RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thespectator.com/topic/donald-trump-fooling-this-time-security-clearances/

It is said that the adage “he who hesitates is lost” is an adaptation of a line from Joseph Addison’s 1712 play Cato. I do not believe that Donald Trump is a student of the co-founder of The Spectator, but he has clearly absorbed that nugget of practical wisdom.

Within hours of taking office on Monday, Trump issued some 200 executive orders and proclamations affecting the government’s conduct on everything from immigration to DEI, from energy policy to the 1,500 people incarcerated in Washington jails because they joined in the protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  

It is one thing to issue orders and proclamations. It is another thing to see them carried out successfully. But here we are, barely fifty hours into the second Trump administration, and the activity on the ground is furious. On Tuesday, heads of all government agencies were ordered to shut down their DEI offices by 5 p.m. today, Wednesday, and place all DEI hires on paid administrative leave “immediately.” Trump is not fooling this time. The order also directs the heads and acting heads of every agency to ask employees “if they know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.” 

That chill in the air that you feel is not due solely to the polar vortex making the mercury plunge. The country is also in the grip of the Trump common-sense vortex. With respect to illegal immigration, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan reports that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement team made 308 arrests yesterday. Following his policy of going after the “worst first,” the people arrested were all violent criminals: murderers, rapists, gang members and the like. The total number of people apprehended crossing the southern border illegally has dropped from between 10,000 and 12,000 under Joe Biden to 766. That’s in two days. 

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/24/lets-turn-the-pdb-into-the-trump-daily-intelligence-briefing/

The Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) was once a well-regarded daily intelligence summary prepared for the president and his most senior national security officials that provided timely and vital highly classified intelligence. Unfortunately, due to the bloated and increasingly politicized intelligence bureaucracy, the PDB’s usefulness and quality have plummeted over the last twenty years.

President Trump has well-founded suspicions about the U.S. Intelligence Community, which was weaponized against his campaigns and first administration. It therefore will take radical changes to fix the PDB and assure President Trump that his daily intelligence briefings are fair and objective.

I speak on this subject from experience. As a CIA analyst in the 1980s and 90s, I drafted over 50 PDB articles and received feedback from two presidents. At that time, the PDB contained 7-10 concise, carefully written articles on critical national security issues. Although the PDB usually did not shy away from controversial issues or bad news, articles would be added on issues of interest to the current president.

The PDB staff I worked with served for decades. Most PDB editors also served as briefers and were usually senior CIA analysts late in their careers who kept a low profile. They were on the PDB staff to serve, not for attention or to advance their careers. Although not every president liked or trusted the PDB, most did because these officers worked to produce a daily intelligence product that was not about politics or currying favor with the president or Congress.

Unfortunately, things changed for the worse for the PDB in the mid-1990s when the CIA decided to staff it with younger, up-and-coming officers and not just senior officers approaching retirement. Unfortunately, the CIA’s increasingly liberal analysis directorate exploited this change to put young liberal ideologues on the PDB staff, who used these assignments to rocket up the career ladder and advance the intelligence deep state.

https://tomklingenstein.com/trumps-mandate-restore-national-sovereignty/

Donald J. Trump’s 2024 electoral victory was so decisive that, for the first time since 1988, congressional Democrats did not challenge the certification of a Republican presidential victory. Trump won the popular vote, swept the swing states, and ran ahead of down ballot Republicans. Unquestionably, he has a mandate to govern. That mandate belongs to the MAGA agenda, not to conventional Republican priorities.

President Trump best defined his political mission in his 2016 address at the Republican National Convention: “The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponents, is that our plan will put America First. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America First, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect.” In his second inaugural address this week, as he echoed these same themes, the 47th president’s first promise to the American people was simple: “Our sovereignty will be reclaimed.” 

Trump’s goal, in 2024 as much as in 2016, is to reorient politics and policy towards America’s national wellbeing through common sense reforms. (Again in the second inaugural, he promised a “revolution of common sense.”) These reforms include protecting American workers and balancing foreign trade, revitalizing manufacturing, securing energy independence, ending foreign wars and drawing down military commitments abroad, mass deportation of illegal aliens, limiting legal immigration to maintain wage stability and cultural unity, and nurturing patriotism and civic confidence.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/23/the-addicted-petty-and-hysterical-left/

Donald Trump won the 2024 election in part because the left’s hysterical style of attacking Trump no longer worked.

After a decade of this unhinged furor, it proved worthless in winning public support—and for two simple reasons.

One, after years of Russian collusion hoaxes, the laptop disinformation farce, and the warped lies about the “suckers” and “fine people on both sides”—the shrill left became predictable.

So, the bored public began tuning them out, switching channels, hitting the mute button, and pulling the plug.

Like the deleterious effects of inflation that eventually render a currency worthless, nonstop hectoring, hysterics, pontification, and distortion finally made all such criticisms of Trump mostly as valueless as 1930s German marks.

Second, the wearied public never heard reasoned counterarguments from the likes of a Rachel Maddow. Instead, on spec, she kept mouthing, “The walls are closing in” on Trump.

Joe Biden did not explain why his open border was a better idea than Trump’s closed one. He preferred mumbling about “semi-fascists!” and “ultra-MAGA!”

The Never Trumpers did not critique the Trump deficits. Instead, they hammered away that Trump was Hitler, or Mussolini, or Putin—or just a dangerous dictator or autocrat.

Angry retired generals never demonstrated why Trump was, in their view, an existential threat to democracy. Instead, they shouted nonstop in op-eds and interviews that he was a fascist, Nazi-like, no different from the guards at Auschwitz, a pathological liar, and should be summarily removed.

Worn-out voters began to understand these psychodramas were substitutes for substantive criticism or occasions for legitimate debate.

Indeed, the exhausted public finally concluded that the hysterics increased in direct proportion to the poverty of the charges.

So, what did ten years of such derangement achieve for the left?

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-inauguration-speech-biden

The 1619 Project is routed, at least for now.

“Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs and pioneers,” declared Donald Trump in his second Inaugural address. “The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. . . . Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on earth. . . . Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand.”

Anyone steeped—voluntarily or involuntarily—in the critical historiography that culminated in the New York Times’s post-George Floyd hit job on America was thinking at that point:

“Wait! You can’t say that! What about the Indians? What about instituting slavery—not just allegedly “ending” it [insert ironic air quotes]? What about the three-fifths and the fugitive slave clauses of the Constitution? What about the oppression of women, LatinX, gays, and every manner of “marginalized Other?” What about environmental rapine and imperial conquest? Surely one needs to acknowledge the many sins that the just-departing president insisted are written into America’s (or at least white Americans’) very soul?”

Nope.

Those days are over, at least in official Washington and its tributaries throughout the federal and state bureaucracies.

Trump aims to make America patriotic again. Many Americans never stopped being patriotic, but their patriotism was viewed as a mark of ignorance by the coastal elites and the academy.

In fact, it was the reflexive left-wing critics who were ignorant. They are seemingly untouched by any awareness of how hard-won was the vast catalogue of Western achievement, whose roots were laid millennia ago, before accelerating during the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, until today modern man takes for granted the freedom, affluence, comfort, and health that were unthinkable for most of human history.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/23/in-two-days-trump-answered-more-reporter-questions-than-biden-did-in-four-years-and-without-a-cheat-sheet/

OK, we admit, we haven’t actually counted the number of reporters’ questions President Donald Trump has answered since being sworn in. And four years is certainly an exaggeration. In any case, someone covering the White House should keep track, because it won’t take long for Trump to beat Biden on this score.

Biden held the fewest number of press conferences of any modern president. He would answer questions only from pre-selected reporters. He had to have a cheat sheet with him at all times to give his answers, and even then the White House would often have to rush out to correct the record.

Biden’s first press conference wasn’t until March 2021 – and it was a disaster. As the BBC reported it:

Biden’s performance was more akin to a cautious walk across a not-quite-frozen lake. Every step was careful and calculated, lest an unexpected crack led to a dark, icy fate.

He relied heavily on notes and called from what appeared to be a pre-determined list of reporters – one that didn’t include Fox News or any other right-leaning outlets.

At one point, in an answer about the filibuster – an arcane Senate rule that has thwarted many a president’s ambitious agenda – Biden appeared to lose his train of thought, ending his sentence with the wave of a hand.

On Trump’s first day in the White House he answered reporters’ questions for 45 minutes while signing hundreds of executive orders. On Tuesday, he held an impromptu press conference after announcing a $500 billion investment in artificial intelligence, taking questions for half an hour.

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28355/the-11th-commandment-thou-shalt-not-rape

goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Globalism’s war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The overall attack strategy is to destabilize and destroy both the morality provided by our Judeo-Christian infrastructure, and the individualism protected and preserved by our Constitution.

Meryl Nass has provided her readers with David Schonbrunn’s excellent infographic (see below). It is an extremely helpful overview that identifies the strategic objectives and tactical operations of the globalist war on nation-states, but it is incomplete. The infographic is missing its most essential element: Children are the primary target of the globalist predators. The implosion of the United States of America requires the destruction of America’s future––her children.

Globalism’s War on America is a war of attrition. My generation of patriots is dying. My children’s generation of indoctrinated millennials is transitional. It is my grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are the primary targets of the avaricious globalist predators, specifically its global network of pedophiles and child-traffickers whose political purpose is soul murder––the spiritual and psychic annihilation of self. The total destruction of what exists includes the total destruction of childhood innocence––the obliteration of all boundaries of self. The development of an independent autonomous self required for individualism in a free society, is prohibited in order to advance the collective in preparation for life in globalism’s feudal totalitarian Unistate.

New World Order Graphic provided to Meryl Nass by David Schonbrunn:

https://www.city-journal.org/article/donald-trump-dei-executive-order

Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order abolishing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracy in the federal government.

The move marks a stunning reversal of fortune from just four years ago, when Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, and DEI seemed unstoppable. Following the death of George Floyd, left-wing race activists made a blitz through America’s institutions, rewriting school curricula, altering government policy, and establishing DEI offices in major universities, big-city school districts, and Fortune 100 companies. The Biden administration immediately followed suit, mandating a “whole-of-government equity agenda” that entrenched DEI in the federal government.

No more. President Trump has rescinded the Biden executive order and instructed his Cabinet to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions,” and “all ‘equity action plans,’ ‘equity’ actions, initiatives, or programs.” In other words, President Trump has signed the death warrant for DEI within the federal government.

How did we get here? Through patiently building a movement and winning the public debate. At the beginning of 2023, I worked with Florida governor Ron DeSantis to launch the “abolish DEI” campaign. We began by terminating the DEI bureaucracy at New College of Florida, a small public university in Sarasota, where I serve as a trustee. The reaction from the racialist Left was intense. Protesters descended on the campus and the left-wing media published hundreds of articles condemning the move. But we held firm and made the case that public institutions should judge individuals based on their accomplishments, rather than their ancestry.

The argument began to take hold. The polling data indicated that Americans supported a “colorblind society” over a “race-conscious society” by large margins. Even the New York Times, one of the largest boosters of left-wing racialism, started publishing pieces that criticized DEI. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement was ensnared in scandals and the leading intellectual voices of DEI, such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, faced sustained public scrutiny and seemed to disappear from the spotlight.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/22/will-metas-shift-away-from-fact-checking-social-media-boost-free-speech-most-americans-say-yes-in-latest-ii-tipp-poll/

Meta, parent of social media giants Facebook, Instagram and Threads, has decided to make substantive changes to its fact-checking policies — changes that will mean less-onerous scrutiny of users’ posts by paid “fact-checkers,” and more by fellow readers. Is it a victory for free speech? A solid plurality of Americans say “yes,” according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll.

Users have long complained about “woke” rules that lead to even innocuous posts being, in effect, censored by Facebook’s and Instagram’s legions of “fact-checkers.” A common complaint of users described a system that resulted in progressive politics being used as a template by which to stifle free speech.

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he would replace the formal fact-checking mechanism with a “community notes” system, such as the one favored by X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk.

Do Americans like the changes?

In its January 2025 national online poll, taken from Jan. 8-10, I&I/TIPP asked 1,424 adults this question about the changes to Meta’s fact-checking rules: “Do you agree or disagree that Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking practices will positively impact free speech on its platforms?”

That answer came back “yes,” but with a large share of respondents describing themselves as “not sure” yet about the changes. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

Overall, 43% said they agreed either “strongly” (19%) or “somewhat” (24%) that Zuckerberg’s move would bolster free speech, while 32% disagreed strongly (17%) or somewhat (15%). But a sizeable 24% said they weren’t sure how the changes would impact free speech.

And how people felt about it varied by age, with younger respondents agreeing it’s a good thing, while older ones are less likely to agree. Among those 18-24 years, 50% agreed that the changes were good; for those 25-44, it was 46%; 45-64, 42%; and the most skeptical group of all was those 65 and over, with just 36% agreeing that the move will benefit free speech.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/donald-trump-inauguration-speech

As he assumed the presidency again, Donald Trump proclaimed a “revolution of common sense” in his second Inaugural Address at the U.S. Capitol. Surrounded by the political elite and the captains of Silicon Valley, the new president pledged to restore faith in American institutions and championed a “manifest destiny into the stars,” with the United States expanding its territory and even planting a flag on Mars. The speech highlighted Trump’s many contrasts with his predecessors, even as it revealed how his political model has evolved.

Many recent presidents have used their Inaugurals to offer an ambitious vision for the nation or to rearticulate the terms of the national compact. Joe Biden’s, for instance, made a case for American “unity.” Some presidents have also sounded broad ideological themes, as in George W. Bush’s 2005 Inaugural Address, which committed the United States to the “expansion of freedom in all the world.”

But a series of disappointments and an embattled sense of national identity form the backdrop for the populist disruption of which Trump has been the avatar. His first Inaugural in 2017 lamented “American carnage,” and his second picked up that theme in assailing his predecessor’s record. Two signature moments of the end of the Biden administration—Biden’s bizarre attempt to “affirm” the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution and his wave of preemptive pardons for his family and political allies—set up Trump’s denunciation of a “radical and corrupt establishment.”

Positioning himself against that establishment is essential to Trump’s outsider appeal, but his speech did not confine itself to complaint. Trump laid out a detailed set of policies that he would be implementing through executive orders.