It is not a full quarter as his inauguration was 20 days into it, but it is the first quarter of 2025.  How does it look?

Perhaps I can put it this way:  a lot of good initiatives undertaken in a haphazard way that could limit their effectiveness or even result in failure. I will use a few of Trump’s initiatives to illustrate my concern.  I will begin with Trump’s approach to ending the conflict in Ukraine.  Next I will examine Trump’s use of DOGE’s revelations about waste, fraud, and grift in the federal budget.  Then I will examine Trump’s approach to tariffs.

President Trump has no stake in the conflict with Russia.  He is on record as stating that the conflict would not have occurred if his 2020 reelection had not been stolen by the Democrats, RINO Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, and the whore American media. Trump’s ability to extract the US from the conflict is greatly helped by the NY Times very long article, in my view written by the CIA as a confession, that from day one the conflict was one initiated by the United States against Russia with Russian defeat as its goal, with Ukrainian military action decided by Washington, including targets, weapons to be used, and targeting guidance of missile and drone attacks.  In other words, the conflict has been Washington’s attack on Russia, not Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The CIA’s confession in the NY Times is a statement that the CIA has admitted a failure and has withdrawn from the conflict.

This paves the way for Trump to withdraw.  The conflict will end the minute that Trump tells Putin that he hasn’t a dog in the fight and is withdrawing the US from participation.  No more US weapons, money, US targeting information.  Total military and diplomatic withdrawal and removal of all sanctions, as they are conflict related and Washington is responsible for the conflict.

This will leave the conflict where it belongs, not with Washington and NATO, but with Putin and whoever the Ukrainians elect to the office now in the hands of a person whose term has expired and who has no negotiating authority under the Ukrainian constitution.

But Trump has not taken advantage this obvious way of ending the conflict. Instead, he has introduced extraneous elements into the negotiations such as Washington’s claim to Ukrainian rare earths as payment for the war aid given by the Biden regime.  Trump has also complicated the negotiations by denouncing Putin, who has kept the agreement, while defending Zelensky who has violated it 12 times according to news reports.  But according to the NY Times, as the war is conducted by Washington and NATO, not by Zelensky, how is Zelensky sending missiles into Russia without US or UK targeting services? Is the Pentagon and NATO carrying on a war that the US president opposes? If so, who is in charge?

The Kremlin is also an obstacle to ending the conflict.  I have come to the conclusion, perhaps mistakenly, that Putin had no intention of winning the conflict, only of continuing it while expressing willingness to negotiate.  With who?  With the West.  What Putin and the Russian Establishment want is a new Yalta agreement. I learned this some years ago when I was invited to speak at a conference at the Russian Academy of Sciences about a Yalta agreement for our time.  I pointed out that the Zionist neoconservative policy as presented by Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was a policy of American hegemony, which is clearly prohibitive of a new Yalta agreement.  This was unwelcome information to the conference, and I was cut off. The conference monitor protected the Russian Academy of Sciences from reality.  Today as I read it, Russian analysis is largely self-deception.  Russian intellectuals are writing articles  promoting a new Yalta agreement. They are entertaining these hopes despite Britain and Europe preparing for war with Russia.

DOGE was a great Trump/Musk invention. But its contribution to Trump’s program of American renewal has been largely squandered.  Trump should have held his horses and let DOGE provide more and more detailed evidence of the US budget used to promote ideological agendas and enrichment of insiders and favored people and groups.  With accumulated evidence, Trump should have addressed on national television the House and Senate  and presented the evidence that Democrats and Democrat-sponsored NGOs created fake entities to which grants were given by USAID, National Endowment for Democracy and other federal budgetary entities. The fake foundations then passed on the grants to legitimate foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, Pew, et. al., and were then passed to the intended receivers, such as “news oganizations” that enforce the official narratives, NGOs that work to overthrow democratically elected governments, and into the personal accounts of Democrats, such as allegedly Chelsea Clinton to the tune of $84 million. 

In his address Trump should have asked Congress what are we to do about this?  Shall we ignore and perpetuate the exploitation of the American taxpayer and their trust in their government, or shall we cease to use the budget in this way?  

This would have given Trump the high ground. Instead, his piecemeal attacks have given the high ground to the “victims” of his budget cuts.

If Trump had proceeded in a thoughtful organized way, the corrupt Democrat judges, not Trump, would be on the defensive.

Trump’s position on tariffs is problematical for many reasons.  First, let me say that historically tariffs were a legislative issue.  The Morrill Tariff was voted by Congress. The Smith-Hawley Tariff was voted by Congress.  How is it that the executive is imposing tariffs?

Assuming the president has this authority and assuming that we don’t have tariffs on others but others have tariffs on the US, the way to success is for Trump to sit down with the offenders and explain that the situation is not working for us. How do they propose to rectify the inequality?  This would have given Trump the upper hand.  Instead, he is portrayed as issuing threats not only to China but also to American allies. Retaliation has become the game, and this itself raises another serious consideration.

With Wall Street predicting a recession caused by Trump’s tariffs, not by the tariffs of other countries, the Federal Reserve has cover to cause the predicted recession, and thereby, to restore Democrat majorities in the House and Senate in the midterm elections and terminate Trump’s renewal of America.

The first time the American people tried to put Trump into the presidency, the chosen one did not know what he was doing and appointed his enemies to his government.  The second time, his election was stolen. The third time he behaves instinctively without thought and design and undermines his opportunity to succeed.

Possibly the higher courts will overrule the lower courts which seem to be populated with an assembly of non-Americans recruited by Democrat DEI.   America now has federal district judges who are Japanese, Chinese, Arab, African, Hispanic, and LBGT+.  Once a country becomes a tower of babel, the country is lost.

Can a lost country really be renewed?  Perhaps, but not by a haphazard approach to the task.

For the Morrill Tariff see: https://www.timesexaminer.com/mike-scruggs/8856-the-morrill-tariff