A Few Good Men?

Trump 2.0

What a year this last week has been!

Right after he was sworn into office, Donald Trump signed a series of sweeping Executive Orders, which promise to disrupt and shake up status quo in Washington DC. Trump vowed that he would leave no stone un-thrown in his quest to rid the nation’s institutions of “parasites and leeches that have been preying on us.” Rumor has it, one of Trump’s executive orders allows the US Government to pay him fifty billion dollars in exchange for resigning from the Presidency if he ever chooses to. “It’s a great deal that I negotiated myself, with myself, for myself,” said Trump.

Trump also announced tariffs against America’s biggest trading partners – Mexico, Canada and China. And he withdrew them within a few hours taking members of his own administration by surprise. Speaking to reporters, VP JD Vance said, “I stand by everything President Trump does, even though I haven’t the faintest idea what he will do next. This also confirms my suspicions that there is a group chat between the President and Elon Musk and some others that I am not part of.”

Trump blamed the recent tragedy in Washington DC in which an army helicopter crashed into a commercial plane killing 64 civilians on diversity and inclusion initiatives of the Biden administration. “Black and brown women shouldn’t be allowed to drive even cars, let alone aircraft. They’re crashing too many things,” said the President. Later in a meeting with the families of victims, he assured them he was doing everything within his means to bring back segregated neighborhoods and ensure an endless free supply of hoods to Klansmen.

In the meanwhile, Elon Musk has been on a cocaine fueled rampage in Washington DC, shutting down entire government departments and putting workers out of jobs over the weekend. The actions of Elon, a private citizen and an unelected official with seemingly unlimited powers to reshape the government spending, has raised alarm levels around the country. However, the Hitler Center for Democratic studies, a think tank based in DC issued a statement earlier this week assuring Americans that “this is all legal and quite normal.”

The Democratic leadership has been conspicuously absent from the national conversation in the last several weeks. David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign manager, issued a statement on behalf of the party saying, “As you might be aware, all is not well between Michele and Barack. All the resources of our party have been diverted now towards a peaceful resolution of the greatest crisis of our times. We request Americans to respect our privacy while we withdraw from public life to spend more time talking to Jennifer Aniston about this. In the meanwhile, we urge everyone to read Nancy Pelosi’s Substack on how to make money off insider trading.” President Biden could not be reached for comment. Rumor has it he suffered a mishap over the weekend when he inserted his hand into a fruit blender.

On a serious note:

You can easily describe Trump as a narcissistic maniac only out to punish those who have slighted him. You wouldn’t be wrong. But that would not be the entire picture. I think we are seeing another side of Trump that we did not see in his first term. He appears to be displaying a far greater conviction in his ideas, and a greater resolve to solving the biggest problems of our time. And he doesn’t care how he solves them. He has already admitted that Americans will have to endure some pain to reshape the country.

He has authorized Elon Musk to cut a trillion dollars from the Federal Government budget. This is NOT a crazy idea by any stretch of imagination. The US government today spends about 7 trillion dollars a year. Not too long back, in 2019, we were spending about 4.5 trillion. I’d say cutting a trillion dollars is not aggressive enough. Maybe two trillion is the right target. Let’s get it back to 2019 levels.

He ordered tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China. While economists and academics are wringing their hands over the economic implications of trade wars and such, Trump is focused on entirely something else: the influx of fentanyl into America. The drugs are manufactured in China, smuggled through Mexico and the money is laundered through Canadian banks. Last year alone, 400,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdose. The Biden administration sat for four years on their hands on this issue. Trump is vowing to bring these three countries to heel. Will this work? I don’t know. But I do know that sitting on my hands has never worked. When Trump calls for Canada to become the 51st state of the US, what he means is “Your laws and your enforcement are not working for us on the drugs issue. If you don’t do the right thing, I’ll force you to become a part of my country and enforce my laws on you.”

Today, he called for America to take over Gaza. The thing I’ve noticed about Trump is he gets the timing impeccably right on his zany ideas. Americans taking over Gaza, developing it into an economic center, and then presumably handing it over to Israel is about as crazy an idea as it gets. It wouldn’t have been met well even 4 or 8 years ago. Previous American presidents spent all their time getting Israelis and Palestinians merely to talk. A photo of the two shaking hands was the prize. No one ever tried to solve the problem. Today, no one cares how it is solved. Here comes Trump with his zany “Let’s make Gaza into a resort,” and there is nothing anyone can do about it. There is nothing anyone WANTS to do about it. We are all tired and exhausted. “You want to get rid of Hamas? Sure, go for it.”

Most of us have a problem with Trump’s methods. Few of us have disagreements with what he is trying to solve. We’d rather someone else solve these using more ethical methods. Unfortunately, some problems are better solved by gangsters. In the movie, “A Few Good Men,” Jack Nicholson when grilled about his unethical practices as an Army General says,

You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? <snip> And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!”

Trump does not give a damn about what we think we are entitled to. The Democrats pretend that methods matter while deploying unethical methods. Old school Republicans have really bothered with ethics or morality, except when it comes to business and making money. I don’t blame the American citizen who says, “Listen, I want a functioning government that does things. At this point, I don’t care how you do it.”

I don’t know what Trump is going to end up achieving in his second term. He has already killed wokeism in America. That’s a huge win right off the block. If he solves the fentanyl problem, cuts government spending by a trillion and settles the Palestine issue, his Presidency will be regarded as the greatest since FDR, maybe since Lincoln. A Nobel Peace Prize awaits. They will put his face on Rushmore. And he will receive the highest honor of all – a Hollywood biopic.

I, for one, am strongly rooting for Donald Trump to succeed because if he does, America will be on the path to truly becoming great again.