Trump Administration 2.0

[ccp]

My favorite line that comes to mind

was something to the effect:   we didn't need legislation reform to control immigration we just needed a new President.

 And all the crats could do was just sit there like a bunch of lying fools.

and Slotkin gets up and says we do need immigration reform since we are a nation of immigrants actually she means ->
[democrat voters]

And then called for more good middle class that are *unionized*   In other words middle class jobs that are unionized to support her party.

[DougMacG]

"we didn't need legislation reform to control immigration we just needed a new President."

  - Yes, great line. Directly addresses and corrects a major falsehood they kept making. 

[DougMacG]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/03/04/cbs-news-poll-overwhelming-majority-viewers-approve-trumps-speech/

The 76 to 23 advantage was among those who viewed the speech. I suppose you were more likely to watch if you supported the President.

This poll says 57-32, maybe more realistic.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14462121/donald-trump-address-congress-poll.html

Each policy came with the full explanation. If you approved of it, that has a lasting effect. If you approved of the closing of the border, why would you ever vote for those people who sat for that? If you approve of the way he's trying to end the war, why would you ever vote for the people fighting that? If you approve of reading ourselves of the wasteful spending, why would you ever vote for the people who committed the wasteful spending? If you believe all these regulations being removed were excessive and wasteful, why would you ever vote for the people who pass them? If you approve of the goal of balancing the budget, why would you ever vote for the people who wanted the deficit run up to 2 trillion?

There isn't much middle ground here, sorry.

[Crafty_Dog]

Quite pleased with the speech.

A particularly potent rhetorical point in my opinion is when he pointed to the Dems and invited them to join, at least for one night, in applauding the good things that were being accomplished for America and then accurately predicting that they would not do that.

How can you not applaud a little boy beating cancer and becoming an honorary member of the Secret Service or a fine young man getting into West Point?

[ccp]

" How can you not applaud a little boy beating cancer and becoming an honorary member of the Secret Service or a fine young man getting into West Point?"
The dems would say that was a cheap political circus stunt and therefore we will not give Trump the satisfaction. of course

Like he said he could cure cancer and they would still complain in some way .

[Crafty_Dog]

The SWF seems to me a hideous idea of vast corporatist fascist potential:

===========

(5) TRUMP TAPS BANKER FOR SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND PLAN: The Commerce Department is hiring former Morgan Stanley banker Michael Grimes to lead a planned sovereign wealth fund. President Trump proposed the idea of a sovereign fund to invest tariff revenue in manufacturing hubs, defense and medical research during his 2024 campaign. The Commerce Department is considering pairing the sovereign wealth fund with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank to focus investment on national security priorities.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://tldavis.substack.com/p/restless-natives

[ccp]

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-appoints-two-fox-news-hosts-to-kennedy-center-board/

[Crafty_Dog]

This could be a lot of fun!

[Crafty_Dog]

March 10, 2025
View On Website
Open as PDF

A Personal Explanation of Why I Don’t Vote
By: George Friedman

I must confess that I have not voted in an election, other than local ones, since I left my life in academia and government 30 years ago. I chose to pursue my passion – geopolitical modeling and forecasting – as a business and so created a company that was my own Office of Net Assessment. (I’d encourage you to look this title up online.) Academic and government life constrained my ambitions. I sensed there were fewer constraints on ideas, and what it takes to develop them, in the private sector. I was too arrogant to imagine that I could fail, despite my ignorance of entrepreneurship.

And so off my wife and I went into business, producing and selling geopolitical forecasts and explanations of national behavior. It sounded like snake oil to some and boring to others. But the move left me free to pursue my passion and my wife (as crazy as I was) loved the challenge. She had no desire to be a professor’s wife. So we started this business by sending free articles to friends, and they forwarded them to others, until my wife told me to stop the free stuff and charge money. She was and is my business manager.

My idiosyncratic view of things boiled down to the idea that leaders do not make policy and that outside forces compel leaders to do what must be done, regardless of their intent. It is not ideology that shapes nations but national imperatives, constraints and capabilities. Watching politicians compete is a sideshow. History is impersonal.

Our marketing strategy was to be right more often than we were wrong so that, in time, the word would spread. To achieve this, we had an intellectual, business and moral imperative. I had to control the urge to express my own wishes regarding the outcomes in history and see instead what is and must be. My goal was to call the play-by-play of history, not to be a player in it. So I decided not to vote in national elections. I must force myself to be clinically distant from political personalities and their ideas. I must focus on the forces that create them, shape their actions and determine their fates.

This was not as difficult for me as it might be for others. At the heart of my model was an insistence to focus not on the behaviors of leaders but on the forces that call them to action. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt had radically different political beliefs, and both had their share of critics, but neither would have become president without an unsentimental and ruthless understanding of how to win elections, and neither could govern with an equally unsentimental and ruthless understanding of the world. Each crafted his personality to the task. This is true in democracies and dictatorships alike.

I can’t suppress my love of my country or the New York Yankees. I won’t put money on them if they don’t have two good relievers. So I must discipline myself on the things I can disregard. This came up in a recent video interview, in which I mentioned that I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I received many comments from Trump supporters who thought this meant I voted for Kamala Harris. But the truth is I didn’t vote for Harris either. I write this piece today because of that confusion. My job is to explain what Trump is doing in his capacity as president. But as with all presidents, who are the products of history rather than its masters, I care more about forces that shape his actions. This is because I think leaders, more often than not, do what they must or what they can. Leaders emerge because they have personalities that adapt to what is necessary. They craft their actions and personalities to suit the situation. If they can rise to leadership of a country, they have the wit and will to recognize what is necessary and possible. And if that’s the case, they must be ruthless and cunning to some degree. For some, their personality is what the times command. Others craft the personality they need. They make errors, of course, but they have gained an overwhelming ability to avoid errors in their climb to power.

I do not know if Trump’s persona is genetic or crafted, and I don’t care. In my thinking, we do not know the vices and deep thoughts of successful leaders. Leaders can see more clearly than I can what’s at stake, what’s necessary and what’s possible. If they cannot, they will be crushed by their enemies or by history. What I do know is that Trump understood what he must do to become president, and that taught him much about the principles of geopolitics.

It is my job to forecast events. So I must see as clearly as I can and suppress my own feelings. The passions of the time are not indicators of much. So far, I think I understand what Trump is doing, and in doing it, he reveals that the norms and guardrails of the last epoch have collapsed from old age. Remember that the Founding Fathers smashed through the rotted guardrails of their time and were loathed by the vast mass of American loyalists to the English Crown. This is the nature of America, and it is how my model told me that the norms and guardrails rot every 50 years (a regularity I have no explanation for), and it was time for a president like George Washington or Franklin Roosevelt to storm through them. I saw it coming but had no idea of the name that would be coming with it. And I knew that whoever was president would be both loved and hated by a divided nation. As for Trump himself, I am neither for him nor against him. I would say only that he is not violating the guardrails or norms as much as recognizing that they have outlived their usefulness and that new ones must be built. In my work on the United States, I have found that each cycle destroys the old cycle’s norms and replaces them with a new set. The defenders of the old cycle are outraged, and the defenders of the new cycle are pleased.

Mark Twain said, “history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Trump is a product of American history and, as such, should have been expected, even if the new norms he ushers in are unknown. But emerge they will as they always do in U.S. cycles.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/latest-trump-executive-order-guts-seven-agencies-including-voice-of-america/ar-AA1AZraU?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=b77553a1f43b4b2bb49f829bf38773f3&ei=80

[ccp]

Darn, as I was going to be there since Philly is only ~ 1 hr away.

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2025/03/22/trump-receives-thunderous-applause-as-he-arrives-at-ncaa-wrestling-championship/

And at the end

when Oklamhom State's Wyatt Hendrickson )formerly Air Force Acadamy grad) beat the greatest heavyweight in history Gable Stevson 5 to 4 in the last 30 seconds, and then points and salutes Donald J Trump and goes over to shake his hand etc 

See both the first and second video:

https://sports.yahoo.com/wrestling/article/oklahoma-states-wyatt-hendrickson-stuns-wrestling-world-with-upset-of-gable-steveson-salutes-president-trump-after-victory-031153518.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall

BTW we will not see this on MSM. 

[Crafty_Dog]

I've been seeing a lot of investment like this:


https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/hyundai-announces-a-20-billion-investment-in-the-united-states/ar-AA1Bywit?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=f5d6dee173f645a0843ea871ea6291aa&ei=64

[Body-by-Guinness]

Hmm, how will the unions respond?

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Exempts Agencies with National Security Missions from Federal Collective Bargaining Requirements

The White House

March 27, 2025

PROTECTING OUR NATIONAL SECURITY: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order using authority granted by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) to end collective bargaining with Federal unions in the following agencies with national security missions:
National Defense. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Coast Guard.
VA serves as the backstop healthcare provider for wounded troops in wartime.
NSF-funded research supports military and cybersecurity breakthroughs.

Border Security. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership components, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Executive Office of Immigration Review, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Foreign Relations. Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, and U.S. International Trade Commission.

President Trump has demonstrated how trade policy is a national security tool.

Energy Security. Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Interior units that govern domestic energy production.

The same Congress that passed the CSRA declared that energy insecurity threatens national security.

Pandemic Preparedness, Prevention, and Response. Within HHS, the Secretary’s Office, Office of General Counsel, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, Food and Drug Administration, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the Department of Agriculture, the Office of General Counsel, Food Safety and Inspection Service, and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

COVID-19 and the recent bird flu have demonstrated how foreign pandemics affect national security.

VA is also a backstop healthcare provider during national emergencies, and served this role during COVID-19.

Cybersecurity. The Office of the Chief Information Officer in each cabinet-level department, as well as DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the General Services Administration (GSA).

The FCC protects the reliability and security of America’s telecommunications networks.

GSA provides cybersecurity related services to agencies and ensures they do not use compromised telecommunications products.
Economic Defense. Department of Treasury.

The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) defines national security to include protecting America’s economic and productive strength. The Treasury Department collects the taxes that fund the government and ensures the stable operations of the financial system.


Public Safety. Most components of the Department of Justice as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Law Enforcement Unaffected. Police and firefighters will continue to collectively bargain.

ENSURING THAT AGENCIES OPERATE EFFECTIVELY: The CSRA enables hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management. This is dangerous in agencies with national security responsibilities:

Agencies cannot modify policies in collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) until they expire.

The outgoing Biden Administration renegotiated many agencies’ CBAs to last through President Trump’s second term.

Agencies cannot make most contractually permissible changes until after finishing “midterm” union bargaining.

For example, the FLRA ruled that ICE could not modify cybersecurity policies without giving its union an opportunity to negotiate, and then completing midterm bargaining.

Unions used these powers to block the implementation of the VA Accountability Act; the Biden Administration had to offer reinstatement and backpay to over 4,000 unionized employees that the VA had removed for poor performance or misconduct.

SAFEGUARDING AMERICAN INTERESTS: President Trump is taking action to ensure that agencies vital to national security can execute their missions without delay and protect the American people. The President needs a responsive and accountable civil service to protect our national security.

Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.

The largest Federal union describes itself as “fighting back” against Trump. It is widely filing grievances to block Trump policies.
For example, VA’s unions have filed 70 national and local grievances over President Trump’s policies since the inauguration—an average of over one a day.

Protecting America’s national security is a core constitutional duty, and President Trump refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests.

President Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him; he will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies with vital national security missions.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-exempts-agencies-with-national-security-missions-from-federal-collective-bargaining-requirements/