I & I Editorial BoardIn what must be the millionth time never-Trumpers have predicted this, New York Times columnist David French claimed this week, pointing to appointments he doesn’t like, “Donald Trump is already starting to fail.”
But what really worries people like French and those on the left isn’t that Trump will fail. It’s that he’s off to an outstanding start and has the wind as his back to succeed.
And by that, we don’t mean he will live up to the left’s gross mischaracterization of Trump as a fascist, but that he will actually do what he’s promised: gut the administrative state, restore order to the southern border, and get the economy moving again.
Think about what Trump was up against and what he accomplished in his first term.
After winning in 2016, Trump struggled to appoint his team. On inauguration day, he’d named only 29 of his 660 executive department slots, and ended up with several Obama holdovers.
His support from the public – and even his own party – was weak. He didn’t win the popular vote. Protests erupted all over the country in response to his victory. In the first two years, Republicans sidelined his effort to start building the wall and killed his plan to repeal Obamacare. Embedded bureaucrats thwarted his agenda wherever they could.
And, of course, Trump was immediately dogged by the Russia hoax, which would drag on for his entire first term.
Even with all those handicaps, look at what Trump managed to achieve: a massive pro-growth tax cut that drove unemployment to 60-year lows, an unprecedented peace deal in the Mideast, significant cuts to regulations, the elimination of the hated Obamacare individual mandate, a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, ISIS defeated in short order (after Obama dawdled and said it would take years to accomplish), energy independence for the first time in decades, record low unemployment and low inflation.
This time around, Trump is making appointments at “breakneck speed,” as the New York Times put it, filling key posts with an eclectic group of reformers from inside and outside government who are eager to carry out his agenda, or as the Times lamented, he’s “picking people he considers true loyalists.” (Imagine that.)
Having won the popular vote and dramatically expanded the Republican base, Trump’s support from the public and his own party is far more secure. Unlike in 2016, Democrats are demoralized and fractured.
There were several important reforms – like Remain in Mexico at the border, regulatory rules for agencies, and the like – that either came late in his term or he wasn’t able to enact. He’s not going to make those mistakes again.
His naming of Tom Homan as border czar and Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to wring out federal waste and dismantle the regulatory state are two of many very good signs in this regard.
In their Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday, Ramaswamy and Musk laid out their vision for DOGE in uncompromising terms.
“The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long,” they said. “That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.”
And this time around, Trump won’t be under constant attack from a weaponized Justice Dept.
All of this bodes well for Trump 2.0, and it is terrible news for big-government leftist and status-quo Republicans.
At the end of Trump’s first term, we wrote about his “remarkable presidency” and noted that “More than any other president of recent memory, Trump fought hard for average working Americans. And contrary to the epithets thrown at him by his far-left detractors in the Democratic Party, his policies helped low-income and minority Americans most of all.”
At the end of his second term, we expect we’ll be writing an even more glowing assessment.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
The major difference for this term in Trump world is that every position has a very long line of applicants. Couple this fact with the already named heads of several of his cabinet choices. DJT has hit the road running, and he off is to a fantastic start.
Trump is the people’s President and that drives his opposition nuts. Kabama’s only campaign substance was about the joy of fearing Trump.
On Nov 6, Joy cometh in the morning. It feels like a rebirth of our nation.
“Bigly” return to normalcy; exactly what voters sought in Trump.
When mass rioters are arrested, smash and grabbers go to jail, when downtowns are not closed due to inconsequential and backward Soros DAs and AGs, when the actual fear of the integrity and power of the USA carries weight around the world again after the feeble dithering Biden’s sophomores, when a man is a man and a women is a women and no more questionnaires ask me what I was assigned at birth.
Goodness, what a lot of despicable and perverted nonsense.
When everyone views the video, “The Fall of Minneapolis,” to learn that George Floyd was not murdered, but died from swallowing his own drugs he had in his pocket. That Judge ought to be jailed and the policeman, Chauvin released! A return to normalcy.
When the dumbest generation ever of college students learn the actual history of Israel, Hamas and terrorism. What embarrassing fools. Why would anyone give them a college loan! Reason enough to close the Dept of Education.
When Nancy Pelosi is convicted of being a treasonous seditionist for her two self initiated unconstitutional impeachments of a US president and for so many other infractions of common sense, integrity and her blatant offenses against our constitution; which is just fine as she intones, because she prays for us every day. Insufferably arrogant and delusional person.
When our borders are protected, secure and that buffoon Mayorkas, and the equally buffoonish Ms. Word Salad Kamala get what should be due to both of them, jail, for opening the borders. Return to normalcy.
So much more to return normalcy to the USA.
By the way, my pronouns during this period of insanity, have been, “Thee and Thou!” Always stumps the questionnaires!
It was a disgraceful and un- American attempt by Democrats, including the press and so called Republicans to twarth pres. Trump first administration. To this day, their dishonorable and dirty tricks continue to reverberate through out, except that it only took the exposure of such conduct for America to realize the truth. The election results show that “We, THE PEOPLE” by a convincing majority,GOT IT!, the antagonists presented their case and lost!
For as long as I live I’ll believe that 2020 was a stolen election.
Not because I’m a Republican (which I’m not) and not because I’m a Trumpster (which I am) but because I can read charts and statistical graphs (who can forget the appallingly “timely” mail-in votes that conveniently came in for Biden during the darkness of the night).
Who can forget the boxes of ballots that the the Democratic apparatchiks were trying to hide at the Georgia polling place. How about all the Democratic harvesters and the new, not PO boxes (which if tampered with would have been a Federal crime), but mailing boxes especially constructed for ballots. I saw photos of trucks heaped with ballots-looking for the right geographic place were they might prove useful.
And who can forget the Zuckerberg millions that funded the entire swindle.
I can’t forget! And I won’t!
The first Trump presidency was before they shot him in the ear, he changed more in 5 seconds than in the previous 7 years. Hearing bullets whiz by his head made him realize how important his work is.