So welcome to the podcast. This is episode 373. I'm Douglas Wilson, and I am grateful you decided to join us.

We're just a few months into Trump's second term with a four-year break in between Trump 45 and Trump 47.

And Trump 47 is functioning in a very different way than Trump 45. He,

Trump 45 came in to make a difference, but I think he expected people, more people than did,

to sort of recognize the value what he was doing. And he instead got tied up with the Mueller investigation

and just all kinds of things happened to thwart, frustrate, interfere with the things he wanted

to do. This time, he is not just coming in as a wrecking ball himself, but appears to have put

together a team of wrecking

balls. So everybody involved appears to be bent on downsizing or eliminating their department. So the

Department of Education is going to be eliminated. There are rumors that the IRS might be eliminated, but if not

radically downsized, a bunch of bloat and waste are going to be cut out of the Pentagon and so on.

So all of this, for any kind of fiscal conservative, all of this is like Christmas every morning. So you wake up and you and you read

about some new outrage that Trump is perpetrating on the, on the deep state and your heart leaps

for joy unbidden. So there's that. And Trump appears to put together a team of people who really are dedicated to doing that kind of thing.

However, I think that we should be prepared. I think as delighted as you may be watching all this go down,

I think we need to be prepared for certain political realities to settle in.

I think there's going to be a good, healthy two-year run of this Christmas every morning business.

And I think Trump is trying to get as much of this done, as much of the deep state dismantled as he can before the midterms.

It's conceivable that in the midterms, the Republicans lose control of the House.

And if they lose control of the House, then they're going to lose some of their ability to be doing this sort of thing.

So they want to get as much of it done before that time. But let's say that the Republican, let's say

the American public is happy with the downsizing as so far they appear to be. And they're happy with

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