Exciting times are ahead. You can feel it in the air, and it’s far more palpable than the typical joy and merriment that surrounds a yearly holiday season. Whether they admit it or not, a majority of Americans, perhaps even an overwhelming majority, is happy or at least relieved that our country will be getting its best gift less than a month after Christmas, on January 20, 2025, when Donald J. Trump is inaugurated into office for a second time.
I remember having a similar feeling eight years ago. Unfortunately, the honeymoon didn’t last long. Despite the fact that more good happened than bad and America was in a far better place than we would have been under Hillary, Trump disappointed many of us in many ways that first term. From awful staff picks to weak judges to an unfinished border wall to almost everything about how he handled Covid, there were countless missed opportunities to put our country in a better spot.
That, however, was Trump 1.0. This, what we’re about to experience, is Trump 2.0, a whole new fantastic upgrade; an upgrade, by the way, that I never anticipated being possible when I opposed the ex-president in the primaries. After Covid, January 6th, multiple tired court appearances, his refusal to debate in the primaries, and what felt like a million other things, I thought Trump was a washed up shell of the spirited, based, defiant fighter he was in 2015-2016, a broken man who couldn’t possibly win again.
But from there to the summer, something happened, a metamorphosis, a trial by fire that transformed the seemingly tired ex-president into something else entirely, a based fighting machine hellbent on cementing a legacy all of us can be proud of. What exactly happened to enable this transformation? Was it the assassination attempts? Yes. Was it the endless lawfare? Absolutely. Was it coming to the realization that the only way around the fire was through it? Of course. All those things doubtless played a role along with countless others. But whatever happened, it’s more obvious than ever that this version of Donald Trump is NOT the version we saw during his first term.
So, what can we expect from Trump 2.0 that we didn’t get from the original version? Since he can’t do everything himself, it all starts with picking better personnel, a developed skill that is already manifesting itself in many ways as Trump chooses a cabinet & staff of loyalists, yet people with diverse opinions in all the right directions.
Who could have imagined former opponent Robert F. Kennedy, a person whose views on vaccines and the overall state of healthcare in America are the opposite of any Republican or Democratic establishment, being a cabinet choice even one year ago? Or Tulsi Gabbard, whose views on foreign policy have neocons in a tizzy, being picked as director of national intelligence? Or Covid dissident Dr. Jay Bhattacharya heading the National Institutes of Health? If confirmed, Pete Hegseth is bound to shake things up at defense. And even the more mainstream picks, like Pam Bondi as attorney general, Howard Lutnick at commerce, and Chris Wright at energy, have the potential to be low-key transformational. We can certainly argue over the merits of each nominee, but on the whole this batch is heads and shoulders above the last batch, and it’s not even close.
The fact that Trump has done a better job picking people who are loyal and intent on carrying out his policy agenda shows an ability to learn from his mistakes. This will serve him well as he begins a term with not just a ton of unfinished business from his first term, but a huge steaming pile of carnage that needs to be dealt with from the Biden administration.
Even Trump 2.0 isn’t going to be perfect. We saw that firsthand with the choice of Florida sheriff Chad Chronister, a Branch Covidian tyrant who actually locked a pastor up for daring to have in-person church services during ‘mUh vIrUs.’ as DEA head. But the president-elect quickly changed course once he realized, at least in part thanks to protests from his base, who Chronister really was. The first time around, Trump seemed to be above it all, easily led by people whose approval he desperately wanted but would never have. This time, he seems to have a genuine desire to please the people to whom he owes his position.
Donald Trump seems to be fully aware that his legacy depends on what he does over the next four years, and that kowtowing with the ‘establishment’ isn’t going to cut it. What other leader would have had the political devil-may-care attitude to create something like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and have it headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy? Surely he knows the powerful ‘deep state’ people whose worlds that will upend, yet he is brave enough to do it anyway.
Combine all this with the fact that the ‘Resistance,’ after throwing everything it had against Trump for the past decade to no avail, is but a shadow of what it once was, and we’ve got a potential recipe for some real, lasting success over the next four years.
Yep, I think we’re going to like Trump 2.0 even better than we liked Trump 1.0.