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DEMOCRAT RO KHANA GIVES CREDIT TO PRESIDENT TRUMP.
From The Post Millennial
3:18 PM · Jan 21, 2025
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https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1881798595239981056
Politico1/2
Time to Admit It: Trump Is a Great President. He’s Still Trying To Be A Good One
JOHN F. HARRIS 01/21/2025 05:00 AM John Harris is founding editor and global editor-in-chief of POLITICO.
His Altitude column offers a regular perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption.Donald J. Trump in his second inaugural address was everything his supporters hoped he would be:
Breathtakingly expansiveabout his intention to reshape the vast federal government around his vision; raucously jingoistic in proclaiming that the country will do whatever it wants to advance its interests around the world; openly triumphal in assertinghis belief that his survival from an assassin’s bullet and his victory show he is God’s chosen instrumentto lead an American revival.
Trump was also everything his adversaries feared: Messianic in tone; lovingly protective of his grievances;wholly uncharitable to the people, sitting just feet from himunder the Capitol Rotunda, who he defeated so convincingly.
In one light, it was all quite familiar.
But thesecond occasion of Trump taking the oath of office also put him in an entirely new light. For the first time, he is holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact:He is the greatest American figure of his era.
Let’s quickly exhale:
Great in this context is not about a subjective debate over whether he is a singularly righteous leader or a singularly menacing one.It is now simply an objective description about the dimensions of his record. He began a decade ago by dominating the Republican Party. He soon advanced to dominating every discussion of American politics broadly. Now, his astonishing comeback after his defeat by Joseph Biden in 2020 and the notoriety of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot makes clear there are certain things he is notand one big thing he is.
He is not a fluke, who got elected initially in 2016 almost entirely because of the infirmities of his opponent.He is not someone the American public somehow misunderstands— as though Democrats and the news media have not spent 10 years forcefully highlighting the risks of his record and character.
He is someonewith an ability to perceive opportunities that most politicians do not and forge powerful, sustained connections with large swaths of people in ways that no contemporary can match.
In other words: He is a force of history.
This issomething his most ardent supporters— still shy of a national majority —have never doubtedbut something others, myself included, have been slow to reckon with.The inaugural address and a raft of hundreds of executive ordersTrump has promised for his opening days in office make it impossible to avoid.
For Democrats — and most excruciatingly Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris — the inaugural ceremony and all it symbolizes were a meal made of ingredients scraped off the kennel floor.Once they gargle and spit, however, the opposition party may find something liberating about the moment.
That is becausethey can no longer place confidence in a strategythat once looked plausible but now has been exposed as illusion.
They cannot push Trump to the margins, by treating him as a momentary anomalyor simply denouncing him as lawless and illegitimate.
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Some voters bought that but not enough to win an election.Opponents have no choice but to acknowledge he and his movement represent a large historical argument— and then rally similarly large arguments to defeat it. Trump in 2020 showed himself ready to undermine democracy for his own purposes.
Trump in 2024 showed that he is also a potent expression of democracy.
The most flamboyant rhetoric of Trump’s inaugural address — “Drill, baby, drill!”; retaking the Panama Canal; renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America; sending federal troops to the border —are all expressions of his genuine worldview.
That leaves plenty of room for argument.Trump has transcended his vulnerabilityto criminal penalties for January 6.
It is not possible for him to transcend a genuine contest over competing visions of the better America.
That contestmay be more effective if opponents embrace the reality that Trump has already demonstrated some familiar signatures of the most consequential presidents.
Like influential predecessors,his arguments have shifted the terms of debate in ways that echo within both parties— in this case, on issues such as trade, China, and the role of big corporations.
Like other large presidents, Trump has been a communications innovatorand exploited technological shifts more effectively than rivals.
In that sense, Trump’s use of social media recalls Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mastery of radio, and John F. Kennedy’s and Ronald Reagan’s mastery of television — even as his banter and insults don’t aspire to anything like traditional presidential eloquence.
One more signature shown by the most consequential presidents: Uncommon psychological toughness. Have you ever known someone who was facing legal hurdles? In many cases, even if people ultimately win the case, they end up being consumed and shrunken by the searing nature of the experience.Imagine running for president amid huge civil suits, criminal prosecutions, and even felony convictions —then emerging from this morass as a larger figure than before.
No one needs to admire the achievement torecognize that Trump is possessed by some rare traits of denial, combativeness and resilience.
About that combativeness: Could someone so zealously divisive ever join the roster of presidents who even schoolchildren can typically recite as the nation’s greatest?
My mind goes back to a conversation, just before Bill Clinton began his second term, with the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. He had inherited a tradition from his father, also a renowned scholar, of conducting surveys of historians asking them to rank American presidents from best to worst. Clinton was promising in his second term to be a great national unifier. Schlesinger, who wished greatness for Clinton but mistrusted his ideological centrism, was skeptical.
“Great presidents are unifiers mostly in retrospect,” he told me.
Most great presidents, he later wrote, “divided the nation before reuniting it on a new level of national understanding.”
This is the same sentiment uttered by FDR: “All our great presidents were leaders of thought at a time when certain ideas in the life of our nation had to be clarified.” FDR also said:
“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”
The implications for Trump are ambiguous. He’s ready to use his second term, and second chance, to divide the nation over immigration, over foreign policy, over school curriculums that allegedly teach “our children to be ashamed of themselves, in many cases to hate our country,” and a long roster of other subjects.What he didn’t show in his first term, or on his improbable pathway to a second,was an ability to bring these conflicts to resolution, to unite the country on a new level of understanding.
This would require Trump revealing a new understanding about himself and how to use the next four years.
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This is one major admission that Politico never understood Trump or the American people that voted for him.
They miss one gift that Trump and the American people have that support him, Loyalty and keeping promises
Send him a reminder
And stupid, that its only he was re elected that he could understand
>>22403901, >>22403912 WATCH - TRUMP ON NEWSMAX'S CHRIS SALCEDO SHOW AT 4PM ESTPN
Chris Salcedo: The America-First reckoning begins | The Chris Salcedo Show
Chris Salcedo detailed the America-First reckoning that President Donald Trump is pursuing on Tuesday's "The Chris Salcedo Show."
8:55
https://youtu.be/7aei3qDQ1ao
White House website debuts new look: 'America is back'
The 'Outnumbered' panel discussed President Trump's first executive actions as he kicks off his second term, which he has dubbed a new 'golden age.'
9:24
https://youtu.be/2hXWX7eBI-g