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Get used to it: Understanding the age of Trump

Writer: Armstrong WilliamsArmstrong Williams

PUBLISHED: March 12, 2025 | www.iol.co.za

Secretary of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Vincent Schiraldi answers questions at a Judicial Proceedings Committee briefing on the Department of Juvenile Services Evaluation by the Department of Legislative Services Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability. (Kim Hairston/Staff)

I was an eyewitness.


I attended President Donald Trump’s electrifying address to a Joint Session of Congress last Tuesday. It was like watching New York Yankees pitcher Don Larson pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mr. Trump has soared past President Geroge Washington to become number 1 according to his own scorecard.


From beginning to end, Mr Trump recited his extraordinary achievements in downsizing the bloated Leviathan federal bureaucracy, stemming the flow of illegal immigration, jettisoning ultra-liberal dogmas, staring down foreign nations, and saluting Machiavelli’s adage, “Better to be feared than loved.”


President Trump accomplished more in his first 43 days than President Franklin Roosevelt’s legendary first 100 days. Mr Trump succeeded in a counterrevolution against the effete liberal establishment.


Illegal immigration has virtually stopped. No more caravans traipsing across the Darien Gap in Panama. 


Would-be violators of our immigration laws know President Trump means business.

No squinting at obvious economic migrants ineligible for asylum. Streamlining the adjudication of asylum claims to prevent release and disappearance of claimants into the general community. A new law—the Laken RileyAct-directs the Department of Homeland Security to detain aliens arrested for serious crimes. 


President Trump restored the United States to the centre of the international universe. We are the sun, and other countries subordinate planets. We have earned our place in the universe through sacrifice, innovation, industry, and courage. 


Mr Trump pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into compromising with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war. In the Oval Office on public display, President Trump underscored that the United States has all the cards and will not be bamboozled anymore as was the atrocious according to Trump, President Joe Biden. 


If you want the money and arms of the United States, you must march to our drummer. No free lunches in international affairs. We are not a philanthropy.


President Trump’s thunderbolts about reclaiming the Panama Canal yielded immediate results. Panama agreed to accept immigrants ordered deported that had no other safe place to go. Panama ports licenses controlled by Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing were sold to Black Rock and other investors.


President Trump proclaimed that sooner or later, the United States will acquire Greenland to strengthen national security. Canada will become a de facto 51st state of the United States to prevent its foreign policy walking off the reservation.


Let’s be candid.


Every country in the world is shaking in its boots after President Trump’s chesty address with hand grenades thrown every five minutes. 


America is truly number one again, and all the world knows it and respects it. We don’t need NATO to defend against an attack. It needs us. That’s why the Democratic Party response to Mr. Trump was so anaemic.


President Trump thrilled the audience by celebrating Grant Wood’s American Gothic and Norman Rockwell’s iconic representations of American life.  Hard work. An aristocracy of merit. Men and women. Pride in America as the most wonderful country in history—warts and all. Piety. And a bow to divine providence.


Mr Trump showed himself to be an economic visionary, not a mercantilist troglodyte. His national security-driven tariffs at Canada, Mexico, China, and other trading partners are aimed at diminishing artificial trade restrictions, not compounding them.


It is the first move in a chess game intended to force our trading partners to open their markets to American businesses in exchange for withdrawing the tariffs. 


But Trump’s tariffs are necessary to jolt them from complacency with ripping off the United States with impunity. The United States trade deficit in 2024 hit a record $1.2 trillion.

Face it. Donald Trump is the only game in town. Democrats are clueless.


Democratic Congressman Al Green’s juvenile tactics or naysaying do not make a policy. The Democratic party is like an acephalous church with no leadership.

Get used to it. This is the Age of Trump.


* Armstrong Williams is an American political commentator, entrepreneur, author, and talk show host. Williams writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column, has hosted a daily radio show, and hosts a nationally syndicated television program called The Armstrong Williams Show.


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