Dakota Beacon

He hit the ground running.  In the week since his landslide victory, President-Elect Trump has already gone to work to fix the mess in Washington.  He has assembled an impressive team and one would have to know that he has been putting this in motion long before election day.  It looks like the Avengers - Tulsi Gabbard, recently placed on a no-fly terrorist list by the FBI is to be the head of National Intelligence - poetic justice there; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will head up Health and Human Services, an answer not only to his own prayers but to those who have suffered from the effects of Anthony Fauci and so many other corrupt grifters in the various health services as well as our border enforcement; Tom Homan will take over ICE - his aspect reminiscent of Erich Von Stroheim  - he definitely looks like he means business; Pete Hegseth in the Department of Defense; Marco Rubio in the State Department; John Ratcliffe for head of the CIA, as well as many ambassadors - Elise Stefanik for the UN, Mike Huckabee in Israel.  Perhaps most controversial of all of these would be Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, a veritable pitbull who will likely frighten many, which might be his downfall in the confirmation process.

Along with these top dogs are already a large number of deputies of various departments and other key positions.  For the most part they sound like a dream come true for those who understand that we can no longer make do with half-measures and weak response.  The swamp must finally be cleared if we are to survive.  

Most of those who supported Trump will applaud the majority of these proposed appointments.  There are a couple I would personally have my doubts about.  Kristi Noem has been named for head of Homeland Security.  We will remember that Homeland Security is a fairly recent addition to the top-heavy bureaucracy.  It was one of George W. Bush’s big mistakes following the 9-11 attack on the Trade Towers.  That, along with his ill-conceived “Patriot Act” have had a worse effect on the nation than the 9-11 attack itself, if we are to gauge by destruction of the fabric of our nation and our culture of freedom.  Rather than appoint Noem to the position, I would rather have seen her forgotten completely and the Homeland Security department dismantled.  She has a terrible public image between her torrid affair with Trump’s aide de camp, Lory Lewandowski and her brutal manner of handling unruly pets.  She also was quite content to allow businesses in South Dakota to continue to allow various woke practices as men in women’s restrooms, locker rooms, on sports teams, etc.,an unseemly cowardice in the eyes of many.  Why continue to staff Homeland Security?  We are less secure than ever since it has been there.  There are few who have developed any fondness for the TSA.  One more oppressive alphabet agency.

A couple of other nominations might raise some eyebrows - no pun intended.  Doug Burgum as Secretary of the Interior is somewhat problematic in that he has had a close association with Bill Gates.  This is a sensitive area given that association.  I don’t think it necessary to put Burgum in any position at all.  There are many competent people to oversee mineral resources (oil, gas, etc.) and who would have less to question in the area of Indian Affairs, public lands, etc.  It would be deeply concerning to open public lands for sale to private entities and find that ANY of them went to Bill Gates.  I could imagine some conflict between Kennedy and Burgum over land use and we should all be aware of Gates’s long-range ambitions to gobble up farm land.  I would have liked to see someone with NO history with Gates in this job.*

Likewise, Trump’s pick for Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, has lots of  ties to Big Pharma, which is an unhealthy  circumstance.  We have not heard that she has left that world behind. 

We can take heart, though, in hearing nothing about the Department of Education.  This creation of Jimmy Carter has coincided with the worst decline ever in our nation’s education.  We did not need it before and were  better off without it.  Our kids’ education should be run by their parents with the assistance of the schools, public, private and parochial.  Let’s hope he makes good on his promise to end this department.  He will meet resistance from teachers’ unions and their bought congressmen and senators, but it’s worth a knock-down, drag-out fight to demolish this disaster.  

All in all, we can’t complain too much about most of these appointments.  But right now it’s all on paper.  It will be a tough fight to get these all through Senate confirmation, and here lies the rub.  The semi-senile Senator Mitch McConnell had just enough savvy left to call for a snap vote to choose a new Majority Leader to take his place.  His place is extremely powerful.  He has made it more so over the nearly two decades he has held it.  One of these moves was to establish the 

Senate Leadership fund.  This is how he held absolute power over the Republican members of the Senate.  He could withhold or provide money for their campaigns.  He has caused havoc with this.  Ted Cruz won re-election in Texas with no help but rather  in spite of McConnell, and in Arizona we could see the extent of his malevolence where Kari Lake was defeated in a border state, Arizona, in a Trump landslide year.  Despite the importance of winning this seat, McConnell withheld any of this fund from her campaign.  McConnell is a rotten old man.  His pick for his successor was John Thune.  Thune comes as close as any left in the Senate to Liz Cheney.  He hates Trump.  This is the last thing Trump needed.  And guess who voted for Thune?  North Dakota’s own RINOs - John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer.  This could be the undoing of the swamp cleaning project, despite all of Trump's inspired choices for leadership.  His picks will only go through with the support of the Senate.  The replacement of McConnell with Thune was a disaster.  The only choice that would have gotten Trump’s agenda into the real world would have been Rick Scott (FL), and he lost in the first round.  Where was the famous Trump sway here?  With the result of Wednesday’s vote in the Senate the chances for a Trump Make America Great Again agenda dimmed significantly.  Now every issue will be a fight.

It is always the “little things” - the things that fly under the radar - that can bring about needed change or doom such change in the womb.  Yes - you might call Thune the abortifacient for Trump’s plans, his dream team and our future.  I hate to end on that note.  My excuse will be the gloom of November.  Let’s continue to put pressure on our Senate at every turn.  It’s our job now because we dropped the ball collectively in the accession of John Thune.

*Sunday morning update:  https://www.bitchute.com/video/GKKybX2w4_g