1. A norm is born! In November, I wrote again about Harvard’s unethical and dishonest propagandists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt after earlier pronouncing them Academic Ethics Villains. “These two favorites of the New York Times are substantially responsible for the Axis of Unethical Conduct‘s Big Lie #6: “Trump’s Defiance Of Norms Is A Threat To Democracy,” a cornerstone of the Harris Campaign’s desperate “Trump is Hitler” strategy. They had just issued another one of their fear-mongering and academically indefensible Times op-eds, banging that same metaphorical drum with their (profitable!) argument that any genuine student of Presidential history (like they claim to be) knows is 100% hooey, and using the beat to argue for Democrats taking unprecedented measures to block Trump from the presidency….all of which defy previous democratic norms! The Levitsky and  Ziblatt hypocrisy has nonetheless become, apparently, a standard weapon for the Axis to use against Trump, as increasingly absurd as it.”

Trump, like all functioning Presidents who understand the office, creates new “norms.” (Fortunately, the Joe Biden innovation of the President being a hollow shell maneuvered by hidden hands does not look like it will become a norm.) During Trump’s first term, he created a norm by using social media to make the case for his own leadership while competing with the Axis news media’s efforts to debase him. Such direct contact with the public hearkened back to the days of FDR’s “fireside chats” on the radio. Trump is no Roosevelt, and his often hasty tweets in ALL CAPS often did more damage than good. Still, the use of social media as an unfiltered means of reaching the public without the spin of media partisans is destined to become standard operating procedure, at least for President bold enough to do it, and not delegate their social media accounst to 20-something nerds. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence bots. Trump, or any President, can create his (or her) own political cartoons via the meme-maker function, and get more circulation via social media than most news sources can give to outdated hacks like the self-righteous ex-WaPo cartoonist discussed here.

The viral “Trump as bad-ass gangster” meme above, following nicely on the “Melania as gangster” talk around her flashy Inauguration fashion statement, also guarantees that “FAFO” will enter the lexicon beyond its Gen X origins. FAFO is short for “Fuck around and find out,” or, in Tony Barretta’s words, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”…. or, in my father’s generation’s words, “Actions have consequences.”

2. The Colombia showdown yesterday, when the president of Colombia initially refused to accept the illegal immigrants from his country that Trump’s crackdown was sending back, looks as if it will be Trump’s equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s resolution of the illegal air traffic controllers’ strike early in his administration. Trump responded by slapping a 25% tariff on the South American nation for its defiance, and Colombia’s president quickly capitulated, agreeing to take back his citizens after all. In some respects this was even better than Reagan’s slap-down of the air traffic controllers union: a lot of American support unions, but almost nobody likes Colombia.

3. As so often happens, Trump’s tactics triggered some of his favorite foes into making fools of themselves. AOC quickly whined via social media about how Trump’s Colombia products tariffs would raise the price of coffee and ruin Valentines Day by causing flower bouquet inflation, or something. It has been said before, but Donald Trump has been blessed with some of the most inept and ridiculous political foes of any major U.S. political figure, ever. In a similar vein House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies told a gathering that DEI is “an American value” last week. That one’s head-spinning. The Left’s position has been that racial and gender discrimination was embedded in the evil U.S. culture and must be exorcised by any means possible. Now its position is that racial and gender discrimination are admirable values, as long as they are doing the discriminating.

4. The stark contrast between Trump’s furious and unprecedented series of Executive Orders and policy changes with the slow-motion rot of the last months of the Biden Administration is guaranteed to increase support for both Trump and the Republican Party. CNN’s Harry Enten was freaking out about that this morning, saying that the swing to public approval of Trump is extraordinary. As right-wing wag Stephen Kruiser says on his daily newsletter today, “It’s more obvious every day that Americans from all over the political spectrum have been longing for meaningful change, which President Trump is giving them.” 

5. One conclusion that has to me made from the last week: Trump does not have a flat learning curve, at least in organization management and the Presidency. In 2016, he was both unprepared for the dynamics of his new job and not ready for the degree of (undemocratic) obstruction that was heaped on him before his Presidency could even get underway. The 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck began with Trump receiving the equivalent of Butch Cassidy’s kick to the crotch in this memorable scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”…

….that “kick” being the unprecedented efforts to frame his election as illegitimate, with the Russian Collusion accusations and investigations beginning almost immediately. This time, Trump did the kicking. “Fool me once…”

6. Regarding some of Trump’s more controversial moves:

—-I have no problem with his revoking the security credentials of the 51 intelligence officers who signed a public letter announcing that Hunter Biden’s laptop bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and the security details of former National Security Advisor and certifiable whack-job John Bolton as well as Ethics Villain Anthony Fauci. Call it retribution if you want: the moves are still responsible and well-earned. None of these individuals is trustworthy.

—-Trump fired 17 inspectors general in the Defense Department, State Department, Energy Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Veterans Affairs, and elsewhere. One of the fired IG’s lamented, “It’s a widespread massacre. Whoever Trump puts in now will be viewed as loyalists, and that undermines the entire system.”

This is more learning curve stuff. In his first term, Trump found that he couldn’t trust any hold-over government employees not to be actively involved in the Left’s efforts at undermining him. Maybe all of the ex-IGs weren’t snakes in the grass, but some of them were. Starting from scratch is prudent and simply competent management.

7. The effort to end birthright citizenship is still probably futile, but there was much to be learned from this exchange J.D Vance had on CBS’s “Face the Nation”:

HOST MARGARET BRENNAN: “A federal judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, who I think you’d agree, has some conservative credentials… paused the order to end birthright citizenship, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” How do you reconcile this challenge to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution?”

VANCE: “So, I obviously disagree with that judge and these things — some of them will be litigated. That’s the nature of our constitutional system. But here’s the basic idea of President Trump’s view on this. If you are a lawful permanent resident or a legal immigrant who plans to stay, your children, of course, should become American citizens. But let’s say you’re the child of an ambassador, you don’t become…”

BRENNAN: “…but that’s not part of it.”

VANCE: “Well, that’s an important principle…”

BRENNAN: “There’s already a carveout having to do with kids of diplomats.”

VANCE: “But we’re saying that that carve out should apply to anybody who doesn’t plan to stay here. If you come here on vacation and you have a baby in an American hospital, that baby doesn’t become an American citizen. If you’re an illegal alien and you come here temporarily, hopefully, your child does not become an American citizen by virtue of just having been born on American soil. It’s a very basic principle in American immigration law, that if you want to become an American citizen, and you’ve done it the right way, and the American people in their collective wisdom have welcomed you into our national community, then you become a citizen. But temporary residents, people who come in here, whether legally or illegally, and don’t plan to stay, their children shouldn’t become American citizens. I don’t know any country that does that, or why we would be different.”

BRENNAN: “Well, this is a country founded by immigrants.”

VANCE: “Well, this is a country founded by…”

BRENNAN: “This is a unique country….”

VANCE: “This is a very unique country, and it was founded by some immigrants and some settlers. But just because we were founded by immigrants, doesn’t mean that 240 years later that we have to have the dumbest immigration policy in the world. No country says that temporary visitors- their children will be given complete access to the benefits and blessings of American citizenship. America should actually look out for the interests of our citizens first, and that means, again, if you’re here permanently and lawfully, your kid becomes an American citizen. If you’re not here permanently, if you’re not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States…”

BRENNAN: “Yeah…”

VANCE: “…and don’t plan to be, why would we make those people’s children American citizens permanently?” 

Takeaways:

• When will the news media figure out that acting as partisan adversaries every time they interview a Republican or a conservative is wrecking what little credibility and influence they have left? Bias makes you stupid, I guess…
• Vance is no Kamala Harris: he can speak clearly and pointedly. Indeed, he speaks much more clearly than President Trump. A competent Vice-President! When was the last one? Al Gore?
• Brennan falling back on the “America is a nation of immigrants” as a rationalization for leniency toward illegal immigrants is just one step above arguing that the poem on the Statue of Liberty commits the U.S. to open borders.
• Hilarious! An Axis journalist arguing that the United States is unique! It is, of course, but her cabal reflexively rejects claims of America exceptionalism, and is constantly arguing that U.S. policy should follow the rest of the world in immigration, in gun control, in universal health care, in “hate speech” censorship, in capital punishment.

8. Finally, Trump has done more interviews and taken more questions from reporters in one week than Joe Biden did in the six months before the election. When will journalists give him appropriate credit for that?