Trump Explodes Out of the Gate

Opinion|Trump Explodes Out of the Gate

Bret Stephens: Gail, Donald Trump has been back in office for a week though it seems like a decade. Do you feel (a) outraged and ready to do battle; (b) disoriented and listless; (c) eager to read, finally, all 12 volumes of Anthony Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time”?

Gail Collins: Bret, my normal ritual when I’ve got a little bit of down time is to just call up a TV news channel to catch up on what’s going on. Since the election, I’ve had so much trouble dealing with reality I call up the Game Show Network and listen to ordinary Americans trying to guess the name of the governor of Utah or which breeds of dog have no tail.

Bret: Who is Spencer Cox? And what is the English bulldog?

Gail: Bravo. You’ve put your finger on the challenge of American citizenship in 2025: Don’t let Donald Trump push you into despair.

Bret: He isn’t. Dirty little secret, Gail: I’m feeling mostly OK, even with Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon and threats of stupid trade wars with our allies. Trump may be a very blunt instrument, but we’re a country in need of disruption. The important conversation we should have now is how to disrupt wisely, not how to defend norms for norms’ sake in the face of Trump’s norm bending.

Gail: Bret, if we’d elected some virtuous Republican like — oh, I don’t know, it’s your job to pick one — we would be talking about finding ways to improve education, health care, support for the needy that actually involved making services more efficient. But the folks we’re watching here want to slash taxes, creating huge deficits that would, by design, increase pressure to slash services.

Bret: Slash taxes? Slash services? Gail, I think you’re describing me.

Federal spending was just north of $4 trillion eight years ago, when I joined the Times. Now it’s over $7 trillion. That’s a 75 percent increase. Where does all that money go? Is all of it being well-spent? Do agencies that expect their budgets to grow year-in, year-out no matter how they perform have any incentive to manage costs or improve performance? Does anyone with a government job ever get laid off, as they do in the private sector, simply because a department has grown too bloated? Have people’s needs really increased by that much in a few years — especially if the Biden economy was as terrific as Joe Biden claimed it was? Or is this just out-of-control spending and an establishment that refuses to apply the reins?