After several months of relative silence following his re-election campaign announcement, Donald Trump has begun to publicize his agenda for another four years. His nearly two-hour address at the CPAC 2023 conference last Saturday night was an opening salvo against those who have ceaselessly plotted and schemed to destroy him and his movement for the past seven years. Mincing no words, Trump spelled out our predicament:
The sinister forces trying to kill America have done everything they can to stop me, to silence you, and to turn this nation into a socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals, and dangerous refugees that no other country wants. No other country wants them. If those opposing us succeed, our once beautiful USA will be a failed country that no one will even recognize. A lawless, open borders, crime-ridden, filthy, communist nightmare…. We’re now in a Marxism state of mind, a communism state of mind, which is far worse. We’re a nation in decline. Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we are the only ones who can stop them.
Trump went on to raise the battle cry:
We will beat the Democrats. We will route the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the rhinos. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all. When we started this journey, a journey like there has never been before, there’s never been anything like this. We had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open border zealots, and fools. But we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.
Strong words, but what does Trump intend to do to curb these forces, if elected? For starters, Trump pledged to take better care of American veterans. He promised to rebuild our military and regain control over our southern border. He also pledged to stop the “slide into costly and never-ending wars…spending billions of dollars protecting people that don’t even like us.” Trump also promised to end the epidemic of violent crime and homelessness.
As for the culture war, Trump pulled no punches:
On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden’s crazy executive order installing Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion czars in every federal agency, and I will immediately terminate all staffers hired to implement this horrible agenda. I will urge Congress to create a restitution fund for Americans who have been unjustly discriminated against by these Biden policies. They’re so unfair. They’re so un-American…. I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states.
And Trump pledged to get the American economy back on track, to “stop Joe Biden’s demolition of our economy with his crushing inflation and mass layoffs.”
On China, Trump promised to “revoke China’s most favored nation’s trade status immediately on day one” and to “will implement a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods and gain total independence from China. We have to do it.” He continued, “I will hold China financially accountable for unleashing the China virus upon the world, and I will again withdraw from the WHO, which stands for We Hide Outbreaks.”
On elections, he urged Republican governors to go to paper ballots, same day voting, and voter ID, a call he reiterated on Truth Social this week.
All of this, and more, is good from an Americanist and constitutionalist perspective. But, as has often been the case, some of Trump’s policies and proposals did not pass muster. For one thing, he railed against anyone proposing to get rid of our “great” Social Security and Medicare systems—never mind that both of them are unconstitutional and contribute very substantially to the national debt crisis. He also promised to push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress, another proposal that will do little to change the revolving door of appalling candidates in some districts—while unwisely limiting the influence for good by the increasing number of outstanding, constitutionalist multi-term congressmen.
In a word, Trump remains Trump — sincere and mostly sound in his instincts, but sometimes more concerned with self-aggrandizing populism and with policies that, however popular they may be, ought to be opposed on principle. By all appearances, a Trump second term would be very much like his first.
