Macrismo, owner of the Trump connection

During Donald Trump’s first term the Argentine friend was Sergio Massathrough lawyer Rudy Giuliani, today in judicial disgrace and multiple embargoes for talking too much. This relationship proved that Trump’s presence in the US presidency did not help the Fernández government at all in the two years of coexistence they shared.

Now the handrail of history awakens the relationship with Macri and the PRO, a party with dangerous relations with the Milei government. On Thursday night, Trump announced that his chief of staff will be his campaign co-chair, Susie Wiles, nicknamed the “Ice Maiden.” It will be the first time that a woman holds that position.

Trump’s feminist exaltation turns on the lights here. The Ice Maiden’s daughter, Katie Wiles, is a partner at the government relations firm Continental Strategy, which is run by former US ambassador to the OAS, Carlos Trujillo. It is the law firm that defends Trump in his most committed causes, and has an office in the Parque neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

The Argentine partner is the Buenos Aires senator from the PRO Alex Campbell. This leader was president of the PRO Deputies block between 2019 and 2023 in the province of Buenos Aires and plays alongside María Eugenia Vidal. The seal that unites them is the Hacemos Foundation, dedicated to educational issues, chaired by the former governor and with Campbell as vice president.

Just for the record, former General HM McMaster, former National Security Advisor to Trump, registers Mauricio Macri as a “old friend” in the memoir “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House” (it came out last August). In October 2023, Vidal participated in a summit of foundations and think tanks at the University of Miami convened by that conservative connection.

After all, he presides over the Pensar Foundation, which expresses the relations of the PRO with the PP. For next year, the FAES Foundation of José María Aznar organizes a “campus” in Buenos Aires, so that the conservatives here learn that They are the Spanish friends and not the Vox right-wingers that Milei cultivates. Macri and Mariano Rajoy were able to talk about this at the dinner at the Faena hotel with businessmen organized by former minister Daniel Sica as part of the annual summit of his consulting firm.

Trujillo is Campbell’s partner in the Buenos Aires studio. He arrived in the country with the help of Gabriel Sánchez Zinny, today Jorge Macri’s deputy chief of staff, under Néstor Grindetti. He was Minister of Education during Vidal’s government. Sánchez has offices in the United States and has organized trips for Macri and others to the United States.

Because of that relationship, Trujillo came to the country to be sworn in by Javier Milei last December. On a second trip he met with Macri and, among others, with Vice President Victoria Villarruel. Trujillo is called, like Mauricio Claver-Carone, to occupy an important role in Trump’s cabinet. He encourages the expectation that the daughter of the “ice maiden” is his partner in the study.

This Trujillo’s task as a reference for the Cuban-American community was key in Trump’s victory. The Republicans won the state of Florida, always disputed with the Democrats. In the previous presidential election, Trump had already beaten Biden.

On Thursday Milei has a turn at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), organized by the American Conservative Union (ACU) that will meet in Miami. It is the opportunity for the first meeting with Trump, who is also invited.

Two days later, he exchanges hugs with Biden and, perhaps, with Lula in Rio de Janeiro. The following Monday, November 18, Milei has committed to attending the G-20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. Until this weekend, the attendance of Joe Biden was confirmed, to whom Milei must present greetings. It is not the best time to meet, due to the Trumpist enthusiasm of the Argentine government.

These international meetings offer risks. If not, let Vladimir Putin say it, he won’t be able to go to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil is a signatory of the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court. This court has ordered the capture of Putin, accused of crimes against humanity in Ukraine. If he appears, Lula will have to order his arrest and put him in prison. That scenario that illustrates what Pope Francis calls a third world war “in pieces” is unimaginable.

Changes in the United States accelerate fantasies that the American friend can save the government from its misfortunes. It is difficult to imagine what else an Argentine government has to do to be taken care of, when the country tops the ranking of historical support for Washington in votes at the UN.

How many photos does Milei need to take with Trump, Elon Musk and other powerful people for investment dollars to start coming in? Surely we must put the two conservative governments – Buenos Aires and Washington – on the same line. The result of the elections in the US brought Diana Mondino closer to some explanation about the deep reasons for her dismissal from the Foreign Ministry.

Olivos’ certainty that Donald Trump would win hastened the opportunity to displace the then ambassador in Washington, Gerardo Werthein, and make him jump up to a more important position whose motives are not asked. The “loyalists” of the new president surely do not forget that Werthein, current chancellor, promoted a lunch between Javier Milei and Bill Clintonhe was barely elected.

It occurred on November 27, 2023 at the Plaza hotel in New York. This contact did not attract attention because Clinton had visited Argentina in the past, invited by the Werthein business group. With Trump in the White House it may have seemed inconvenient to keep him in the embassy.

Tolerance and good manners are not a characteristic of Trump or his group of entourageists, those “loyalists” who assemble his government according to a criterion of verticality that leaves no room for gray areas in political alignment. Argentina has to make the effort now. If not, everything will remain in photos.

Trump’s victory awakened other demons that the government will have to appease. The Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone, former president of the IDB and today the head of an investment group in Latin America, is called to occupy one of the highest positions in the new administration.

He already did it in Trump’s 45th term, and he will repeat it in his 47th, which begins next January. To appoint this close friend, Trump departed from a tradition that was that the president of the United States did not put Americans in the IDB. That decision frustrated the Alberto Fernández government’s project to appoint Gustavo Béliz.

It was shortly after the end of Trump’s first term. Two years later, Claver was removed from office due to an investigation into his personal relationship with a bank official that would violate the organization’s ethical rules. Biden governed and the representative of Argentina on the bank was Guillermo Francos.

Claver presumes that Francos did not help him stay in office and that he was removed as an anti-Trump measure by Biden. “The Biden administration, China and the socialist governments of Latin America previously expressed their desire to have me removed,” he complained at the time.

He denied the charges, but kept his memory. Last June, in Rio de Janeiro, Claver criticized the presence of Francos in the Argentine government. “He was more Kirchnerist than Cristina.” Last October he spoke out in favor of the Milei government in strong terms: “From a political and foreign policy point of view, and geopolitically – he stated – there could not be a greater ally than Argentina. A future Trump administration would be 100 “% agree with Argentina when it comes to the foreign policy issues we are seeing in that regard (…) But the reason foreign investors are not yet jumping all over Argentina is because there is still a lot of currency risk” .

And he shot at the team: “In practice he still has many of these old-school Peronists in his government and he still has a team that likes to intervene in the currency markets and until the stability there becomes transparent, investors are not going to flock to Argentina,” he added in a talk with investors on the Global Americans site (” The US Election and Latin America: Mauricio Claver-Carone, a dialogue with Tulio Vera). To finish off the specifications that Trumpism places on Milei, Carone concluded that Milei “does not have a growth strategy” (statements to Bloomberg Line). , of last June, in Rio de Janeiro).

The government resigns itself to the fact that the limitation to the DNU festival will be approved by Deputies and will once again be held captive by Mari and the PRO. What you are now looking for is to extend the deadlines. First, this project to place restrictions on the seas needs a special majority.

The law that is sought check a fuse when it says that “The Chambers cannot introduce amendments, additions or deletions to the text of the Executive Branch, and must be limited to the acceptance or rejection of the norm by the vote of the absolute majority of the members present” (art. 23 of the law 26122, of 2006, project by Cristina de Kirchner for Néstor president). As soon as the request for a session was presented, the ruling party went shopping to buy wills so that there would be no number.

He is not helped by the silence of the PRO – the bloc on which the government depends in the Chamber. Only this Monday will Cristian Ritondo’s bench decide what it will do in that debate. The PRO’s strategy is to turn the debate into a bargaining chip with the ruling party.

They estimate that the project, if approved, will be discussed in the Senate only next year: They are going to step on it in that Chamber so that it is not discussed before November 30, nor are they going to include it in extraordinary sessions. That brings the times to March. If approved, the veto minuet will ensue.

Then The PRO will have the negotiating tool ready to go. We will be in April, closing time for lists for the August primaries. With that gun on the table, the PRO will claim precedence in the joint lists with mileism and, most importantly, will order La Libertad Avanza to suspend hostilities against the PRO in the Federal Capital.

Do you want rock and roll in CABA? Then we overturn the veto that Milei signs on the DNU and a new life begins. Milei must fear something because he harasses Macri with little messages in which he sends him the phrases that he says in praise of Mauricio.