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OPINION
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Where Do We Stand Right Now in the Fight to Make America Great Again?

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke

During any massive operation, like a military campaign or a struggle to save our country, you must occasionally pause to take stock and evaluate where you are. This self-evaluation allows you to reorient resources, change strategy, and refocus your efforts. In this epic battle to Make America Great Again, we’re making definite and measurable progress on multiple axes, re-ordering the executive branch, reining in the administrative state, and changing the terms of engagement with all our allies and enemies, both foreign and domestic. Of course, it’s not going perfectly. There are problems. There are setbacks. There are challenges. But you know what? There were always going to be problems, setbacks, and challenges. That’s the nature of the beast.

The bottom line is that we’re winning.

Unequivocally in the win column are victories such as getting all of Trump‘s appointments through the Senate, getting the reconciliation bill on track, unleashing DOGE on the fat, stupid, and corrupt administrative state, reorienting the military towards victory, reorienting our health policies towards health, and shutting down the border. Our progress has been measurable, and these wins will set us up for future victories.

In other fields, we have not yet won. We’ve had mixed success fighting back against the Democrat judge insurgency. We have yet to lock up any Democrat or Dem-adjacent criminals for their crimes over the last several years, though the noxious Leticia James may be the first to don the striped suit. The economy is mixed, and the tariff issue is unsettled. We don’t have peace in Ukraine yet. We haven’t smoked the mullahs, and there are still Hamas members alive and holding an American. But none of these fights are over. It’s just that these fights haven’t been won yet.

As for outright losses, there aren’t any. There are no distinct failures yet, which is pretty impressive. Some might argue the tariffs are, but the tariff initiative has not yet ended. Others may complain about our relations with other countries. There are lots of foreigners mad at us because we’re demanding they pay their fair share. Again, that will shake out. This is the result of Trump being audacious – he’s attempting to remake, in a very short time, the whole post-war order. 

And it needs remaking. This is a new age, with new issues, and jamming the square peg of the monopolar United States that graciously subsidizes everybody else into a round multipolar hole of an America that is burnt out from picking up the check isn’t going to fly. We don’t know how all this is going to turn out. It would be nice not to have an epileptic seizure every time I look at my 401(k), but it doesn’t matter what it looks like now. It matters what it looks like in November 2026 and when I decide to start taking money out. And asked for the foreigners, let them cry.

Objectively, Donald Trump has done much better than we have any right to expect. He’s fired off a fusilade of different initiatives with absolutely no hesitation and no doubt, each aimed directly at our enemies’ most vulnerable points. It’s his utter confidence that is running up the score. He doesn’t hesitate. He wants to win, and that’s a refreshing change. 

Trump doesn’t listen to the people who babble about norms and guardrails, norms, and guardrails that have been blown to smithereens over the last few years and now function only to restrain the right while they provide no obstacle to the left. Weak-hearted Fredocons are terrified of acknowledging the new reality where the old rules are gone because to acknowledge that the battlefield has changed requires a change in tactics. Those new tactics require confrontation, not complacency, and the common currency of the soft right is cowardice. They don’t want to fight. They don’t want to engage the enemy. In theory, they would love to win, but they have no intention of doing so. Winning requires combat, and they frankly don’t have the stones for it. They are much more comfortable riding out the slow decline of America into socialist serfdom as long as they get to maintain their power, prestige, and position for just a little while longer.

Thankfully, these sad and degraded pseudo-men no longer represent the heart and soul of the Republican Party. I deeply wish I had said it myself, but somebody else on X beat me to it: Republicans are no longer interested in winning the argument; they are interested in winning the fight.

The age of Thatcher and Reagan has passed. As glorious as they both were, and they were glorious, their tactics, techniques, and, most importantly, their mindset are obsolete. Margaret Thatcher famously said that first you win the argument, then you win elections. That was true at the time, but we’re in an age where the argument doesn’t matter. We’re in an age where our enemies will look you in the eye and lie to you. Look at the Maryland Man and his alleged lack of due process. We all know he’s not a Maryland man. And we know he had due process, including an appeal, which led to an order that he be removed. We know he’s an MS-13 affiliate, and we know his wife (under penalty of perjury) testified he beat her up. But his advocates won’t tell you that, and when confronted by the facts, they simply deny them. You can’t win an argument with someone who doesn’t argue. You can’t debate someone who simply shuts his eyes, puts his hand over his ears, and yells “Nanananananananana!”

But that’s what the left, aided by the regime media, does. Part of the reason is that they don’t know how to argue. They have never had to in their comfortable commie conformity campuses. They don’t consider us worthy of debating either, and they also don’t believe that there even can be a contrary argument to what they’re currently feeling. Those feelings change. They are endlessly mutable based on what’s convenient. Democrats last week loved tariffs. Then Trump imposed tariffs, and they suddenly hated tariffs. They’ll love tariffs again when Trump is gone, and they think it’s to their advantage. 

You can’t debate or argue with an opponent who is completely divorced from objective reality and basic facts, an opponent driven by a fervent cause a religious faith in their pagan ideology. The only thing to do is beat them. And the good news is, at about 100 days in, Trump is beating them.

It won’t last forever. Every campaign peters out. Every empire falls. We can look back over the last decade and there were times the Democrats were riding high above us, without a care in the world. Right now, they’re swimming in the cesspool, dodging floaters. Eventually, they will arise from the muck. This is the way of the world. Let’s enjoy our success while it lasts and make it last as long as possible. This is the time to run up the score. 

We will never grow tired of all the winning.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Pre-order Kurt Schlichter and Irina Moises’s action-packed new noir fantasy novel, Lost Angeles: Silver Bullets On The Sunset Strip! Check out the newest volume in Kurt’s Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord! And get his novel about terrorism in America, The Attack!

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