By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2025-01-26 03:22:45 | Updated at 2025-01-27 04:11:21
1 day ago
A headline last week focused on what Donald Trump could get done in his first 100 days.
A better focus would have been on his first 100 hours.
There’s hitting the ground running, and then there’s Trump 2.0.
No president in modern history has come to the Oval Office better prepared and more determined to get big things done fast.
No sooner had he taken the oath than executive orders, pardons, appointments, speeches, public meetings and press conferences began piling up.
The flurry included an historic gathering on artificial intelligence where private firms promised investments of $500 billion!
All that and more happened before Trump took his can-do show on the road Friday for visits to the disaster areas of North Carolina and California.
All along, he was more available to the press in one week than Joe Biden was in a year.
Much of the early activity centered on Trump’s No. 1 priority: closing the border and rounding up and deporting criminal migrants.
‘A week is a long time’
He also delivered a video speech to the Davos Economic Forum, where he offered business elites a deal: produce your goods in America, or get hit with big tariffs.
The dramatic contrast between the two presidents featured a large executive order Trump signed on his first day.
It revoked about 80 Biden orders and covered everything from the border to DEI to green mandates.
The scope alone demonstrates Trump’s determination to change the nation’s direction right out of the gate.
The tone was also striking, starting with “The previous administration has embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the Federal Government.” He promised to “restore common sense to the Federal Government and unleash the potential of the American citizen.”
In his visits to western North Carolina, which had been devastated by Hurricane Helene, and fire-ravaged Los Angeles, Trump was both consoler-in-chief and persistent citizen advocate.
In North Carolina, he criticized the Biden administration’s lack of help, talked of getting rid of FEMA and let residents take the microphone to name and shame insurance companies ignoring them.
In California, he took the side of residents who want to get back to their destroyed homes by publicly urging LA Mayor Karen Bass to get out of the way.
“I just think you have to allow the people to go on their site and start the process tonight,” Trump told the Democratic mayor.
Bass, whose performance has been universally panned, said she would, then suggested it would take a week.
“A week is actually a long time, the way I look at it,” Trump responded firmly, insisting “they are safe.”
His burst of activity, which included a brief meeting with Governor Gavin Newsom, embodies Alexander Hamilton’s words in Federalist #70 that energy in the executive is “the leading character in the definition of good government.”
That perfectly captures Trump’s first week back in the Oval Office.
There were bumps on the road.
A federal judge rejected his bid to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, and police groups objected to his pardons of Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted Capitol police.
Anchors ‘away’
Yet the best measure of Trump’s fast start were the hesitant, unfocused responses of his main antagonists — Democrats and their media handmaidens.
Much of the press was consumed by its own drama, with “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell, a scolding never Trumper, losing her perch.
Ratings were rock bottom, and CBS will replace her with two co-anchors and a team of correspondents.
CNN, which has a fatal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, is also cutting staff and moving anchors, with Jim Acosta demoted to the graveyard shift.
His threat to leave the company was odd.
What Acosta lacks in talent he makes up for with angry insults, so he might not find another home.
Meanwhile, internal turmoil keeps rocking The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, with owners of both striving to make their news pages fair, or at least less rabidly anti-Trump.
Both spiked editorials endorsing Kamala Harris, sending staffs into fits of rage and leading a handful of writers to quit.
At The Washington Post, an earlier meeting Jeff Bezos had with Trump and his attendance at the inauguration fed the fires of hostility and raised the question of whom the staff hates more — Bezos or Trump.
LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong says it’s a “struggle” to get his staff to accept his decision to broaden the paper’s appeal beyond leftist Democrats.
“I really wanted to make sure we are a trusted source for all Americans,” he told Fox News
Imagine objecting to fairness and calling yourself a journalist.
The New York Times shows no sign of softening its hostility to Trump, with the front page a daily drumbeat of attacks and opinion masking as news.
“In His Return, Trump Embraces Pomp of Royalty,” read the most prominent headline Thursday, while another declared “Trump Hurries To Test Limits of His Powers.”
A third focused on whether he would punish mayors and governors who hide criminal aliens.
All these outlets carried water for Biden by defending claims the president was in good health until it became too obvious he wasn’t.
They also pooh-poohed the Biden family’s influence peddling schemes and looked the other way as House Republicans showed that $20 million flowed from foreign entities into Biden family bank accounts.
They then defended Biden’s pardons of his family as a shield against Trump “retaliation” while denouncing Trump’s pardons as obscene.
Headless party
Dems in Congress were caught off guard by Trump’s rapid start, in part because they don’t have a party leader.
Biden is off eating ice cream somewhere and few people see Harris as the answer.
Congressional bosses are being outmaneuvered by Trump’s feisty Cabinet nominees, with most likely to be confirmed by the GOP Senate majority.
Pete Hegseth, for secretary of defense, was vulnerable, but got his 51st vote when Vice President J.D. Vance broke a tie Friday.
Three Republicans joined every Dem in voting no.
Yet the Dem unity splintered when 12 of its senators and 46 House members supported the Laken Riley Act, which allows illegal immigrants accused of crimes to be deported without being convicted.
The law, named after the Georgia nursing student killed by an illegal alien, was a test of how Dems will deal with Trump’s border plans, which are the opposite of Biden’s agenda.
Although those who supported the act should be commended, it also means the vast majority of Dems are still ignoring the public fury over the open border, which was the top issue in the election.
They’ll have other chances to come to their senses.
Trump intends to keep his promises to vet those allowed in and deport those who aren’t supposed to be here.
And not in some hazy future, but now.
Buckle up, America.
The trip back to common sense is just getting started.
