Friends, at long last, I've written another article! It was a long time in coming. This one is about the remarkable, and very favorable, contrast between the first Trump Administration and the second. This time around, Trump means business, and he and his team are executing their strategy with robotic efficiency and precision. Oh, sure, mistakes have been made, but infinitely fewer than before, and that gives me cause for celebration!
President
Trump is Running a Tight Ship and Giving the Deep State a Run For Its
Money
Memories
tend to be short in American politics, but it was not so long ago
that Donald Trump was a first term president and, if we're to be
honest, a flailing one at that. Trump's presidency began with the
hiring
and firing
of
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, which sent the signal early
on that Trump was 1) highly responsive to media criticism, and 2)
more than willing to jettison anyone in his circle who he viewed as a
polling liability. The result was massive
turnover
throughout
the four years of Trump's first term, a constant barrage of media
attacks,
and a steady drumbeat of policy
reversals,
as Trump struggled to find a tone and a direction that resonated with
both the public and the D.C. in-crowd. Trump was also repeatedly
hamstrung by the seditious behavior of his own appointees, who
frequently leaked
information
to
the press, and often ended up on the outside looking in, joining the
ranks of Trump's bitterest
critics
and
most formidable enemies. It was not, in short, an administration
characterized by loyalty, efficiency, or consistency, to say the
least.
That's
why the smooth functioning of Trump's second term administration
comes as such a pleasant surprise to his supporters. Trump's Chief of
Staff this time around is Susan
Wiles,
who effectively ran his 2024 presidential campaign. Wiles has kept
Trump focused and dissuaded him from posting rash or self-destructive
comments on social media. She has also helped Trump to assemble a
team, centered on his cabinet,
that is competent, deferential, and ideologically in sync with Trump
and the MAGA movement.
Compared
to Trump's first term, his second has featured remarkably few
personnel changes. We saw one notable exception recently, with the
ouster
of Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater,
who was in charge of the DOJ's all-important antitrust division.
Slater appears to have been encouraged to resign because of
persistent conflicts with her boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi,
potentially verging into insubordination
and mendacity, not to mention selective leaking.
She allegedly
lied
to Bondi about checking with intelligence officials before
maneuvering to block a national security-related merger, which some
intel experts said helped China at our expense.
Rather
than let Slater hang around and become a cancer on his
administration, though, Trump – or rather Bondi – engineered her
quiet departure, without undue notice from the press or significant
damage to Trump or the MAGA movement. Meanwhile, Bondi, despite a
drumbeat of criticism from the media and Democrats, retains
Trump's confidence
and
continues her efforts to bring justice to Deep
State darlings
like
Adam Schiff, James Comey, et al. All this shows an administration
capable of a deftness and a poise quite unlike the manic chaos that
characterized its first iteration in 2017-2021.
None
of this is to deny that the Democrats and the Deep State retain
powerful assets in their relentless and ruthless drive to obstruct
Trump and MAGA. The mainstream media remains as implacably
hostile
as
ever, and it has succeeded in vilifying ICE, the Border Patrol, and
Trump himself as far as half the country is concerned. Meanwhile,
liberal judges, although they have not had the same success in
sabotaging executive power as they did in Trump's first term, have
nonetheless proved a
significant obstacle.
D.C. juries
and grand juries,
infected with TDS, have also made it nearly impossible to hold any
prominent Democrat or leftist accountable for crimes he or she may
have committed.
The
fact remains that Trump haters seldom are in a position, in his
second term, to dismiss the President as a bumbler or a buffoon.
Quite the contrary, they hate Trump now more than ever, but because
of his policy successes
rather
than his failures. They know that Trump now has a smart, articulate,
and loyal team surrounding him, and that he is painstakingly
executing a well-considered set of policies that is rolling back
wokeism and bureaucratic overreach, while it reaffirms our
constitutional liberties, our national sovereignty, our common
civilization, and our capitalist and competitive values.
This
time, leftists are not aghast at Donald Trump and his presidency
because they are train wrecks, but because they are sleek, modern,
and powerful engines of change that threaten to obliterate everything
in their path – the Deep State, most of all.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is a history professor at SUNY Alfred and blogs at:
www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmakers show on WLEA/WYSL.
And here it is at Townhall:
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2026/02/22/president-trump-is-running-a-tight-ship-and-giving-the-deep-state-a-run-for-its-money-n2671679
