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:
" . . . theretofore. . . " Not heretofore. Jacki
ReplyDeleteSorry, I erased my comment. Really like your article. more later. Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: What a fine article! Your writing is always concise and free of dictum. It reminds me of high quality legal writing.
ReplyDeleteIts fascinating in an obverse manner that the far left reacts in such snitful tantrum to the insolent opposition our President presents against their emotionally generated conviction of their unassailable justice and wisdom. Oh I'm sure their so very wounded pride will be expressed with the frantic and malicious "high" dudgeon which is their custom at the State of the Union Address. And I'm just as sure that hombre DJT will be ready to meet them in full "Happy Warrior" resolve.
He is their worst nightmare and their viciousness at being cornered is reminiscent of slavering wild dogs. He has sacrificed 10 years of a surely comfortable retirement to redeem proven American verities from the almost runaway train of Marxist subjugation in this once most un likely setting for totalitarian dreamers. Before his first election we were very nearly "for it" and yes, his first term was a painful learning experience. He had, after all, spent his life in the real world instead of the rarefied ambience of political longevity. But he sent grimly vindictive Hillary packing and , in a stupendous gain for the integrity of our legality, gave us a lawful Scotus.
I had guessed that his would be a far more successful second term after the terrible tests all his travails afforded him and I'm elated to see it so. He endured unspeakably vicious personal, legal and even physical attack and its always implied danger and he has come through bitter castigation and threat with a verve which manifests steely resolve. His love of country and his firm determination to redeem it from the curse of Marxism has earned him the regard and the gratitude of an America some of which, at least, fully appreciates our fantastically good fortune in his rise .
His hate filled reflexive detractors are as "insects, microbes" (Chekov) who daily shame themselves in their unfettered, hyperbolically juvenile and slanderous onslaught on him. In it they give undoubtable prediction of the intense and haughty contempt and malice with which they would rule should they ever completely triumph. It would break most people but not him and they make him tougher with every detestable attack they make on him!
I meant Chekov the playwright . Jack
ReplyDeleteThe quote is from his "Uncle Vanya". Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Wow, we never hear much about Susan Wiles but the country probably owes her very much. I'm amazed that the far left harpies have not attacked her (as far as I know). Maybe they are too afraid of her.
ReplyDeleteYour essay is a welcome antidote to the fart left's (no that was accidental but I do like it) recent fit of wishful gloating after what they would have America believe is DJT's inevitable long descent down the slippery slope. They ain't seen nothing yet ; they are essentially prevented by their pinched minds from considering the dread truth that their frantic and reflexive dismissal is of, in truth, a historically great President! I'm confident that they will be grouped with the Know Nothings, the slaveholders , the Copperheads, the admirers of the Soviets, the McGovernites and such as golden tongued AOC in the eventual time honored evaluation of their vicious humbug.
Why, thank you, Jack! The feeling is mutual: I find your writing very fluid and erudite. The fact that you can so easily and aptly quote Lieutenant Chekov from Star Trek in your expository prose shows that you have your finger on the very pulse of contemporary (and future!) discourse. Ha!
ReplyDeleteYou know, it's become pretty clear from the tone of their "humbug" that the Left sees Trump as a shell of a man about to collapse under the weight of his corruption, dementia, physical infirmity, pedophilia, etc etc. They really have learned NOTHING from the past ten years... Boy, are they in for a disappointment!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Thank you in turn. Its a thrill to have one's writing endorsed by a professional intellectual.
ReplyDeleteSome commentators have held that our time most closely resembles the 1850's in their provenance of eventual Civil War. What if one as able as Lincoln had ascended to the Presidency in say, 1856? How might one of his transcendent wisdom have dealt with the challenges of that era? He was surely far more able than Pierce or Buchanan.
How is President Trump handling the centripetal forces which could again whirl our country apart? I expect we will see tonight in his State of the Union stand a determination to "preserve and protect" American verities which Lincoln went so very courageously far to champion and who, should he have had an earlier opportunity, might have thus preempted the 1861-1865 maelstrom.