The Mountain and the Iceberg

Judging success means knowing the starting point.

Has the 2nd Trump term been successful?

I’ve noticed a growing sense of disillusionment from some people regarding a term that started at a furious pace. There is a widespread feeling, perhaps not yet dominant but growing, that the progress has stalled and the wins are fading from memory.

I should add that this is not the kind of thing Democrats have desperately claimed is happening. It’s not a ‘buyers regret’ and it’s certainly not a sense that the Democrats were right all along.

Where there is frustration with the 2nd Trump term, I feel, it is not coming from those who want less populism, less radicalism, and less fight….but those who want more of all three.

A very obvious example of this comes in terms of reactions to the release or non release of the Epstein Files, followed by Dan Bongino and Kash Patel coming out firmly with the view that Epstein killed himself. For many of those who have seen Trump and MAGA as the victims of Deep State conspiracy, and who have likewise reached a level of disgust and cynicism regarding mainstream narratives that makes the Epstein story a somewhat typical example of CIA degeneracy, Bongino and Patel were supposed to be busting open every dirty secret and proving long held theories true.

For those people, saying there is no evidence that Epstein killed himself reads like just another cover up.

Another example of alleged disillusionment comes in terms of the activities of DOGE and whether these have had any long term effect. DOGE did incredibly good work in terms of exposing the extent of fraud and waste in the Biden years, and I think few people except the crooked and the brainwashed firmly on the other side would dispute how important, necessary and useful that kind of accounting and exposure is.

But the point of disappointment is that those who already knew how wasteful, spendthrift, fraudulent and corrupt the budget was, and how shamefully enormous debt has been built up for many years with fewer proper restraints and accounting practices than even the Mafia might apply to one of their businesses, did not just want these spending issues exposed.

They wanted the insane levels of spending stopped, and better yet, a political and criminal accounting to take place, where those responsible for effectively stealing trillions from the US taxpayer are made to face real punishment for having done so. They didn’t just want a tally of how much has been stolen-they wanted to be assured that the theft was now ended and the thieves were going to prison.

To some extent whether you remain hopeful and optimistic about the 2nd term, or whether you feel disappointed that the initial promise has been squandered, depends on whether you think you will get 1. Truths confirmed that were previously denied 2. Spending under control and significantly reduced and 3. Criminals and guilty parties actually punished for their crimes.

Elon Musk’s withdrawal from heading the DOGE project is interpreted by many as an acknowledgement that for all the exposure of fraud and waste he has successfully delivered, Musk himself is disappointed with the translation of that realisation into real spending cuts and the kind of radical response such vast levels of fraud require. Musk has not exactly contradicted this feeling that he is, in walking away from a frontline role, giving up in disgust. Here is a typical response from him when the idea that DOGE has been betrayed is raised:

The third great area of potential disappointment is in terms of the judicial activism and lawfare that is stalling so much of the agenda and policies on which Trump was elected and which the MAGA voter urgently wants to see delivered.

Almost all of the most significant policies of the 2nd term have been legally challenged. It’s hard to think of a major Trump Executive Order that is not currently or has not recently been stalled in the courts. The legal challenges have been sustained, coordinated and relentless. And they have boldly intruded on areas that should be purely executive matters and easily recognised as issues over which the courts themselves have no jurisdiction, particularly given the broad discretion the Constirution gives the Presidency in terms of executive policy, military matters as Commander in Chief, and matters relating to foreign policy and foreign threats, all of which have traditionally and constitutionally been understood as the areas where the Presidency is most powerful, or even, in some cases, has absolute and unquestioned authority to act in ways the courts have no remit to question.

Trump’s key policies in multiple areas have been blocked by Democrat judges, seemingly in total disregard of the seperation of powers, the traditionally recognised rights of the Presidency, and the limitations which exist legally on the courts and judges themselves.

Many of the policies that have been blocked or stalled seem to Trump voters like actions which are both common sense and things which the President is fully entitled to do, indeed, morally required to do. They include deporting foreign criminals and gang members, removing unjust DEI hiring practices and discriminatory policies based on race, ending the federal funding of fraudulent or illegal programs, and removing federal employees who act in insubordinate and treasonous ways due to their ideological and partisan hatred of the elected President.

The majority of Americans believe that the President is fully empowered to remove and deport illegal aliens, to protect the borders from invasion and to protect citizens from the consequences of invasion. Likewise they believe that the President may terminate departments of government and possesses the right to determine what policies are followed within these departments, since this is after all the purpose for which a President is elected in the first place. They also believe that as Commander in Chief it is the President who gets to say whether or not, for example, the military should hire transgenders to combat positions, and that it is perfectly sensible to allow the military and its commander in chief to decide that people on potentially mind altering drugs and subject to gender dysphoria delusions are not the best people to train and equip with military weapons.

The absurd situation that judicial activism has created is this: that apparently Americans are supposed to believe that a President can create departments that spend billions of dollars, but is not allowed to end them. A President can open the border to 10 or 20 million invaders, but is not allowed to deport them. A President can enact mad and discriminatory DEI policies, but is not allowed to end them. He can allow gigantic fraud and waste, but is not empowered to end that either, even if the spending is obviously criminal. He can throw away 93 billion dollars with no accounting in the last days of his Presidency, but the next President isn’t allowed to seek answers on where the money went or to enact measures that prevent such waste occurring again. Due process and habeas corpus can be denied to US citizens by a Democrat President, but must be offered in extreme forms to foreign criminals by the next Republican President. A Democrat President can deport 3 million people without a word on due process or a single legal challenge, but Trump cannot deport a single person without the approval of every judge in the nation and a version of due process that would take ten million years to get through every removal case.

In all of this people see the judges blocking policies that won the election, exceeding their jurisdiction, and impinging on executive authority to the extent of rendering the power of the Presidency trivial compared to the power of a district court judge.

The frustration then is the opposite of the one that would be there if the ridiculous Democrat and mainstream charges against Trump had ever been true. It is that Trump is too lawful, too moderate, and too respectful towards his enemies, not that he is a dictator in waiting, an unprecedented threat to democracy, or a thin skinned mean tweeting ignoramus. For those who voted for Trump and had previously endured the Biden years, Trump’s great failing in the first term was being unprepared for the sheer malice of the Deep State, and his failure in the second term is in still being bound by rules his opponents set for him, without following themselves.

While Trump voters know how loathsome the embedded Deep State and Permanent Administrative State is, there comes a point where these voters want more than the exposure of that, and more than excellent spokespersons such as Stephen Miller articulating how insane and unjust this lawless resistance through the corruption of the law really is.

They know that, and they want real action against it, not just condemnation while obeying it.

To summarise then, these are the problem areas:

• As of yet, past crimes have not been punished (the theft of 2020, Clinton crimes even prior to 2020, hoaxes like Russian Collusion, lies on COVID, the theft and waste exposed by DOGE and all the illegal measures taken against Trump from 2015 onwards.

• Specific Biden administration crimes also seem unlikely to result in punishment or as yet no serious efforts have been shown to be responding to these things even when bold claims (like holding Mayorkas fully accountable for open borders) are expressed.

• Various ‘conspiracy theories’ were awaiting confirmation and action, but have instead received denial and evasion.

• Spending and debt is still in some eyes proceeding as normal, following standard Washington DC patterns of vast waste despite everything DOGE was supposed to be for.

• Major parts of the policy platform are repeatedly stalled by corrupt power structures (like activist judges) the administration complains about, but does not fully challenge.

These issues strike to the trust that voters have in the capacity of the administration to deliver. While the executive orders and bold moves like being willing to remove recalcitrant and obstructionist staff no matter how senior initially impressed, letting all those efforts be derailed by judicial activism and entrenched interest groups (including the weakness of GOP Senators) squanders some of that good will. Trump voters and MAGA followers want accountability for wrongdoing, and real change in how things operate. The patience of the adninistration as it follows absurd rulings and attempts to reverse them through a protracted legal process dependent on appeal courts and the Supreme Court getting it right will quickly be considered ineffectual and weak if it doesn’t start obtaining significant victories soon.

Finally yet another frustration can derive from the Kennedy wing of the Trump coalition, since that promised a fresh honesty on vaccines, health and food policy. Given Kennedy’s level of reputation as a health and vaccine rebel, things like the lack of a ban on mRNA treatments, voicing support for certain vaccines, and not bringing forth clear evidence of massive COVID corruption are all things that might suggest betrayal or failure.

Part of the problem I think is one of perception. We have been talking for years about the Deep State and the Uniparty. DOGE has given us firm evidence of just how much federal state spending could be handed over to anything without any kind of limit or even acknowledgement of where the money has gone.

But many people on our side don’t seem to think through the effects of that. If 93 billion can be stolen in one or two weeks, think how much resistance to the legitimate authority trying to do the right thing that buys. And then think about the spending of every Presidency except Trump’s for the last 50 or 60 years and where that has gone. Too frequently we act as if the trillions that have been stolen are then sitting passively, doing nothing. But that’s absurd. That money is active. It is active for years after it is stolen, buying future political results. And the people who have received this money in the past are the people who fight so vigorously for the continuation of these funding streams and corrupt practices.

It is not coincidental that the activist judges have family members who work for NGOs funded by the State, or for charities and departments whose funding is threatened by DOGE revelations.

When we say Deep State and Permanent Administrative State we aren’t really talking about things limited to a few malign actors at the CIA or the FBI or in the Department of Justice or the Department of Education, for instance. We are talking about much of, perhaps the majority of, the federal entire government and we are talking about an entire infrastructure of graft and crime and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people, none of whom stop doing what they do when they lose an election.

Some 50,000 NGOs have been funded by the ecosystem of graft and theft for decades. They still have money to spend, and by circular routes through aligned also profiting billionaires, this is the money that pays the families of judges and the money that funds the legal challenges in the first place.

Take an example with just three of these billionaires and just one specific instance of the flow of money between them and the State:

Given this scale of financial theft, the idea that winning an election is going to hand all the power back to the winner and that the money will sit doing nothing in response as it’s favoured political party and it’s purchased politicians are destroyed is rather naive.

Therefore the success of the 2nd term so far must be parsed in particular ways.

If we are talking about the function of a political movement in building broad support and lessening the support of the opposition, the 2nd term represents a spectacular achievement, both in gaining it and in deepening the things that won the victory. The Democrats have been forced more and more to openly expose how insane they are, and to fully reveal that they are the party of minority violence, extremism, perversity and corruption. The Democrat support is still shrinking, and Trump support is still growing (despite disillusionment in some quarters).

Similarly, there have been notable successes. Many difficult to pass picks ended up successfully getting confirmed. These are reflective of a much better control of the RINO element than existed in the first term. Both the Democrat Party and the Uniparty faction of the Republicans have been in some degree of disarray, at least so far as the politicians are concerned. The successful obstructionism has been from non elected positions.

Some of the most significant successes have been ones of omission. The US has been saved from the control of the World Health Organisation and has avoided becoming a signatory of the Pandemic Treaty. Trump’s efforts may not have thus far ended the Ukraine War, but the change of direction and tone may have prevented a nuclear one. It is hard to calculate a benefit in terms of a disaster that did not come to pass, but would have been much more likely if the US was being led by a US neocon or by anyone as insane as the European and NATO leaderships.

I’d also say that it is highly premature to say the 2nd term has failed to deliver, even if it’s excessive restraint regarding legal judgements that deserve to be ignored can be frustrating. The ‘big beautiful Bill’ is not so surely a continuation of business as normal as it has been painted, and Stephen Miller did in fact offer a good and strong defence of it that has some merit. Since a new piece of funding legislation is intended to follow, this one focused on enacting DOGE cuts, it may turn out that even the ‘I tried’ declaration of Musk is too much of a black pill, too soon delivered.

It’s therefore at this stage possible that this will end up as a term that doesn’t make significant inroads on national debt, but this still hangs in the balance and genuine change remains very possible. To feel betrayed on that score, this early, is I think unfair.

At the risk of sounding too optimistic, I’d say the same applies with the lack of accountability and the lack of serious action against the most corrupt and malign forces that behaved in illegal ways both before and during the Biden term. This response to the Bongino and Patel ‘conversion’ on Epstein seems fairer to me than much of the criticism has been:

It’s likely that saying they haven’t seen any evidence that Epstein killed himself is an accurate comment. In a way it becomes more accurate if you are as cynical regarding the prior authorities as I am. Such evidence will have been destroyed. What’s more curious is Bongino saying that there is video evidence that Epstein killed himself-it seems curious that this never emerged before and that we were previously told that video surveillance failed (one of the most suspicious elements, in fact, of the events surrounding Epstein’s death).

For me, even if Epstein killed himself and even if that part of the ‘conspiracy theory’ really is wrong, there remains enough in Epstein’s life and end that is unexplained or only explicable via him being protected by others, whether that’s a pedophile ring or CIA handlers (or both). He operated too blatantly for too long without criminal investigation for his actions to have been genuinely unknown (much as applies with the activities of Diddy). A genuine truth telling adninistration would want to confirm whether or not Epstein’s rape, trafficking and procurement and supply of minors was conducted as a CIA operation or as a CIA asset, and would be as interested in the answer as any ‘conspiracy theorist’.

Unlike instantly offended truthers, though, I’m prepared to give Bongino, Patel and Bondi time to deliver. And again I do this on the basis of the nature of the enemy, and the time it takes to find evidence and act on it when the enemy still controls most of the professionals in the field.

Here we come finally to my choice of title, and why I mention a ‘mountain’ and an ‘iceberg’.

The 2nd Trump term has been very, very effective against the visible part of the iceberg. The bit that sticks up out of the water, and is evident to everyone, is the official Democrat Party. And it’s been melted, it’s been reduced. But beneath that is the far larger real enemy, the vast networks of corruption that simply used the Party as their public front organisation.

Trump’s support, by contrast, is like a mountain. Everyone can see every part of it. It’s growing, and none of it is hidden. It has no Deep State assets, and it has no Permanent Administrative State on its side. It doesn’t have secret admirers. It doesn’t have hidden, previously diverted trillions working for it. It doesn’t have 50,000 NGOs attached.

People can look at the mountain besides a smaller, melting iceberg and wonder why the mountain hasn’t yet destroyed the iceberg. Surely it can just smash its way through, and the tale is done. But the bigger iceberg is all below the water. And that may still be bigger than the mountain.

We should watch closely for the accountability and action we desire, but also give a little more time than this to allow those things to happen. I hope that what we want is being worked on, and will judge differently if it never emerges. The idea that anyone in this term has sold out though seems a very early call to make, and an unfair one at this stage.