Trump Administration 2.0

[Body-by-Guinness]

An accurate perspective:

From Daniel Jupp:

The 2nd term has been conducted so far even more gloriously than I thought it would be.

I don’t think people realise fully what is happening here. Trump is using the mandate and his personality to simply go straight through all the usual barriers, obstacles and crooks like they aren’t there.

And he’s taking action. It’s not just words.

Signing executive orders is one thing. But he’s learned the lesson from the obstruction that took place in the first term. He has his people, MAGA people, empowered and where obstruction is happening, they are going in and removing it.
You want to delay releasing J6ers? Ok, I’ll send US Marshalls in to pull them out.

You want to give someone a different job title and think you can still keep doing that DEI shit under a different name? Ok, we will spot it, get the legal team on it, and the person above has got 10 days to stop or you’re losing your job as well.

You are still doing nothing and fucking around leaving people freezing and homeless in Carolina? Ok, I’m ordering the Army back and they are building bridges and roads and fixing things. Enough of that shit.

You have a scheme with insurance companies and mortgage providers to steal all the land in California and ‘build back better’? No. I’m going in, I’m letting the victims speak live on every channel, I’m shaming the insurance companies. Federal permissions are going to delay rebuilding? No they aren’t, I’m waiving them. Karen Bass says it takes months to start rebuilding? No it doesn’t, I’m publicly shaming that and I’m looking at every means to bypass her and just let people get back to their properties and start cleaning up.

Ukraine grift? No, I’ve turned off the money tap. I’ve phoned Putin and Zelenskky. Get working on a peace deal, now.

You used security clearances and intel expert status to try to impose a Democrat permanent tyranny? Those security clearances are gone. Immediately. Oh, and you can forget your security detail too. I know people are going to bleat about it. I don’t care.

Basically Trump is treating the whole federal system as a company he owns where the employees have been lazy thieving bastards…and it is. But more, he’s treating it as a company YOU own where the employees have been lazy cheating bastards….and it is. And by sheer energy, force of personality and some obvious planning awareness that obstruction would be attempted again, he is, as Chuck Schumer whines, bulldozing.

Before, he reached over the heads of the Matrix to address the people directly. Ok, I’ll go round the media because the media is crooked. I’ll address the people directly through tweets and rallies and just constant presence always, every day, going somewhere and meeting ordinary people. I’ll walk into a restaurant and shake a hundred hands. I’ll visit a fire station. Every single day. Combine the rallies and the public appearances and Trump campaigns at a level and with an energy like nobody else….but he does it when in office too. He doesn’t stop. It’s perpetual campaigning.

Now, he’s added to that. Ok, the obstacle is this whole edifice of the Deep State, the administrative State, the obstructionists who want decline and disaster because that’s what they have schemes to profit from. Fuck that. FEMA are no good, I’ll use the Army. Do I have an honest piece I can place on the table? I’ll use that instead. The people are furious and being ignored? I’ll bring them right into the heart of this. I’ll reach over the heads of the Matrix again. But this time to do the tasks. Real action.

The most heartening thing for me was hearing that people were sacked and cleared out of their desks and escorted from buildings in some instances. Yes, the best news is these people being sacked. Because that signals it’s not just words. That signals action and consequence. You can’t try and block this. You have no legitimate ability to block this. And if you are sitting in a non job doing nothing but propaganda and obstruction, you’re being removed from the building.

Apply that to the Republican Senators who try to block appointments, and all is good.

My one cause of concern is the AI deal, but the rest has been golden. No western nation has seen an assault on the corruption of the system like this in centuries. Trump is dealing with the administrative State the way Thatcher dealt with the unions in Britain in the 1980s. In Britain, that led to the sole period of pride and success my nation has had since World War Two. Trump’s assault on the administrative State if continued will be bigger than what has already been achieved by a similar attitude in Argentina. It will be the greatest blow against the Matrix and for the people and the greatest impediment to the slave society that was being built ever seen.

The AI infrastructure deal is the only route he has left them for that dystopia, but I’m hoping he and Musk will be able to turn it to genuine good serving the people rather than to the control system of the elite. I don’t think as the truther crowd do that it means him and Musk want the same slave society that a Gates wants. Everything else they are doing contradicts that.

[Crafty_Dog]

AMEN.

PS:  I'm glad to see the article note AI policy as problematic.

[DougMacG]

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-myth-of-mt-denali/

National Park Service notes that, “no fewer than nine Native groups… used unique names for the mountain. There are five Athabascan languages surrounding the park, each with its own oral place name.”

And Mt. Denali is not even the right tribal name.

[Crafty_Dog]

I am more than a little uneasy with this.  Pompeo was an outstanding Sec State and even though Bolton turned asshole, both men's lives are legitimately in danger from the Iranians. 

There is a whiff of pettiness here , , , Furthermore, if either is taken out, it will be very bad politically for Trump.

https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/1881850242930491675

[Body-by-Guinness]

@CynicalPublius
To fully understand just how remarkable today’s exchange with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues, and the different way it works now under Trump.
I’ll illustrate.

Traditional Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. On Monday, the State Department convenes an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security.
3. The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper.
4. The position paper is rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process.
5. The task force reconvenes a week later to redevelop three new, equity-centric courses of action and create a new position paper. 
6. The process is delayed a week because Washington DC gets three inches of snow.
7. SecState approves the new position paper for interagency circulation, and considerable input is received from the heads of other departments so the task force must reconvene.
8. The original three proposed responsive courses of action are scrapped in favor of a new, fourth course of action that achieves the worst aspects of the three prior courses of action but satisfies the interagency.
9. Someone in State who disagrees leaks to the Washington Post, who writes a story about how ineffective the Presidential administration is.
10. The White House Chief of Staff sets up a session three days later to brief the President, who approves the new fourth course of action.
11. Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory.

Trump Approach:

1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. After a par-5 third hole where he goes one under par, Trump uses his iPhone to post on social media as to how the USA will destroy Colombia’s economy if they do not do what the USA demands.
3. By the time Trump gets to the par-4 sixth hole, Colombia’s President has agreed to repatriate all the illegal Colombians in his own plane, which he will pay for.
4. Trump finishes three under par and goes to the clubhouse for a Diet Coke where he posts a gangsta AI image of himself and the new FAFO Doctrine.
5. Winning.

See the difference?  It’s called LEADERSHIP.

[Crafty_Dog]

I heartily concur!

https://www.dailywire.com/news/cotton-urges-trump-to-revisit-his-decision-to-pull-protective-details-off-people-targeted-by-iran

Not only is Trump in the wrong here, the whiff of personal pettiness is already in the air on this one (e.g. weathervane Lindsay Graham https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/01/27/lindsey-graham-wants-senate-to-probe-why-trump-yanked-security-for-john-bolton-1518734/
 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1883554438889025792 ), and any attempt or god forbid, success would be devastating to Trump's image.

[DougMacG]

'The GOP needs to act as though they have 18 months to fix everything because that could be the case.'

[Body-by-Guinness]

The NLRB is capable of all manner of hijinks, and worse. This will be worth tracking; on the face of it Trump has a strong hand to play here, albeit one the next Democrat president will also be able to exercise:

@BehizyTweets

BREAKING: President Trump just fired Gwynne Wilcox, the National Labor Relations Board Chair.

Wilcox says she will fight to overturn his decision, "As the first Black woman Board Member, I brought a unique perspective that I believe will be lost upon my unprecedented and illegal removal... I will be pursuing all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent."

President Trump's decision shocked the system because apparently, NLRB members are shielded from presidential removal, a rule that clearly violates the Constitution.

There is no such thing as an "independent agency" of the federal government. ALL agencies that wield executive authority are under the president's jurisdiction. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”

[Body-by-Guinness]

2nd post.

This could go a lot of places, but given Trump’s election is the root cause of much of what is discussed, I’ll drop it here. Note, a lot of rabbit holes linked in the original and subsequent pieces I’ll also link below.

Amusingly and annoyingly, a theme that emerges throughout these pieces involve impact Trump’s EOs et all have on federal employees (FE). FEs don’t know if they’ll have jobs/predictable income, you know like many Americans that endured Bidenomics. FEs fret that they are or will be singled out for the choices they made while doing their jobs, you know like those that questioned woke dogmas, or had the wrong affiliations, or indeed had some characteristic that did not provide them membership in a “protected class.” Poor FEs, in short, feel persecuted for doing the bidding for their political masters and persecuting their fellow Americans.

Cry me a freaking river, mofos:

https://thetransom.com/p/trump-to-bureaucrats-freeze

Politico’s take on the destruction of political structures Dems used to maintain political power, calling it a “power grab:”

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2025/01/28/trumps-massive-power-grab-00200908

Yo Politico, make that some realpolitik jits.

And Politicos tale of the poor, beleaguered DOJ employees coming to terms with what it feels like to lose hunter status and contend with the powerlessness they imposed on their former prey:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/27/trump-justice-department-week-one-00200860

[Crafty_Dog]

Tulsi Gabbard, Edward Snowden and Intelligence
Does the U.S. want a director of national intelligence who excuses mass leaking of secrets?
By The Editorial Board
Updated Jan. 28, 2025 6:24 pm ET

Voters want disruption in Washington, but it’d be something else entirely for the Senate to confirm a director of national intelligence who has a record of defending those who subvert U.S. interests. When former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard testifies Thursday, will Republicans pose questions that serve the public interest, or go along to get along with President Trump?


Sen. Tom Cotton, the head of the Intelligence Committee, recently said he hopes nobody questions Ms. Gabbard’s patriotism. We aren’t. The issue is what she believes and what she does, especially on U.S. intelligence. Her history isn’t encouraging. In 2020 she introduced a House resolution, alongside then Rep. Matt Gaetz, calling for the feds to drop charges against Edward Snowden.

“The National Security Agency’s bulk collection telephone records program was illegal and unconstitutional,” the resolution argued. “Edward Snowden’s disclosure of this program to journalists was in the public interest.” Oh, his disclosure of one NSA program to some trusted journalists? Is that all Ms. Gabbard believes Mr. Snowden did?

The reality is that Mr. Snowden betrayed his oath by pilfering a massive cache of U.S. secrets, fleeing to Russia, and subsequently taking citizenship there.

“The vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests,” a House Intelligence Committee review said in 2016. “They instead pertain to military, defense and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries.” Many of the details are classified, though, and the report was heavily redacted.

Yet the damage was real. “Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries,” the U.K.’s Sunday Times reported in 2015. The U.K. is part of the Five Eyes alliance of nations that share intelligence with the U.S. It’s hard to square that report with the euphemistic description in Ms. Gabbard’s House resolution.

Or take it from Mr. Cotton, who didn’t mince words in 2016. “Edward Snowden was an egotistical serial liar and traitor whose unauthorized disclosures of classified information have jeopardized the safety of Americans and allies around the world,” he said. “Snowden’s close and continual contact with Russian intelligence services speak volumes. He deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life.”

We agree with the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who led a commission on government secrets in the 1990s, that overclassification is a problem. “The best way to ensure that secrecy is respected, and that the most important secrets remain secret, is for secrecy to be returned to its limited but necessary role,” that report said. “Secrets can be protected more effectively if secrecy is reduced overall.”

What Mr. Snowden stole wasn’t needlessly kept secrets, and the solution to overclassification isn’t for random government contractors to go rogue and download whatever they see fit. Ms. Gabbard might try to parry by saying today’s whistleblower protections offer better channels for dissent. But the House report said that “laws and regulations in effect at the time of Snowden’s actions afforded him protection.” He made a different choice.

No, the question isn’t Ms. Gabbard’s patriotism. It’s judgment, and what message it would send friends and foes to confirm a director of national intelligence who doesn’t really seem to believe in protecting national intelligence.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqmw-Gmemdc

[Body-by-Guinness]

A wide ranging piece covering all sorts of ground and containing many insights. Given that Trump is the common denominator herein, I’ll drop it here:

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-occupation-saturday-february