This is the time of year when any online writer worth his cursor looks back at the completed year and takes stock.
Personally, I’ve had enough of 2024. You can go here and see for yourself everything I wrote this year.
I suspect many of us feel that enduring 2024 once was sufficient. So this week, a quarter-century into the new millennium, I’m going to peer ahead into what the Chinese calendar might call Year of the Trump.
Unless you're booking a flight to Canada, it all looks rather promising and exciting going in.
Let’s be honest, though. After the constant cringes of the appalling Joe Biden era of error, an Olympic knitting match would be refreshing.
After another large pardon party, Mr. Magoo and family are off on another of its chronic vacations now in the borrowed mansion of another billionaire that should be reported to the IRS as an in-kind political donation. But probably won’t.
Biden, the devout Catholic abortion advocate, has scheduled one last international freebie junket on Air Force One for another audience with the Pope.
Instead, the 46th president should be seeking forgiveness from his own people for the countless lies, fables, serial screw-ups, lethal decisions, and the intentional erasure of the southern border that will adversely impact our nation long after his beach chair is vacated.
In 22 more days (it just seems like years), he and that pack of elder abusers will be out of the White House, hopefully not removing dish settings like the Clintons.
A ghostwriter can then begin assembling Joseph R. Biden’s memoir (“My Life’s a Beach”) about how Bidenomics engineered four years of record prosperity and that peaceful exit from Afghanistan. It will be on the Fiction Shelf at Barnes & Noble.
The only thing we know about what’s coming next in an historic, non-consecutive second Trump term is that it will be busy and interesting. Also loud.
This transition appears different (my emphasis). Even Trump noticed this. The opposition going in seems quieter and softer than 2016. No hoaxes, lawsuits, and malevolent Deep State leaks, yet.
“Everybody wants to be my friend,” Trump said. However, unless you have a pet dog, friendship in the Swamp is situational, transactional. This time, Trump is experienced there.
One of Trump’s more popular vows is to aggressively pursue media for false reports, as he did so successfully against ABC News recently.
Hopefully, Trump can continue that winning streak by picking only the best cases to sue carefully. In his first term, he was sometimes distracted from more important objectives by feeling the need to respond to every perceived slight.
A new Gallup Poll finds overall approval for Trump’s ongoing transition so far, with some doubts about a few of his appointees.
An early challenge will be pushing scores of nominations, some of them controversial, through Senate confirmation.
A tireless Trump has made many campaign promises or, more accurately, intentions. As with any pol, some are no doubt hyperbole or spur-of-the-rally-moment.
He’ll have roughly two years to enact them before the 2026 midterm elections turn him into a lame duck, especially if those results erase the GOP’s slim congressional majorities.
Of course, a newly-reinstalled President Trump will also face his party’s uncanny ability to defeat itself through factional squabbles and posturings. Since he helped many of them get elected, hopefully, that will be minimized this time.
Despite initial 2017 turmoil, Trump did fulfill an impressive number of first-term promises – the personal and corporate tax cuts, honoring and rebuilding the military, conservative court judges and justices, deregulating business structures, unleashing the energy sector to produce independence, turning the ISIS caliphate into a bloody smudge in history.
Trump bullied NATO allies into boosting defense spending, just in time to help Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion. And the alliance leadership expressed thanks. Trump solidified U.S. support for Israel, exited Obama’s porous nuclear agreement with Iran, and forged the historic Abraham Accords.
Despite vigorous Democrat opposition, Trump did get about 500 miles of wall built along the 1,954-mile southern border. Mexico did not pay a peso, and Biden halted construction.
In perhaps his most popular pledge, Trump has vowed to resume construction, “seal” the border, and launch history’s largest deportation program, beginning with criminals. He says Mexico has promised to help with the immigrant flow.
The American Immigration Council reports that among the estimated 11 million illegals in the U.S. now, about 1.9 million have criminal convictions or final removal orders.
Homeland Security records show the busiest year for deportations was 2013 under Barack Obama, when 430,000 were expelled. Trump will want to exceed that eventually.
Deporting just the existing 1.9 million would take considerable organization, time, and expenses.
And some local jurisdictions have vowed to resist, even over violent offenders.
Practically speaking, even with cooperative authorities, there is no way even a determined president with Trump’s seemingly boundless energy will be able to find and deport the 10 million-plus illegals that Biden and Kamala Harris willfully gave entry to and helped secret throughout the country as sleeper Democrat voters.
Hostile media will surely want to break out the violins in coverage of many attempted deportation cases, likely neglecting to mention the illegality of their presence.
However, Trump has dismissed doubts. He told NBC News:
It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not. Really, we have no choice. When people killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries. And now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.
Trump will want to give the opening impression of a furious flurry of activity. His transition team is currently drafting executive orders to come out minutes after the noon ceremony Jan. 20.
He has spoken of pardons for the Jan. 6 demonstrators. He will no doubt move to dismantle Biden’s green agenda and encourage fossil fuel production through deregulation and faster drilling permits.
No stranger to bold promises, Trump said in September he would approve new pipelines and his goal would be to slash energy prices in half during his first year.
In theory, more oil supplies would reduce gas prices. However, supply is only one factor in the global market. Profits are also key. More oil could reduce them, too, and actually discourage the huge investments necessary for drilling.
In his Time magazine Man of the Year interview, Trump cautioned that bringing food prices down will be difficult:
Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.
But I think that they will. I think that energy is going to bring them down. I think a better supply chain is going to bring them down. You know, the supply chain is still broken.
Trump has also backed off his campaign claim that he could arrange peace in Ukraine within 24 hours. He now says that may be as difficult to obtain as general Mideast peace.
And then there are the broad tariffs that Trump has promised to encourage investments in the U.S. and create domestic jobs. Wall Street is lobbying hard against them over fears the tariffs will simply be passed along to American consumers and add to the inflation that Trump campaigned so strongly against.
More recently, Trump has floated the idea of gaining possession of Greenland from Denmark over national security concerns about Russia and China’s growing interest in the Arctic. And the president-elect has criticized Panama for charging exorbitant passage fees.
Leaders of both countries have rejected the suggestions.
One other aspect of a second Trump term is far from controversial: The return of Melania Trump as a graceful First Lady.
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