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The Conversation
Trump Is On the Move
Feb. 10, 2025
Credit… Kevin Lamarque/Reuters Gail Collins: Bret, we’ve spent so much time agreeing about President Trump, it’s been great — at least for argument’s sake — that you can come up with specific presidential actions where you’re now pro-Trump. While I tend to irrationally object to every single thing he does.
Well, maybe not so irrationally. But today, tell me how you feel about the latest sweeps to save money by shutting down humanitarian aid overseas and offering buyouts to the entire C.I.A. work force.
Bret Stephens: I’m not pro-Trump. He scares me. There are days when I wake up and think: If this goes on like this for four years, or even four months, we’re going to be living in an unrecognizable republic — one in which lickspittle Republican legislators and cabinet members rubber-stamp every crazy Trump idea, federal court decisions are simply ignored by the executive branch, Elon Musk creates a Department of Personal Efficiency (DOPE) that tracks and scores your every move and a booming economy keeps a majority of voters indifferent to the collapse of civic and constitutional norms. We saw that model play out in the early years of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship in Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule in Turkey.
Gail: I do like that Musk idea — not the actual agency, just the part about calling it DOPE.
Bret: But today I’m in the mood to provoke our readers a little. And the truth is I just don’t disagree with every single policy of Trump’s. With regards to U.S.A.I.D., I’ve always had my misgivings about the way the United States delivers aid, often via self-dealing contractors to corrupt countries and often making our supposed beneficiaries more corrupt and less self-reliant. As for the C.I.A., it’s not going to be abolished in this presidency or any other. Though I’m a little surprised to hear so many liberals spring to the agency’s defense.
That said, the way the Trump administration has essentially tried to shutter U.S.A.I.D. overnight, stranding employees, cutting off critical health care programs and getting blocked by courts, is reckless, capricious and cruel. We need to rethink and reform aid delivery, not destroy it. The same goes for all the other agencies and programs to which Musk is taking a hatchet instead of a scalpel.
Gail: Pretty hard to argue with reform-not-destroy. Although it definitely depends on the character of the so-called reformers.
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