It’s been a year since a near-majority of Americans decided it was time to give Donald Trump a second shot at the White House.
How’s it going?
Well, first, the positives.
Trump’s election meant we didn’t have to endure a President Kamala Harris. Harris didn’t appear to have many ideas besides vowing to continue whatever President Joe Biden was doing. I didn’t find the inflation thanks to Bidenomics to be particularly enjoyable and anyone who thinks price controls is a good idea can’t be taken seriously.
Of course, there are plenty of specific policy actions I can generally appreciate. His administration ordered 10 regulations be repealed for every new one issued. He also ensured the income tax cuts from his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act were extended, which is great, since I’d rather waste my own money than have the government waste my money. All good so far.
And intangibly, it appears his election popped the woke bubble that engulfed the culture the last several years. The Democratic Party lost its mind over the last decade and became fixated on skin color and genitals to the detriment of its (formerly) working-class base. Meanwhile, the wokesters got busy destroying every institution they touched, from amateur sports to entertainment to media to tech. And if you dared point that out, you had to prepare to be called a racist, sexist, transphobe, all that. So, good riddance to that.
That’s basically my list of positives: He’s not Kamala Harris, he popped the woke bubble, he’s done some deregulatory things and cut some taxes.
But what’s on the other side of the ledger?
Well, the biggest problems with the second Trump term are the horrible precedents he’s setting that will definitely be abused by future administrations.
Where to start?
Well, he started his presidency very early on with a mass firing of U.S. inspectors general. These are the people specifically tasked to serve as independent watchdogs within federal agencies. Call me naive, but I’m pretty sure you want people in place to investigate reports of waste, fraud and abuse. What could go wrong?
He appointed well-established conspiracy theorists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to positions of authority and takes advice from conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who, among other things, spread the idea the “deep state” engineered a winter storm during the 2024 Iowa caucuses to help Nikki Haley. When there are no more standards, beyond loyalty to the president, how can one ever effectively criticize future administration picks?
There are also his trade policies. He’s unilaterally imposed and threatened to impose steep taxes on goods from all over the world, which incentivizes businesses and countries to woo him, the president of the United States, to get special carveouts and special treatment. That’s a blatant invitation for cronyism and corruption. It’s allowed him to essentially shake down companies for the privilege to do business, like his 15% tax on Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices in exchange for “allowing” them to do business in China.
Imagine if Barack Obama or Joe Biden did that? I can imagine the Glenn Beck “Obama is a Kenyan Communist” charts already. The same people who are defending Trump for doing this would be declaring the Bolsheviks have taken over if Obama imposed tariffs on everything.
Then there’s his war on the media, specifically the legacy media because he’s a boomer and thinks they still have the sway they had decades ago. Now, look, I get it. Mainstream media outlets have definitely leaned left and have definitely treated Trump far more critically than they treated Biden or Obama. But, ultimately, so what? Legacy media outlets, from newspapers to television broadcasters, are just a shrinking piece of a vast media market. Podcasters and streamers get more views than television networks, while partisan propaganda outlets like the Daily Wire and niche Substackers draw subscription numbers rivaling or exceeding nationally recognized newspapers.
With or without this context in mind, the Trump administration has threatened broadcast licenses (remember the ridiculous Jimmy Kimmel saga?) and Trump has personally sued media outlets for things as frivolous as editing an interview with Kamala Harris for broadcast. For a supposed champion of “free speech,” he’s sure been happy to flex his muscle to crack down on speech he doesn’t like.
Even more pernicious is the chilling effect government crackdowns have on the press. If media institutions that strive to be objective start pulling their punches, that’s only to the benefit of the powerful. Imagine the hypocritical outrage to come when President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cracks down on right-wing outlets for misinformation and sues conservative podcasters into submission.
Then there’s the militarized and thuggish execution of immigration enforcement policy Trump has unleashed. ProPublica documented 170 instances of American citizens held by immigration agents. As they reported, “Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them.”
An America where Americans are numb to seeing masked federal agents disappear people for showing up to work on a house at a day labor site is an America that’s no longer recognizable.
Remember when even right-wingers got mad at Obama for signing a National Defense Authorization Act that included indefinite detention powers? Remember when right-wingers at least had a part of them that got mad about what the government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge? Suddenly, many of these same people are happy to embrace the idea of federal agents running around arresting disabled American teenagers (yes, this happened) and trying to deport kids with cancer.
When the right — ostensibly the faction most inclined to resist federal tyranny — suddenly thinks unleashing federal agents is the key to a better America, we’re definitely heading toward Big Government authoritarianism.
This column is getting long, but I could keep going.
The point is, everything Trump is doing now is laying precedents that future presidents are almost certainly going to take advantage of. Every law he has and will stretch will give future governments room to do whatever they want, for better or ill. Every norm and institution he tears down to own the libs is a norm that those libs are going to get revenge for later. And everything non-conservative thing he does that “conservatives” make excuses for is yet another blow to what conservatives are actually supposed to stand for, which leaves a void that will only empower those who want government to do more.So far, Trump has done a good job of eviscerating the apparently quaint ideas of capitalism, limited government, fiscal responsibility. The next time Democrats come to power, will Republicans and young conservatives even remember what any of those ideas are? They’ve spent so much time on their mental gymnastics this past decade — will they even have the memory to offer conservative-ish, free market-ish, limited government-ish critiques of Democratic overreach?
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com
