

Because who cares, that's why. You know what happens in April? Everyone pays their taxes. Does that mean the deficit is in great shape every April? Of course not. That just happens to be when a lot of the money comes in.

But it doesn't matter. As I've mentioned before, Trump's tweets are for for his fans, not for us. And his fans now think that in his very first month Trump has erased the deficit. The guy promised action, and by God, he's delivered. It just goes to show that all this deficit stuff wasn't really so hard to solve after all. It just needed a man of action to go in and straighten things out.

Not that the FAKE NEWS media will ever admit that, of course.

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Donald Trump Obliterates the Deficit! - Mother Jones