Will Trump Be Successful at Stopping America’s Long-Term Spiral into Darkness?
If you’re looking for someone who has ALWAYS been a diehard Trump fan, I am not that guy. I loved his agenda in his first term, but I wasn’t a fan of how Trump behaved, and I didn’t think it made sense for Republicans to run him in 2024. That all changed on the day of the assassination attempt against Trump:
That assassination attempt SHOULD HAVE killed him. The shooter was close, and he fired a shot that would have taken off the back half of Trump’s head if he hadn’t turned EXACTLY the right amount, at EXACTLY the right time. To me? That seemed like such happenstance that I had to consider the possibility that God Himself wanted Trump exactly where he is. Although I still had my doubts, I figured if God wanted Trump running for president, then I should be backing him, too:
Trump himself said that he felt God was involved and that something had changed in him because of the assassination attempt:
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Now, you might disagree with all that and I can understand that, but me? I look at what’s happened since then and that original “God did this” impulse I had feels more spot-on than ever.
Trump ran an absolutely brilliant campaign and the Democrats, who had more money, the mainstream media slavishly promoting them and a candidate with all sorts of criminal cases hanging over his head as an opponent, floundered.
Since then, Trump has done something that he didn’t do in his first term and that no president has attempted since Reagan. He is actually trying to reform the government, update our foreign policy to the 21st century, and fix the culture.
It’s worth noting that under the best of circumstances, this is always an extremely difficult undertaking because as Machiavelli has said:
“And one should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer than to introduce a new order to things; for he who introduces it has all those who profit from the old order as his enemies; and he has only lukewarm allies in all those who might profit from the new. This lukewarmness partly stems from fear of their adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the skepticism of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they have personal experience in them.”
All of that applies to Trump as well. Of course, you can expect Democrats to challenge everything he does in court and slow-walk everything as much as possible while the liberals in the so-called “mainstream media” continuously lie about and distort everything he does. We’ve also already seen Democrats trying to encourage riots and it would be a surprise if Trump (and his administration) have faced their last assassination attempt.
You’ll also see some business leaders, squishy Republicans, and bureaucrats try to undermine Trump’s agenda because they LIKE how things work now. Do you think Big Pharma and Big Food want RFK Jr. to undermine their business models that profit from other people’s misery? How about the meat packing plants and farmers that hire illegal labor? Do you think they want to pay more for American workers or machinery instead of illegal aliens? Do you think government bureaucrats want to be told they’re actually going to have to work instead of coming into the office once per month?
All those groups are going to push back, which is why presidents very rarely try to fix the system. Heck, even Trump didn’t try it in his first term, and had he not had four years in power, then four years to think about how he’d do things differently, he probably wouldn’t have done it in his second term. Heck, without four more years of liberal overreach that drove so many Americans, including people like Musk and RFK Jr. into his corner, he probably COULDN’T HAVE DONE it in a second term starting in 2020.
That would have been tragic because what he’s trying to do right now at least has the potential to help get America going back in the right direction for decades.
Just as a starting point, Elon Musk thinks they can cut 1.7 trillion dollars per year in fraud, waste, and outright corruption:
That’s almost one-quarter of the budget and it potentially spares us 17 trillion dollars in debt over the next decade. That would not fix our country’s spending problems, but it’s no small amount of money and ultimately, it could be the difference between an inflation-fueled economic depression and turning things around.
Similarly, Trump’s success in shutting down the borders and aggressively getting rid of illegals is critically important as well. For example, one of the key reasons the Roman Empire fell was because they were no longer willing or able to control the influx of non-Roman tribes into their empire. America is headed down that same road, but if Trump can control the border while deporting large numbers of illegals and getting millions more to self-deport, we may not meet the same fate as the Romans.
Along similar lines, Trump is making some smart foreign policy moves that have the potential to pay huge dividends. He has Mexico and Canada putting troops on our border to stop the flow of drugs and illegals. He put a stop to China’s increasing control of the Panama Canal. He’s shutting down US aid until we can make sure we’re getting something out of it. He’s also insisting our NATO allies spend even more on their defense so that America will have allies other than Britain capable of being big players in future conflicts. It’s not just that his foreign policy is different than Biden's, he’s restructuring our policy in a way that will be beneficial for the United States.
Confronting the gender weirdness liberals are inserting into our society and the open racism of DEI is also a necessity. Mentally ill men should not be in the military, in women’s prisons, or playing women’s sports. There is also a world of difference between the LGB and the mentally ill TQ and it has been long past time for making those differences clear. Furthermore, as a society, we had already moved past open racism toward an ideal of having a colorblind world. Most Americans considered that a good thing. Ramping up the race hate and open discrimination against white men via DEI programs was dragging the country back to the race-filled conflicts of the 60s again. It’s just something that makes no sense in a multicultural society.
Weirdly, Democrats also seem dedicated to stifling AI research and are outright hostile to crypto. This is just as nuts as it would have been to say, “We don’t want anything involving the Internet to develop here” in the nineties. It’s highly likely Crypto and AI are going to generate a staggering amount of wealth and advancement over the next few decades and having that happen primarily in America is every bit as important as it was to have Apple, Microsoft, Google and the other cutting edge tech firms set up shop here.
We’re also seeing Trump move toward a revitalization of America’s military, which was missing recruiting targets and slowly but surely sliding toward mediocrity. Making it clear that we intend to rid the military of incompetent and overly political generals along with mentally ill trans men has already started paying huge dividends:
Granted, even if Trump succeeds at everything he tries (and newsflash, he won’t), he can’t fix all the problems this country has. However, if you look at what he’s trying to do, these are not small changes. All combined, what Trump is doing here has the potential to be a game changer for our country – and we need that. Any smart person who knows history and doesn’t have blinders on could see that America is on the backside of the mountain and picking up speed. Just stopping that rapid descent and giving the country a chance to catch its breath and get back to sanity could at least give us a CHANCE to start going in the right direction again.
Good work, John. After seeing all the enemies of the Clintons who died, I was thrilled when Trump won in 2016, and feel he would have won easily in 2020 but for Covid. All the absurd antics of Biden over the last four years made it clear how important it was to have Trump win this time. God appointing the rise and fall of rulers is a biblical Truth, and here we have another example. Trump was overwhelmed by the swamp creatures the first time around, and Americans saw how the media and Democrats in Congress used the FISA courts and FBI to bully him into ineffectiveness. He has learned from that, look how hard he is charging ahead in his first two weeks back. Indeed, looking at the character and agenda of his enemies ought to tell anyone a lot. Speaking of that, you learned from 2016, 2020, and 2024, and ultimately changed your mind about Trump. What does it tell you about Jonah Goldberg that he can't, or won't? Maybe a debate with him would make for a good column, perhaps the last column of this essay would be a good starting point or thesis: "Resolved, the election of Donald Trump is a good thing for the United States," with you taking the affirmative. I'd bet on you to win.