Don’t Believe the Anti-Hype

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

You have undoubtedly heard the propaganda—apparently, Donald Trump’s in trouble in the polls. Apparently, Trump’s supporters are wracked by regret at having voted for him instead of for the half-wit who replaced the quarter-wit on the Democrat ticket. Apparently, Trump, who is doing absolutely nothing that he didn’t promise to do, has completely undermined his own popularity by doing what he promised to do.

If you believe that, after all that has happened since Donald Trump rode down that escalator almost a decade ago, your fellow American First patriots need to stage an intervention over your addiction to black pills.

It’s all a nonsense narrative. You know the Democrats have an agenda. You know the regime media has an agenda. And you know sissy Republican Fredocons, well, they have one hell of an agenda. The Democrats want power. The regime media wants the Democrats to have power. And the Fredocons want the Democrats to use their power to dominate them because the submission is part of the kink. But this column is not about Senator Jimmy Lankford.

This column is about the opposite – it’s about staying strong in the face of overwhelming pinko propaganda, about never losing hope, and about never deserting our team. Remember that everything our opponents say, everything you are told, and everything they try to make into the narrative is a lie and a scam. 

Take the polls, please. According to the same people who have lied to you about literally everything for the last decade, the polls say that Trump’s approval rating is somewhere between 42% and 45%. He won just a fraction under 50% in the national popular vote, which isn’t a thing, but stay with me. So, they’re saying that between 10% and 15% of the people who voted for Donald Trump six months ago are so outraged that Donald Trump did exactly what Donald Trump said he was going to do they regret their vote?

Think about that. Nothing Trump has done is a surprise, and that includes the tariff stuff. Now, there’s reasonable debate about the tariff stuff, but I doubt the purely notional change to our 401(k) levels over the last four weeks has made a significant number of Trump voters throw up their hands and decide to support the party that wants to keep illegal alien gang-banging wife beaters in America, that believes that genital amputation is the proper treatment for young boys who glance in the direction of a Barbie doll, and that never met a war it didn’t expect you and your kids to go fight. 

Statistically, there are some people like that. There are also, statistically, people who think Elvis lives in their garbage disposal and whispers advice to them while they do the dishes. But I don’t think there’s a significant number of them. It’s certainly not between one in ten and one in seven Trump voters. If it was, we’d have probably met one of them by now.

Of course, this assumes that the polls are not total garbage. And why on earth would anyone ever assume that the polls are not total garbage? I got a poll message just the other day: Would I spend a few moments of my precious life span answering their questions? Oh, I got right on it, right after I finished paying off that toll road violation the bot with broken English texted me about and handing over my credit card information to that nice man with an Indian accent who wanted to help me with that Social Security problem he called about even though I don’t get Social Security because I’m not that old.

No, the polls are always wrong. Always. That’s not in question. What’s in question is whether that’s the result of the incompetence common to all our institutions in the last few decades or the result of the leftist orientation of all our institutions in the last few decades. Either way, the polls suck, and they always seem to suck in the same direction, which is to the left. 

Then there’s the personal experience test. I don’t know anybody who’s abandoned Trump, and I’m a very popular guy with lots of friends. Not a single one. I have not even heard secondhand about anybody jumping ship. Nor do I believe the randos on Twitter who keep tweeting out about how they met somebody who was a Trump voter and who admitted to them that they now deeply regret having voted for Donald Trump. The only thing missing is the entire coffeehouse standing up and applauding the confession. We get these in the regime media too every, where they’ll find somebody – usually a government worker - who is stunned to find out that Donald Trump is cutting the number of government workers like he promised and who now has second thoughts about supporting him because he’s doing what he said he was going to do. If you want to waste time looking up their voter registration, donation history, and social media feeds, I’m pretty sure you’ll find that these are not hard-core MAGA types. Just like every regime media star illegal alien they start playing the violin over when they get deported, I suspect that if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find there’s a whole backstory, like that they worked for Joe Biden preparing his gruel.

If someone regrets voting for Donald Trump, you have to ask yourself why. Did they expect this fundamental transformation of our society to be easy or quick or painless? I do see some people who are still on the President’s side nevertheless complaining that we’re not going fast enough or that we’re meeting resistance. Stop it! No one‘s ever gone faster than this. It’s not even clear that anyone can go faster than this. Remember, the enemy gets a vote, figuratively and literally. This isn’t blitzkrieg; it’s trench warfare in the Somme. We’re going to take casualties before we come out on top. 

What can you do? You can keep supporting the President. You can keep the faith. We’ve had a lot of good days in the last hundred days. We’ve also had some bad ones. And you know what? In the future, we’re going to have good days, and we’re going to have bad ones. What’s important is that we don’t falter. What’s important is that we don’t stop. And what’s important is that when they tell us Trump is losing support, we remember that we’re opposing the party of communism, criminals, and kiddie castration and that we will never stop until we defeat these mutants and make America great again.

Now, take two red pills and call me in the morning.

X22, And we Know, and more- April 30

 

The Battle of the Russo-Ukraine War Narratives

posted by James Soriano at American Thinker 

All wars are like car accidents, and all car accidents have causes. The trouble arises when conflicting testimonies produce different explanations of the cause. We see this in the Russo-Ukraine War.

The conventional view of how the war started and who is responsible is the one put forward by the U.S. and its NATO allies at the war’s outset. It is still dominant today, but it is being challenged by alternative views, one of them coming from the American president.  The Battle of the Narratives has been joined.

The conventional narrative holds that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine constitutes a grave act of injustice, amounting to a clear case of “unprovoked” aggression. War guilt rests solely on the shoulders of one person: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin’s past words and deeds show that he had long planned for war and sees himself as a modern-day Peter the Great, reclaiming territories he views as historically Russian.

Russia, goes this version, has unlawfully denied Ukraine its U.N. Charter rights to live in peace. Its behavior is an affront to the norms of world order, and justice requires armed opposition to thwart its designs.

In critical theory, there is something called a “dominant discourse,” which is a way of speaking about a topic that reflects the outlook of those who have the most power. The conventional view of the Ukraine war is like that. It gives people a way of thinking and feeling about the war and Russia. It justifies military assistance to Ukraine, it keeps NATO together, and it allows like-minded opinion writers to signal their solidarity with each other.

Although it is not a closed system, it filters new ideas, allowing some to pass while blocking others. An unvetted idea could send the discourse in a different direction.

Donald Trump is offering those unvetted ideas. With his election, the titular leader of the Western alliance has become a critic of the alliance he leads.

Trump is challenging the dominant narrative. His deputies no longer speak of Russia in the condemnatory talking points of the Biden administration, nor do they refer to Ukraine as a besieged ally.

A few months ago, this would have been considered heresy. Today, it is American policy, but it is a peculiar policy in the sense that the most powerful player on the field also professes a minority view. Trump’s idea of seeking rapprochement with Russia is unpopular among foreign policy experts on both sides of the Atlantic. It is outside the dominant discourse.

The conventional narrative is basically a blame-based analysis. It is like a prosecutor’s brief, a charge sheet drawn up against only one party, the accused, while the actions of the other parties are squeezed out of the picture. It is a forensic approach, akin to going through a basket of apples looking for the bad ones. The narrative builders look for evidence in the actions and statements of Russian leaders and plot these on a line leading irresistibly to the conclusion that Russia has harbored aggressive intent all along.

But our search for an explanation cannot be merely a one-state inquest. It must consider all actions from all the players. Of course, Putin ordered his commanders to attack, but he did not do so in a fit of isolated resentment, but rather from a highly dynamic context in which Russia was both proactive and reactive to the challenges posed to it by its enemies. And our search should not only look at the situation at the time of Russia’s invasion. It must also account for factors that are more remote in time that shaped the decisions.

Will future historians write their accounts of the Ukraine war from within the tenets of the orthodoxy? Some will do that, but the question is, will those accounts stand the test of time? To get an answer, let us look for a clue in the different ways we have come to understand the origins of the two world wars of the twentieth century. That story goes like this:

In 1919, the victorious powers gathered in Paris to dictate the terms of the peace. The Versailles Treaty contained an article that fixed war guilt on one party only—Germany and its allies. That article would later become the woe of Europe.

No sooner was the ink dry than a reappraisal of the Great War’s origin took place. Historians began to sift and re-sift the data, trying to come up with a satisfactory explanation. They questioned the verdict of war guilt. Today, library shelves are filled with such volumes. Some of them look at the various crises that buffeted Europe in the decade before 1914. Others looked for more remote causes going back into the nineteenth century.

The debate has gone on for a century, and it appears that historians are still not done with it. Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers (2012) is perhaps the latest contribution to that conversation. Today, it would be rare to find the expert who would place war guilt solely on the shoulders of one party.

Nothing like this happened after the Second World War.

The consensus view in 1945 of the war’s origin is basically the same view today: the war was the emanation of the mind of an evil man taking advantage of Germany’s post-WWI economic disarray and societal breakdown, and he died in a double suicide in Berlin in April 1945. Germany was the aggressor. Unlike the aftermath of the First World War, there has been no serious reappraisal of that finding, no serious decades-long debate.

Today’s narrative builders want us to understand the origin of the Ukraine war like we understand that of the Second World War: Both conflicts have a simple and final explanation. The narrative tells us that if one is looking for the causes of war in Ukraine, one need not look much beyond the Kremlin walls. The demonization of Vladimir Putin is an important part of this. The narrative builders make Putin into a Hitlerian figure who must not be appeased. They urge us to apply the hard lessons of the 1930s to Ukraine in real time.

By contrast, the Ukraine war critics are in the tradition of the First World War re-appraisers. They cull through the war’s long run-up, going back into the twentieth century, looking for where mistakes were made and why. They question whether Russia’s attack was really “unprovoked” and whether the right party is being charged with aggression. While the conventional narrative fixes its analytical gaze on Russia, the critics turn it inward. They raise questions about what our side did and how it fits into the picture.

With the passage of time, more re-evaluations of the Ukraine war will be brought out. It’s probable that, as with the histories of the First World War, eventually a more nuanced view of the war’s origin and where responsibility lies will displace the dominant discourse.

Dissolve the District Courts

posted by Matt Vespa at Townhall 

President Donald Trump dealt with and beat back the Deep State. He’s also beaten down the corrupt media. But now, he’s dealing with a new animal: rogue judges. 

Another layer of liberal hypocrisy is bubbling to the surface, and it is funny to watch. The left is trying to make the argument that judges who break the law shouldn’t be arrested. This is how Trump Derangement Syndrome can affect one’s brain cells, but thankfully, there is a remedy: We dissolve the district courts. 

The U.S. House of Representatives has the power to do it, or better yet, impeach these judges who have issued unlawful rulings that have exceeded their authority. These radical judges were never meant to weigh in on national policy, let alone issue injunctions on matters clearly outlined for the executive to handle. Liberals are doubling down on this since it’s the only branch that’s able to push back against the Trump administration.   

Trump had lawyers ready to appeal these decisions, so in some way, he was prepared for lawfare. He’s survived it before, but now we’re at a point where judges are trying to help illegal aliens escape capture. 

Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin attempted to do that and got busted by the FBI. In New Mexico, Judge Jose Luis Cano was arrested, along with his wife, after an ICE raid found a Tren de Aragua member living in his home. 

Democrats blew a stack. The left said this was another sign of authoritarianism, which is laughable. How so? It’s now Nazi-esque to be cuffed after breaking the law? It may sound crazy, but then again, this is the party that defended an MS-13 gangbanger who beat his wife. 

It’s time for Trump to ignore these little judges. 

Joe Biden can import this illegal alien scum into our country, but Trump can’t issue executive orders to deport them? I don’t think so.

The House already has something aimed at curbing national injunction authority. We might need to go further than that. 

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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Christianity Is The Real Target Of All The Hysteria Over ‘Christian Nationalism’

Are there any real statistics supporting a menacing movement by Christians seeking to theocratize America with neo-Naziism?

posted by Harold Ristau at The Federalist

The public square has never been theologically or morally neutral. Therefore, the church must and will continue to heed its divine obligation to publicly speak the holy Word of God.

Only a godless culture would dare to claim that the public sphere is somehow neutral. Yet those who boldly lift their voices on behalf of the church and her Lord in the public sphere, are facing intensifying persecution for doing so.

Over the last few years, a frenetic buzz around “Christian nationalism” has spread across America. Is Christian nationalism, according to its most offensive definition, even a real threat in America? Are there any real and credible statistics supporting a menacing movement by extremist Christians seeking to theocratize America with white-supremacist neo-Naziism?

Prior to lockdowns, most of us had never heard of “Christian nationalism.” Rather, it appears that the powerful gaslighting term created by neo-Marxists is another attempt to terrify Christians out of sharing God’s perspective on moral issues in the public sphere. It attempts to dissuade Christians from fulfilling their vocational duties in the civil sphere.

By distorting the language of public discourse, the godless manipulate the parameters of discussion within it. Christians who are unaware of these political tactics cannot effectively contend for the faith.

We witness this in the abortion debate by allowing the dialogue to be framed by rights versus responsibility language. Notwithstanding the existence of any civil or even human rights, mankind has a moral responsibility to care for the innocent. Also, by adopting the language of LGBTQ+, Christians add legitimacy to the absurd concept of more than two sexes, or multiple identities present in one human being.

Quietistic Christians have allowed themselves to be manipulated by leftist media placing a wedge between “church” and “state.” They claim the church’s role in society is limited to prayer and works of mercy, and that the civic role of a Christian is, at most, voting. Many who strongly advocate against Christian activity in the public sphere today are the same ones who failed to respond properly and reasonably to the recent “pandemania.”

They use screeds against “Christian nationalism” to avoid participating in the public sphere and to justify what amounts to antinomianism: the belief that, because Christians are saved by grace alone through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, living a godly life in accord with divine and moral law, and shaped by biblical principles, is at best optional. To think otherwise is smeared as “legalism.”

Orthodox believers of goodwill, however, will find that “Christian nationalism’s” theological and political implications by no means fall afoul of the doctrine and practice of historic Christianity. According to the best definition, “Christian nationalism” is basically synonymous with the term “Christendom,” something just about all Christians, until recently, considered a good thing.

The fearmongers even go so far as to malign “Christian culture” through its association with “Christian nationalism.” Their views are frighteningly aligned with those who advance communistic ideas that judge Western culture’s hallmarks, such as Christian values, as harmful and destructive to society.

As every attentive Christian is well aware, these ideologies have been revealed as anti-Christian, unveiled in critical theory, which seeks to demonize Western civilization and Christendom, and to replace it with absurd alternatives that assault the very pillars upon which the West is founded. Even the new atheists appreciate the invaluable benefits of Christian civilization as the best option to all other alternatives.

Historically, the relationship between church and state in the West was symbiotic: The church prayed, rebuked, and advised civil rulers, who then preserved the ministry of the church from external interference. Jesus Christ was acknowledged to be Lord of both realms, although in distinctive ways.

Even the founding fathers of the United States did not boast a rigid separation of “church and state.” The iconic language was intended to protect the life of the church from overreach from the state, not the other way around.

Even if one would dare to argue that communism and globalism meet the material needs of their constituents, they have consistently proven to stifle and maim God’s beloved creation, the church, and the gospel. Klaus Schwab, former leader of the World Economic Forum and considered one of the five most influential people on the globe, had a clear agenda to penetrate world governments with policies that subverted the interests of Christians. Christians are wise to refrain from understating the influence of such deliberate agendas to silence Christ in the public sphere.

In the recent American election, Christians were free not to vote for Donald Trump, but it was hardly justifiable for any of them to vote for his adversary based on her anti-Christian policy recommendations alone, symbolized by the strategic decision to position a portable abortion clinic in front of the Democrat convention in Chicago.

To reject “Christian culture” as a positive contribution to “secular” public space is to welcome any number of other religious cultures to take its place. When former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first arrived in office, he boasted that Canada has no shared values: “Canada is becoming a new kind of country, not defined by our history or European national origins, but by a pan-cultural heritage,” he said.

“There is no core identity,” as Canada is “the first post-national state,” Trudeau said. He also said, “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because of their basic dictatorship.” There is no indication that his replacement, Mark Carney, thinks any differently.

What fills the dark vacuum remaining when Christian culture is chased away? Look around you and see the bombardment of Western civilization once founded upon God’s Word and Christ’s church. God is the sovereign Lord of all human institutions and history, and faith in God’s providence has never justified a retreat from vocational obligations in the public sphere and the gifts of God of which we are called to be godly stewards.

Furthermore, Christians who criticize and discourage active Christian political participation indirectly embrace a national anti-Christian religion that unabashedly pursues the demise of the Kingdom of God and the gospel on earth. Which is a greater threat to church and society: the rhetorical phantom of Christian nationalism, or the real phenomenon of Christian apathy?

‘Pro-Palestine’ Is a Cover for Anti-American

‘Pro-Palestine’ Is a Cover for Anti-American 

Aviv Nathanael Phipps for TheAmerican Spectator

Rather than championing solutions that improve the lives of Palestinians, these ‘charitable’ organizations seek to incite violence here in the United States

Does a “pro-Palestine” movement that incites violence and calls for the destruction of America, under the guise of championing human rights, deserve national sympathy?

In response to accusations of antisemitism, members of the “liberate Palestine” movement regularly claim that they are criticizing Israel’s actions, along with the United States’ alleged complicity, in the Palestinian territories.

While denouncing the actions of the Israeli government is not always antisemitic, a new report from the Capital Research Center proves that the claim of “just criticizing Israel” is not the goal.

The report, titled “When Charities Betray America: How ‘Pro-Palestinian’ Protest Groups Promote Anti-Americanism” (hereafter referred to as the “CRC report”), surveyed the social media posts of 496 “pro-Palestinian” organizations and activists, many connected to charities. It found a “3,000 percent surge in calls for violence” and a “186 percent increase in the use of anti-American and anti-police phrases” since October 2023.

The so-called “pro-Palestine” movement has finally revealed its true agenda: to deny the United States’ right to exist and to promote violence and domestic unrest in the West. While saying a group “wants to destroy America” often feels alarmist and polarizing, it’s hard to deny these charitable groups are pursuing an anti-American agenda, given the evidence.

The writers of the CRC report note they don’t “concede” that these extremist groups care about innocent Palestinians. Instead, these groups use popular causes and inject anti-Americanism, anti-Israelism, and antisemitism into their activism as they side with the West’s adversaries.

The CRC report unveils how many “pro-Palestine” groups registered as 501(c)(s) charities push messages to stir up civil unrest. Within our Lifetime (WOL) leadership has taken anti-American rhetoric to a new level. WOL founder, Nerdeen Kiswani, posted on X that the United States “would not exist” without “continuously massacre/rape/pillage the global south.” Also, WOL organizer, Fatima Mohammed, said on X that “the United States of America’s foreign policy is the greatest threat to humanity.” Numerous organizations also claimed that Mohammed said on X that she prays for the death of the United States. However, these posts appear to be from an old account that has been deleted.

Another group, Columbia United Apartheid Divest (CUAD), connected to protests at Columbia University, called for the “end of Western civilization,” according to the New York Post. While some have disputedthe existence of this post, a report from OSINT suggests it is likely real.

Even if the post is not real, the CRC report shows that the sentiment to destroy the West is pervasive in the “pro-Palestine” movement. The report hits on anti-American messaging, up a thousand-fold since October 7. Such messages include “AmeriKKKa” (up 3,400 percent), “bring the war home” (up 3,000 percent), and “pigs” in reference to police officers (up 1,088 percent).

Unfortunately, the reach of these activists has gone far. The CRC report notes that “pro-Palestinian” movement’s anti-American posts after October 7 “had over 23 million views on X and TikTok and 4.2 million engagements in the form of comments, likes, and shares on those platforms.”

Another troubling term that has risen is “Turtle Island,” which is a mythical land that some native traditions hold once encompassed North America. These activists are now using it as a dog whistle to suggest the U.S. has no right to exist. The CRC report shared an Instagram post from Jewish Voice for Peace, which called readers on the Fourth of July to consider the parallels between “Turtle Island” and Palestine. These so-called parallels include genocide, land theft, and environmental destruction.

Any hypocrisy on the part of the founders of Western tradition cannot eradicate the transcendental truths that undergird the American tradition, such as the equality of all men and their natural right to life, liberty, and property. Protesters’ attempts to condemn the West based on these principles attack their own moral foundation.

Rather than championing solutions that bring peace to and improve the lives of Palestinians, the CRC report highlights how these charitable organizations use slogans like “Bring the War Home” and “Globalize the Intifada” to incite violence here in the United States.

It would be careless to say that radicals constitute the majority of the often disorganized “pro-Palestine” movement. Breaking down the exact divide between radical and moderate protesters is difficult to impossible. However, as the CRC report shows, the leadership behind the majority of pro-Palestine charities is pushing radicalized messages, and thus, radicals possess an outsized influence.

The moderates, in contrast, can be broken into two categories. A smaller minority of voices recognize their movement’s problems with radicalism and antisemitism, along with a bigger segment of moderates who seem either unaware of or ignore the radicals. These are the people who chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but when asked what “river” and what “sea” are, they offer only blank expressions.

There’s also a stark contrast between the messaging of these groups. The moderates often support a two-state solution or naively suggest the creation of a bilateral state where Israelis and Palestinians will maintain peaceful coexistence, despite spending the better part of a century in bitter opposition to each other.

Contrast this with the radicals who have been seen telling Jews to “go back to Poland” or suggesting that Israel be violently dismantled. It’s one thing to push a bilateral state naively, it’s quite another to march arm in arm with radicals who want to push the same violence upon Jews that they claim Israel uses against Palestinians.

Palestinians who don’t support Hamas and want to peacefully coexist with Israel deserve a better movement than what currently exists. Moderate “pro-Palestine” activists must separate themselves from and sternly denounce the radicals who push anti-Israel, anti-American, and antisemitic sentiment. Until they do so, the “pro-Palestine” movement’s ability to advocate for a better future for Palestinians will remain compromised.

Trump’s First 100 Days of Executive Action Were Busier Than FDR’s: ‘We’re Not Going to Restrain Ourselves’

Trump’s First 100 Days of Executive Action Were Busier Than FDR’s: ‘We’re Not Going to Restrain Ourselves’

Audrey Fahlberg for National Review

President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order imposing tariffs on imported goods during trade announcement at the White House in Washington, D.C., April 2, 2025.(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)none

At the 100-day mark in his second term, President Trump is reveling in his administration’s broad interpretation of executive authority.

After signing 220 executive orders during his first term, Trump has already signed 142 orders just three months into the job this go-round, according to the University of California Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project. That figure far exceeds the 99 executive actions Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law during his first 100 days in 1933, and the running number may soon overtake the 162 orders that former President Joe Biden signed in total during his four years in office.

Many of these executive actions involve immigration, such as his moves to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and nonpermanent residents, crack down on sanctuary cities, grant immigration-enforcement agents more access to schools and churches for deportation raids, designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and deport certain illegal immigrants to El Salvador notwithstanding pushback in the courts.

Despite the unsettled legal fights ahead, the White House sees the administration’s actions involving immigration as Trump’s greatest success thus far, given the crisis that existed at the southern border under his predecessor and Trump’s ability to resolve it without an amnesty bill.

“It was a lie that you needed Congress” to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, a White House official said in an interview. “We need Congress for resources, right? But the laws are all on the books already.”

This official compared the Biden administration’s handling of illegal immigration to the left-leaning prosecutorial discretion of a George Soros–funded district attorney. “They didn’t follow the law.”

Beyond immigration, many of Trump’s orders mirror the executive actions he signed during his first term (which Biden later reversed), such as his deregulatory moves and his decisions to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization and Paris climate agreement.

But others go far beyond the bounds of his first term. Since reentering 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, he has signed executive orders to declare English the official language of the U.S., slash foreign aid, eliminate DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives from the federal government, dismantle the bureaucracy, and rescind federal funding from education programs that allow biological men to compete in women’s sports. He has also used executive power to target law firms and order agency heads to investigate and suspend security clearances for first-term administration officials he views as disloyal.

Perhaps most disruptive have been his executive orders involving trade policy, which have evolved dramatically in the span of just a few weeks, rattling investors and foreign leaders alike.

His first 100 days have been marked by a comparatively light legislative footprint. As of this week, the president has signed five bills into law: the Laken Riley Act, government-funding legislation, and three measures overturning Biden-era regulations under the Congressional Review Act. Much of his administration’s successes will hang on whether Republicans in Congress can pass this year’s reconciliation package before many provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire in December.

The stunning scope of this administration’s approach to presidential power did not emerge out of thin air. This time around, the president’s closest advisers invested much more time and energy into how he would govern by executive fiat. And to avoid the disorganization of Trump White House 1.0, his transition team implemented an intense vetting process to sniff out administration hires who weren’t sufficiently allied with the president’s campaign promises.

This is a drastic change from his first term, “when the White House was so factionalized that different factions would often try to push through executive actions without other factions inside the White House knowing about it,” a Trump world operative said in an interview. In other words, this administration is letting Trump be Trump. “The president decides what he wants to do, and the team goes and does it.”

These days, it’s not uncommon for lawmakers to show flexibility in their philosophical interpretations of executive authority depending on which party is in power.

In recent weeks, Democratic lawmakers have railed against the president’s executive actions to trim the federal workforce, dismantle the Department of Education, and slash foreign aid. And yet the same Democrats who accuse Trump of executive overreach were unbothered by former President Barack Obama’s decision to circumvent the legislative branch with his 2012 implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to protect young illegal immigrants from deportation, or Biden’s decision years later to unilaterally forgive student loans without an act of Congress.

The Trump administration’s broad interpretation of presidential power has indeed alarmed some conservatives who believe that a too-powerful executive undermines the separation of powers. But it’s come as a welcome development to others who have long championed the unitary-executive theory’s approach to executive authority, or who believe that the only way to scale back the left’s excesses is to fight fire with executive fire.

“There’s no doubt that the president and his team have been effective in changing the debate in conservative circles so more and more people are comfortable with expanded executive power,” said Marc Short, who served as director of legislative affairs during Trump’s first term before becoming chief of staff for former Vice President Mike Pence. “Some of that is because one of the things that President Trump is so good at is isolating a common opponent like Harvard” in ways that prompt conservatives to form a kneejerk reaction: “Yeah, let’s take them on.”

Signing executive orders can also be an effective vehicle to stage a press conference and drive a message. Enforcing and expanding border security and cracking down on Ivy League schools are prime examples of areas where a broad interpretation of executive authority will likely be politically popular across much of the Republican Party for the foreseeable future.

But the president’s whipsawing tariff policies carry political risk for Republicans ahead of 2026, given that Trump ran his 2024 campaign on securing the border and bringing down prices.

“As long as the trade agenda is tanking the economy, I feel like that’s the biggest Achilles’ heel,” said Short, who now serves as chair of the Pence-founded group Advancing American Freedom.

And yet the Trump administration plans on barreling full steam ahead, motivated by a sense of urgency ahead of the 2026 midterms and the belief that voters elected him to deliver on his campaign promises as quickly as possible.

From trade actions to dismantling the federal bureaucracy, “we’re going to do what’s in our purview and what we think we can do, and if Congress thinks it’s their purview, well, that’s on Congress,” the White House official said. “But we’re not going to restrain ourselves.”

Even If The Polls Are Accurate, I Don’t Care. I Want My Country Back

If we’re serious about saving America, we need a leader who’s willing to be hated by the pundits, pollsters, and even some short-sighted Americans to do what’s right.

Brianna Lyman reporting for The Federalist

The country has been suffering for decades economically, culturally and politically — and the propaganda press wants you to care about approval ratings. As President Donald Trump marks his first 100 days in office, headlines scream about “record-low” poll numbers. But here’s the thing: polls don’t fix nations — leaders do.

The same media that tried to convince us seven months ago that then-Vice President Kamala Harris had a legitimate chance to take Iowa could very well be running yet another psyop — bad polling — to malign Trump and stain his legacy. But let’s just pretend, for argument’s sake, that the propaganda press’ polling is accurate.

To borrow a line from Vice President JD Vance: “I don’t care, Margaret” — because I want my country back.

Even if what Trump is doing is “unpopular,” it’s necessary. Only a real leader can decipher the difference between what’s easy and what’s essential –and choose the hard path, even when it costs him politically.

A joint ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted by the left-leaning pollster Ipsos says Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 39 percent.

“The previous low in approval for a president at or near 100 days in office, in polls dating to 1945, was Trump’s 42 [percent] in 2017,” ABC’s Gary Langer reported. As my colleague Beth Brelje pointed out, “it is hard to trust ABC’s Trump coverage after its biased moderation against Trump in the 2024 presidential debates, or after the $15 million defamation settlement ABC agreed to pay Trump.”

Still, Langer reports that Americans “disapprove of Trump’s performance on six of seven issues tested…” including “stock market volatility, tariffs, foreign relations and the economy overall.”

Langer adds that 53% of Americans polled “said they disapprove of [Trump’s] handling of immigration.”

A CNN poll conducted by SSRS Research found Trump’s approval is 41 percent while a New York Times/Siena College poll found Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 42 percent.

Fixing the country won’t be painless. There’s no clean, easy way to undo decades of bipartisan failure. If we’re serious about saving America, we need a leader who’s willing to be hated by the pundits, pollsters, and even some short-term-minded Americans to do what’s right. These polls may very well be designed to put pressure on Trump to change course so that Washington D.C. and coastal elites can go back to the status quo — but Trump and the rest of America need not pay any mind to the “data.”

Take tariffs, for example. The polls claim to show Americans disapprove of Trump’s use of tariffs to cudgel other nations into engaging in fair trade practices and require Mexico and Canada to control their borders to stem the flow of illegal aliens and fentanyl. The propaganda press, those on the left, and even some faux-conservatives clutched their pearls at news of the tariffs and spread the message that tariffs will drive up costs and therefore Trump should not implement them (notably, the legacy media and the left were silent as Americans were crushed by record high inflation under the Biden administration).

The coverage of tariffs was a calculated tactic to gaslight Americans into believing they must choose between national sovereignty and low prices, access to cheap-Chinese-made goods or the longevity of our economy and domestic industries.

It was a false dichotomy.

Just because previous administrations were willing to relinquish our sovereignty and sell out blue-collar America in exchange for cheap goods and friendly handshakes with “leaders” on our southern and northern border doesn’t mean Trump should follow their failed policies. Trump wasn’t elected to protect the comfort of the global investor class — he was elected to restore American strength, even if that means rattling markets or bruising diplomatic relations.

But the propaganda press couldn’t accept that, so they twisted the coverage, warped pubic perception, and now fallback on that warped public perception as the basis for the polling.

According to CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy, Trump’s “far-reaching efforts to reshape the federal government’s workforce” has also landed him in hot water with Americans, whose approved for managing the federal government has fallen.

Of course they have — because dismantling the entrenched, unaccountable bureaucratic state doesn’t poll well with the very institutions that benefit from it. The administrative state isn’t just ineffective, it’s un-American. It’s the fourth branch of government that nobody elected. It writes rules, enforces them, and punishes dissenters.

This isn’t governance — it’s a modern oligarchy. And Trump is the only one with the guts to storm the castle.

And perhaps the most important issue of them all: immigration.

Agiesta and Edwards-Levy report a “declining approval rating[s] and diminished confidence in Trump’s actions” when it comes to immigration.

This is no accident. The propaganda press has spent decades romanticizing illegal immigration while vilifying those who oppose it. They’ve referred to the illegal alien with gang affiliations as merely a “Maryland father” who was “mistakenly” deported. They’ve insisted that said illegal alien deserves “due process” — a political smokescreen designed to preserve the dividends of mass illegal immigration by delaying deportations indefinitely and draining public resources.

All of the coverage is designed to sabotage Trump’s lawful deportation effort and delegitimize it so that the American people sour on the efforts. And apparently, at least if you believe the polls, it’s working.

But once again, I don’t care and neither should you.

Mass migration (both legal and illegal) is a cultural wrecking ball, but let’s focus on illegal immigration for now.

America is not an empty vessel into which the world can pour itself. It’s a country built on shared principles, language, traditions, and a way of life. When you allow millions to enter en masse without enforcing assimilation, you turn America into a patchwork of unassimilated foreign enclaves. But assimilation is required for the preservation of the nation. Alexander Hamilton said as much in 1802:

“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”

If we allow mass migration without the strict requirement for complete and total assimilation, we lose America.

The toughest problems this country faces cannot be solved with a smile, a handshake, and a high approval rating. They require grit, sacrifice, and a willingness to endure the slings and arrows of the media elite and their oh-so-“accurate” polling.

Trump isn’t chasing headlines. He’s not bending to pollsters. He’s doing exactly what needs to be done — even if it’s unpopular in the short term — because the long-term survival of this country depends on it.

Stop Getting Psyop-ed By Garbage Polls About Trump

Which is more plausible: the lying media has suddenly discovered accurate polling data? Or Real Trump supporters are not being polled?

Beth Brelje reporting for The Federalist 

The left is having a dickens of a time trying to take down President Donald Trump. Activist judges have not deterred him. Unfocused protests have not slowed him down. And now the left is recycling its highly unsuccessful psyop, bad polling, as it tries to convince supporters that finally — this time they are almost certain — Trump is losing the confidence of average Americans.

Just look at the polls, they beg.  

The media has learned nothing in its many years of Trump coverage. Neither Trump nor his supporters back down from media’s manufactured bad news. It only spurs them on.

Trump has been through at least two successful presidential campaigns in which so-called expert pollsters rarely if ever put Trump in the lead. Why should we believe them now?

In anticipation of Trump’s first 100 days in office, the propaganda press whipped up stories about his approval ratings, using shaky polling as the foundation of their reporting. Each used different parameters. But when a poll is purchased or administered by a bias news outlet, the results are skewed.

Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, according to a joint ABC News/Washington Post poll by the left leaning pollster Ipsos.

“The previous low in approval for a president at or near 100 days in office, in polls dating to 1945, was Trump’s 42 [percent] in 2017,” ABC’s Gary Langer reported. It is hard to trust ABC’s Trump coverage after its biased moderation against Trump in the 2024 presidential debates, or after the $15 million defamation settlement ABC agreed to pay Trump.

CNN’s poll by SSRS Research, an online and telephone poll of just 1,678 people, reported Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 41 percent. SSRS is so “accurate” that it consistently found losing presidential candidate Kamala Harris had a slight edge in the 2024 race that Trump resoundingly won.

The New York Times/Siena College poll of just 913 people (including 190 who did not complete the entire survey) was conducted on the phone and reached a mix of English and Spanish speakers. It found Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 42 percent.   

NBC wrote its own poll and put it on Survey Monkey for nine days. It got almost 20,000 respondents who gave Trump a 45 percent approval rating. Not bad for a poll of NBC consumers who are unlikely to be Trump supporters.  

The coordinated polls trotted out this week came to the same conclusion: Trump’s approval rating is tanking, his base is losing faith in him, and Trump is freaking out about it, so, they seem to be telegraphing, you may as well give up on him.

The polls are garbage, and even if they were not, they don’t matter because they won’t sway Trump off course. But remember them, because the polls will be treated as truth and used as the basis for future propaganda in an attempt to shape policy. It is already happening, with headlines that claim Americans are “losing faith,” or that his favor with Hispanics is “collapsing,” or that Americans are going sour on Trump’s economy.

But talk to your MAGA neighbors, look on social media, and look at the practically sealed southern border as Trump gets illegal immigration under control. Watch as Trump gets his hands dirty in difficult political negotiations like tariffs, global policy, and government waste. These are vital issues that needed attention and other presidents have been too weak to make bold choices in these areas. This is the progress so many have been waiting for.

And ask yourself which is more plausible: that the lying media has suddenly presented highly accurate and not at all slanted polling data? Or that the majority of people who support Trump’s policies are not being polled? And if that is true, why not?