Trump 2.0 is a Wrecking Ball
And he's wrecking the right stuff.
Less than six months ago, I wrote: The Left Gave Us Trump 2.0. And they’re not going to like it.
Right after the election, I wrote that Trump was going to come in like a wrecking ball.
Boy, did I nail it, or what?
With the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” Trump has crushed a lot of Democratic dreams and plans, and — as I predicted right after the election — he’s also starting to lay an institutional foundation for Republicans.
The Big, Beautiful Bill is more big than it is beautiful, but the only way to get the changes that were needed through without a filibuster was through reconciliation. And the changes got through, and that is beautiful. It’s just the reality of our system that to get things done you have to buy votes.
Elon Musk, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, et al. don’t like that, and they’re not exactly wrong not to like it, they’re just wrong to think that we could have gotten what was needed any other way.
Hugh Hewitt offers some perspective here:
And even Hugh omitted some stuff:
This is a lot for a new president in less than six months, to put it mildly. And an important point about DOGE is that while yes, it saved money, it’s biggest impact was to defund the government-funded left — which turns out to be most of the left, especially the activist left — thus preparing the battlespace for other issues down the line.
Elon, et al., are right that the debt is an existential threat, but you can’t get at the debt and at spending without first taking apart the coalitions that created the problem. That’s what Trump is doing.
My suggestion for the GOP is that they now start hitting the Democrats with single-subject bills that will have to be voted up or down, and that will be very politically expensive for Democrats to oppose, when they’re clearly presented without a lot of extraneous legislative cover. Will some of them be filibustered? Maybe, but if they are, the Democrats look bad. (And if they’re really important bills, the GOP can drop the filibuster with a majority, as the Democrats did already.)
At any rate, as we go into the Fourth of July weekend, remember that it’s not just a calendar date, but that it’s really Independence Day. And especially this year.
Thank you for addressing the "purity" votes of Massie and Paul. Assuming they have the best interests of the country at heart—a concession I will grant Paul but not Massie—one can understand the goal but not the means. These votes only make sense in a world that does not exist. A little realpolitik wouldn't hurt. I am willing to cut more slack to Musk since he routinely makes the impossible possible. But he too needs to understand the shortcomings of government. We simply do not have, on average, the quality of politicians needed to execute in a manner that improves upon our unfortunate extant processes. This must be painful for Musk. Fortunately, Trump also makes the impossible possible. But he is able to do it in a world that requires compromise, negotiation, and leverage. The country would be better off if Musk could truly appreciate this aspect of Trump's genius.
Outstanding summation, Glenn. And hat tip to HH.