The first 6 weeks or so of the 2025 Trump administration were generally good for those who favor liberty.  Of course, we have to grade on something of a curve because every president for the last many decades has been bad.

Trump, with the help of Elon Musk, came in swinging.  It wasn’t always pretty.  It has been quite chaotic.  Some chaos in a really bad system is to be expected.  Some of the chaos has probably been unnecessary.

Still, we have seen massive waste, fraud, and criminality exposed by DOGE.  There was a hope that we might actually see real cuts in the government.

Trump had his share of establishment picks for his administration, but he has also had some seemingly great ones, such as Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Trump has made good on his promises to free or pardon Ross Ulbricht and the J6 protesters.

To top it off, Trump threw down the dictator of Ukraine and has taken a position far outside the establishment by saying that he wants peace in Ukraine.

These are just a few of the highlights.  Trump has showed that he really can be different than previous presidents who always maintained the establishment narrative and the deep state.  Even with Trump’s many flaws, he has arguably done more for liberty in the first six weeks of his new presidency than any previous presidents have done cumulatively for the last 25 years.

The Honeymoon is Over

I remember the first Trump term.  Every time he did something really bad for liberty, he would go and do something really positive.  And every time he did something really good, he would find a way to ruin it with something bad.

Maybe we are going for longer stretches this time.  For some reason, everything has seemed to turn after about 6 weeks.

There are three really bad things that have transpired recently.  They aren’t necessarily new things, but it just shows a continuation of bad policies that are against liberty.

1) Tariffs

We already knew that Trump was not sound on economics and really bad when it came to the issue of tariffs.  He sees tariffs as a wonderful thing where he can mold the economy and mold his relationship with leaders of other countries.

First, it is like we are living in a dictatorship where one person gets to arbitrarily decide the policy on any given day.  Why does the president get to just raise or lower tariffs on a whim?  Where is Congress?

Sure, Congress is horrible, but at least it would be a roadblock from this tariff nonsense.  And at least it would add some stability if tariffs had to be enacted with legislation.

Instead, we have Trump changing his mind virtually every day.  One day, we are going to raise tariffs.  The next day, we aren’t going to raise them after all.  The next day, we are going to raise them, but we will exempt certain products and we’ll revisit the issue in another month.

It is total chaos.  But this isn’t like the DOGE chaos where it creates chaos within the government.  This is chaos for the marketplace and consumers.  Suppliers, both foreign and domestic, don’t know what to do or how much to produce or what to charge.

This is just bad policy.  If Trump had just raised all tariffs by 10%, it would make life more expensive for Americans, but at least there would be predictability.  Instead, we are just getting complete chaos.  This could ultimately make things even more expensive or perhaps even lead to some shortages.

2) Free Speech

Trump has been trying to crack down on protests on college campuses, specifically regarding Israel and Gaza.

He has threatened to withhold federal funds from Columbia University for protests there.  I am all in favor of not sending federal funds to Columbia or any other college or university.  But it shouldn’t be on the basis of allowing people to protest or say things you don’t like.

Now we have the Trump administration threatening to deport people who are involved in these protests.  This even includes someone who has a green card, which means the person is a legal and permanent resident.

This is a horrible precedent that is a complete violation of free speech.  If the person is directly threatening violence or committing violence in any way, then that should be the crime.  It is not a crime by itself to protest or speak out.

To me, this seems like something the Biden administration would have done, only for protesting or speaking out on a different issue.

I guess Trump and some of his followers are woke.  It just has to be the right issue.

3) Thomas Massie and the Budget

Trump has decided to pick another fight with Thomas Massie and suggested that he should be primaried in the next election.

I guess Trump didn’t learn his lesson from 2020 when Massie tried to question all of the insane and reckless spending to cover over the lockdowns.  It turns out Massie was beyond correct when he took this stand.  There was massive fraud and waste with the trillions spent in 2020, and it was a major factor in giving us the high price inflation that came on in 2022 and still to this day.

By supporting this continuing resolution in Congress, Trump is continuing the awful spending from before.  It almost negates everything that DOGE has done up until this point.  With this budget, there are no cuts in government spending.  Maybe some of it is redirected, but there are no cuts.

At the very least, the awful spending uncovered by Musk and his DOGE team should have gone to Congress to rescind the funds.  That should have been a condition for passing the current continuing resolution.

If Trump doesn’t strike at the budget now and lets the phony Mike Johnson get away with this, then I don’t see much hope in September when the next budget comes up.  Trump has to strike while the iron is hot.  In another 6 months, he will have lost his honeymoon privilege, and he probably won’t have as much support from the American people.

Massie is absolutely correct on the phoniness of this budget and the fake fighting in Congress.  It is a cover for Washington DC to keep doing what it has been doing for a long time.  Trump is absolutely wrong on this issue.

It also shows that Trump still doesn’t understand who is enemies are.  Just because someone criticizes you or opposes something you are doing doesn’t make them an enemy.  Massie defended Trump on things like Russia collusion and J6.  Trump continues to show a lack of judgment.

Conclusion

Trump’s second term started off well, but it has reversed quickly.  The best we can say now is that it has exposed a lot more bad things going on in Washington DC.

We are going to hit a recession, and Trump will get blamed by some people who voted for him or were at least open to him making changes.  It won’t be any cuts in government spending that causes the recession because we don’t know that there are actually any cuts and the recession was going to happen anyway.

Trump’s tariffs should rightly take a little bit of the blame, as it has just made a bad situation worse with the economy.

Now that Trump has done a series of really bad things, maybe he will go and do something good next.