#WTH Donald Trump, one month in

The good, the bad, and what's in between

Donald Trump’s theory of the American electorate was that people were sick of illegal, unrestrained immigration; sick of crime; sick of being told they were close-minded louts for having opposing “gender reassignment” for minors; sick of being lied to by the media; and sick of the status quo. Whether you share those complaints or not, the election result showed he was right.

He also assumed that many were sick of metastatic government growth, overbearing bureaucracy, an explosion in debt and spending, wasteful government programs, lawfare in general, and a foreign policy that did little more than make the world safe for cocktail parties. He was right about that too.

So Trump took his marching orders, real and perceived, from the American people, and it was off to the races on day one. And if it were just DJT signing Executive Orders and blustering on Truth Social, most of the chattering classes would probably have stifled their outrage. The 2016 “resistance” brigades have been dispirited at best. But Elon Musk sent the cognoscenti into overdrive. A billionaire. Unelected. A malignant bull in the precious china shop of big government.

What the elites and the message crafters inside the DNC forgot is that a) Everyone in the Executive Branch, barring the President and Veep, are unelected; b) Being a billionaire is not a crime in America and indeed is generally viewed as admirable (ahem, George Soros); and c) The problem is not what, it’s how. They’re still railing about the “what.”

The “what” is often defensible. Is the Agency for International Development (AID) a “criminal organization” (per Musk)? Nah. Is it incompetent, politically biased, inefficient, and uninterested in American national interests? Too often. Are its cost-plus arrangements gross? Yep. Did it fund Hamas? You bet. Should it be under State Department management? Almost certainly. Should its personnel be fired without due process? No. Should they be accused publicly of malfeasance without specific proof? No. Should every hire be vilified for the few who had lost the plot? No.

Does the American public care? Absolutely not.

Should the NIH be making grants with 65 percent overhead costs (per Musk)? No. Should NIH be making research grants? Hell yeah. Are the grantees criminals? Not that I’m aware. Should their promised funding, duly budgeted, be cut arbitrarily and summarily? No way. America is the heart of global medical, scientific, and tech innovation. We may need to rightsize and rethink grant making, but we don’t need to attack the people searching for a cure for cancer with a chainsaw.

Does the American public care? They will when we stop being America and become Canada, where the only speedy solution to serious health problems is government assisted suicide.

How about Musk at the IRS? The Social Security Administration? Treasury? It depends. Consider where you get your information… Is Musk telling you the truth about social security checks going to 250 year old people? Is the New York Times telling you the truth about Musk wanting your private tax and social security information? It’s unclear. Is there malfeasance at the IRS? Damn straight, or have you forgotten Obama’s IRS-led vendetta against conservatives? At the Social Security Administration? Surely you jest. Of course there is. Does the American government spend like money is no object? Duh.

The issue is not whether these institutions are in need of reform. The issue is do we want Elon Musk and his (occasionally white supremacist) juvenile tech bruhs doing the clean up? Without oversight? Without adult supervision? Without accountability? Having heard about the methods used to police AID, I have to say, erm, no. More on this later.

How about Eric Adams? Should DoJ have dropped charges against him in order that he cooperate more fully on immigration enforcement? As usual, Andy McCarthy is a lodestar here on the legalities and intricacies of the Southern District of NY. He notes that, a) the charges against Adams were not politically motivated; b) the decision to drop charges was on its face corrupt. Bottom line? I don’t care much about Eric Adams. It looks like he was on the grift, looks like he was caught dead to rights, and looks like Trump’s DoJ is engaging in an unnecessary and possibly illegal perversion of justice. This is wrong. And it doesn’t matter that it is Bidenesque-wrong.

How about Ukraine? There should be a happy story to tell here: Donald Trump likes Volodymyr Zelensky and has insisted he does not want to abandon Ukraine. He wants a long term partnership with Kyiv to exchange mineral resources for U.S. weaponry. He wants peace. The problem is Trump has also just called Zelensky a dictator (he isn’t), cited his low popularity (actually higher than Trump’s), accused Kyiv of starting the war with Russia (WTF), and otherwise ranted falsely and in unhinged fashion about the theft of U.S. assistance. We have spent so long telling people not to listen to Donald Trump, he too has taken on board that it doesn’t matter what he says.

How is this working out? Just the way Russia and its fellow travelers in Trump-world want it to. Has Zelensky taken the bait? He has; he is actually democratically elected and does not wish to remain silent in the face of false accusations. Predictably, that has backfired. Trump doesn’t take well to criticism, and he will pay Zelensky back with interest. Is all lost? No. And again, many of the ideas — peace, more support from Europe, less burden for the U.S. taxpayer — are good. I’ll even allow that Trump’s instincts about how to play Putin — based on conversations others have had with him — can be good. The execution and the louche inattention to details are the problem, and the price we will pay down the road will be high.

There’s something else critical to underscore as well. I find it outrageous that the White House — Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump — has arrogated power to itself that does not exist in the Constitution. For this, I do not blame the various proto-megalomaniacs in the Oval Office. People who want to be POTUS, and will do what it takes to get there, are power hungry, ideological warriors, ethical trimmers (some more, some less), who put themselves through the grueling process of being elected for a reason. It’s no surprise they do what they think they can to amass power in their hands… (Line item veto anyone? Recess appointments? DACA? Student loans?)

The founders understood this will to power, and put checks and balances in place to constrain it. Similarly, the Courts from the Supremes on down have sought to reinforce the guardrails on power grabs by the White House, and where the courts have arrogated to themselves more power than allowed, they too have been corralled by their overlords at the Supreme Court. Where have the wheels come off the bus? Congress.

In most of the instances where there have been power grabs by a president, the ball has actually been in the congressional court to answer. In the case of Trump, it is surely Congress that has appropriated money for AID, sought to roll AID into State, constituted it as an independent body; and we could go on here. Taxes are Congress’s sole purview; ditto social security spending — and spending of any and every kind. Sure, Congress has given the White House some legal wiggle room with the impoundment act (read my colleague Gary Schmitt’s terrific explication and history here), but Trump (and Musk) are going to test the limits of Congress’s supinity.

Congress’s likely reaction will be to hope that the Courts will do more to protect the legislative body’s power of the purse than they themselves have been willing to. Indeed, Musk and Trump are right that government needs rationalization, reform, and cutting. But it should be Congress that insists on the “how.” Its unwillingness to do so, frankly, is the greater scandal in Washington. You cannot have checks and balances when one of the checks, checks out.

I like a lot of what Trump is doing; oppose a reasonable chunk of what he is doing; and dislike a lot of how he is doing things. What I don’t see is a player to stand athwart history and yell slow down. Do it right. Make it last. When Eric Adams is an asterisk on New York’s wikipedia page, the legacy of Trump’s efforts to reshape government will be in the balance. If they are not rooted in law, they will go the way of Joe Biden’s equally aggressive efforts to reshape America to look more like California. Up in smoke.