Immediately upon his second inauguration, President Trump set out to fulfill his campaign promises through executive orders. Among his commitments was to shrink the federal workforce, especially of those who have continued to work from home post-COVID. Among the government workers fired were 3-400 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) workers. Since the inauguration there have been a number of shocking airplane collisions and and near misses, starting just 9 days after the inauguration. On January 29 a US Black Hawk helicopter collided with a civilian jet near Ronald Reagan Airport. With each incident, the media returned to the question of how much the FAA staff cuts were responsible for what began to seem like an unprecedented number of accidents in a president's first two months.
The media coverage of this topic highlights the media and Democrat's approach to everything Trump does. It is not about the subject, it is always about the fact that it has happened under or because of Trump. This applies to everything from plane accidents to ensuring proper spending by federal agencies. Trump must exist in a vacuum with no relation to other administrations or even in the context of the Executive powers as defined by the Constitution. The reason is simple. Comparisons favor Trump. There have been 99 airline accidents so far in Trump's term, there were 164 by the end of February in Biden's term. The alternative to Trump is the failure that elected him to his second term.
The left has avoided any introspection over the reasons for their loss in November. Rather than accept the reasons voters have given for their loss, they are doubling and tripling down on their incredibly unpopular platform. At the same time, dems are doing all they can to obstruct Trump. However, as they continue to portray Trump as a threat to democracy, what Trump is doing is more popular than he is. The Democrats undermine their future electoral success by reflexively choosing positions that are the opposite of Trump. As a result they start by strongly supporting minority positions rejected by 60-80% of voters. They stand less in opposition to Trump than in opposition to what the majority of voters want.
The most vocal opposition to the Trump agenda is directed at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk. The agency was established under Obama as the United States Digital Service (USDS). The goal was to recruit tech experts to improve digital capacity of the government and modernize technology across agencies. Trump renamed the agency the United States Doge Service, to retain the USDS acronym, while shifting and growing the mission of the agency. Now, instead of just focusing on modernizing technology, DOGE is working to aggressively cut waste and fraud, and the number of federal regulations. Musk is committed to cutting a trillion dollars in needless spending from the budget. The Democrats are opposed to his effort.
They claim is that Musk, as an unelected official, has no right to look at the personal information of US citizens, unlike the faceless bureaucrats who look at the personal information of US citizens. In 2024 the Treasury Inspector General released an IRS audit which revealed that 919 individuals accessed the unmasked identifiable data of US citizens including 20 unpaid student volunteers. In May 2024, the IRS revealed that the information of 70,000 taxpayers, including the current president were leaked. That number has been revised to over 400,000 affected. All of that is ignored while the work of Musk, appointed by the president who ran on Musk doing the exact thing he is doing, is claimed to be unconstitutional. At least four judges have placed injunctions on DOGE's work examining the United States Agency of International Development (USAID), The Department of Education, and the Department of The Treasury. All three agencies fall under the direct supervision of the president. The idea that district judges can intervene in that supervision is in itself unconstitutional. While voters have some concern about DOGE access to private information, they overwhelmingly support its mission.
Until 5 minutes ago most Democrat voters would have lined up behind any effort that would expand the projected lifespan of Social Security and the long term health of the Medicaid program. The Government Accountability Office reports $234 billion in "improper" payments, $50 billion of that from Medicaid. Although it is not clear if there are payments associated, Musk's DOGE team found over 8 million people over the age of 120 with no date of death listed. One would expect the Democrats to see this as an area of possible collaboration to appeal to voters. Instead they pretend to worry that Musk might use their personal information to enrich himself. The problem for the Democrats is that in the absence of the introspection that might have led to a commitment to principles they could articulate, they jumped to immediate reactive resistance. They are incapable of claiming a win for their principles if it means acknowledging they share areas of agreement with Trump.
The son of an old friend had a negative, racially charged experience in his community. A peer essentially told the son that Hitler was right. I can imagine the discomfort a young Jewish teen might experience in that circumstance. In his telling of the incident my friend laid all blame at the feet of Trump because the kid was a MAGA supporter. Because he's a Democrat in a Democrat bubble, most of the comments on the thread agreed with him and condemned Trump and his followers for white supremacy and antisemitism. The only problem with their assessment is that Trump agrees with them about antisemitism and has publicly condemned white supremacy. He has a Jewish daughter and son in law, he has Jewish grandchildren. He is a vocally and materially strong supporter of Israel. During the Biden administration, following October 7, there were antisemitic marches in the streets of large cities and large anti-Jewish encampments on many campuses. The Biden administration response was mostly silence. The Trump response has been to create an antisemitism task force in his Department of Justice. The objective is to ensure that there are consequences for the anti-Jewish behavior that went unremarked upon in the prior administration.
I pointed out these facts, which to any rational person might temper their depiction of Trump. What I was told is that Trump's condemnation of antisemitism was insufficient because he only meant it for rich people. I found the exchanges shocking, as well as disgusting. To all my Jewish friends, you can either argue for people to take antisemitism seriously or you can argue that the autistic billionaire was doing a nazi salute and the president who condemned white supremacy and created the only task force on antisemitism in his DOJ is a white supremacist antisemite. You cannot do both. We all know the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf and how the same tale repeated without evidence loses all power. Truly, the only connection between Trump and Hitler exists in the minds of Democrats constantly advertising Hitler and minimizing his crimes to condemn Trump because they lack an actual political argument against him. The most powerful tool against an antisemitic MAGA supporter is the fact that Trump would condemn him like all other white supremacists and antisemites. Sadly, Democrat principles matter less than reactive opposition to Trump. If they finally prioritized anything that voters said was important to them, Democrats would abandon the position the moment that Trump agreed with them.
Alternatively, what they call resisting Trump seems to be boycotting companies that may have supported Trump or agree with him. There is a boycott of Target for abandoning DEI, because too many Democrats think ending DEI means no longer hiring black people. There has also been a boycott planned for February 28. A day without shopping to show the economic power of the 'Resistance.' The idea is that once there is a disturbance in the economy the corporations will be forced to acknowledge them and then....I honestly don't know. I have read that this is a very effective form of resistance, but no one will say what it's effective at doing. If we are honest, they hope to harm the economy, in the hope of harming Trump as if it will not harm Americans, including themselves. More likely, they do not care that it might harm fellow citizens. In an interview on The Breakfast Club, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett admitted to hoping that Mexico and Canada win in any economic conflict with the US.
Resisting Trump seems to mean hoping for the failure of the US. It is possible that I'm wrong and the Democrats actually have reflected on their loss. If so, their conclusion seems to be that instead of competing to better fulfill the needs of voters, their future electoral success rests on assuring that Trump fails, regardless of the consequences for the rest of us.
If I was to offer advice to cynical Democrats who would like a chance of winning again in the future, I would say listen to voters. 66% of voters polled by Harvard Caps Harris want the Democrats to wait and see with Trump instead of opposing everything he does reflexively. Find issues he supports, agree with him on the goal, paint his approach as insufficient and offer a better alternative. Appealing to the Democrat desire for power might work where the appeal to reason has failed. They need to at least appear to care more about the well being of the nation than they seem to hate Trump. Instead, they have so deranged themselves because of their loss they seem committed to harming the country as their only means of stopping Trump. That is not an example of someone the voters want to give control to govern their lives.
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