As usual, Victor Davis Hanson puts in an easily understood perspective on where we are at with Trump's second term.......
I'm sorry, but Donald Trump is 78 years old and never once showed an ounce of self-awareness or personal discipline about ANYTHING, from his dating life to his personal life (he's morbidly obese) to his finances. He did not take a magical pill and suddenly develop the ability to care about the USA or anyone else in the abstract.
I'll defend Trump on one thing and ONE THING ONLY: since he DID say before the election he was going to be a Tariff guy, I'll tweak Democrats who are going full "well, he said he was gonna do it." Yeah, I know it's a strange thing to a Democrat to do AFTER the election what you say BEFORE the election you're going to do - from Bill Clinton's phony middle class tax cut to Barack Obama's promise I can keep my own doctor - so, I'll give Trump that much.
Then again, the only thing dumber than breaking a promise is keeping a dumb one, and he's done that.
And please, can we stop with this "well, they put tariffs on us" argument that is incredibly stupid at every level? That's how a bunch of those places NOT as well off as the US and with fewer rich people to shoulder the burden on taxation raise money to run their governments.
No, Nike is not going to build a factory in the US and hire a bunch of $20/hour workers. How long does it take to build a Nike factory and then throw in all the US environmental regs. How long?
All they have to do is what Russia did with Reagan, which is why Reagan had to come up with some sort of deal with Gorbachev - "meh, all we have to do is wait him out, the next person isn't going to be so keen on Trump's stupid policies."
Nobody is wiping out the deficit.
Nobody is even making a decent cut into the deficit.
We are not beginning payments on a $36T national debt, no matter who tells you we are.
And we aren't going to save a dime when Trump spends the so-called "savings" identified by firing a bunch of workers, either.