Trump 2.0 - The story so far
OODA loops, Target Rich Environments and more
We’re in the third week of the political tsunami that is Trump 2.0. The DOGE boys are getting access to systems and turning off the money flows and the DC swamp creatures are panicking. I think they may be mistaking what happens now for about as bad as it can get, while actually what we have now is that moment when the sea retreats abruptly from the beach and poor widdle crabs and fishies are left flapping in pools that are too small for them. Although the FBI agents and DoJ persecutors prosecutors who were involved in the Jan 6 investigations and the Jack Smith fishing investigations are probably feeling the wave coming down on them. In particular I would very much not want to be the agent who pawed through Melania’s underwear.
Right now the lacka money, lacka graft and lacka future employment seems bad, and that may be all some of the bottom feeders experience, but in the weeks ahead we’re going to see just what the federal government was spending all that money on and just who was benefiting and what they were doing. People with nice modern automobiles, large houses and so on may be required to explain where the money for those possessions came from. That’s going to lead to prosecutions and, well, as Trump and the Jan 6 guys know the process is part of the punishment. Moreover, since the graft flow will have stopped, paying for defense lawyers etc. is going to be interesting. In particular it’s going to be really interesting because the big firms that might normally step up and offer pro bono support are likely to find the requests for support overwhelming and, simultaneously, their regular income from paying clients drastically reduced.
Well shucks
Mind you we have a while before that wave comes crashing down so it’s worth noting what we have learned so far.
The first is that Trump 2.0 is uninterested in slowing down. As I said in my previous post, DOGE are working 24x7 while the swamp is used to 9-5, Monday to Friday. With generous time for lunch etc. That means Trump/DOGE can (and have) got inside the OODA loop of the enemy. We can see this by how protests about DOGE actions are a couple of days after the action has happened. Moreover we see Trump people saying things like “yes we need to look at the Department of Education” which causes talking heads to rush to its defense. This is quite possibly a ruse and deliberate distraction.
Meanwhile, probably, DOGE has paid a visit to the SBA. NPR has an article published the same date as the above claiming that access has not yet occurred though:
And now, Musk's cut-slashing unit is reported to be eyeing a way to gain access to the systems of the Small Business Administration, which gives loans and support to small firms, according to PBS News Hour.
The SBA is a prime target for graft and grifters though so cutting that money spigot is going to have a large impact.
Another thing that is notable is that bureaucrats are given days to decide whether to take the redundancy package or not instead of weeks as might be normally expected. They had just a week to decide whether to get 8 months of what British people call ‘gardening leave’ or instead decide to show up and ‘work’ and risk being fired.
It isn’t just the grifter bureaucrat class that Trump 2.0 is discomforting by its speed. International relations are also being handled rather differently
A friend of mine posted this on mewe about the threatened tariffs on Mexico and Canada and was already corrected because
It’s actually the second trade war after that 45 minute one against Columbia
And (channeling the Simpsons) it’s the second trade war of 2025 SO FAR.
Anyway, regarding the “trade wars” I wrote a comment on another substack which I think is worth expanding slightly. The thing about Trump and his relationship with foreign countries is that he's doing to them what hard nosed business people and trades union negotiators do in their negotiations. Trump is using tariff threats like trades unionists threaten strikes that will hurt their workers in order to really hurt the employer. The Trump approach goes like this:
Say to country I want you to X
Country’s government says it won't X because of national pride, X hurting politically influential groups etc.
Trump says: “OK then if you don't X, then your economy goes titsup.com thanks to the tariffs I'm going to impose next week that will kill your exports the US. That’s going to make your popularity way worse than upsetting politically influential groups”
Government goes. "Oh shit I'd better X"
The thing is this is not how other people do foreign relations and to the extent that they do make such threats they tend to be made via diplomatic channels rather than in public and they don’t have deadlines of “later today” or “tomorrow (or Monday) morning 9am”.
The key here is that Trump is making very clear that the days under Resident Biden and his minders of the US being apologetic, asking nicely and worrying about “escalation management” are over. By doing this now, in public, to countries that (at least in the case of Canada) thought they were allies and rough equals means he probably won’t have to be quite so vicious to countries in Europe that persist in, say, failing to get serious about military spending.
A slight aside. The Biden administration’s handling of Ukraine (and for that matter Gaza) undoubtedly jeopardized the world. Even Reuters reports that the Biden regime slow-walked a lot of the aid they had authorization to send and, while I’m not sure there has been lots of in country corruption on the military side of the aid (it’s hard to send fewer f-16s for example), I have no doubt that USAID’s payments have had all sorts of graft in them. People are now noticing that USAID gave a grant to Burisma for example. The Trumpian right have always claimed there’s been lots of corruption in the US assistance to Ukraine, my guess is that USAID is a major way this happened with friendly contracts to beltway bandits back in the US to refurbish/ship military gear to Ukraine being the other.
Back to overall strategy. Various substackers that I generally like such as Noah Smith and Rajan Menon (and there are plenty of others) are upset about the chaos
What I think they miss is that this chaos is almost certainly a deliberate strategy to keep his opponents off balance. He’s had four years to strategize and two months since November to turn strategy into tactics and battle plans. He’s also had advice from people like President Milei of Argentina who, like DOGE, works all hours of the day and night.
Plus it has become clear that the sleaze and corruption is widespread. In some ways DOGE are surrounded by enemies, which, as the USMC says means they are in a target rich environment. And talking of sleaze and corruption, one DEI cut I haven’t seen much (any) discussion of is impact on the “female minority disabled veteran” owned federal contractors. Banning DEI in contracts means that these people have lost their status as grifting middlewomen. In the past they would bid for contracts and when they won, subcontract the actual work to the big beltway bandit that gave them the best kickbacks terms. Now those companies can bid on their own behalf and have no need to pay the vig to these people.
I remind you. The tsunami has not yet landed, it’s a wall out to sea. The panic and chaos we see now will be nothing to the panic and chaos once trusted (FBI) agents start making dawn raids on places. It is also entirely possible that certain state AGs and investigators may get involved. The NGOs involved in the border shenanigans in Texas, for example, might prefer they would get any trial in statist DC rather than some border county in Texas, so having Texas handle the prosecutions could be dire.
[Update: on that note I see that Trump is suing “the individual members of the Pulitzer committee (there is actually no Pulitzer Prize entity) for defamation in state court in Okeechobee County, Florida.” That means the Pulitzer prize people may be the first set of swamp creatures to experience the tsunami of Trump 2.0 smashing down on them. See Clarkson meme above for my opinion.]
And, BTW, it occurs to me that despite all the pardons, a dawn raid on the residence of a certain J Biden might be very informative and it will only be revenge if Special Agent Melania Trump takes part
Enjoyable post.
The last paragraph is a gem!