Tulsi Gabbard getting confirmed. Wow! Auditing the money that the US sent to Ukraine. Shutting down the slush funds of NGOs. Freezing foreign aid. Shutting off the funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the chief meddler in other countries' elections. What's next -- getting RFK Jr confirmed? Things have been happening.
It is scary for me to move from a tightly leashed Hope to actual optimistic expectations. Perhaps professional cynics like me are cowards who use their cynicism to protect themselves from disappointment.
Regardless of whether a person agrees with Trump or not, Trump 2.0 seems drastically more effective than Trump 1.0. Does this show that it can be beneficial for presidents to have non-consecutive terms? It makes sense that a four year hiatus for some deep thinking and reorganizing would have an effect. Consecutive terms make it too easy for failed advisers and cabinet heads to carry over to the second term.
What if Trump 2.0 starts auditing the Pentagon and CIA?
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As I watched this odd billionaire stand in the Oval Office, his toddler running around and climbing on him - with the co-president sitting quietly in a cuck chair in the room - explaining that it's OK that he just makes up harmful lies and that he has access to all sorts of personal and financial information, I couldn't help but think of two ladies. They were the most qualified persons to ever run for president. One had decades of diplomatic experience, years of dealing with foreign leaders, and had a better grasp of the inner workings of government than almost anyone alive. The other had served as a prosecutor, the AG of our largest state, a US senator and the Vice President of the country.
But they had problems. First, they're women. And well, I think we all fully recognize the problem some in America have with that. Beyond that, though, one was just so careless with classified documents and the other just wasn't smart enough.
People just couldn't bear to vote for Hillary Clinton because she had been so careless with those confidential documents. Why, she had once emailed three documents that contained information later deemed classified to other state department officials. How incredibly reckless. I mean, no, she never mishandled documents actually labeled classified or showed those documents to anyone not authorized to see them. And it's true that she never stored boxes of documents labeled "top secret" - our most sensitive - in her bathroom or showed them off to visitors as if they were a new painting. But dammit, this was a woman with a server at her house. We can't trust her. Who could ever vote for such a person?
Well, obviously, you could if that person was facing an opponent who was mentally impaired, like Kamala Harris. I remember when Donald Trump first started questioning Harris' intelligence and how many Americans nodded along. Because, after all, wasn't it Kamala who suggested that Americans inject bleach to kill the COVID virus? Didn't she think Fredrick Douglass was still alive and that exercise depletes the body's energy reserves? Wasn't she the one who drew a hurricane track with a sharpie? Wasn't she the one who believed batteries on boats would lead to a Sophie's Choice between electricution and a shark?
Or was it that Kamala Harris simply laughed weird while also being a Black woman?
Thank God America avoided the horrors that could have come from two people so dangerous. Had Hillary or Kamala been elected, who knows what would have happened. We could very well be sitting here today as all of our personal and financial information, along with the sensitive business records, education records, defense department records and treasury records, were turned over to some unelected donor who used it all for his personal gain, to seek retaliation against those who held his companies accountable and to stifle his competition for the billions in government contracts he currently holds. And all the while, these two would have probably been stupidly sitting by, as that guy's kid told them to shut up.
What a disaster that would have been.