America: Where Kings Were Once Toppled January 7, 2025 Commentary by former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt: . . . Donald Trump is the king of the hill. He has taken the proverbial castle, and it is the castle that he must now defend from the horde he incited and will soon disappoint. . . . He will claim that he has fixed everything that is broken in America before very long. He will spin magical yarns about making America great again, and everywhere he goes he will brag about fixing every problem except one. Yours. When it comes to your problems, Trump will say that he doesn’t have the power to do that. . . . Elon Musk has embraced his white South African pedigree with a zeal that would have made even the most vicious Afrikaner beating in a black skull with a club smile in delight. Whether cheerleading for the British racist Tommy Robinson or the German AFD, which holds that the SS was not a criminal organization, Elon Musk is dropping the curtain. Following the connective thread is not difficult— or rather should not be — but for much of America’s media it is a bridge too far. For them, it is better to pretend that it isn’t happening. The news these days is often what can be seen and heard, but is not allowed to be spoken. That’s too bad because the danger is coming closer. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are kings in America. Their courts are happy, fat, rich and powerful. Millions of people whom they disdain and despise cheer for them, and will countenance no criticisms of them. It is good to be the king as they say, but America has always been a bad place to try and build a kingdom. There is a simple reason for that, and it has do with the national character. I remember reading somewhere once upon a time about a land of fierce people who topple kings because “all men are created equal,” and some people have an allergy to tyranny in all its many forms. Listen: there’s a ton to admire and thank Musk for. Anyone who can mastermind a giant rocket that returns snugly to its launch pad for reuse is little short of a miracle worker. If he can find ways to make our government operate more efficiently without at the same time doing terrible harm, that will be great. Remember how badly the Obamacare roll-out went? In came a few Silicon Valley geniuses who got it working in a month. Maybe the same sort of thing can be done to improve other systems. We should all cheer if (for example) Department of Defense bloat can be reduced and our tax-dollars more effectively focused. And there may well be some good things Trump accomplishes, although you can be sure that much of what he takes credit for will in fact have been largely or entirely the work of Biden & Co. Things like the 70,000 infrastructure projects Biden launched that most Republicans voted against . . . and the strong measures to fix the border Trump himself scuttled . . . and — one fervently hopes — the kind of sweeping Mid-East peace deal Antony Blinken has been working so hard to achieve, as described here Sunday. If and when Trump and Musk do good things, we should applaud for two reasons. First, “credit where credit is due.” Second, it will make our criticism more credible when they do awful, appalling things, as their Project 2025 so clearly threatens to do. Those things begin a week from Monday. When good things may begin remains to be seen. (I plan to write soon about one that I can imagine happening — sensible Social Security Reform.)