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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
Sorry, there are lots of appropriate images, but after going through quite a few and finding them "not available," I gave up.
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Donald Trump is preparing to enter the office of the Presidency of the United States for a second time, but with the terms of office being non-consecutive. Well-known to many readers of OpEdNews columns, he is the second in the history of the U.S. to do so. Until now, Grover Cleveland was the only President to have served two non-consecutive terms, being both he 22nd and the 24th President. However, Trump goes into his second term with several distinctions from Cleveland's Presidencies.
Courtesy of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, Trump cannot try for a third term. Cleveland could have, but, given the politics and major national issues of the era, chose not to. Trump is a convicted felon. The worst that could be said about Cleveland along the lines of possible illegality and certainly immorality (Trump has too many of the latter to start listing them in the space available here) is that he may have fathered a baby out-of-wedlock. In his first campaign, against James G. Blaine in 1884, this charge was summarized by the Blaine campaign's famous slogan, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, ha, ha." (Of course, the first Trump felony conviction in the books was for the "Stormy-Cover-up," but [apparently] no pregnancy there.) Then, in the Final Report of the "January 6th Committee" Trump is strongly implicated in the organization and observation-of-without-interference-in-for-quite-some-time of the violence. Nothing like that appears on the record of Grover Cleveland, or, as it has happened, any other President before or since.
Then there is the New York State felony conviction, obtained by the New York State Attorney General Letitia James, for financial fraud. (And as of this writing, on the Federal, charge-crimes side, we are waiting to see if Attorney General Garland will authorize the release of the "Jack Smith Report.") Wow! What a record! It obviously Trumps that of any other President. Of course, all the convictions are on appeal. If he is master of nothing else, Trump is a master of delay-delay-delay in any legal proceedings taken against him, whether civil or criminal. And who knows, he may win one or more of them.
Now despite all of this, there are certain sources which have had a "left-wing" identity attached to them over time, who have come out in support of Trump. Take Naomi Wolf for example. Known as a "leftist" of one stripe or another for quite some time, she came out strongly in support of Trump, at the time of the election. Here is a summary of some of the reasons she gave in that speech for doing so:
(First) Steve Bannon was imprisoned for four months, during the campaign, having been convicted of contempt of Congress, for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee. (Second) you should vote for President Trump because "Vice President Harris failed at her only job" (which in Wolf's interpretation was to get the 25th Amendment invoked against President Biden). (Third) you should vote for President Trump because "it is not true that there will be no abortion in America if he gets in." (Fourth) "There will be a strong environmentalist in the White House." (That of course would be RFK Jr., who would be the subject of another discussion which I might get to if he is confirmed.) (Fifth) "The Trump campaign and MAGA have become the movement of racial and ethnic unity." (Folks: On that one, take a deeper breath than you already have on the others, and then see my recent OEN column on why Trump won. You guessed it; The-Trump-Trifecta: racism, sexism, and xenophobia.) (Sixth) "Who really supports women and children?" (Your guess is as good as mine.) And so on, along typical lets-make-excuses-for-Trump-ian lines. If you've got the time, read Wolf's column for yourself (I have; the link is above). It's just fascinating.
Other leftists or centrists, or however one might describe them, have taken similar, either pro-Trump, or "he's really not going to be as bad as many folks say he will be," like one Helmholtz Smith, who presents a list of "No's" that Trump MIGHT engage with on Day 1. Some of them, like not building anymore aircraft carriers, letting Taiwan and China sort things out between themselves (apparently ignoring the problem[s] that would arise if Taiwan asked for protection from the U.S. at some point), and reducing the number of U.S. foreign bases, sound rather attractive. (Many others aren't, but you can read the list [link above] for yourselves.)
However, this column presents a summary of the possible actions that Trump will/might take on "Day 1" of his Presidency, that he has talked about on one or more occasions himself. For the sake of argument, for him "Day One" includes Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025, plus the first full day, Jan. 21, 2025. As a reminder, on a Sean Hannity show a year-or-two ago Trump, despite the best efforts of Hannity to get him to take it back, Trump persisted in declaring that indeed he would be "Dictator on Day One." See my column on that episode at: Click Here.
This column, however, focuses on a list/collection of "Day Ones" that on Dec. 26, 2024 was:
"Presented by Goldman Sachs[!]: AXIOS AM, by Mike Allen; Authors: Zachary Basu, Erin Davis; Source: From Trump's first day frenzy: Everything he promised to do on 'day one;' Click Here; Things Donald Trump has said he will do on his first day in office; From 122 speeches, press conferences and interviews Jan. 1, 2023, to Dec. 6, 2024." (To the reader: I carefully looked for a copyright notice or sign for the article as published, and could not find one. And so, I am reproducing its contents here, as I found it on the web.)
The list below, is put together from a word cloud which the authors assembled showing things Donald Trump has said he will do in his first day in office. According to the authors he has mentioned more than 60 items, including closing the (U.S.-Mexico) border, settling the Russia-Ukraine war "on Day One," and defunding schools with vaccine mandates. Noted in parens are the number of found mentions for each). There are brief added comments by me for some of them.
*Settle the Russia-Ukraine war (33). Exactly how would that be done?
*Close the [U.S.-Mexico] border (32). (Oh, you mean along the lines of the Democratic-Republican very stiff Bill put together last summer that you ordered the Repubs. to drop so that you could use the issue in the Campaign?)
*Cut federal funding for schools that teach CRT [Critical Race Theory] or who have a vaccine mandate (26). (So far at least, Critical Race Theory is a subject primarily taught at the graduate level in a limited number of universities. As for "vaccine mandates" [left undefined], for schools they are controlled by State law.)
*Begin largest deportation operation (25).
*End [the] "electric vehicle mandate" (22). (I must say that I didn't know the U.S. had such a "mandate." There are programs designed to encourage the purchase and use of electric-powered vehicles. Of course those are very much in Musk's interest, but I would leave the two of them to sort that one out.)
*Increase drilling/fracking for oil (17). (Along with other announced Trumpian policies, this one obviously is designed to increase global warming and the various negative outcomes that have so far arisen from it. But maybe Trump and his global-heating crowd have seme positives to present to us.)
*Begin ending inflation and making life affordable (10). (Post-election, Trump has said that bringing down grocery prices would "be hard.")
*Terminate "open border policies" of [the] Biden admin. (8). (Actually, he worked very hard with the Republicans in Congress to make sure that the stiff Biden control- policies would NOT be implemented.)
*End "Bidenomics" and start "MAGAnomics" (8). (Definitions, please.)
*End "Green New Deal" policies (6).
*End birthright citizenship (. (The only way to do that would be to amend the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for it. Since he talks about it so much, one has to wonder if Trump knows that.)
*Begin reducing energy costs by 50% (3).
*Ban trans women from competing in women's sports (3). This one is also a huge concern for the Republicans in the House. (And the rationale, based on research, is?)
*Appoint task force to review cases of Jan. 6 prisoners (2).
*Pardon Jan. 6 prisoners (2.) (Would that come before or after appointing that review task force [?], which of course would involve some kind of inquiry into the procedures of the Federal Courts which found the guilty ones guilty.)
*Stop flights bringing migrants into U.S. (2). (Does that include persons who have tourist visas to the U.S. who overstay them?)
*Roll back biofuel regulations in the military (2).
*Restore and expand Trump travel ban (2) (Indeed the anti-Muslim travel ban has been found Constitutional by the Trump-Court.)
*Roll back "job-killing" auto regulations (2).
*Direct Secretary of Veterans Affairs to fire "sadistic" VA employees (2).
*Ask for resignations of those involved in withdrawal from Afghanistan (2). (That would have to start with himself, because he negotiated the totally unenforceable agreement on Afghanistan withdrawal, one that did not involve the Taliban in the negotiations. So, at the time of the withdrawal, they could not be brought into the process.)
*Bring "competence and common sense" back to the Oval Office (1). (By whose definition would that be?)
*Turn the country around (1).
*Terminate all Biden policies harmful to workers (1).
*Sign an executive order banning federal agencies from colluding to censor free speech (1).
*Shift parts of federal law enforcement to immigration (1).
*Revoke federal DEI requirements (1). (But wait a minute. Dr. Wolf told us that Trump is not a racist.)
*Revoke China's "most favored nation" status (1).
*Revoke Biden's executive order combating firearms (1). (Ah yes. Let's have evermore gun carnage in a country, not involved in a foreign or domestic war, in which there are more guns than people.)
*Combat antisemitism (1). (From someone who has for example, regularly used the "Geroge Soros" twitch when campaigning.)
*Restore "constitutional government" (1).
*Reduce violent crime (1).
*Reduce crime by immigrants (1).
*Put sanctions on Iran (1).
*Have DOJ investigate DAs he disagrees with (1).
*Empower border patrol (1).
*Commute sentence of Ross Ulbricht (1). (He is a convicted drug smuggler .)
*Ban transgender people from the military (1.) (On what basis, one wonders.)
*Terminate federal staffers implementing DEI policies (1). (Again, Trump's not a racist, eh?)
*Suspend refugee admissions into U.S. (1).
*Support parents' rights (1). (Presumably rights that extend beyond being able to vote in school board elections.)
*Establish criminal penalties for future administrations who open the border (1). (And that one is found in which clause of the Constitution?)
*Ask Congress for a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors (1) (On what grounds, again?)
It is, of course, an impressive list. We'll see just how many of them he and his minions will be able to get to, on the first, or subsequent, days. But this is a wish-list. It is all out there. Too bad that too many people, for one reason or another, didn't pay enough attention to it, before election day. And oh yes. I wonder just what Naomi Wolf would think of it.
(Article changed on Jan 07, 2025 at 6:13 PM EST)
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