☕️ THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE ☙ Saturday, January 25, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

We just witnessed one of the most significant weeks in history. Nothing else is remotely comparable to the last 100 hours of the Trump Administration. Don't miss what's happening right in front of us.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! It’s our first post-Biden, Trump-era weekend Edition. I was two hours into a normal roundup when I scrapped the whole thing and started over. We need to step back and appreciate the big picture before it races by. It is far bigger than the Art of the Deal this time. This time, it has become the Art of the Possible. And it seems like anything is possible.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

Over the last twelve months, I’ve worn out my thesaurus looking up synonyms for the word “historic.” I’ve repeatedly written about news that was set records, broke records, shattered records, were unique, momentous, never-before-seen, or once-in-a-lifetime, and on and on. It taxes a writer; one tries to avoid being repetitive, as it tends to bore readers and cause them to wander. But this week was truly incomparable. Trump’s own White House web page issued a press release yesterday titled, “The First 100 Hours: Historic Action to Kick off America's Golden Age.” But even Trump’s extroverted press release was totally inadequate to describe the momentous last five days.

Unmentioned on the White House website, for example, were gigantic developments like Trump’s decision yesterday to cancel Dr. Fauci’s taxpayer-funded limousine service and private security army. I’m not making that up, by the way:

CLIP: Fauci lives large (0:17).

I couldn’t find another example of any privileged former federal official who lives like a billionaire on the tax dole. (If there are any, their perqs should also be canceled). It is no surprise to discover the depths of Fauci’s permissive narcissism and megalomania.

But what was surprising was how effortlessly Trump ordered what, for anyone else, would have been politically suicidal.

"You can't have a security detail for the rest of your life because you work for government," Trump told reporters, who were frantic with worry for the former bioweapons engineer. The President casually added, "They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security, too."

As we are all painfully aware, for some reason I will never understand, Fauci became a liberal celebrity. Progressives literally buy each other cute Fauci memorabilia and —this is a verifiable fact— erect Fauci shrines in their homes. They eagerly overnight their hand-drawn Fauci artwork to the human cockroach himself, desperately hoping he’ll add it to his ever-expanding collection. They buy themselves multiple copies of his moronic, self-aggrandizing book and write rhapsodical reviews.

Not since Reagan fired the illegally striking air traffic controllers en masse can I recall such a politically risky and bold move and cutting off Fauci’s security (as well as his clearance, by the way). Trump didn’t just touch the Fauci third rail, he stood on top of it and whacked it with a sledgehammer. But for some incredible reason, there won’t be any Congressional investigations or impeachments over the cancellation of celebrity darling Fauci’s fabulous post-government-service life of luxury.

All signs say Trump’s going to get away with it. And somehow, he knows it.

🔥 But unlike Reagan’s dramatic mass layoffs, which critics falsely claimed would collapse our commercial air industry, Trump’s bold foray into political no-man’s-land wasn’t just the one fearless Fauci maneuver. Yesterday, Trump actually told reporters he was considering canceling the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Instead of federal financial assistance flowing through FEMA, the funds should flow directly to the states, Trump said, while visiting devastated areas of North Carolina. Which was right before he flew to California to tour devastated areas of Los Angeles County. All in the same day.

“I’d like to see the states take care of disasters,” he confidently told reporters in North Carolina. “Let the states take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen.” In a bad sign for the DEI-addled agency, Trump added, “I’ll be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.” The President explained simply, “I think, frankly, FEMA is not good.”

Proposing ending FEMA could have easily ended Trump’s political career. You can easily imagine Democrats calling for Trump’s resignation over the proposal. Yet somehow, casually suggesting unplugging the agency that helps people in disasters has become politically possible for President Trump.

It’s not blowing back at all. Behold CNN’s limp reaction, in its headline from this morning:

Everyone agrees! In other words, Trump has even partly convinced CNN.

🔥 After an overlong day, with travel from DC to North Carolina to Las Vegas, Trump somehow still summoned a flex of astonishing political jiu jitsu. The President sparred with California officials in a live press conference —surely Trump’s idea— but only after meeting with locals, who begged the President for help. In the dramatic press conference, the President called each official out for their failures, from missing water, to unavailable insurance, to empty hydrants.

The whole time, Trump’s repeatedly emphasized what he wanted for the residents. The officials seemed stubbornely impotent, worse than useless. Trump made the officials look like the villains. And he —the same President who worked the drive-thru and rode in a garbage truck for us— was obviously the only official LA County residents cared to hear from.

CLIP 1: Trump argues with LA Mayor on behalf on the people of California on live TV (1:56).

CLIP 2: Trump castigates California insurance commissioner for driving all the insurance companies out of the state (1:16).

Trump’s (I’m sure it was him) insistence on a live press conference was genius. It showed Californians in real time how incompetent their leaders are. They were trapped. They didn’t want to do live TV. But, had they skipped, Trump would surely have made a big deal of it saying, “We invited them, but I guess they didn’t think it was important enough to show up.”

The result? Behold yesterday’s LA Times headline, which says it all. Look at who this Pacific Palisades resident hopes will help:

Trump. He hopes President Trump can help. Lest you conclude this gentleman was only an outlier, independent media yesterday reported highway overpasses decorated with American and Trump flags in LA County:

Grateful locals even erected a Hollywood-style sign for the President:

In other words, California residents have lost hope in stuttering Mayor Karen Bass and California’s oleaginous Governor Newsom. They see what he’s doing for the rest of the country. They saw how he sympathized with the victims in North Carolina. They trust him more. They want Trump.

Since Californians are viewing President Trump as their last, best hope, the President can afford to say something as bold and politically verboten as this:

Regardless of whether Trump follows through with conditioning federal aid this time, he has thrown down the gauntlet. California is on notice. A fight over Voter ID is coming. It’s on Fedex and out for delivery.

🚀 You might be saying, sure, Jeff, but nobody cares anymore about one retired doctor and Californians really need federal aid, so of course they’re playing ball.

Okay, here’s another political sacred cow slaughtered yesterday to make Trumpburgers. Defying all political calculus, President Trump issued an “immediate, widespread pause on foreign aid.” Meaning, or especially, Ukraine. Only Israel and Egypt were exempt.

Without even explaining himself.

How could we forget how urgently the progressives and even many hawkish Republicans felt about “supporting Ukraine.” Slava Ukraini! We stand with Ukraine! Welp, yesterday President Trump cut Ukraine’s money and weapons spigot off at the tap, and you probably never even heard about it.

Had any other President cut off aid to Ukraine like this, without first lobbying for support, all amidst contentious hearings over his Cabinet nominations, a war would have broken out in Congress. Had Trump miscalculated, the Senate could have locked down his Cabinet nominees tighter than the velcro on Zelensky’s wallet, until Trump agreed to free up Ukraine’s aid.

Consider the same dynamic, but more broadly. Trump is making all of these controversial moves right when he needs Congress the most. Not just on Ukraine aid, but all of it, Fauci, California, DEI, the works.

In other words, these last 100 hours would have been far too risky, if not politically impossible, for any president besides President Trump. Any other president would have prudently taken the minimum possible political risk before — at least until his nominees were confirmed.

But Trump is a rare type of muscular President, in total command of his team.

Clearly, Republicans in Congress are willing to follow where Trump is leading them despite the shared political risk—which is the best evidence of real leadership.

🔥 And so it continued. Late last night, Trump unleashed pink-slip-Hades on 17 federal Inspectors General. The Washington Post reported the story headlined, “Trump ousts at least 12 independent inspectors general in late-night purge.” He fired 17 IGs assigned to 12 different agencies. WaPo thinks Trump broke the law and insulted Congress. The sub-headline said, “The dismissals appeared to violate federal law, which requires Congress to receive 30 days’ notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general.”

In general, IGs are confirmed by the Senate, assigned to various agencies, and are tasked with identifying fraud, waste, and abuse, and with recommending how to make the government more efficient. There are 74 IGs in total. According to the WaPo, IGs are “nonpartisan, just like all federal employees.”

Like dozens of NSC staffers the day before, the 17 now-former IGs were fired last night, by email, effective immediately. Don’t bother coming back to the office.

Many conservatives feel the IGs have been mostly useless, since they did nothing effective to prevent or even disclose the worst excesses of the Biden Administration. Now, I’m only guessing, but it seems to me that the IGs could play a very useful role in any DOGE project designed to increase government efficiency, which is the IGs’ mission anyway. Just speculating.

If Trump did break the 30-day prior notice requirement, it’s not clear what anyone can do about it, or what effect it might have, apart from annoying Congress. But again, this was the act of a totally confident President unconcerned about how Congress might react, because he is fully in command of his party.

Don’t take all this for granted. Trump did not enjoy this kind of loyalty and discipline among Congressional Republicans during his first term. And there are still some Never-Trumpers around.

No, this is a completely different, better, and stronger Trump.

🔥 The deep-state blob did everything it could to stop this next development. Even former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell disgracefully joined Democrats in voting “no.” But yesterday, after a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance, the Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth as the new Secretary of Defense, replacing buffoonish cartoon villain Lloyd Austin.

Hegseth’s confirmation is significant because he is now the first super-controversial Trump nominee to be confirmed anyway. So, if Trump can confirm Hegseth, the other nominees should be in good shape. We might be past the most difficult part.

During his confirmation hearing, Hegseth told lawmakers he intends to restore a “warrior culture” to the Pentagon. I would argue that what we’ve seen over the last 100 hours is a brand-new, whole-of-government warrior culture. Bring it.

🔥🔥🔥

At the risk of over-generalizing, there are three main categories, or types, of Presidents. The first two are the most common: the politician and the manager. Bill Clinton, the “triangulator,” was the quintessential example of the Politician type, who calibrates his policies in real-time to match the nation’s mood. The Politician’s goal is to play a good game. The Manager type dutifully sustains his party’s platform, making incremental improvements and tweaks wherever possible, playing on defense.

Very rarely, so rarely it has only happened a handful of times, America has been blessed with a Leader type. A Leader arrives in the office with an Agenda, an unstoppable offense, and he recruits the country to his cause like calling the team off the bench. The Leader doesn’t care so much about the nation’s mood — he’ll rouse the nation into a better mood if he need to. He has a Plan, a mission, a conviction of winning. To him, it seems easy.

Lincoln was one of these. For better or worse, Lincoln arrived at the office with a revolutionary agenda to preserve the nation at any cost—and, leading his famous “Team of Rivals,” Lincoln accomplished that agenda in one four-year-term. Reagan came to the White House intent on crushing global communism, and he did. (And then the neocons totally squandered our opportunity to remake the post-communist world. But I digress.)

🔥 In his first 100 hours, Trump has accomplished more than any other President in history has accomplished during their first 100 days. It’s not even close. Even Trump’s own website couldn’t list everything; it’s not clear that anybody knows how much, exactly, has happened since Trump was sworn in on Monday.

Maybe only President Trump and Melania know.

Forget about how this unparalleled velocity of change is record-breaking and historic. It’s not obvious we’ve ever seen anything comparable to this. Oranges and turbocharged disco balls; which are spinning at lightspeed, making progessives’ heads spin like manic tops.

It wasn’t accidental or providential. It was carefully planned. On January 12th —over a week before Trump’s Inauguration— Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy.) told Face the Nation’s anchors that “When President Trump takes office next Monday, there is going to be shock and awe.”

Barrasso —the Republican whip in the Senate— had clearly been briefed in.

Consider how, although there was clearly plenty of prior coordination between Trump’s team and Congress, there were no leaks. When’s the last time anyone can recall that kind of political discipline?

This week was more than historic. It’s not just setting a new record; I find it unlikely we’ll ever again see these perfect conditions for creating the man and the moment. It is unique. It is something that has never happened before, and probably it will never happen again.

So pay attention.

🔥 I’ll end today’s overlong Weekend Edition with a strong recommendation that you watch this YouTube video titled, “Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s unstoppable rise to power.” In the hour-long episode, conservative historian and public intellectual Victor Davis Hanson discussed his perception of Trump in a historical context. It was taped on January 21st, without the benefit of seeing the week play out, which makes it even more significant. VDH called it.

YOUTUBE: Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s unstoppable rise to power (1:10:06).

Remember, this was taped shortly after the Inauguration, before most of the week’s developments. Hanson started his remarks saying, “we're going to be in for a roller coaster ride in a way we've never seen before.” And how.

Hanson’s discussion was packed with historically minded ways of interpreting what we’re seeing, in fascinating ways you probably never considered before. Given how remarkably prescient his comments were, Hanson was prophetic, accurately predicting what nobody else recognized as to how the first 100 hours would play out.

It will reassure you and make you even more excited about what’s coming next.

“Trump,” Hanson explained, “doesn't play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. His view of the world is: these are pretty nasty people, and under the guise of sober and judicious language, they impeached me twice, they tried to get me off the ballot, they waged lawfare in five different jurisdictions against me. They're not nice people, and I'm not going to play by their rules.”

Hanson immediately recognized from Trump’s Inaugural Address that things were very different:

Trump's inaugural address was a powerful speech, and he began it very optimistically talking about a new golden age for America. How do you assess his speech compared with previous presidents? Obviously, the famous ones from John F Kennedy, FDR, and so on — those were aspirational speeches. They were, you know, ‘pass the torch to a new generation,’ ‘ask not what your country can do for you,’ all of this ‘morning in America stuff,’ but Trump’s was operational.

It was a blueprint of attack. He went through all of the things, from DEI to energy, to the border, to crime, and he promised ‘we're going to end illegal immigration,’ ‘we're going to end this misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment on anchor babies,’ ‘we're going to end Catch and Release.’

It was very detailed. It was a plan of attack like we haven't heard before, and you could see it on the faces of our former presidents. It wasn't just that he bitterly attacked Joe Biden —and by association blamed the Clinton/Obama record— but when they heard what he was detailing and promising, the faces of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, even George W Bush, it was ‘oh my God, this man is a revolutionary! He's going to cancel everything that we did!”

Through his historical lens, Hanson sees the world in a much broader context, much differently than most commenters, especially the hot takes. For instance, Hanson recognized critical historical context in Trump’s cozying up to the Tech Titans, and it should greatly reassure you. Consider this:

In theory, the Tech Lords are contradictory to the MAGA people, except he's not really getting Jamie Diamond and the bankers and the financiers up to Mar-a-Lago. He's getting people who make Rockets, who make Tesla, who opened up X, who have social media, who —Bezos— have newspapers, they have Rockets, they’ve revolutionized the way we buy things —Amazon.

And so, what that appeal is to the MAGA people is that these are can-do people, and they can lend their expertise to make the country rich rather than just themselves.

These Tech Lords are not really so much political as they only have one overriding political interest. They don't really care about high taxes taxes on the middle, because they can pay anything, and they have lawyers. So the higher the taxes the more they evade it or the more money they make. They don't care about censorship, unless it intrudes into their own business.

But one thing they cannot tolerate is regulation. And when they saw what Biden was doing, forcing them to do certain things, to enter the political realm, or telling them that these new technologies of biotechnology and space and AI and cybersecurity and cryptocurrency were all going to be controlled, they thought ‘I don't mind anything else but I want to be able to make money and to do stuff unregulated.’

And that's good for the country. And it's good for the Tech Lords, and so that's why they turned on Biden. The argument they made to Trump was, ‘you don't like me, we don't like you, but you believe in entrepreneurism, and you're going to free us, and if you do that the United States will be preeminent in oil production, in space, and AI and biogenetics, you name it. We will do that for you.’

And so with Trump, it is very similar to FDR when the war started.

Hanson then compared Trump’s tech initiative to America’s entrepreneurial explosion after the Great Depression. I promise, especially if you feel anxious about Trump and the Tech Titans, you’ll want to hear this. Watch or listen to the whole thing.

Trump is so far beyond what anybody has yet recognized (except maybe VDH). Nobody gets it yet. Nobody can get it, since nothing like this has ever happened before. It’s the shock and awe of a confident leader occupying a newly discovered landscape of wide-open political permission. Anything is possible.

Have a wonderful weekend! I’ll meet you back here on Monday morning to kick the exciting second week off the right, C&C way.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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