Strom sees the Trumpian light. Kinda, sorta, a little bit. What the hey: baby steps, man, baby steps.

I Was Wrong About Trump
No, I am not in love with Trump. He still makes me cringe sometimes, and I still don’t understand the Canada/51st state thing at all, and want nothing to do with Gaza if he is serious about that.

He should make ALL of us cringe sometimes, and anybody who agrees with Trump’s every policy, position, and statement every single time needs to see a shrink and have his head checked. Can’t remember who first coined the phrase (Milton Friedman, maybe? Eh, dunno), but it’s right as rain: if you find yourself agreeing with anyone in the political arena 99 percent of the time, then one at least of you is almost certainly insane…and it’s probably you. True then, true now, true forever.

But there are two vital things about him which I got completely, totally, and without question wrong.

Walter Kirn slapped me in the face (not literally) with a single tweet…

Boom. At least it was a “boom” for me, because I was one of those people who was absolutely certain that Trump was too immature, too narcissistic, and too lacking in self-awareness to put his ego in check and hire the best people and support them. More than that, Trump has withstood weeks of attacks on his “ceding power” to “President Musk.”

And he has shrugged it all off and pushed his collaborators to the front, empowered them, and backed them every step along the way despite the Democrats and the Pravda Media baiting him hourly on how weak he appears.

As the Democrats and the Pravda Media scream about “President Musk,” Donald Trump invites him to give a press conference in the Oval Office with Little X running around. Trump seems so comfortable in his own skin that the richest man in the world waxing about his role in the government isn’t threatening at all; he invited it, and handed the mic over to him.

Same with Kennedy. Same with Gabbard.

I was also wrong about another issue that is perhaps even more important: his competence to take on the Deep State and win.

During his first term, I came to the conclusion that Trump didn’t understand government well enough and that by the end of his term, he hadn’t destroyed the Deep State, but rather they destroyed him. I stand by my assessment of the success of the Deep State. It hobbled him in his first term, which ended with the annus horribilis of 2020. The Deep State ran the United States in 2020, leading to Trump’s narrow defeat in the 2020 election.

As Trump himself has said several times of late, he squandered most of his first term listening to bad advice from people he believed to be his friends but were in actuality no such thing. He has learned from those mistakes, and it shows.

Believe it or not, even some normal people are scared enough about change and still trust the Democrats enough to buy the “woe is me” propaganda, but enough people are waking up that the Democrats are in a losing battle. Trump won’t win every fight, but he is wracking up a lot of wins.

I supported Ron DeSantis in the primaries because I thought Trump would have the will to fight, but not a winning strategy.

I was wrong. Trump might still be stopped, but it won’t be due to his inherent weaknesses. He is performing masterfully.

He is at that, and deserves full credit for it.

Update! Even shitlib ABC journalismist Jon Karl is forced to own up to the painful truth:

YEEEEOWTCH! You know saying that had to hurt him like a hydrochloric acid-dipped shiv to the heart.