100 Days of Power and Chaos (guest Kelly Sadler)
Bessent and Greer excellent, Rubio soldiering, Hegseth failing, Noem “at war with gravitas”
There is a growing realization in the world that Donald Trump needs to be taken seriously this time. April 30 will mark his 100th day in office and he has had the most consequential and frenetic first 100 days since President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and his New Dealers created that standard for a fast start.
We see this with immigration, where Trump has replaced an intentionally uncontrolled border during the Biden administration with one that is controlled.
We see this in the culture war, where Trump has struck a blow against the racist diversity lie-factory known most recently as DEI and in favor of a restoration of American meritocracy, first in government, and now in the corrupt racketeering enterprise of higher education.
We see this with the economy, where Trump and Congress have at least set in motion the steps to avoid an automatic tax increase and preserve the pro-growth tax levels Trump signed in 2017. Who knows if they will succeed, especially with a golly-gosh-jeepers choir boy running the House of Representatives. Trump has also mandated more of the deregulation of his first term that helped spur private sector growth.
We see this with foreign and defense policy, where Trump has ended much foreign aid that seemed only to make foreigners hate us more. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have also given a stark wake-up call to Europe that its days of freeloading and mooching off of America may be over. The men have pointed out our “traditional allies” don’t actually share our values and are useless. Trump’s willingness to negotiate with Russia to achieve peace in Ukraine marks a fundamental shift toward realism in foreign policy.
Finally, we see the world taking Trump seriously—or at least much of the world—when it comes to trade policy. Important allies like Japan have chosen to seek a deal and will likely succeed. China, on the other hand, has chosen poorly. The European Union is run by America-hating pinkos, so who knows what will happen there.
But not all is well. In our latest podcast episode of “Domino Theory,” co-host Mark Simon and I chat with Kelly Sadler, who worked for Trump and edits the Times’ opinion page, about the chaos of his first 100 days and the wide range of his aides who span from excellent to disastrous.
For example, in Scott Bessent, Trump has found perhaps the best Treasury Secretary in modern history—excellent on policy and excellent in explaining that policy to the public. All of his recent predecessors have been panga hugging agents of Wall Street.
White House economic boss Kevin Hasset is such a happy warrior he would be smiling on TV even if nukes were falling on Washington. (Andy Puzder is the high priest of Trump capitalism and excellent on media but is necessarily on ice awaiting confirmation as ambassador to the EU.) Marco Rubio is loyal and effective at the State Department, but we wonder if he would rather be back in the more pleasant swamp in Florida. Peter Navarro is doing exactly what the president wants and isn’t going anywhere despite a lie-and-leak campaign by his opponents.
But the story is different with others. As we discuss, Kristi Noem and her decision to dress like a stripper and go on raids like one of Charlie’s Angels going rogue looks like a “war on gravitas.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is proof that you don’t need to be coherent or persuasive to become rich in our great country. U-S-A.!...U-S-A.!
National security advisor Mike Waltz and his staff’s stupid attempt to charm Beltway liberals and establishment poohbahs looks a little like featherbedding for post-government careers. More damningly in Trump world, Waltz is ineffective on TV.
And then there is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. His big problem is not bro-tacular Signal chats or a choice of finery that evokes a Swiss male prostitute who should be manning the bar at the Alpina Gstaad Hotel, but that he can’t run the Pentagon. As a colleague noted, it’s not a crisis for Trump, just bad PR and a liability in the place of what should be an asset.
Most surprisingly for a former Fox News host, Hegesth is also bad on TV. Love them or hate them, past Republican spokesmen for the death machine like Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom I loved in their heydey, exuded confidence and calm resolve on TV. Hegseth conveys the opposite, with fast-talking, edgy defensiveness and aggressiveness even with friendly media, which makes him look guilty of something. He promised not to drink while Secretary of Defense, but did he promise not to do cocaine and go on TV?
Hegseth’s vow to deliver a Pentagon budget request that tops $1 trillion for the first time is like promising teenage boys vodka and the keys to the Porshe. (I think I stole that from P.J. O’Rourke.) The Pentagon needs reform more than anything and a broke government facing fiscal crisis cannot afford an increase in defense spending. What is needed is a Secretary of Defense who can force the Armed Services to incorporate the lesson of the Ukraine War—that we are in an era of high-tech sensors and space-based surveillance and communications married with low-tech drones in air, space, land, and sea—and to adjust the Services’ weaponry and staffing accordingly. That means cancelling new procurement of $13 billion aircraft carriers as we have known them, fighters and subsonic bombers that needlessly have men aboard, bespoke doomsday planes (also $13 billion for just four!) that won’t make it airborne in a crisis, pointless garrisons in Europe and South Korea, and much other legacy hardware. That is where funding for a new military should come from and it will take a smooth operator who can work with the Armed Services, industry, and Congress to get to that point. Paging pro-Trump anti-Chicom former Marine and former Wisconsin congressman Mike Gallagher.
But I digest.
Some excerpts from the show follow. For starters, Kelly Sadler made the most fundamental point of all. Boom:
Kelly Sadler: There are no gatekeepers anymore, and that is what annoys legacy media.
Kelly on the fundamental turning point Trump has effected but the less-than-terrific policy and comms execution:
Kelly Sadler: Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick, Kevin Hassett. And they all seem to have different messages. Lutnick in particular seems to always throw a curve ball to everyone else and throws the message off base. But I think it's very clear holistically. If you look at what Trump's doing, he is trying to decouple our economy from China.
He's trying to bring Xi [Jinping] to the table for a potential deal like he made in his first term. He's trying to siphon off those countries in the Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines; and Japan, South Korea to all basically the tariff ploy is to get them to the table so that they too cut off China so that it's a global effort…
It's going to be very hard because it’s a dramatic restructuring of our economy. It's taking globalism and it's bringing manufacturing back to the United States. He said, you know what, globalism did not work for the bottom 50% in this country….
But that was his entire campaign strategy. That was his messaging. And whether or not he can be successful in doing it, it's going to take, perseverance, and I'm worried with the pause that we saw last week with the other countries…
He's not focused on Wall Street. He's focused on Main Street, but he could be clearer with the American people, the president himself, in terms of what he's looking to accomplish when he's looking to accomplish it by and what success looks like.
Should we let Trump be Trump? Do we have a choice? Kelly on Trump lacking discipline and the odds of him tightening up messaging being similar to finding a three-legged ballerina (joke stolen from John Candy):
Kelly Sadler: I don't know. But to expect Donald Trump and his White House, to have an organized weekly message focused on one thing is never going to happen. Working in his first administration, it was always infrastructure week. That was the joke because we never got through infrastructure week before it turned the story turned to something else.
I think you have to look at Trump through his actions, what he is actually announcing on a daily basis, what his team is doing, because there's a lot of noise. The Democrats like to call it chaos, and yes, it's a bit chaotic. Is it Peter Navarro that's leading the tariff strategy, or is it Scott Bessent?
Is it Elon Musk? What is Musk doing? So it's all, it's, it's gonna come to fruition. I think it's cohesive in the fact that they're all China hawks. They all view China as the central problem and everything they announce every day when they have some sort of announcement is something targeted specifically at China to get under she's skin and to, crash his economy.
Kelly, Mark, and Christian on the market failure of the lying media and the fun of “hate reading” the loser New York Times, plus the need to crush Google:
Christian Whiton: Why do you think of the way the media is covering this? You go and just story after story--and Google, it's just you type in a topic or go to Google News, it's now, it used to be half and half, some conservative, some regular, then it's two thirds, and now it's just it's NPR it's MSNBC, it's CBS, it's just all liberal. You have to actually put a conservative outlet into the search for it to turn up, anything like that. But it's all people rooting for Trump to fail, with the exception of some in the conservative media--the Washington Times has been great on this--the National Review has been terrible on this. I don't know if anyone even cares about them anymore. The Wall Street Journal has been terrible about this, both the news division and the editorial page. I think they're trying to ruin the news division. It seems they're trying to, I, it's actually very difficult, increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Just the headlines you could mistake one for the other. I enjoy checking the New York Times just because I like reading…
Kelly Sadler: I like hate reading them. I still have a subscription, have it every Sunday I get the paper delivered to my home.
I just. I hate read it.
Christian Whiton: That's fine. I don't actually subscribe, but I just want to know what neurotic women and emasculated males on the Upper West Side about Chelsea are worried about today. And literally the, it was, I think I was up to about 12, the first 12 headlines were about Trump.
Mark Simon on the traitors at Nvidia, who are gay for China, plus the new comms world Trump has created:
Mark Simon: I'm here in Taiwan. I own, I know all the TSMC guys.
Nvidia is really a Chinese company, just a Taiwanese company. Jensen Hu proved that yesterday when he went to Beijing and told the Chinese—because he's pissed off about the duties--he told the Chinese, “You’re our blood, our family, we're part of China,” which I hope people come back and smack him on…
I ran a media company. I'm the, I used to be a major media executive in Asia. Not anymore. The Chinese took care of that. But I look at the Wall Street Journal and first of all, they're going down as subscriptions and we're about to see their next quarter results. I was an investor in News Corps still playing every once in a while for full disclosure.
The Wall Street Journal is going down and what's happening is alternative media is coming up. And I think they don't know how to deal with it. And for example, they just don't have any idea how Trump communicates around them, how he works around them.
Check out the full episode below on YouTube or your favorite podcast catalog. Subscribe for free so you don’t miss an episode.
Parting Shot
In case you hadn’t noticed, the United States is getting a divorce from the deviant freeloaders of Europe who are now free to be weirdoes provoking Russia on their own time and their own dime. It’s a Pacific century and that must be the focus of America’s foreign commerce, diplomacy, and military effort. Non-feminized, non-woke Brits actually forecast this some time ago, especially via Rudyard Kipling and the superior quest in Asia—”east of Suez.” The poet was ahead of his time:
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst…
I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and -
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay...
Transcripts and poems are edited and stylized.
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