President Trump must rip off the Band-Aid® and cauterize the wound

I’m happy to see President/President-elect Trump moving quickly to make Cabinet appointments and announce policies. He only has 4 years to get things done, and with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, he needs to move fast, especially because the Biden administration and the Democrat agenda has crippled America and put it on a dangerous path. He needs to make quick changes that will result in some short-term pain and disruption but will put America back on track to get another Republican in office in another four years to continue the healing and strengthening.

Government Corruption

Trump has pledged to root out corruption in government agencies. This will be very difficult. The easy ones to find and fire will be in the upper echelons of the various bureaucracies. However, there are many corrupt individuals in positions of power that will require long investigations to find. And there are laws to keep federal employees in lifetime careers. Those laws may be able to be overturned or modified. Of course, we also have the principle of innocent until proven guilty, so President Trump must start these investigations very early, using trustworthy outsiders to get to the truth, find the corrupt individuals, gather evidence, and start the long legal process to remove them.

Government Inefficiency

There is way too much government bloat. The U.S. government currently employs almost 3 million people. That’s about 2 out of every 100 people in the U.S. In the past, government jobs were often undemanding and paid well but offered little opportunity for advancement. I know because I spent a summer working for the state of Pennsylvania before college, back in 1977. It paid well, but it was the most depressing job I have ever had. Many of my relatives worked for the state, and several now work for the federal government. In recent years, government salaries have gone astronomically high, rivaling and sometimes surpassing those in the private sector when taking benefits into account.

Trump needs to quickly eliminate inefficient and unnecessary government bureaucracies as he’s promised to do with the help of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Unemployment will blip upward, but if it is done correctly, it will come way down before the next presidential election.

Immigration

Obviously, the border wall needs to be completed and America must return to sensible laws to allow orderly, safe, legal immigration to stop the influx of drugs, human trafficking, and potential terrorists. Democrats like to say the illegal immigrants do the jobs that Americans don’t want to do. Growing up, with little money, there was no paying job that was beneath me. In America, all work used to be respected, including physical labor and especially skilled labor. With so many people let go from government jobs, Trump (and all of America) must once again stress the importance of labor and the pride of employment, so that the newly unemployed have no shame in taking on new jobs, including those previously held by illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants must be deported. There are big questions about which ones and how. Do we start with those convicted of criminal acts in their home countries? Those convicted or simply accused of criminal acts while here? Those who never showed up for their asylum hearings? Do we eventually deport all of them?

And how will Trump deal with the Democrat mayors, governors, and other politicians who have sworn to disobey federal immigration law, give sanctuary to illegal aliens, and even swearing to “fight to the death” against Trump, ICE, federal agencies, and federal laws?

However he plans to do it, Trump needs to start immediately because the Dems and their progressive base will start protests and riots and all kinds of civil disruption. Like the fake claims of “kids in cages,” Democrats will rally their brainwashed supporters. Maybe after the Trump landslide, the American public is finally onto the Democrat politicians’ lies and shenanigans and are sick of crime-ridden cities, but Trump and the Republicans politicians cannot take that for granted.

Tariffs

Trump has shown that tariffs work. With just the threat of tariffs, Mexico and Canada have started discussions on cooperating with America after four years of opposition and derision.

Tariffs on China may mean rising prices in the short term for Chinese-manufactured goods until manufacturing moves back home. At that point, prices should go back down and employment should go up. But he needs to move quickly so the pain to the economy is quick and short-lived. American manufacturers also need to move quickly to ramp up facilities in the U.S. And labor unions need to cooperate rather than see an opportunity to squeeze manufacturing businesses.

Stop the Wars

Israel needs to be given a green light and full support to destroy Hamas and cripple Hezbollah. President Trump from now until the destruction of Hamas must reiterate regularly and publicly that Hamas is an American-designated terrorist group whose declared mission is to destroy Israel and kill all Jews. He must remind Americans that Hamas during its last “ceasefire” with Israel murdered around 1,200 innocent people, took 251 Israelis and foreigners as hostages, and still holds 101 captives including two Americans. This is why a ceasefire is meaningless.

The war with Hezbollah is more complex, so perhaps the latest ceasefire is the right solution. Hezbollah has greater, more accurate weaponry than Hamas that can cause more destruction, even reaching central Israel. Hezbollah is embedded within Lebanon, a country whose citizens despise it but seem to have no ability to extricate it from their government or their nation.

Strong economic sanctions must again be immediately placed on Iran, the leading financial and philosophical promoter of terror on earth. America may want to give Israel a green light for destroying Iranian nuclear plants and oil production facilities. Or better yet, America should do that work itself because America can better handle the pushback from the world who would rather appease the monstrous Ayatollahs in return for empty promises.

America must sanction those countries that are willing to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the only democracy in the Middle East and one of America’s greatest and most important allies. The ICC decision, supported by the Biden administration, sets a dangerous precedent when the leader of a democratic country can be put under arrest for politically motivated, false accusations, especially when there are no punishments or restrictions on modern-day monsters such as Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Vladimir Putin of Russia, or Masoud Pezeshkian and Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran. Trump must re-right this morally upside-down world immediately.

The Russia-Ukraine war is more complex, destroying lives from both sides, while embarrassing Putin with over 3 years of devastation, hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ deaths, and little progress along the physical fronts. Can Trump negotiate a safe compromise whereby Putin saves face, Zelensky of Ukraine takes credit for saving his country, and war is averted rather than temporarily ceased? I have my doubts, but Trump has pulled off some masterful negotiations like the Abraham Accords, so we’ll need to wait and see. But he shouldn’t wait too long.

No Pandemic

And finally, let us hope there is not another plague or similar singular event before the next election that screws everything up like it did last time.

About the author

Bob Zeidman is the creator of the field of software forensics and the founder of several successful high-tech Silicon Valley firms including Zeidman Consulting and Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering. His latest venture is Good Beat Poker, a new way to play and watch poker online. He is the author of textbooks on engineering and intellectual property as well as award-winning screenplays and novels. His latest book is Election Hacks, the true story of how he challenged his own beliefs about voting machine hacking in the 2020 presidential election and made international news and (possibly) $5 million.