To fully understand just how remarkable today’s exchange with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues, and the different way it works now under Trump.
I’ll illustrate.
Traditional Approach:
1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. On Monday, the State Department convenes an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security.
3. The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper.
4. The position paper is rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process.
5. The task force reconvenes a week later to redevelop three new, equity-centric courses of action and create a new position paper.
6. The process is delayed a week because Washington DC gets three inches of snow.
7. SecState approves the new position paper for interagency circulation, and considerable input is received from the heads of other departments so the task force must reconvene.
8. The original three proposed responsive courses of action are scrapped in favor of a new, fourth course of action that achieves the worst aspects of the three prior courses of action but satisfies the interagency.
9. Someone in State who disagrees leaks to the Washington Post, who writes a story about how ineffective the Presidential administration is.
10. The White House Chief of Staff sets up a session three days later to brief the President, who approves the new fourth course of action.
11. Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory.
Trump Approach:
1. Colombia announces it will not take our repatriation flights.
2. After a par-5 third hole where he goes one under par, Trump uses his iPhone to post on social media as to how the USA will destroy Colombia’s economy if they do not do what the USA demands.
3. By the time Trump gets to the par-4 sixth hole, Colombia’s President has agreed to repatriate all the illegal Colombians in his own plane, which he will pay for.
4. Trump finishes three under par and goes to the clubhouse for a Diet Coke where he posts a gangsta AI image of himself and the new FAFO Doctrine.
5. Winning.
See the difference? It’s called LEADERSHIP.
The media doesn’t want you to see 275 linemen being housed for free by President Trump at his Trump National Doral Miami resort as they prepare to respond to hurricane recovery.🇺🇸
You know what to do!
If you were shocked by what you saw last night (as many of my centrist & Democrat friends were), ask yourself why you were shocked. Biden’s cognitive deterioration has been evident for a *very* long time: if you weren’t aware of it, or were convinced those claims were “right-wing conspiracies,” that tells you something important about the quality of the news you’re consuming & the institutions you trust.
Ask yourself whether it’s possible that those same outlets which lied to you about the mental fitness of the sitting president might have lied to you about anything else. Look into the Russia collusion hoax, the “fine people” and bleach hoaxes, the origin of COVID-19, Hunter Biden, the evidentiary basis for climate change policies or pediatric “gender-affirming care.” Seek out original sources & uncut video footage, instead of relying on the filter of mainstream media coverage.
Ask yourself this too: who is actually running this country? Do you honestly believe Joe Biden is in charge? Is the “deep state” a conspiracy theory, or is it a reality hiding in plain sight?
Last night was a sad moment for our country to see a mentally debilitated President, but it can still catalyze positive change & open minds that were previously closed. Once you see it you can’t unsee it.
For my own part, I will never fault a fellow citizen for coming to these conclusions “late.” It’s more valuable to unite around the truth than to gloat over who was right first. We’re all human, we’ve all been wrong & been misled before, but we are best off as a nation if we can openly admit it and improve in the future. We’ll have our opportunity to do that this November & beyond.