The normal term of gestation is almost done. Apologies to Kubrick.
What have we got to go on so far? What kind of President is 2.0 going to be? The 1.0 version was naïve about the extent of corruption and poison in Washington, DC. He got stabbed in the back a lot. Like most of us, he was not nearly suspicious enough of the massive healthcare/pharmaceutical complex and learned the hard way that their “science” is just as fraudulent and mercenary as the Climate Change Mafia. He got a lot done in the first term, but they were successful in removing him from power. What can we expect now. How different is 2.0? Here’s an assessment of who Trump has been since January 20.
He is boldly but carefully revolutionary. I say carefully because he is playing the long game and when he drops a big rock in the water he lets the system absorb the shock and respond. People stung by his second term tweets overlook the fact that tweets these days are a frequent substitute for ignoring the law and forcing the angriest ones to stop him. He’s not trying to provoke a domestic shooting war. He really does prefer peaceful outcomes. He’s much more of a politician now. He puts up with a lot of guff, a lot of impudence and defiance by establishment Republicans. There have been multiple times when he could have taken Johnson, Thune, Graham, Paul, and even Greene to the woodshed, but he’s trying to hold the party together, win what he can win in the early rounds.
This strategy has been surprisingly successful in thus far. I thought the Big Beautiful Bill was roadkill very early on, but he pushed and trimmed, and nudged, and squeezed it through. He never thought Congress would fix the deficits. His plan all along was to do it with other sources of federal income, not phony cuts that would vanish in hidden agency shell games. What he wanted was to make the tax cuts permanent and extend them into new areas. He got that.
Politician. Why so many women in key positions in the Cabinet and White House inner circle? Because he’s not a sexist and decided to go the Affirmative Action route this time so that crazed feminists would sound like the dolts they are when they accuse him of misogyny. Not the only Affirmative Action criterion he had in building his team. You had to be good, but you also had to be telegenic and practiced at coming off well in exchanges with mass media hunter-killers. Looks not as important as interview skills though. Patel and Miller wouldn’t make the looks cut, even if Bondi, Hegseth, Gabbard, Noem, Rubio, and Vance all pass the Q-Rating test with flying colors.
Result? Trump talks a lot on camera, in press conferences and televised Cabinet meetings, etc, but he delegates most of the tit-for-tat dueling to his staffers on the news shows. He, meanwhile, is free to answer questions and interact with reporters more genially on specific issues. The real snarky Trump stuff is reserved for the tweets, so the easily triggered among the suicidal TDS’ers are provoked into ever more absurdly unpopular positions on the issues. Where else is the politician running the show more than the fiery mouthpiece of MAGA?
For the first six months the red-meat MAGA crowd were gradually becoming restless. Where were the investigations and arrests of the goons in blue suits and black robes who had ransacked Melania’s underwear drawers and coerced a former President into an endless series of kangaroo courtrooms when he should have been free to run for the Presidency again? Where was the damn Retribution? President Trump 2.0 deferred on Retribution. Or “kicked the can down the road” as the critics say. For good reasons.
This time, Trump knows how deep the Deep State is. You don’t fix the DOJ and the FBI by appointing Bondi and Patel to run them. Their first job is not revenge, it’s fixing horribly broken and corrupt organizations with thousands of lifetime employees. It’s much the same situation with the judiciary as a co-equal branch of government, only you don’t get to name a new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because you’re President now. The judiciary has to be dealt with in the way Senators deal with each other in Congress. Politely, suspiciously, and wearing the best political Kevlar available. The arrests are coming. They will be matter-of-fact. They will be backed by evidence. Bias in DC courts be damned. The process is the punishment, and it continues all the way into the history books.
This why we have seen the priorities of the new administration we have. Of course they’re misunderstood by almost all the experts. Go to work first where it’s easier to spot the backstabbers and other logs in the water. Overseas. (Sad commentary I know.) Fix the war problems they’ve gotten themselves and us into. And fix the trade problems that have made almost every country in the world use U.S. dollars to finance their innumerable anti-American schemes. Hence all the peace negotiations and agreements, tariff negotiations and signed settlements, and an overall reminder that if anyone anywhere in the world wets the bed, the United States will know it and make whoever did it clean it up.
At home, his approach to a flurry of rulings blocking his orders on firings, deportations, crime prevention, and tariffs, he seems to be biding his time. He objects to each partisan, myopic decision, but he does so in the manner of a man watching a man in a hole trying to extricate himself by digging deeper. I wrote about this yesterday at Facebook:
SISYPHUS ON A ROLL…?
Of COURSE I could be wrong about this, but which pundits have been consistently right in the last 10 years? I happen to have a different view of the state of play in the world at the moment.
I think Trump is still a step or more ahead of all the pundits who think he’s experiencing setbacks in peace negotiations overseas and domestic initiatives at home. He’s using the same strategy for both. He’s reaching out to help in extraordinary ways and finding resistance everywhere. From Israel, Ukraine, Russia, and China with their peace negotiations. From DC, Maryland, Chicago, and California with their crime control efforts. From judges throughout local blue federal districts in the court system. From Democrats in Congress who actually glorify themselves as The Resistance.
What happens if peace is not achieved in Eastern Europe and the Middle East? No one can deny that Trump has worked amazingly hard for peace. No one will be able to complain when he leaves the countries who want to keep fighting to their own devices. Or when he feels obligated to demonstrate that wannabe world powers cannot withstand the muscle of U.S. economic power. Tariffs and sanctions higher for all involved, with no tears from the nation that will grow wealthier by letting the little boys of western civilization play soldier when they’re running perilously low on soldiers.
What happens if major U.S. cities continue to block deportations and subsidize the growth of violent crime in their streets? No one can deny that Trump has offered material and physical assistance to cities struggling with illegals and the gradual breakdown of civil order. No one will be able to complain when the sanctuary states and cities continue hemorrhaging blood, taxpayers, and sources of federal financial aid. Those who will not help themselves are not thereby entitled to demand chunks of money from the taxpayers in the rest of the nation.
What happens if the Supreme Court does not discharge its responsibility by doing whatever is necessary to make the judiciary branch ONLY co-equal with, not superior to, the executive branch and the legislative branch? If vandalous local rulings threaten the economic security and solvency of the nation, no one will be able to complain when the President declares a state of national emergency and takes the exact steps necessary to prevent massive defaults by the U.S. Government at home and abroad.
When I say no one can complain, I mean their inevitable complaining, whining, screaming, and violent acting out will not be seen as justified by voters who want peace, physical safety in their lives, and a government that works actively to build and maintain prosperity for all. Their complaints will go for nought. But that’s all they have in their sorry old playbook now. And it won’t work this time.
The opposition in every case has no hill to die on here. Nothing that doesn’t boil down to petty self interest, offended ego, delusions of grandeur, personal fear of exposure, and envy of the most powerful nation on earth, led by a man who believes in that nation with all his heart and soul.
Anybody else spent their time better on this Hump Day?
This all looks like chaotic patchwork maneuvering by Trump to the mainstream media. But he keeps goading his opposition, giving them time to come to their senses, and they keep digging — France and Germany in phantom preparations for war, crime-devastated cities pretending they need no help to do nothing, the far-left gumbies in Congress inciting actual murder against ICE agents and their families, and the mass media running out of anything to cover that isn’t Trump action met by Dum Talk.
We’ll see. It looks like we’re on course for a healthy, bouncing baby boy now that the Oval Office crib has the right pics and toys in place. Things may get messy in the next 3+ years, but we’ve had messy times before. Nobody promised anyone but Putin and Xi that we could live forever. Relax. Pretty sure the right guy is in the White House.
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