The Pattern in the Trump Administration

They execute. You can argue over the wisdom of the policy choices, but the administration is defined by the discipline of its staff work, its task focus, and its drive to produce measurable outcomes. When they set out to do something, they do it. As always, compare that to the insane media narrative. Let’s take up a few of the most obvious recent examples.

The single theme that emerged over the last few months in news coverage and political discussion about American military affairs is that the Pentagon was being torn apart, and would be unable to reliably execute military operations and planning.

First, Pete Hegseth, an amateur who was being chosen as Secretary of Defense because he was a television personality, would have no ability to lead complex operations that required disciplined planning.

Similarly, Trump utterly DEVASTATED the senior ranks of the armed forces, driving out our most experienced leaders….

….and then he replaced one of those serious leaders with a totally unqualified military retiree, a mere three-star, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

Then, being dumb and an amateur, Hegseth destroyed the Pentagon’s ability to plan:

And so here’s the result of a Department of Defense that was purged of all its serious leaders and filled with unqualified amateurs who have no ability to plan anything:

In an operation of massive complexity, involving well over a hundred moving parts on the other side of the world, many of which had to be committed months in advance to be in place on time, bombs landed as planned and on at least three separate targets — resulting in no American casualties or lost aircraft.

So, clearly, Trump’s dangerous purge of the senior ranks has destroyed the American military’s ability to plan, and the news media have nailed it again.

Again, the wisdom of the policy choice is a fair debate — but the quality of the execution isn’t. They set out to do X; then they did X, the end. Against the miasma of Blue Zone decay and the relentless operational incompetence of the virtue-signaling, mimetic-performative alternative….

….we have an administration that sets out to do things, not to signal about things.

You can do this over and over again, comparing narrative to reality. Kristi Noem is a moron and a Barbie figure who is tearing apart the federal government’s ability to respond to disasters:

Also, Noem found that Hurricane Helene claims were languishing, so:

Against a storm of persistent babbling from a mindless opposition, the Trump administration is executing its agenda — in work being done steadily, quietly, and seriously by hundreds or thousands of people whose names we don’t know. The administration is, first, a vision and a direction, and then the ability to do it. We’re seeing with great clarity that they have that ability to take meaningful action, and to sustain it. I don’t see any weight on the other side of the scale, where symbol performance and slogan chanting are the highest values.

Between people who do and people who signal, my guess about long-term success is pretty easy.