Decisive Leadership In An Age of Decline

How is Trump supposed to look at millions of illegals being allowed to cross the border with zero repercussion—many of whom are unvetted criminals—and respond?

Is he supposed to throw Alejandro Mayorkas a testimonial dinner for repeatedly lying in front of Congress with a smirk while knowingly keeping the country’s borders open?

And how exactly is Trump supposed to tackle the problem of crime in major cities and drugs and homelessness ravaging Washington, D.C.? Is he supposed to kick back in his chair and act as though everything’s fine?

You can hem and haw all you’d like about his companies’ bankruptcies in the past, but the point is Trump is a “get-shit-done” kind of person, even if it is with a heavy hand.

Even the worst that the private sector business world has to offer is millions of times more efficient than bureaucrats in government who have no idea how the free market rewards results. If Trump wakes up at 6 a.m. and goes to bed at midnight every day and only spends 2 of those 18 hours making swift, decisive decisions about getting things done while spending the rest watching Fox News and battling with the press, his days will likely still be 100 times more productive than Joe “6 Handicap” Biden’s or Kamala “Unburdened From What Has Been” Harris’ would be.

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I once saw a documentary where Trump was talking to one of his workers at his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland while they were working on it. He was having a back-and-forth with someone that was helping him design a golf course, and at some point Trump just pleaded with his employee to stay out of the way of people who were getting things done. The employee had a gripe about something small on the course or how something was being done, and Trump’s message to him was: if the project is moving forward, then don’t rock the boat. He’s results-driven.

Yes, Trump’s decisions may not always be perfect, but that is superseded by his ability to take swift corrective actions at a time when the nation desperately needs it most.

Was his formula for figuring out tariffs for other countries nuanced and carefully done? Probably not. But did it get the attention of the world and send a broader message that the United States is actively reevaluating its trade deficit? It sure as hell did.

Is Immigration and Customs coming down with a heavy hand on illegal immigration? Yes, they are. But is that sending a message to future illegal immigrants and ones that are still here? Yes it is.

And is Trump’s decisive action to battle crime in inner cities with a heavy hand sending a message about his expectations for law and order? You’re damn right it is. The message is “the bullshit stops today” — and it’s a message our inner cities have needed to hear since the “Summer of Love” riots in 2020.

One only needs to do a precursory Google search online to find that many of the policy positions Trump has put in place are ones that Democrats would have approved of in the ’90s or early 2000s. I see countless clips surfacing of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and even Chuck Schumer talking about how illegal immigrants don’t belong in the country — and how we need a secure border:

Odd. It seemed pretty simple for them to understand a decade or two ago, but perhaps this was before the party had engineered a plan to try and use said immigrants to tip the scales of elections, or before we learned we are all racists without even knowing it.

There’s also been critiques about the Trump administration taking equity stakes in public companies. I’m constantly being flamed by people telling me I’m supporting socialism because I own Intel and other companies that I think the administration might invest in.

To be truthful, I see their point about socialism. But the Trump administration isn’t ultimately looking for a state-planned, socialist economy—it’s trying to protect and call attention to the assets the United States does have and will need to rid itself of dependence on foreign nations. It would be a different story if the United States wasn’t in such a precarious position in relying on the rest of the world to provide us with the things that we desperately need to maintain our quality of life and national defense.

Is it a heavy-handed approach? Again, a little bit. But do the ends justify the means if companies like Intel—now potentially paired with some of the biggest names in the world in semiconductors—become technological staples in the United States so we don’t have to rely on other countries? Sure.

I’ve been saying for years that the pandemic exposed our reliance on other countries, specifically China. The Trump administration is looking at the industries most critical to national security and is trying to ensure their success and survival.

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At the end of the day, what matters most is not whether President Trump has been flawless in his first year in office, but whether he has been effective in steering the country back toward stability, sovereignty, and common sense. The answer to that, in my opinion, is yes.

His willingness to confront uncomfortable truths—whether about immigration, crime, or foreign dependence—shows a level of courage that has been missing in Washington for decades. The heavy-handedness that critics point to is not the sign of recklessness, fascism, white supremacy, colonialism, Project 2025, climate change or whatever progressive talking points claim this week, but instead it’s the natural outcome of a leader who refuses to accept decline as the new normal.

Criticism will always come, especially from political opponents and the media, but leadership is not about pleasing everyone—it’s about setting a course and holding firm when the inevitable resistance comes.

Trump’s approach may ruffle feathers, but it’s also forcing conversations that need to happen. It’s not enough to nod along politely while the country crumbles under bad policy like President Autopen did for four years; someone has to make bold choices and demand accountability, even when it isn’t popular.

Looking at the big picture, Trump’s first year demonstrates that he is not only capable of making those choices but also committed to doing so consistently. The fact that his policies echo what Democrats themselves once supported highlights just how far the opposition has drifted from reality. While they chase academic theories and ideological purity tests, Trump is focused on practical outcomes that directly impact Americans’ everyday lives.

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

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