The Challenges Facing Donald Trump

As I write this, January 20th and the Second Coming of Donald Trump is just a mere 5 days away. I thought it was as good a time as any to sit down and think about the challenges that will be facing the Greatest President Of The 21st Century (so far). This list is not exhaustive, it is merely what I’d have on my agenda if I was in Trump’s shoes.

Russia

Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine, which was a foolish war to start and the culprits should be prosecuted for criminal stupidity if they managed to do all this without committing any real crimes. Not only is Ukraine in an unwinnable war with millions dead, they have taken Russia from “Strategic Adversary” to “Hostile Actor” and they did their best to straight up declare Russia our enemy. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and we won’t wind up that far. But it’s a horrendous mess with the death toll reportedly numbering in the hundreds of thousands. We knew from the beginning that Ukraine couldn’t win on their own. So the US and Europe engaged in a campaign of giving the Ukranians every weapon that could legally be transferred. Now, if I’m Vladimir Putin, that might make me not feel particularly inclined to sit down with the US to negotiate a peace deal when there’s several hundred thousand dead Russians and complete victory is basically mine.

Let us be perfectly clear. The fake President Joe Biden owns the Ukraine debacle lock stock and barrel. The piles of dead bodies are his. The depleted stores of weapons are his. And the complete failure of his sanctions regime on the Russians have left us with no bargaining leverage at all. It will take a miracle for Trump to salvage this situation in a way that merely permits the US to save face.

China

The failed sanctions on Russia regarding the Ukraine War shoved Russia into China’s waiting arms and provided a huge boost to the BRICS nations. Not only do we still have the same problems with China that we’ve been fighting ever since the US foolishly granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China in 2000. The rampant theft of intellectual property, the requirement that expensive and irreplaceable manufacturing machines and dyes be moved to the Chinese mainland, etc etc etc all continue and in fact may have been put into overdrive under the Biden Regime.

It seems inevitable at this point that China will retake Taiwan. Be it militarily or just through a political solution where Taiwan agrees to be absorbed into Greater China. Tariff’s are a good tool for dealing with the Chinese. We should have been tariffing the crap out of Chinese goods the entire time to level the playing field with American manufacturing companies (if the Chinese do not have to abide by the same rules regarding worker safety, minimum wages and benefits, and environmental cleanliness it should be a no brainer to enact tariffs that reflect those costs that we have levied on American business). But tariffs do not solve the Taiwan problem. And they don’t solve the Panama Canal problem. Or any of the places where the Chinese have gained influence.

Now, we aren’t on the verge of a hot war with China the same way we are with Russia, but we have lost significant ground to a strategic adversary who has gained a significant foothold in our part of the world. Resolving this peacefully will be a significant challenge for the Trump administration.

Illegal Immigration

The United States has been overrun with illegal immigration, particularly since Reagan signed the 1986 Amnesty Bill, which was one of several significant mistakes Ronald Reagan made. I should note that just like Trump’s mistakes during his first term don’t change the fact that he was a great President during his first term, talking about Reagan’s mistakes don’t change the fact that he too was a great President. But the ‘86 Amnesty was a terrible mistake. And it’s one of the reasons that California is a complete disaster today. The results of the ‘86 Amnesty should be explanation enough for why another amnesty is off the table. DACA should be off the table. It was a mess before Biden frauded his way into office (we should note that the way that vote harvesting uses immigrants to “harvest” votes for Democrats is a large part of the reason that California is a complete disaster and a large part of the reason that Biden was able to collect enough votes to “win” while campaigning from his basement).

This is probably an easier problem for Trump to solve than Russia or China. You can divide the people here into 2 groups. The first group is the criminals. The rapists, the murderers. The sex traffickers. The cartel drug mules. This group should be dealt with extremely harshly. And Tom Homan has expressly stated that rounding up this group is going to be the Trump administrations first priority. And it should be. What is happening is absolutely appalling and inexcusible.

The second group is the people who have come here looking for economic advancement or social stability. These people are not malevolent the way that the first group is, but they also present problems for the US government, the main one being that they flouted US Immigration Law to get here. But Trump has several good options for dealing with this group as they will likely respond to incentives to do what we want. It will be expensive to round up and deport these people. Offering them help with travel (with their stuff) to return to their home countries with their families may be an enticing offer if coupled with a sufficient stick of, for example, e-verify and immediate deportation if we catch them driving while impaired or without insurance.

Rampant Inflation

This one is going to be a challenge because the long term solutions involve the Congress. But in a lot of ways it’s also one of the easiest for Trump because this is his wheelhouse. He understands the economy and he knows what has to happen to get prices to stabilize. In addition to putting back his policies, he needs the Congress to repeal the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which is the law Biden has abused to tie Trump’s hands on oil exploration and development. Why repeal instead of just passing a law explicitly allowing Trump to undo Biden’s idiocy? Simple. We have to put a stop to the idiocy. You play stupid games you win stupid prizes. You abused a law, so now we’re not going to “fix” the law. We’re just going to repeal it. And ALL the areas that were ever designated safe are now back on the table. Hopefully Trump coupled with the current High Court’s skepticism of deference to government bureaucrats will get the economy moving again.

The Deep State

During his first term, Trump was constantly bogged down by a bureaucracy that is very disproportionately Democrat. In addition to DOGE, we have some tools to deal with this.

1) The US Government should be more decentralized. The headquarters for some of these government agencies should be moved a LONG WAY away from DC. When you become head of HHS, you should wind up moving to Kansas, not Washington DC. And you should be attending state fairs instead of fancy parties with elites.

2) Congress needs to clean house. A lot of these government employees are partisan political activists and need to be purged from the ranks.

3) EPA and Department of Education should just be disbanded.

4) The FBI and the US intelligence apparatus need to have a solid housecleaning. Their partisan political maneuvering on the taxpayers dime has been inexcusable and it’s time for there to be hell to pay for it.

Staying Alive

Trump had 2 assassination attempts on him that we know about in the last year. The one in Butler Pennsylvania wasn’t an accident. The Secret Service is not that incompetent. That was malevolent. And there was no excuse for it to be allowed to happen. It was only by God’s Grace that he survived that day. May God continue to keep him and his family safe. And I very sincerely hope that Donald Trump and his family remember how much they owe God that they didn’t lose someone that they love. Because we need a President who cares about God’s opinions on how things should be.

And there you have it. What I think are Trump’s biggest challenges. This list is not anywhere near exhaustive. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts on what problems Trump is going to have.