Trump Friend or Foe

Can we tell?

This is an “audience participation” article. I’d like to hear your ideas!

What actions or inaction by Trump will tell us if he is honestly going to help the country or if he is still just part of the problem?

We can’t trust the (mainstream) media which spews propaganda. We can’t trust the extremist posts on the Left or the Right, those can be even more inaccurate than the corporate media. So we need to look at what actually happens (not someone’s spin or interpretation of it).

I’ll start with some of my thoughts.

A huge one will be if Trump actually does, as he promised, and really does put Robert Kennedy into a position of power.

Another big win would be if Trump does actually bring peace between Russia and Ukraine and stops the USA’s support of warmongering across the world. This can be a little tricky to watch for as Trump loves attention and he will make brash and bold public statements that may threaten other nations when in private he is actually working toward peace. Look at the results not the statements!

Perhaps just as important would be if Musk and company are able to actually cut government spending significantly. Tax cuts would be nice, but spending cuts are a million times more important. Be careful of tax cuts because they can be deceptive. For example our first tax bracket is a 10% rate for the first $0 to $11,600. Everybody pays that rate, so a cut for that bracket (to say 8%) is a tax break for everyone, both rich and poor. To truly shift more of the tax burden onto the wealthy it’s essential to reduce / eliminate deductions. Nobody needs a deduction for buying a yacht! That’s truly a tax break for only the wealthy.

We may want to watch for any favoritism. Will SpaceX get extra NASA contracts and leave out Amazon (are you even aware that Amazon has a space program)? Elon claims SpaceX doesn’t need any government funding / assistance. Will he stay true to that? NASA will still do contracts with SpaceX, that’s just good business so this might be hard to detect any favoritism.

Let’s watch closely for any funding that gets funneled to Bill Gates and his “vaccine crusade”.

We will have to be very careful in watching legislation that appears to be protecting children from inappropriate things on the Internet, when such legislation might destroy personal privacy and freedom for adults.

Trump has promised to release the government documentation of the assassinations from the 1960s. But will Trump actually have access to accurate documentation? Or has all that been destroyed already? Will it just be for show? Can Trump risk destroying the people’s trust in government even more?

Anything that claims to be protecting free speech and the “truth” but actually is just a different flavor of censorship would be bad. We don’t want to just trade the Biden Administration censorship for Trump Administration censorship.

Will Trump engage in “lawfare” against the Democrats and the Left? Or will he take the high road and say “You did it to me and RFK Jr., but that was wrong and we aren’t going to do the same inappropriate abuse of the legal system.”

If Trump does anything like another “Operation Warp Speed”, I would consider that a complete betrayal of the people. Will Trump finally issue a statement admitting that he was wrong / misled?

What will happen to the financial system? Will Trump promote a crypto system where people lose even more privacy and control of their own wealth?

Unrelated, but I didn’t want to write a separate article for it, is the expectations for the financial situation. Trump is inheriting a seriously terrible financial situation and it will be tricky to navigate out of it without committing “political / popular suicide” and Trump loves to be popular so he is unlikely to do much more than nudge us in the right direction. So far the Trump transition has been smooth, quick and favorable. The expectation is that the dollar will be stronger and if you combine that with peace to come soon this is not a time to buy gold (the stock market is actually expected to boom) so I’d advise taking a “wait and see” position with gold for the next few months even though overall I strongly recommend everyone have a significant personal gold stockpile.

What are you concerned about? What do you think we should be watching for?