This January, Trump Needs To Hit the Ground Running

On the evening of Tuesday, November 5, I had two articles already written. One was for in the event of a Trump victory (read here), and the other was for in the event of a Harris victory.

What a dope I was, wasting all that time on that second article. Guess the joke is on me, eh progs? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ok, enough joking around, time to get serious. Hey Tim Walz, you better hurry back to Minneapolis. I hear there's a boys' bathroom that needs its tampon machine restocked! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ok, but super seriously now, these next two months will be crucial, perhaps more crucial than when Trump takes office again in January. Assuming Republicans keep the house, this time needs to be focused on two overriding priorities: 1) Building a solid cabinet for Trump, and 2) Preparing a legislative agenda for Speaker Johnson and the Senate majority leader to begin passing on Day One.

As many of us have opined on these pages, Trump's biggest mistake during his first term was relying too heavily on cabinet picks whose loyalty to the Constitution was, at best, questionable. John Kelly, James Comey, Christopher Wray, Elaine Chao, Anthony Fauci, and Mark Milley should have been allowed nowhere near the corridors of power. They were either too connected to the Swamp or too timid to fight it. A better vetting process is needed this time around.

In this respect, Trump understands where he erred. His instinct this time tells him to go with outsiders like himself (RFK Jr., Elon Musk, etc.) who are both wealthy enough and/or disdained enough by the Establishment to resist any temptations dangled in front of them. Whether or not other outsiders will prove to be too unpredictable or unstable remains to be seen, but at the very least, whatever they do will be better than their aforementioned predecessors.

There is talk of bringing Ben Carson and Betsy DeVos back into their previous roles, which would be a plus. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is rumored to be in the running for U.N. ambassador. She would make a good bookend to Nikki Haley, who, during her time in this role, decimated this pro-terrorist, antidemocratic institution every time she spoke. And as Stephen Kruiser already pointed out, Susie Wiles is a superb choice for a Deep State blowtorching Chief of Staff of the "intelligent woman" mien that Mark Cuban has trouble recognizing.

Secondly, Speaker Johnson and whoever our Senate leader ends up being need to be fully on board. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell dropped the ball, either intentionally our out of a lack of urgency. Republicans held both houses and the presidency, yet these two "leaders" accomplished almost nothing beyond a modest and temporary tax cut. This was absolutely inexcusable.

The last time the Democrats held both chambers and the presidency, they passed Obamacare. There was no talk of reconciliation, there was no "reaching across the aisle." They sidelined anyone who disagreed with them, and used every procedural dirty trick to ram through their legislation.

We need legislation on this level of scope, with this same Machiavellian will to do so. We have a two-year window to get as much accomplished as possible before the next midterms. Democrats didn't care in 2008 about losing the midterms in 2010; they cared about passing legislation that would permanently alter this country for the worse. Republican representatives have to work as if they don't care about the midterms in 2026, and need to pass legislation that would permanently alter this country for the better.

Speaker Johnson seems to fully grasp this, and has no intention of pulling a Brutus/Cassius on us, as Ryan and McConnell did. Assuming we keep the House, Johnson said, "We gotta execute these plays with precision in January as soon as we're handed the ball." As Sarah Arnold has documented here, Trump already has a 10-point plan for demolishing the Deep State.

Here are a few comprehensive packages worth considering:

IMMIGRATION REFORM

And by "immigration reform," I mean first and foremost to build the damn wall. After that, start the deportations, starting with the violent criminals and gang members. Third, give our Border Patrol whatever support and resources they need. Fourth, place a moratorium on all immigration for the next couple decades or so, to allow recent arrivals to assimilate for a generation or two. When we open the doors again, run a merit-based acceptance system to allow only the most talented and productive.

EDUCATION REFORM

Effective immediately, cut off all federal funding to any educational institution, be it public or private, college or kindergarten, that runs a DEI program. Implement standards (again, tied to funding) that strictly enforce curriculum, especially in the social sciences. Reinstitute a focus on the virtues and exceptionalism of Western civilization.

Launch DOJ investigations and lawsuits targeting schools who either promote racism and division, or who turn a blind eye to its occurrence. No students should be indoctrinated with the idea that their skin color makes them evil. No students should fear going to school because of pro-terrorist mobs. Hit these schools with lawsuits and this despicable behavior will evaporate.

Enshrine school choice. Inner city minorities should have access to the schools of their choosing, and a permanent voucher system should be implemented to give these kids better opportunities. Break the teachers' unions once and for all.

BUREAUCRATIC REFORM

Rein in the alphabet agencies. The Chevron decision gives Trump the green light to do that. Our laws are determined by legislatures, not by faceless departmental cogs who feel they have the right and moral authority to decide how they see fit to interpret and implement our laws. A puddle in some farmer's backyard does not constitute a "waterway," and our tax collectors have no business asking us about our religion.

The FBI needs a top-to-bottom house cleaning. Any agents who had any decision whatsoever in the entrapment and/or violation of Americans' civil liberties needs to be fired and, if applicable, criminally charged. All management level staff need to be terminated immediately, with a rehire process for patriotic, constitutionally minded agents who get caught up in the dragnet. They need to apply again, interview again, and go through another vetting (the first one obviously wasn't stringent enough). The days of the FBI being used by Democrats as their personal Cheka must end.

Ditto for the DOJ and the CIA. The NSA should be disbanded, and its collective powers redistributed back to their original agencies. The Patriot Act should be overturned and the FISA courts disbanded. FEMA is beyond useless, and is now using your tax dollars to intentionally withhold help to hurricane victims who support Trump. Consign it to the dustbin of history.

MILITARY REFORM

Young, patriotic Americans spilled their blood on foreign battlefields for twenty years, with nothing to show for it other than the fact that our enemies control more territory now than they did on September 10, 2001, and with billions of dollars of our weaponry. This is in no way the fault of our soldiers, and in every way the fault of the beribboned cowards we call "generals" who slither their way from the Pentagon to the think tank boards to the weapons manufacturer executive boards, with nary a thought for the lives they destroy.

We need military leadership with a backbone. We need military leadership whose priority is not providing free transition surgeries for transgender enlistees. We need military leadership that fights actual enemies, not a chimerical "white supremacy" within our own ranks. We need military leadership that puts country above career.

I'm no isolationist, but nor do I think stalemate wars with no attainable goals and no willingness to do what is necessary to secure victory is a viable path forward. Not every war is a "forever war," and we can't survive in this world with our heads in the sand. But we need to fight on our terms, not the terms of the terrorists or their U.N. sympathizers. The "hearts and minds" of Islamic jihadists should be about as low a concern of ours as were the "hearts and minds" of the Germans and Japanese of yesteryear. What we erroneously praise as "outreach," our enemies correctly loathe as appeasement and weakness.

If we get into a war, we need to win it. Generals who lack the ability and fortitude to do so must be recycled out, Lincoln-style.

FOREIGN POLICY REFORM

Either help Ukraine, or don't. Either help Israel, or don't. But we expect them to fight their wars the way we fight our wars, with oodles of asinine, self-imposed restrictions designed not to defeat the enemy, but to fight a standstill war for as long as possible until our side eventually loses. So we dish out just enough funding, and just enough "permission" to counterstrike, to affect exactly that. Unfortunately for both our neocons and our woke progressives, that's not the way our allies would prefer to handle things.

Because right now, we're not giving our allies funding and weapons to win. We're giving them funding and weapons to get them to limp along just enough to maintain the status quo. And who does that benefit besides the arms industries and their globalist lackeys whose "expertise" lies in their uncanny ability to lose wars to illiterate goatherds in the most humiliating way possible?

Our would think it self-evident that we should neither abandon our allies nor appease our enemies. Trump is the only president since Reagan to grasp this. He didn't launch unfocused, undefined wars. He used our military in limited, albeit extremely effective, ways to let our barbaric enemies know we mean business. Offing Iranian terrorist leaders on airport tarmacs was good policy, as was standing up to China on trade.

ELECTION REFORM

We won this election in large part because the Democrats weren't able to cheat. But that's not for lack of trying.

The Biden administration didn't send absentee ballots to soldiers stationed overseas, claiming implausibly that they ran out of ballots. Democrat officials in Georgia tried accepting absentee ballots after the legal due date. They also tried to prevent Republican poll watchers from observing the ballot count. In Wisconsin, they tried the same thing. In Pennsylvania, they tried the same thing. Elsewhere in the Keystone State, Democrat officials tried turning Republican early voters away, citing technical problems with the ballot machines. In Philadelphia, Democrats were caught letting illegal immigrants vote.

And, as usual, their ground game quislings, who no doubt fancy themselves the epitome of tolerance, were out on the streets, on neighborhood corners, in grocery stores, and in polling locations, physically attacking Trump supporters. Nothing says "saving democracy" like bashing someone in the head with a sledgehammer because they peacefully disagree with you.

Many of these attempts at voter suppression were thwarted, but only because this time around we had teams of lawyers in position to tackle these attempts as soon as they happened. Had our ground game not been so Johnny-on-the-spot, the Democrats very well may have pulled off another 4AM "victory."

While we can, we need to implement hardcore voting reforms immediately. Voter IDs need to be made mandatory. Attempts to suppress the vote, like those mentioned above, should be met with immediate DOJ lawsuits, to include prison time for individuals attempting to do so. Private citizens engaged in physical attacks on political opponents need civil rights charges brought against them.

There's plenty more, but you get the point.

All these reforms would be dragged into activist courts by the Democrats in attempts to jam us up. Our Republican lawmakers must anticipate this by drafting legislation in ways that renders their constitutionality unquestionable. We also need to ignore the Democrats' newfound calls for unity and reconciliation. Don't buy it for a second. Going into Tuesday afternoon, we were all Nazi, fascist, garbage deplorables. Now all the sudden we're fellow Americans who need to work together to turn down the temperature? Kindly GFY.

Again, we have a guaranteed but small time frame with which to reshape America in our image, the image of the Founding Fathers, and the image of Lincoln, Reagan, and Martin Luther King. Ignore the hysterical shrieking from the media and the campuses. Trump & Co. need to hit the ground running and plow full steam ahead.

Fortunately, it looks like this is exactly that they're planning to do.