According to a longstanding American political tradition, the nation has only one president at a time. Right now, it appears that the president looks like Donald Trump — because President Biden has ceded the spotlight to the president-elect, and has ceded to him the ability to shape foreign policy while proposing a radical transformation and downsizing of the sprawling federal bureaucracy and its out-of-control deficit spending.
Trump doesn’t take office for another month, but many people who had been his fiercest critics in Washington — and the White House — have mostly stood aside while Trump assembles his new administration with unusual speed and confidence.
Ever since Election Day, Trump’s thoughtful and unusual picks for his cabinet and to fill key policy positions across the federal government have dominated the headlines and left his political opponents in confusion and disarray. From the unconventional choice of vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, to the selection of Tulsi Gabbard, an outspoken critic of prior interventions by the U.S. military in far-flung foreign countries, to Pete Hegseth a former mid-level U.S. Army combat officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an advocate for the rights of veterans, with an admitted history of personal issues which he has overcome, to head the Pentagon, Trump has reached beyond the safe choices of political hacks to direct his administration and is clearly seeking to bring sometimes controversial people with new ideas into positions of power where they can keep his promise by changing the course of an increasingly dysfunctional federal government.
TRUMP’S TEAM SHARES HIS VISION AND GOALS
Trump’s appointments also closely reflect his positions on key campaign issues. He has appointed a border czar, Thomas Homan, a former Trump administration immigration official with real experience in controlling the southern border with Mexico, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as a Secretary of Homeland Security who sees Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegal aliens, starting with convicted criminals, as a necessity for national security. Trump has appointed Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, a major oil-producing state, as his Secretary of the Interior, and Chris Wright, who ran a successful fracking company and has been an outspoken defender of fossil fuels as his Secretary of Energy. Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, are experienced Wall Street executives who are enthusiastic supporters of Trump’s low tax, reduced regulation, and pro-tariff economic policies.
To work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reform the country’s health system, Trump has appointed Johns Hopkins public health expert Dr. Martin Makary, who was a critic of Biden’s Covid vaccine mandates, to run the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration which condemned as unnecessary the Covid lockdowns and school closings, to oversee the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which supervises a $48 billion annual budget for medical research. Trump’s ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, is an evangelical pastor who sees this assignment as a holy mission, who rejects as illegitimate the very concept of a Palestinian people, let alone a Palestinian state, and who has been leading Christian pilgrimage trips to Israel for decades.
In addition to swiftly assembling a federal government leadership full of people who understand and are loyal to his vision for leading the country and to him personally, Trump has been laser-focused on following through on all of his major campaign promises. He has also been avoiding the problems that he ran into during his first term as president, as a newcomer to Washington, when he appointed key members of the cabinet and White House staff primarily based on recommendations from others. This time around, with eight years of Washington and nationwide political experience under his belt, Trump has been relying on his own keen instincts and personal experiences with the people he has been considering rather than their public reputations.
VOTERS APPROVE OF PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP’S FIRST MOVES
There are signs that even a significant percentage of those who voted for Kamala Harris approve of Trump’s aggressive first moves as president-elect, by naming a slate of cabinet members and federal agency heads who agree with his intention to make radical changes in the current policies of the federal government, and confirming that he fully intends to carry out his campaign promises once in office. That is in sharp contrast to the record of Joe Biden, who ran for president in 2020 as a centrist “transition” candidate dedicated to governing with a bipartisan approach. Once he was in office, Biden pursued extreme liberal and progressive policies and further divided the nation by attempting to demonize Donald Trump and his supporters as racist bigots who pose a serious threat to American democracy.
The voters also appear to respect Trump’s refusal to back down from the promises that he made during the campaign to address the main concerns and desires that most Americans expressed during the campaign. These include bringing down inflated prices by ending the Biden war on domestic fossil fuel energy, cutting taxes instead of raising them, eliminating unnecessary government regulations instead of creating more of them, putting an end to Biden’s open border policies, and deporting the millions of illegal aliens who took advantage of them, and restoring America’s strength and respect as the leader of the free world, while consistently putting America’s interests first, ahead of those of other countries.
As a result, a CBS/YouGov poll taken in late November found that 59% of all voters approve of Trump’s handling of the transition so far, almost 10% more than voted for him as president on November 5.
TRUMP RATHER THAN BIDEN MEETS WITH MACRON AND ZELENSKY
President Biden remained in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, after returning from a visit to Africa during which he embarrassed himself by falling asleep during a meeting with the leader of Angola, and struggled to justify the unprecedented broad presidential pardon that he granted to his son.
Meanwhile, it was president-elect Trump who traveled to Paris to participate in an event that was attended by fifty world leaders and to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During that meeting, Zelenskyy suggested for the first time that he is willing to come to the negotiating table to bargain with Russian President Vladimir Putin over an equitable agreement to end the war in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy was responding to Trump’s repeated demands that the killing in Ukraine be stopped, backed up by Trump’s power, after being inaugurated on January 20, to either increase or clamp down on the generous American military aid which has enabled Ukraine to keep fighting a much larger and better armed Russian opponent on near-equal terms for the past three years.
TRUMP RATHER THAN BIDEN OFFERS GUIDANCE ON SYRIA
At the time that the meeting was taking place in Paris, the Russian and Iranian-back regime of Bashar al-Assad based in Damascus was in the process of falling to a reconstituted coalition of rebel groups in Syria. While the rapid and total collapse of the Assad regime was not yet apparent, it was already clear that the balance of power in the region had been altered because neither Russia, Iran, nor Hezbollah were in a position to come to Assad’s rescue, as they had in the past. Yet Biden in Washington remained silent and left it to Trump in Paris to state the obvious at that point, that the renewal of the civil war in Syria “is not our fight.”
Biden did not make any public comment on the situation in Syria until Sunday, after it was clear that Damascus had fallen to the rebels, and Assad had fled the country to seek the protection of his Russian allies.
Unfortunately, Biden and his administration’s statements provided little insight for the American people into the dramatic events in Syria that had just taken place and their major implications for the Middle East as a whole. Instead, that leadership task once again was left to President-elect Donald Trump, who issued a statement that reflected his practical, common-sense approach to American foreign policy and his clear set of priorities.
Trump wrote in a social media post: “Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever.
“Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now,” Trump continued, “one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success.
“Likewise, Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse.”
“I know Vladimir [Putin] well,” Trump declared. “This is his time to act. China can help. The world is waiting!”
Trump has made it clear that he believes that America’s main interest lies in ending the ongoing slaughter on both sides due to the bloody stalemate on the battlefield in Ukraine. Putting an end to that war is necessary to restore peace and stability in Europe and eliminate the growing threat of an unintended escalation of the conflict in Ukraine into a nuclear war that nobody wants.
TRUMP’S THREAT FORCES A HAMAS HOSTAGE CONCESSION
Similarly, Trump’s clear position in support of Israel’s right to do whatever is necessary to bring an end to the threat by Hamas to repeat its October 7th attack last year, combined with Israel’s military success in sharply reducing the immediate threats it faces from Hezbollah and Iran, has finally prompted Hamas’ surviving leadership to begin a credible cease-fire negotiating process. According to a report by a London-based Arabic language newspaper owned by a Qatari company, the negotiations involving Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States have reached an advanced stage towards a cease-fire agreement in Gaza. It would be accompanied by the release of an unspecified number of named elderly or medically fragile civilian hostages who were kidnapped on October 7 but who are still alive and being held by Hamas, in exchange for the freeing of a number of Palestinian security prisoners being held in Israeli jails.
Significantly, the list of hostages to be released by Hamas includes the names of four individuals with American citizenship whose return was demanded in a public ultimatum issued by President-elect Donald Trump, even though they do not meet the same criteria as the others to be set free by Hamas under the proposed cease-fire deal. This indicates that Trump’s demands as president-elect, even though he will not be back in the White House for another month, are now being taken far more seriously by Hamas than the numerous calls that were issued over the past year by President Biden for the release of the same American individuals being held in Gaza.
CANADA AND MEXICO REACT TO AVOID TRUMP TARIFFS
Also, Trump’s public promises to raise tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and Canada have put their leaders on notice that he is demanding better trade deals for U.S. consumers and businesses. As a result, since winning the election, Trump has had dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and started a diplomatic dialogue with Mexico’s newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum, both of whom seem to be eager to come to a new trading agreement, on Trump’s terms, to avoid an economically ruinous tariff war with the U.S.
Trump has also moved very rapidly not only to put a large number of people whom he knows and trusts in his cabinet and positions of power throughout the agencies of the federal government, not only to implement his conservative, free-market, America First-based policy agenda, but also to reshape the federal government. He plans to cut out whole agencies that are no longer necessary, such as the Department of Education, and eliminate vast amounts of wasteful spending under the guidance of the new Department of Government Efficiency to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
DEMOCRATS FEEL MORE PRESSURE TO COOPERATE WITH TRUMP
Their dramatic goal of cutting federal spending by up to $2 trillion over the next year and a half by ruthlessly reducing the size of the federal government and eliminating tens of thousands of unnecessary federal jobs has captured the public’s imagination. It has also prompted some congressional Democrats to quietly seek ways in which they can take part in the process, in cooperation with the Republicans, rather than repeating their reaction after Trump won the 2016 election by refusing to cooperate with him and his administration in any way.
At the time they rejected the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency and refused to give him any cooperation. They launched a resistance movement to oppose his every policy proposal and nomination for the cabinet, as well as federal agencies and the judiciary. But this time Trump’s electoral victory was of so much greater a magnitude that they could not credibly deny its legitimacy.
In addition, the caliber of Trump’s nominees for positions in his cabinet and to lead federal agencies, as a rule, is far higher than it was eight years ago. Even his picks which are more controversial, such as Robert F, Kennedy, Jr. to serve as the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard for the Director of National Intelligence are both former Democrats who at one time ran for the Democrat presidential nomination and who have laid out thoughtful positions on the issues in their fields which are clearly outside the mainstream but which have gained a certain level of respect and are consistent with Trump’s promise to voters to shake up “business as usual” in Washington, D.C., and challenge the deeply entrenched bureaucratic power of the so-called “administrative state.”
TRUMP HAS LEARNED HOW TO “DRAIN WITH THE SWAMP”
While Trump was unable to do very much during his first four years in office to “drain the swamp” in Washington, he has learned many lessons from those defeats. Four years later, the president-elect is approaching the same task with far more understanding of the forces arrayed against him, and a renewed determination to keep his promise to overcome them. Trump also now has a substantial Electoral College and popular vote mandate that strengthens his political hand and gives him much more leverage with which to implement his policies with elected Republican and Democrat leaders alike.
This has left many Democrats perturbed that Biden and party leaders, after spending years casting Trump as a threat to democracy, have left a communications and policy vacuum during the transition period.
When Trump visited the White House a few days after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden greeted him personally with a polite “welcome back.” The cordiality was intended to show the Democrats’ commitment to the continuity of government and democratic norms and a smooth and peaceful transfer of power. Some of the Democrats had hoped that Biden would use that moment to make a public point of urging Trump to respect the political independence of the Justice Department and other institutions, unlike Biden’s administration, which abused the federal government’s law enforcement powers to prosecute Trump personally for his alleged crimes and to send some of his key supporters to jail for their commission of relatively minor offenses.
BIDEN IS GIVING TRUMP A BETTER TRANSITION THAN OBAMA DID
It is to Biden’s credit, however, that he has been sincere in his willingness to cooperate with Trump and his transition team to effect a smooth transition between administrations. Biden’s conduct stands in sharp contrast to how President Barack Obama handled the transition following Trump’s election victory in 2016. Obama administration officials used the false allegations against Trump of collusion with the Russians in the Steele dossier, which had been secretly produced and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign as a political dirty trick, in a security briefing for president-elect Trump during the transition, and then leaked the scandalous false accusations in the dossier to the media, launching the Russian collusion hoax.
Also, during the final weeks of the Obama administration, President-elect Trump asked the administration to veto United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned the expansion of Israel’s West Bank settlements as a “flagrant violation” of international law and having “no legal validity,” something that the U.S. had done many times before to protect Israel against the double standard the U.N. has long used against it. But that time Obama rejected Trump’s request. In order to take his personal revenge against Israel’s Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu, President Obama ordered America’s U.N. ambassador to abstain on the resolution, enabling it to pass, marking the first and only time that the Security Council condemned Israel’s settlement policies in such harsh terms. In reaction to the strong objections to the U.S. abstention by President-elect Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, Obama’s deputy national-security adviser admonished, “There’s one president at a time,” while Netanyahu issued a statement declaring that, “Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.”
BIDEN IS THE LAMEST DUCK PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME
The fury at the Biden administration from the Democrats’ progressive wing for ceding the headlines during the current federal government transition period without putting up a fight against Trump and his team has been even sharper than the criticism of Biden for pardoning his son: “This is one of the lamest of lame ducks we’ve seen with a Democratic administration. A massive missed opportunity,” said Usamah Andrabi, on behalf of the progressive group known as Justice Democrats, who complain that the Biden White House has allowed the Trump team to grab the American public’s attention and support during the transition period uncontested.
The biggest news story since the election was Biden breaking his promise to the American people by pardoning his son, Hunter. Biden then left for a trip to Africa rather than confronting Trump over his more controversial cabinet picks. Since losing the election, the Biden administration has also failed to make a broader effort to prepare the defeated Democrats to do political battle more effectively against the incoming Trump administration both in the midterm election 2 years from now as well as in 2028, when Trump will not be able to run for re-election.
WILL BIDEN BE HANDING OUT “GET OUT OF JAIL FREE” CARDS?
The anonymously sourced media stories coming out of the White House have suggested the possibility that before leaving office, Biden might grant pre-emptive presidential pardons to Democrat elected officials like California senator-elect Adam Schiff, and appointed government bureaucrats who played leading roles in the years-long campaigns to demonize Donald Trump, such as special counsel Jack Smith. This move makes those alleged targets for retribution by Trump look more guilty, even though to date, none of them have been accused of committing any crime. Nevada’s Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto has even suggested that Biden should provide a pardon to every illegal immigrant in the country to prevent the Trump administration from carrying out its promise to deport them.
These stories further undermine the credibility of Biden’s use of the presidential pardoning power to immunize his son, Hunter against possible jail sentences for the crimes that he committed. Theoretically, the presidential pardoning power is overseen by the Justice Department and is not supposed to be influenced by personal or partisan political considerations.
Furthermore, by suggesting that Biden use pre-emptive pardons to protect his supporters against prosecution by the Trump administration, as well as other members of Biden’s family who were involved in Hunter’s influence-peddling schemes, those stories tended to legitimize Trump’s stated intention to use that pardoning power on the first day of his second term in the White House to free his supporters who have been jailed for rioting at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
MOST OF TRUMP’S APPOINTEES ARE GETTING A FREE PASS
Because Democrats and the White House have not done an effective job of attacking the records of Trump’s most controversial appointees, “Most voters don’t know Kash Patel or even who Matt Gaetz or Tulsi Gabbard are,” said Waleed Shahid, a progressive Democratic strategist. “But many more Americans would know, if President Biden spoke about them…The only way to win the war of attention is by going to the voters and explaining things to them, which President Biden has consistently avoided doing.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last week also refrained from directly criticizing Trump’s picks for his new administration. Instead, Schumer emphasized the importance of putting nominees through traditional FBI background checks, which the Trump transition team was late in arranging, and conducting thorough Senate confirmation hearings, where the weaknesses of those nominees can be revealed to the public.
Some political observers might say that the muted protests Democrats are now making against Trump’s transition moves and cabinet picks are a natural consequence of their stinging electoral defeat and that the Democrats need to use this time to analyze the causes of their defeat and develop a more effective political response to Trump once he takes office. But even some of those who are urging Democrat party leaders to develop new strategies are saying that at the same time, the party should be doing much more both to highlight Biden’s presidential accomplishments before he leaves office and to shape public opinion against the incoming Trump administration.
TRUMP’S VOTER MANDATE IS REAL
Making a case against Trump “won’t be done by outraged tweets about the latest things he says but by showing the consequences of his agenda on the middle class,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. He also said that Democrats could try telling voters that Trump’s 1.5-point win in the popular vote was historically relatively narrow. “I do think it’s important to debunk the notion that [Trump] has a [real] mandate from the voters, given how close the final result is,” Ferguson said.
However, Trump’s narrow margin of victory in the popular vote in some ways masks the true breadth of his win and its dire implications for Democrat prospects in future elections. He won every swing state and made inroads with Black, Latino, and young voters, groups that have traditionally provided solid Democratic support. Some Democrats still appear shellshocked by the election results, in part because they are unsure what message they need to focus on heading into the 2026 midterms and beyond.
Democrat governors who recently gathered in Los Angeles to discuss the aftermath of the 2024 election said they need to strike a balance between countering Trump policies that conflict with their political principles, such as giving sanctuary to illegal immigrants in their states and cities from arrest by federal immigration authorities, while at the same time finding ways to prevent the Trump administration from withholding federal aid as a punishment for refusing to help those immigration enforcement agencies from deporting those immigrants.
“If your values are being attacked, or you’ve got communities or people who are being attacked that don’t deserve it, you’ve got to fight like hell,” said New Jersey’s Democrat Governor Phil Murphy. “And then over here, you’ve got to have a relationship with the guy [President Trump].”
KAMALA HARRIS LYING LOW
Vice President Kamala Harris vowed in her post-election concession speech to continue “the fight that fueled this campaign,” but since then she has essentially been silent, first vacationing in Hawaii and then returning to her ceremonial duties in Washington without providing any leadership or guidance to help her fellow Democrats to recover from her disheartening electoral loss.
Democrats on Capitol Hill have also done little to shape voters’ views of the incoming administration. The campaign of Adam Schiff of California, newly elected to the Senate, circulated a newspaper story last week headlined: “Sen.-elect Adam Schiff doesn’t want to talk about Trump. He wants to talk about the economy.”
Meanwhile, Trump detailed the sweeping changes he’ll carry out on day one of his second term presidency and beyond during his first post-election network television interview which was recorded last week at Trump Tower in Manhattan with Kristen Welker, the moderator of the NBC News “Meet the Press” Sunday political analysis program.
TRUMP SPELLS OUT HIS NEXT MOVES IN AN NBC INTERVIEW
Trump spoke in a calm, measured tone, offering new details about his governing plans, while at times verbally sparring with Welker when she tried to fact-check the accuracy of some of his statements. He seemed to be especially heartened by the broad scope of his victory on November 5. After winning the popular vote and capturing all seven of the key battleground states, he said with pride, “I’m getting called [with congratulations] by everybody. It’s very interesting. It’s different than. . . when I won the first time, I wasn’t nearly as popular as this. And one very important thing, in terms of [this] election, I love that I won the popular vote, and by a lot.”
Trump drew a contrast between the ready public acceptance of his November 5 victory and his narrower, contested win over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Back then his Democrat and media opponents said, ‘Well, he didn’t win the popular vote. He won a lot of the Electoral College.’ But. . . now they say, ‘He won the popular vote and he won the Electoral College, and he won all seven swing states.’ That was a great election!”
In response to questions from the NBC reporter, Trump still would not concede that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. When then asked how, in his view, Democrats were able to steal that election but not the one on November 5, even though this time they controlled the White House, Trump responded, “Because I think [my victory this time] was too big to rig.”
TRUMP BLAMES BIDEN FOR DIVIDING THE COUNTRY
Trump blamed President Joe Biden for the nation’s current bitter political divide, despite Biden’s promise to the nation during the 2020 campaign to heal the nation’s partisan wounds. “When he weaponized the Justice Department and he went after his political opponent, me. . .because he knew he couldn’t beat him, I think it really was a bad thing, and it really divided our country.”
Trump also took the opportunity during the interview to heap insults and thinly veiled threats against his political foes, such as Adam Schiff, who has never apologized for having falsely accused him of collusion with the Russians during the 2016 elections and for years thereafter, whom Trump called, “a real lowlife.”
Trump also harshly criticized the members of the congressional January 6 investigatory committee, including a couple of anti-Trump Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, who were hand-picked by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to find sufficient evidence to have Trump impeached, even though by that time his first term as president was already over.
“For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said, but then quickly softened the threat by saying that he would not direct the leaders of his Justice Department or FBI to go after the January 6 committee members with a criminal investigation, as the Biden administration had done to him.
During the interview, Trump also called special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, to investigate Trump on federal charges of mishandling government documents and for his involvement in triggering the January 6, 2021, riot by his supporters at the Capitol Building “very corrupt.” Smith’s prosecution of Trump on those charges in federal courts in South Florida and Washington, D.C. was halted by a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in July which declared that Trump enjoys a constitutional legal immunity from criminal charges for anything that he did while carrying out his duties as president.
After Trump won the November 5 election, which made it clear that those two cases against him would never be tried, Smith asked the courts to drop those charges, but not before he issued a report that made it clear that he thought that, despite the Supreme Court ruling, Trump was guilty of criminal conduct, and was getting off on a legal technicality.
TRUMP’S SAYS HIS SUCCESS WILL BE HIS “RETRIBUTION”
Trump sounded another conciliatory note during the interview by saying he will not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the criminal allegations of an organized influence peddling operation led by Biden’s son Hunter and other members of the Biden family who have been enriched by their business dealings by wealthy foreign clients seeking to use Joe Biden’s influence on American foreign policy. “I’m not looking to go back into the past,” Trump said. “[My] ‘retribution’ will be through [the] success [of my policies],” Trump added, refuting the hysterical Democrat accusations that if he won a second term, Trump would unlawfully use the power of the presidency to take revenge upon his critics and political enemies.
Pittsburgh-based investigative reporter Salena Zito who was one of the first journalists during the 2016 presidential campaign to recognize Trump’s unique appeal to working-class voters said that whatever Trump says must be taken seriously, but not necessarily literally. For example, while he often said during the 2016 campaign that Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted, convicted, and jailed for breaking the law by putting classified government documents on her private email server, once Trump became president, he did not order the Justice Department to re-open its case against Mrs. Clinton because he realized that to do so would have needlessly divided the country.
That makes it doubly ironic that President Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, and FBI director, Christopher Wray. failed to exercise the same restraint and good judgment when they ordered a heavily armed predawn FBI raid on August 8, 2022, on then-former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in West Palm Beach instead of continuing negotiations with Trump for the return of the thousands of government documents from his administration that he was keeping there.
TRUMP’S LAW AND ORDER PICKS
Trump’s political opponents fear that he’ll use the government’s fearsome investigative machinery to exact vengeance. He has chosen two allies for top law enforcement positions: Pam Bondi for attorney general and Kash Patel for FBI director, but if they are confirmed, Trump said, he would give them the autonomy to decide for themselves how they will go about enforcing the law.
Bondi, who was quickly named by Trump after former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration as attorney general, has many years of experience as a successful prosecutor and as Florida’s state attorney general. During Trump’s first term as president, she often sided with his administration and spoke out on its behalf in legal disputes over his conservative and national security policies brought by Trump’s liberal Democrat opponents and legal authorities.
Kash Patel has a long record of experience in the fields of investigation and national intelligence in private, congressional, and executive branch positions, and is well qualified to serve as the FBI director. But he has also been outspoken in condemning the way that Donald Trump and his supporters have been mistreated by senior officials in the FBI and the Justice Department. In his 2023 book, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, Patel called for “a comprehensive housecleaning” of the Justice Department for having protected high-ranking members of the Democratic Party from criminal prosecution while unjustly targeting Republicans and their allies. Trump has praised Patel’s book as a “blueprint to take back the White House and remove these gangsters from all of government.” Democrats fear that if he does become the head of the FBI, working under Attorney General Pam Bondi, Patel will try to carry out a thorough purge of the Democrat activists in those agencies.
TRUMP LEARNED A LESSON FROM THE FIRING FBI DIRECTOR COMEY
While Trump has named Patel as his desired replacement for current FBI director Christopher Wray, who was appointed to that position by Trump during his first term as president, but whose 10-year term of office in the FBI does not expire until 2027, Trump has not yet publicly said that he intends to fire Wray after he is inaugurated as president on January 20.
Perhaps Trump has learned a lesson from his bitter experience after publicly firing James Comey as FBI director in 2021. To get revenge, Comey then hatched a political plot which resulted in the appointment by the Justice Department of special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Trump for the next two years in the hope of finding grounds for his impeachment.
That may be why Trump has not yet fired Wray. Perhaps Trump is hoping that Wray will get the message and agree to retire as FBI director of his own accord, rather than go through the embarrassment of being fired by the same president who appointed him.
TRUMP IS DETERMINED TO GO THROUGH WITH MIGRANT DEPORTATION
One of the focuses of his interview with NBC was an attempt to clarify Trump’s second-term policies against illegal immigration which, along with bringing down high prices as well as cutting taxes and excess government regulations, were the centerpieces of Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump refused to pull back and reaffirm that he intends to carry out his campaign promises to conduct a mass deportation of the millions of immigrants who entered this country illegally due to the Biden administration’s open border policies, beginning with those illegal immigrants who are also convicted criminals. Pressed on whether he would also seek to deport the millions of illegal immigrants in this country who have not otherwise broken the law, Trump conceded: “Well, I think you have to do it, [but] it’s a hard — it’s a very tough thing to do… But you have to have rules, regulations, laws. They came in illegally [and must be treated accordingly].”
Trump was also asked about what will happen to those American citizens who will be caught up in his administration’s efforts to deport their family members who are here illegally.
KEEPING MIXED IMMIGRANT FAMILIES TOGETHER BUT NOT HERE
Asked about families with such a mixed immigration status, where some are in the U.S. legally and some illegally, Trump said, “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is [to] keep them together and… send them all back [to the foreign country of origin].”
Asked about how he would pay for the great expense and logistical complexities of deporting millions of people who are here illegally, Trump said, “You have no choice. First of all, they’re [already] costing us [federal, state, and local governments] a fortune [to pay for their living expenses, including food, clothing, shelter, medical expenses, and educating their children]. But we’re starting with [deporting] the criminals, and we’ve got to do it. And then we [will start] with the others, and we’re going to see how it goes.”
TRUMP WANTS A DEAL WITH DEMOCRATS FOR THE “DREAMERS”
Trump also said that he wanted to make an exception in his deportation plans for the “Dreamers” — people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as young children by their parents and who have lived here for years and are now adults. As he did during his first term as president, Trump voiced an openness toward a bipartisan legislative solution agreed to by the Democrats that would allow the “Dreamers” to remain in the country.
“I will work with the Democrats on a plan,” Trump said during the interview, and praised those “Dreamers” who have gotten an education, good jobs, started businesses, and become successful residents contributing to American society. “We’re going to have to do something [for] them,” he said.
On the other hand, Trump also said that as part of his efforts to eliminate incentives for illegal immigration, he will again try to end the current policy of granting automatic birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States, even though a policy of birthright citizenship seems to be required by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Trump conceded that any effort to eliminate birthright citizenship will inevitably face strong legal objections from immigration advocates, and might require the passage of a constitutional amendment, a lengthy and difficult procedure requiring the approval of a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and two-thirds of the states. Nevertheless, Trump seemed determined to make the effort. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people,” he said. “But we have to end it.”
During the NBC interview, Trump again sought to clarify that he was not involved in the project that was undertaken independently by the conservative Heritage Foundation two years ago to serve as a possible blueprint for the next Republican president, and is not bound by its recommendations, some of which he supports, and some of which, such as suggested cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits, Trump strongly disagrees with.
SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE CUTS ARE “OFF THE TABLE”
Trump also confirmed that he had told Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have volunteered to head Trump’s new extra-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose ambitious mission is to find $2 trillion in spending cuts in the federal budget by July 4, 2026, that “raising ages [for Social Security or Medicare eligibility] or any of that stuff [reducing benefits to the elderly]” was “off the table.” He then added emphatically during the NBC interview that, “I won’t do it.”
Trump did suggest that unlike during his first term as president, he would now be open to some increase in the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which was last raised in 2009 and which Trump realizes is no longer meaningful given the more than 20% increase in the cost of living since President Biden took office. “I will agree, it’s a very low number,” Trump said in the interview, but he declined to suggest a specific new number for the national minimum wage because the cost of living varies so much from state to state across the nation.
Trump also provided reassurance during the interview that he would not challenge the political independence of the Federal Reserve by firing its chairman, Jerome Powell, whom he had appointed during his first term as president. Trump subsequently criticized Powell for failing to react to the excess Biden administration spending in time to prevent the subsequent sharp spike in the rate of inflation to a 40-year high of 9.1% that it unleashed.
Getting down to the specific policies of his second term as president, Trump said he’ll work to extend the tax cuts he passed in 2017 which strongly stimulated the growth of the economy during his first term before the Covid pandemic hit, and which are set to expire in 2025.
Trump also said pardons for the roughly 900 of his supporters who were tried, and convicted for rioting at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, will happen beginning on day one of his new presidency. Trump has argued that many of them were unjustly prosecuted by the Biden Justice Department for relatively minor criminal acts and for which they endured overly harsh treatment while in federal prisons.
He also doubled down on his campaign promise to levy tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners. He had already announced his plans to impose a 25% tariff on all imports to the United States from Canada and Mexico on the first day of his second term as president, and a further increase of 10% on all imports from China as a punishment for its continuing involvement in the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl, in addition to the tariffs that Trump imposed on China during his first term in office, and which Biden has maintained.
To justify the new tariffs he wants to impose, Trump pointed out, “We’re subsidizing Canada to the tune of over $100 billion a year. We’re subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion. . . And all I want to have is a level, fast, but fair playing field [for trade].”
When the NBC interviewer asked Trump if he could “guarantee American families won’t pay more” as a result of his proposed tariffs, on America’s three largest trading partners, Trump admitted, that, “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”
TRUMP IS USING TARIFFS AS A NEGOTIATING TOOL
Trump was tacitly acknowledging that he is using the threat of new tariffs as a tool to give him added leverage in negotiating more equitable international trade deals. However, he did point to his success in using tariffs during his first term to get better trade deals for the United States without triggering a significant increase in prices for American consumers.
“I had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries, but in particular China,” Trump boasted during the interview. “We took in hundreds of billions of dollars and we had no inflation. In fact, when I handed it over [to the Biden administration], they didn’t have inflation for a year and a half. They went for almost two years just based on what I had created. And then they created inflation with [the Biden war on domestic fossil fuel] energy and with spending too much.”
Trump also said, “We’re going to be focusing on crime in the cities, and we’ll work with Democrat governors” and mayors to bring the crime rates down.
During the course of the long interview, Trump said that his inaugural address on January 29 would deliver a message designed to reunify the American people and that he would start his second term by treating his critics “every bit as well as I have treated the greatest MAGA supporters.”
TRUMP WON’T FORGET THE LESSONS OF OCTOBER 7
Near the end of the interview, President-elect Trump was asked by the NBC interviewer about the threat that he recently issued to Hamas that if the American hostages aren’t released from Gaza before Inauguration Day, “There will be all hell to pay.” When she asked him whether he thought those hostages were still alive, he admitted that he was not very optimistic “because I’ve seen the way they’ve been treated,” He then spoke about one young girl hostage in particular whom he had seen on a video being physically abused by a terrorist, and when he then asked about her fate, he was told that she had died of her wounds. In light of that, he then said, “I mean, I hate to say it, [but] I think you have far fewer hostages [alive] than people think.”
When he was then asked, “Are you going to pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu, with whom you have a very good relationship, to end the war in Gaza?” Trump said, “Yeah. Sure.”
But then he added, “I want him to end it, but you have to have [an Israeli] victory. People forget about October 7th. . .
“You know what’s happening? I noticed that a lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, it never really happened.’ That’s like the Holocaust. . . You have Holocaust deniers. Now you have October 7th deniers, and it just happened. No, October 7th happened. And I’ve seen the pictures. It is [real] — what happened is horrible,” Trump said.
Overall during the interview, the president-elect was hopeful and optimistic about his ability to end wars and the threat of war in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Taiwan, as well as America’s bright future.
