Donald Trump has changed, learned, developed. He says less, does more.
Trump 1.0 moved beyond the serious offenses of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and even the national security frauds James Comey and John Brennan.
Trump 1.0 also left CNN alone, along with other fake media, after he won.
Trump 1.0 hit China but left them standing.
Trump 2.0 is different. We are beginning to see it.
DJT stands for Don’t Just Tweet. He has a bit more Teddy Roosevelt—less speak softly, more big stick. DJT tweets and teases less, tariffs and trounces more. DJT’s personal and national foes know it.
Just ask Iran, China, CBS and ABC.
As the French say vive la différence!
Yes, Trump 2025 hits adversaries with tariffs, with investigations and even jail, depending on each case. Maybe even bombs. Trump is suing CNN, and he has just settled a suit with CBS for at least $16 million, after settling another suit with ABC for $15 million.
Trump sued CBS for $20 billion, saying they rigged election coverage. He’ll get $16 million as a first installment, and he’ll settle for an additional 50 to 70 million in total. Details are not clear. The mediator wanted it to be $20 million.
Canada played stupid, imposing a tech tax on U.S. firms. NATO allies played dumb on defense budgets. Iran played stupid, stalling nuclear talks.
They all pay in the end.
Now NATO allies call him “Daddy,” and will more than double their financial commitments.
We saw what happened to Iran. Trump gave them 60 days to talk. They stalled. He bombed.
We will see the financial/diplomatic equivalent in response to Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney’s anti-U.S. tech-tax. Carney thought a black Euro-suit was a cloak of invisibility.
Trump saw through him.
Trump’s foes call him TACO—Trump Always Chickens Out—but TACO actually means Trump Always Carries On or Trump Always Carries Out promises.
When Trump says FAFO—he means it. Oh boy does he mean it.
FAFO translates well into Farsi. Just ask the Iranian ayatollahs.
It’s as simple as A, B-2, C.
Just ask ABC host George Stephanopoulos who essentially called Trump a rapist, misstating the facts when he said Trump had been “found liable for rape.”
For ABC, FAFO means $15 million in a legal settlement. ABC translates into Anything But Correct.
The 2020 election, with all its secrecy and mathematical impossibilities, is now under the microscope. Trump 2.0’s FBI has discovered that China pumped phony drivers’ licenses into the U.S. for voter fraud in the 2020 elections. Documents also reveal the FBI blocked an investigation into the scheme, because it would contradict Christopher Wray’s own testimony.
Other elements of election fraud likely will be discovered. A reckoning will come.
The biggest discovery is just how far-reaching Biden’s “auto-pen” was used — or to be exact, misused. Probes and possible prosecutions are moving forward.
Meanwhile, the court of public opinion has already decided the media covered up the news rather than “covering” the news. They are already facing a reckoning, losing ratings, salaries and even their jobs.
A change and a reckoning is coming even in left-leaning strongholds like New York and California, and in universities like Columbia and Harvard.
NYC stands for New York City, but it also means something special—Not Yet Creep—for immigrant Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat mayoral candidate who rapped about his “love” for notorious funders of Hamas. Trump has not ruled out a revocation of his citizenship and his subsequent deportation over the possibility he lied on immigration forms.
A similar fate may await Congresswoman Ilhan Omar who listed her brother as her husband—and other lies—on her immigration forms.
I cannot wait to see what the Justice Department does in response to the alleged fraud of Letitia James, who went after Trump for supposedly falsifying documents while she allegedly falsified her own Virginia mortgage documents.
As comedian Jackie Gleason used to say “How sweet it is!”
Orange is sometimes said to be Donald Trump’s motif, but the color will look good on a lot of Trump’s enemies.
Dr. Michael Widlanski is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, published by Threshold/ Simon and Schuster. For two decades he taught at Hebrew University and Bar-Ilan University, was strategic affairs advisor in Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, and was the Schusterman visiting professor at University of California, Irvine for 2013–14, and at Washington University in St. Louis, 2007–8. Dr. Widlanski has also served as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991–1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem. He is a former reporter, correspondent and editor at The New York Times, Cox Newspapers, Israel Television, Israeli Army Radio and The Jerusalem Post.
Image generated by AI.