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Washington, DC
The temperatures at game time in Kansas City and Buffalo this weekend were in the high teens and the low twenties, respectively, before both sank even lower as day turned to night. The temperature in Washington on Capitol Hill when Donald Trump began to give his second inauguration address was 28°F, a far cry from the 7°F that forced Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural indoors. It turns out more people find it far more important to root for their team even in the face of frigid wind and swirling snow than to cheer on the swearing in of a new/old president — which indicates to me that the American people have their priorities straight.
As inaugurations go, this will be a far less dramatic occasion than normal — but it will also represent a more dramatic shift in terms of the policies of the chief executive than perhaps any transfer of power in the modern era. On his way out the door, Joe Biden — or his underlings — saw fit to deliver one last insulting round of pardons, this time for his family and their spouses (James Biden, Francis Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens and Sara Biden), for January 6 Committee members and their staff and for Anthony Fauci and Mark Milley. The former had been discussed as a possibility, but Fauci and Milley came as a surprise, especially considering that, as the Supreme Court found over a century ago, a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and an accepting the pardon represents an admission of guilt.
That Fauci and Milley were scared enough of the ramifications that they presumably lobbied for these pardons is a very bad sign about what they haven’t told us. We already know a great deal about their activity that stinks to high heaven, but these pardons should embolden Rand Paul, Jim Jordan and others to go hammer and tongs after these figures. They cannot take the fifth given their imputed admission, and lying under oath as a future act would not be covered by a pardon. Yet their fear of what oversight will find and a new administration will turn up about their communications, particularly with foreign powers, apparently compelled them to this humiliating end.
For Donald Trump, his focus today is on a raft of executive orders which will set the new administration on a definite path — particularly as it related to the southern border and our fractious relationship with Mexico. The decision to include among these the designation of Mexico’s cartels as terror groups, a long-debated idea that I favor for multiple reasons (read here, here, and here), is a sign that this second administration isn’t going to be slow-rolling anything when it relates to the Western Hemisphere security agenda. That’s a good sign, given that last time around, slow moving foreign policy shifts allowed Trump’s opposition to coalesce and organize pushback. That’s just one of the lessons learned from last time around: when you know what you want to do and have the buy-in of your political allies, move quickly, don’t waste time.
Of course, these executive orders will also be challenged directly and not just by the left. Trump’s decision to attempt to end birthright citizenship via executive order will result in immediate legal pushback, though that’s a fight that will draw a lot of attention and Trump and his allies will likely relish. Such legal battles also await his efforts to begin immediate deportations starting Tuesday. Others will be more pointless. I overheard one commentator rejoicing at the renaming of Mount McKinley and the Gulf of America, saying, “I’m so happy that the age of Republican isolationism is over, and the age of Republican imperialism is back!” We’ll see if renaming things keeps such people satisfied when he starts making demands of Ukraine, or seeking ways to keep TikTok alive even with partial CCP ownership despite a bipartisan Congressional law forcing divestiture.
Coalitions hold together in a vacuum. It’s when policies start to be implemented, and move beyond performative gestures, that things run the risk of going sideways. Trump is surrounded by a lot of people who want to be best friends right now. Will they all still be with him a year from now? If they are, it’s a sign that his second term’s focus on things that will be both populist and popular has worked. If they are not there, it will tell us something too about the bargain they sought, and what they really wanted all along.
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