When the startling news broke on Thursday that China’s President Xi Jinping had accepted an invitation from President-elect Donald J. Trump to attend Trump’s Inauguration on January 20th, it barely moved the needle in America’s newsrooms…because it was only a small blip on the worldwide radar screens monitoring Trump’s pending return to the White House.
In just the past few days, our 45th—and soon to be 47th—President has received calls from foreign leaders…saw Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau grovel before him at Mar-A-Lago on tariff issues…rang the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange and was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine as its “Person Of The Year” (infuriating lefty kooks including occasional cable personality Don Lemon and MSNBC’s #1 Trump-basher Nicolle Wallace. You might include them in your prayers and maybe gift them with bottles of smelling salts since January 20th is still several weeks away.)
Meantime, incoming Cabinet picks like Secretary of Defense-designate Pete Hegseth and Trump’s nominee to head the FBI Kash Patel appear to have weathered the legacy media-generated “controversy” over their nominations and may be on glide paths to fairly easy confirmations. Current FBI director Christopher Wray can read the tea leaves: after what he called “weeks of careful thought” he announced this week he’s resigning at the end of the Biden administration “to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray” of politics. A/k/a being walked out the door with his personal items in a banker’s box by Donald Trump.
Yes, the old elections-have-consequences bromide is also playing out on Capitol Hill. On the Salem Media Group weekly news program “This Week On The Hill with Tony Perkins,” U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson applauded bipartisan House passage of the Fiscal 2025 National Defense Appropriations Act. Johnson noted this NDAA reflects the fact that there’s a new sheriff in town, adding “One of the things we were really focused on was to return the emphasis of our nation defense policy to just that: national defense.”
The “woke” agenda of the Biden years was stripped out of the NDAA. Speaker Johnson reports that “We took out a lot of the progressive agenda so it is not part of Defense policy going forward. For the first time in federal law, for example, we will be preventing taxpayer funding of Trans surgery on minors. We wanted to assure that no tax dollars are devoted to experimental, non scientific nonsense such as gender affirming care as they call it…which would cause dramatic, permanent harm to these young people.”
Additionally, Johnson says Congress is rooting out DEI and “woke” directives introduced under Biden from America’s military academies…and the NDAA includes the largest pay increase in many years for military members—14%—which the Speaker concedes was long overdue and will positively impact military families.
On the world stage, as well, Donald Trump continues to be blessed by events which are teeing-up potential foreign policy successes early on in his new term in the White House. The fall of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad has rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic that is Iran. On “This Week On The Hill,” former Trump administration national security advisor John Bolton says America stands to benefit from this game changing event. “The effect, largely attributable to Israel’s determination to defeat terrorists worldwide, has given the United States this opportunity,” Bolton declares. “It’s given us a big chance to get fundamental change in the MIddle East for the benefit of ourselves, the Israelis, our Arab friends and the region.” (Even as Bolton was appearing on “This Week,” Israeli jets were surgically taking out targets in Syria including destroying what was left of Assad’s navy, and the mad scramble is on to find the former dictator’s cache of chemical weapons.)
Suffice it to say Assad’s sudden flight out of Syria was only eclipsed by the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan under the careful tutelage of Joe Biden.
Back home in the USA, Alvin Bragg—the Manhattan DA whose creative lawfare and kangaroo court tactics helped “convict” Donald Trump—tried and failed (twice in 72 hours, which was a neat trick) to convince a jury that subway hero Daniel Penny should go to prison for stopping a homeless mental patient from potentially assaulting fellow straphangers; Penny’s physical restraint of the man unfortunately resulted in his death. Bragg suggested Penny was guilty of manslaughter (which resulted in a deadlocked jury) so he quickly pivoted to “criminally negligent homicide.” That sent jurors on the legal equivalent of a ride on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over America, but in the end they gave thumbs-down to that charge, as well. CNN, MSNBC, and The Washington Post immediately cried crocodile tears with thinly-veiled suggestions that Penny’s freedom will unleash “vigilantes” on the streets of major cities. (The Post editorial board even hysterically rolled out the visage of 1980’s “subway vigilante” Benie Goetz who shot assailants that threatened him with a screwdriver as he rode home.)
Throw in bizarre “large drones” the size of VW buses appearing over New Jersey and elsewhere, whose origins or intent are unknown but which the mercifully soon-to-end Biden administration quickly dismissed as “not a public threat” (huh?) and it is safe to say our so-called “national leadership” has never been more embarrassing or anemic.
With all this as the backdrop, Donald Trump stands to inherit command of a nation which desperately needs him to make good on the one promise that has been his mantra since he officially entered politics. We need him to—wait for it—Make America Great Again.
He’s not even inaugurated yet, but he’s already beginning to deliver on that pledge. It is comforting to know that the grownups are about to return to the White House.
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