Morning Glory: What are President Trump's second term legacy goals?
2024-12-31
Category: opinion

As President-elect Donald Trump approaches his second inauguration, does he have a plan for his second-term "legacy achievements" in mind? Trump already holds the title for "biggest upset win in a presidential election ever" as a result of Trump’s 2016 besting of Hillary Clinton. Trump is also never going to be dislodged from the title of "greatest political comeback in American history," a title he took from his old friend Richard Nixon. And Trump is already the most significant president ever when it comes to turning the United States Supreme Court in a dramatically new direction—in Trump’s case, back to the actual text and public meaning of the Constitution—a legacy which may deepen and extend even further into the future if retirements follow the end of this SCOTUS term or next. Trump will almost certainly put two new and different markers on the board. If the GOP holds its Senate majority in 2026, Trump will almost certainly top the record for total number of federal judges appointed over the course of a presidency, which is currently 383, held by Ronald Reagan, which is currently 149 ahead of the 234 total judges Trump appointed in his first term. As for federal appeals court judges, Trump’s first term saw 54 nominees to those benches confirmed, just one shy of the total Barack Obama saw confirmed in his eight years as president. Trump should end up with greatest number of federal appeals court judges appointed, probably within three months of taking the oath of office again. (President Biden appointed one Supreme Court justice and 45 appeals court judges. Those 45 are of course obliged to follow the law as declared by the Supreme Court.) CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION  When "the Wall" is complete, Trump will almost certainly attend the completion of its last section, and for as long as anyone reading this is alive, the Wall will be the country’s visible expression of an invisible national resolve to control our own borders. Trump’s second economic boom will follow aggressive deregulation and the energy production and housing construction deregulation ignites. The one area where Trump did not succeed in his first term? His promise, often repeated, to expand the U.S. Navy to 355 ships while revitalizing ship building via the expansion and modernization of the dry docks and graving docks the expanding fleet needs. He was making a start at the end of his first term when Ambassador Robert O’Brien, a "navalist," was Trump’s national security advisor and doing everything he could to help Trump move the DOD bureaucracy to get serious about ships but Trump ran out of time. He gets a second at-bat on this goal and this legacy. TRUMP'S CONVINCING 2024 VICTORY SETS HOUSE GOP UP FOR HOMEFIELD ADVANTAGE IN 2026 MIDTERM ELECTIONS Making America’s Navy as great as it has ever been is a big lift for Trump but one he can obtain if he begins on January 20. He can message this goal in his second inaugural address and can hammer on it every day by asking his senior staff every morning: "What did we do for the Navy yesterday and what are we going to do for it today?" According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies—easily the equal of any think tank that dives deep into national security matters—"China now possesses the world’s largest maritime fighting force, operating 234 warships to the U.S. Navy’s 219."  There’s more bad news. "About 70 percent of Chinese warships were launched after 2010, while only about 25 percent of the U.S. Navy’s were," the CSIS report noted. "Chinese ship production dwarfs that of the United States. The Office of Naval Intelligence assessment noted that China has ‘dozens’ of commercial shipyards larger and more productive than the largest U.S. shipyards, and an unclassified U.S. Navy briefing slide suggested that China has 230 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States. China’s massive shipbuilding industry would provide a strategic advantage in a war that stretches beyond a few weeks, allowing it to repair damaged vessels or construct replacements much faster than the United States, which continues to face a significant maintenance backlog and would probably be unable to quickly construct many new ships or to repair damaged fighting ships in a great power conflict." Read the whole CSIS assessment and be very alarmed and correctly so. Trump has consistently aimed for the sort of seapower legacy that marked the greatest presidencies of the 20th century—TR, FDR, and Reagan. All three of these leaders understood at their core that the United States is first and foremost a "seapower," and that maintaining dominance of the world’s waterways is essential to American strength and endurance in the face of many global adversaries, most especially the only superpower peer: The People’s Republic of China. (TR and FDR had the advantage of having been Assistant Secretaries of the Navy earlier in their careers.) Trump knows Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the ruthless leader of a ruthless regime. Trump isn’t afraid of Xi but would certainly prefer to manage the tensions between our nation and the Chinese Communist Party rather than have them explode into conflict. "Making America Great Again" necessarily includes avoiding a war with China and that in turn means maintaining our strategic superiority over the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Liberation Army Navy ("PLAN"). &nbsp; Mackenzie Eaglen and Brady Africa of the American Enterprise Institute recently assessed both our Navy and the PLAN and concluded that "China has been investing so much in shipbuilding over the past 18 years that it can now build more ships in a month than the United States can in a year — and Beijing aims to keep widening its advantage." "If the U.S. military does not soon catch up to this capacity, it risks finding itself off-guard and ill-equipped in a conflict scenario," the continued. "China’s recent expansions should alarm American military planners and spur investments to bolster naval power."  Trump can join TR and Reagan as godfather of fleet which primarily deters wars, but also can support winning them. When Woodrow Wilson first sent a half dozen destroyers to join the Allies in World War One, the first six destroyers to reach Ireland and join the battle against the Kaiser’s U-boats were the USS McDougal (Destroyer #54); USS Conyngham (Destroyer #58); USS Porter (Destroyer #59); USS Wadsworth (Destroyer #60), and USS Davis (Destroyer #62). All six of these ships were built between 1913 and 1916. When Wilson finally reacted to unrestricted warfare on all shipping and to the revelation of the "Zimmerman telegraph," he had the destroyers at hand to dispatch to the Channel and the waters nearby.&nbsp;  The Germans’ secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office on January 17, 1917. The telegram was intercepted by the Royal Navy, and it proposed a military contract between the German Empire and Mexico if the United States entered World War I against Germany, one that argued that Mexico should gain Texas, New Mexico and Arizona from the United States. The telegram was sent from the Kaiser’s foreign office to his Ambassador in Mexico City and laid down blunt instructions:&nbsp; "On February 1 we intend to begin submarine warfare without restriction. In spite of this it is our intention to endeavour to keep the United States neutral. If this attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and together make peace; we shall give general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer her lost territory of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Wilson received the contents of the telegram in late February of 2017 and chose to release it to the public and America’s entry into the war followed. We don’t need a Zimmerman Telegraph to alert us to Xi’s plan. He’s building ports in Peru and Namibia to support a blue-water PLAN and new ships suited to the invasion of Taiwan. Trump’s best way to go down in history as a "peace-maker," is to throw much of his vast energy at rebuilding our power on, above, and under the seas. Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. &nbsp;Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT