A new era begins...

Hi friends!

Wow. What an inauguration?!

For me at least, it was a long 12 to 16 hours, in which I tried to keep the activities (and my dread of them) from completely ruining my day.

Yet still, they pretty much did.

‪I spent much of the day focused on work and listening to sermons and some readings from the Bible, simply seeking some kind of distraction and peace.

But that only lasted for so long. In the end, I’m a writer and journalist at heart, and I’ve got a bit more than twenty folks who pay me for my thoughts between here and my defense news podcast, so here we go. (BTW, thank you all who put your money where your mouth is and support the efforts. I sincerely appreciate the trust and support.)

Determined to do my duty as best I could, despite my dejected mood, I ignored what folks were saying on social media and in the news and I watched the inauguration speech of President Trump’s with as open a mind as I could muster.

Then, after watching it, I took in a fair amount of analysis from folks on the right, middle, and left.

And now, I will share with you my thoughts.

In all honestly, as you regular readers know, I had pretty low expectations for Trump. And I dreaded the events of yesterday more than I’ve admitted to hardly anyone.

Probably like you, I have mostly crawled into a shell of isolation and despair since November.

But even though I had super low expectations, it's safe to say that Trump and company exceeded my abysmally-low expectations by a country mile — and not in a good way.

As The Daily Show perfectly summed up in one joke…

Of course, here’s what they’re referring to.

Musk blamed everyone else for what he did, of course, saying on X, “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The 'everyone is Hitler' attack is sooo tired."

Initially, some folks said it was a Roman salute. But as the BBC reported, “The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.”

So from there, the explanation moved to autism.

I’ll just let you read all sides of it here, if you want to dig deeper: Musk responds to backlash over gesture at Trump rally.

I suppose I should let it go, as the Anti-Defamation League gave Elon a pass on the gesture.

But it’s hard to let such a confusing gesture go, and with the country as closely divided as we are, I think an apology would be nice and help clear things up.

But, of course, that gesture from Elon wasn’t the only weird thing that happened.

There was this:

And again, maybe that was nothing. Maybe that was something. But it was certainly weird.

Also, I feel like this sums up Trump pretty well: “Maybe that was nothing. Maybe that was something. But it was certainly weird.”

Moving along, I thought I’d share the below summary of Trump’s speech at the inauguration.

As Dan Rather wrote:

Trump made America sound like a struggling nation rather than a country with one of the most robust and envied economies in the world. That is his schtick. It’s like Munchausen by Proxy, politics edition. He convinces people things are dire so that he, and only he, can swoop in to be their savior. To bring this point home, he said, “I was saved by god to make America great again.”

In the exact spot where rioters tried to carry out a coup four years ago, Trump unironically predicted that his proudest legacy will be as “peacemaker and unifier.” With all the grace of a thundering rhino, he laid blame for our country’s ills at the feet of Democrats sitting close by, accusing the Biden administration of a “horrible betrayal.” Way to be a peacemaker and unifier. We’ve all been here before. This bully has no filter, by design.

That’s one of the things that Trump does.

He talks about peace on the one hand, and then in the same speech vows to take back the Panama Canal.

He talks about peace, but then says the US needs Greenland for international security.

He talks about peace, but then declares cartels terrorist organizations and says that ‘Mexico is not going to like it.’

What is the truth? Who the heck knows?

And honestly, if it’s like the first term, he’ll probably change his mind multiple times, depending on the day.

Like, he may talk tough about Iran one day and bomb a dude in a risky move, such as this: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani.

But then he’ll blink on an attack (that he already authorized) at the last second. (Trump says he aborted retaliatory strike to spare Iranian lives.)

Trump almost thrives on this unpredictability.

And if it terrorizes half the world? Or makes Americans feel anxious? Well, then that’s just the cost of doing business, as he sees it.

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Trump did more than just talk yesterday

Trump moved fast on some things, as well.

He declared a national emergency at the southern border. (Declaring A National Emergency At The Southern Border.)

He signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship. (Trump signs executive order attacking birthright citizenship.)

He released 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants and convicted felons.

And herein you see the problem.

Because this isn’t what Trump and company were necessarily campaigning on.

Trump released them all.

Even this guy.

Also, a reminder, even Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for Attorney General, opposed this move a week ago…

Sadly, whether it’s true or not, by Trump releasing them, he also at least set up the possibility of this:

So, as some on the Left said, Trump just said by his actions that it’s okay to do political violence. If you do things for him, he’ll protect you.

And if we’re honest, that has always been one of my bigger fears.

That while laws may protect and delay some of Trump’s initiatives, it’s the potential for uncontrolled violence and retaliation that may help silence some of the critics.

A pretty bleak picture indeed.

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Can we get some positive vibes in here, please?

So, this all seems pretty negative and scary, but I don’t want to end the piece that way. I want to end with some hope and optimism.

Here’s point 1, a reminder from the first term.

Even on the legal front, we knew there’d be lawsuits no matter what.

But on the even brighter side, this is some REALLY shoddy work so far, it seems.

Below is a three-post thread from a senior writer at Slate, who’s been covering the courts for years, and I find it encouraging. This tells me that the voluminous legal challenges that I'm sure will soon be happening might have even more hope than one would expect.

“CJ Roberts” is Chief Justice John Roberts.

And as expected, the legal challenges are already starting.

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Before we close, let me end by saying I felt a fair amount of anger at President Biden yesterday. (An amount almost in proportion to what I feel toward Trump.)

It was Biden’s selfishness at running again that helped empower this. And his selfishness will unwind many of the accomplishments that he achieved, not to mention put the people of Ukraine and other coutnries, such as Taiwan, at great risk.

I’m also, while we’re being honest, still angry about Biden’s outlandish recent comments that he could have won had he run again. (Biden says he could have defeated Trump.)

Are you serious?! Let me be clear. That absurd comment further wrecked my views of his mental condition, not to mention his absolute insane arrogance.

I’m sorry, but what he said was offensive to Kamala Harris.

And… As a reminder, Biden had his chance to face off with Trump again literally last year, before he dropped out, and Trump wiped the stage with him in the biggest debate blowout probably in history.

So, yes, I’m not happy with Biden. And, yes, I’m not happy that we now have Trump.

I guess this is why I’m a moderate. Both parties absolutely drive me insane.

But I did my Christian duty yesterday. I prayed for Trump, that God would help him make wise decisions and not be ruled by anger or retribution.

Multiple times in the Bible, God commands Christians to respect governing authority and to pray for our leaders.

It’s a hard command to swallow, and one that most angry conservatives clearly either haven’t read or fully ignore, but I will do my best to follow my Lord’s commands, regardless of how hard a challenge some may prove.

As one pastor recently said, “If you don’t think that God can change a President, then you clearly don’t believe much about the power of your God.”

(And as a historical reminder, when many of these commands in the Bible were written, Roman emperors were torturing or killing Christians. And yet Christians still prayed for them and submitted to authority; this partly why the Church back then spread so far and wide in such a quick pacbelieverse: these were true beleivers who lived and breathed what they said.)

But having said all of this as a very long preamable, I hope my Republican friends on the Right are as outraged about Trump’s money-making schemes as they were of Hunter Biden using his close ties to the White House.

Hopefully, you all saw the news: Trump's new meme coin soars on his first day in office, lifts other tokens.

If you aren’t aware of the dangers of that, here’s a good summary from Heather Cox Richardson:

The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”

As Salmon noted, “The emoluments clause of the Constitution,” which prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any gift or title from a foreign leader or government, “written in 1787, hardly envisaged a world where a president could conjure billions of dollars of wealth out of nowhere just by endorsing a meme.” Salmon also pointed out that there is no way to track the purchases of this coin, meaning it will be a way for those who want something from Trump to transfer money directly to him.

Former Trump official Anthony Scaramucci posted that “anyone in the world can essentially deposit money” into the bank account of the president of the United States. On Sunday, Trump’s wife Melania launched her own coin. It took the wind out of the sales of Trump’s coin, although both coins have disclaimers saying that the coins are “an expression of support for and engagement with the values embodied by” the Trumps, and are not intended to be “an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.” Her cryptocurrency was worth more than $5 billion within two hours.

These money-making schemes should be condemned by all sides, but I won’t hold my breath.

Our country is in a nasty political fight, and far too many people give their unquestioning loyalty to one side or the other.

Oh, that we might all question our views and what we believe with more independence than what either Party wishes.

As George Washington wrote in 1799, when he was urged to run a third term in a political party:

"The line between Parties," Washington wrote Trumbull, had become "so clearly drawn" that politicians would "regard neither truth nor decency; attacking every character, without respect to persons — Public or Private — who happen to differ from themselves in Politics." Washington wrote that, even if he were willing to run for president again, as a Federalist, "I am thoroughly convinced I should not draw a single vote from the Anti-federal side."

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Hang in there, my friends. We’re going to get through this, one day at a time.

All posts are free, so feel free to share. (And in that line of thinking, it seems the social media sites throttle down my posts when they have a link to Substack, so if you could forward this to a person — or two — who might be interested, it’d sure help me a lot!)

As you know, if you want true peace, I believe you should look to God for that — not a country, not a Party, and certainly not a person. If you know nothing about the Bible, but want to test the waters and maybe try it out, check out my resource page here.

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Finally, if you love politics, you might love this book. If ever we needed to learn the lessons of Obama, it’s now… The book is a short, inexpensive read that shares some brilliant political lessons that we all need to learn.

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Want to talk to me directly?

Email me at the following address: stanrmitchell2012@gmail.com. I love hearing feedback, compliments, and even constructive criticism. 👊💓🙏

May God bless you,

Stan R. Mitchell

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P.S. Don’t forget that I also put out a weekly podcast about defense news and our military. Here’s that link:

I've also written twelve fast, exciting books. (See covers below.)

Finally, I also write a faith blog about God and the Bible. (As a child, I was wounded badly by the church and left it to study other religions, before returning to the faith of my roots.) You can find it below.

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