Trump’s First 100 Days Should Be Shock and Awe

Landslide in New Hampshire over woman Mitt can shift race to defeating the Democrats, previewing an administration that is a sprint, not a marathon

Former President Donald Trump won a landslide in the New Hampshire Republican primary this evening. He trounced Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who represented the old globalist GOP establishment.

Haley has vowed to fight on despite resounding rejection. However, to lose the nomination at this point, Trump would have to do what the late Edwin Edwards, longtime governor of Louisiana, once said of his prospects: “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.”

Edwin Edwards. The greatest Louisianan in history.

Trump’s victory came despite Haley’s enticement of left-leaning Massachusetts transplants in New Hampshire, who could vote in Republican contests if they registered as independents. That made the victory in the Democrat-leading state even more savory. It is highly likely that the presidential election this fall will be a choice between Trump and either the unpopular President Joe Biden or a late-game substitute.

Currently Trump leads polls in most swing states and would win both the electoral college and popular votes. However, much can happen between now and when election month, as it unfortunately has become, kicks off in October. The Left, which includes the media, Wall Street and Big Tech—hardly distinct groups—will stop at nothing to prevent a second Trump term.

Prepare for more race riots, pandemic absurdities like unverified mail-in votes, accusations of foreign intervention, and lawfare of the sort witnessed in 2020.

Progressives engage in mostly peaceful riots in 2020 and attack a racist pane of glass to advance equity.

But should Trump prevail despite all of these hurdles, then what? He will have the knowledge he gained in his first term and be limited to a single additional term. Both can be enormous benefits. Instead of months-long learning-the-ropes exercise or the unperceived excuse of a new president that he may have eight years to implement an agenda, Trump can begin immediately with shock and awe. He has previewed some of his agenda in his victory speeches. They should include:

1. Bring back the Three Fat Years. The years of economic growth that resulted from Trump unleashing the U.S. economy before China inflicted the COVID pandemic were the most dynamic since 1980s. Immediate moves to liberalize energy, deregulate other industries, simplify taxes and get the government out of picking winners and losers with its climate change catch-all excuse will free real private sector economic growth.

2. Build the wall and deport. Trump has discussed undertaking the biggest deportation effort since the Eisenhower administration and he should start it immediately. No congressional appropriation should get past Trump’s desk without funding a wall from sea to shining sea.

3. Intense border control. Deportation will have the effect of discouraging illegal immigration. However, Trump should also approach Mexico and explain that the caravans of illegals must stop and it must put the trafficking cartels out of business or else the USA will boot Mexico from the USMCA trade agreement or even seal the border to commerce.

4. Raise tariffs. Tariffs work: the first substantive law passed by the first Congress and signed by George Washington was a tariff act. There is talk of a 10 percent general tariff but this should be higher for all—and much higher for China or imports made with Chinese parts. Any inflationary pressure or tax burden that result from the tariffs could be offset by eliminating the federal gas tax or cutting the payroll tax.

5. Attack woke organizations. Wokeness and transgender activism are repugnant to normal Americans. Minor breakthroughs like the firing of Harvard’s president and the spontaneous Bud Light boycott have convinced some that the movement is expended. In fact, it will take the power of government to restore equal opportunity, sanity, and parental rights. Trump should cut funding to colleges and other schools that don’t treat all students equally and recognize parents’ rights. His Justice Department should sue companies that discriminate on the basis of skin color and abuse employees who don’t accept the woke agenda. In diplomacy, Trump should end Biden-era preaching of wokeness to other people and instead spotlight dissidents imprisoned in places like China as a way of demonstrating the superiority of real American values.

6. Send a balanced budget to Congress. The Left will howl that any reduction in government spending, no matter how small, is akin to starving children and throwing granny off a cliff. So why not rip off the band aid and make all of the cuts in one act? This fiscal year, Biden and Congress will spend $1.8 trillion more than the $5 trillion that the federal government takes in. Federal spending will have to decrease more than 30 percent to match the $5.4 trillion the government expects as revenue in Fiscal Year 2025. The budget proposal for that year is the one Trump will send to Congress in his third or fourth month back in office. Such a cut will create a one-time shock to GDP, whose calculation includes government spending. But it is better to take a 5-6 percent hit to GDP in year 1 and begin a strong recovery rather than have cuts dribble in over four years and result in persistent economic malaise—or face a fiscal crisis if cuts aren’t made.

7. Prosecute the real opponents of democracy. Those who have prosecuted Trump and tried to remove him from the ballot are violating the civil rights of voters and engaging in prosecutorial abuse. Trump can and should fire any federal officials involved in past abuses and prosecute those who committed crimes. Interrupting a court session to arrest the Colorado justices who tried to boot him off the ballot will be a useful signal to the legal class.  

8. Withdraw from NATO. To avoid cutting Social Security and Medicare, cuts to government will have to fall more heavily on other parts of the government, including the military. Let wealthy European moochers who have neglected their militaries as they screw us on trade with unfair barriers defend Europe. The United States should focus on deterring China and Iran and stopping threats in our own hemisphere. Congress passed a law saying a president can’t withdraw from NATO without its permission but this infringes a president’s constitutional authority as Commander in Chief—a point Trump should make clear while shifting forces to the Indo-Pacific and cancelling expensive and obsolete defense items like new manned bombers and $13 billion aircraft carriers in favor of cheaper next-generation technology and manpower.

Beyond the shock and awe this will deliver to our floundering political system, an economy dependent on unsustainable deficit spending, and the oddity of paying for Europe while China threatens us, it will restore the power and authority of the presidency. Controlling the border will be a bigger win for the USA than when Trump beat ISIS early in his presidency. Most important, by pulling America out of the nosedive of unprotected borders, unsustainable spending, economic malaise, and possessing a military that can’t win wars—traditional harbingers of the end of empires—Trump will restore faith in the future of America, at home and abroad.