Too much change doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like stress. If Trump wants Republicans to win elections in 2026 and 2028, he needs to slow down. My new column from RealClearPolitics.
By FRANK MIELE
There is a saying among MAGA conservatives that “Trump was right about everything.” You can even buy a hat to that effect, so you know it’s true.
But sometimes the truth is a double-edged sword. Case in point: When Trump predicted in 2016 that his supporters would be so worn out by “too much winning” that they would beg him to stop.
“We’re gonna turn it around, and we’re gonna start winning again. … We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning and you’ll say, ‘Please, please, it’s too much winning, we can’t take it anymore. Mr. President, it’s too much,’ and I’ll say, no it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!”
Well, Trump failed to deliver enough winning in his first term to have his prediction come true – at least partly because the Democrats tangled him up in a fake Russia collusion investigation for the better part of two years – but Trump wasn’t done in 2021, not by a long shot.
Fast forward to the non-contiguous second term that began in … oh wait, it just began this year! Just nine months ago to be exact. Even though it seems like a lifetime. Working at warp speed, Trump has crammed more into those nine months than Joe Biden did in his entire four years (and Barack Obama did in eight.)
Which brings us to the theme of this column. Is it possible that “too much winning” is not just a rallying cry but, in practice, a bad thing?
Any Psychology 101 course will teach you that change is the chief cause of stress, and Trump 2.0 has one indisputable characteristic – unrelenting, unyielding, unprecedented change.
Starting on Jan. 20, when the president signed 26 executive orders in less than half a day, it has been nonstop experimentation and overhaul.
Admittedly, that’s why he was elected. Let’s stipulate that after the disastrous Biden presidency, people wanted a change – and up until now they have been resilient enough to adapt to the new world order that Trump brought to the capital. But how long can it continue at this frenetic pace?
Does Trump risk a backlash that will hurt not just him, but his party? Because, remember, everything Trump did with his executive orders can be undone by the next Democratic president. For those of us who supported Trump in the last three elections, that is an outcome we can hardly contemplate, which is why it is time for a serious accounting of how much winning the public can tolerate before having a collective nervous breakdown.
Some of the changes we’ve seen were long overdue, like closing the border and deporting as many of the illegal aliens ushered into the country by Biden as possible, especially the ones who are violent criminals. Into this category you can also fit the dismantling of policies that permitted men to enter women’s private spaces and to compete with women unfairly in sports that were supposed to be protected by Title IX.
Other actions taken during Trump 2.0 make sense to MAGA conservatives, but are red flags to Democrats or old-school Republicans. This includes the insistence on prosecuting formerly protected government agents who had weaponized the law to target Trump and his family and friends. It would have been easy to turn the other cheek and pretend that the so-called Deep State had learned its lesson by being called out publicly for its abhorrent behavior. But who are we kidding? No one learns a lesson about humility by getting away with murder. Consequences are the great teacher.
There are also instances of what can be considered Trump’s overreach, but which signify honest efforts to find solutions to decades-old problems. In this category, I would include the executive order to end birthright citizenship. The lax interpretation of the 14th Amendment that has turned children into political pawns ought to be stopped, and Trump is making a noble effort to do so – despite Democrats claiming they see no harm in allowing millions of foreign children to become citizens of a republic that is increasingly divided against itself.
But now we come to the last category of “wins” – the ones that seem more of a burden than a comfort. First and foremost in that grouping I have to assign “the ballroom.” Many level-headed people have sought to assure me that Trump’s insistence on adding an ornate ballroom to the White House is not nearly as pathological as Democrats claim. Maybe so, but it is at best a distraction and at worst a complete misreading of the mood of the people.
And that is the most important point. Trump’s magic gift up until now has been his nearly inerrant ability to be on the right side of every populist issue. But the ballroom… there is no conceivable way to sell the ballroom to the American people except as a vanity project that is completely at odds with the economic message of Republicans. If the GOP is the party of the average Joe, then why is Trump building a palatial ballroom for the political elites, funded by corporate elites and off-limits to the common man and woman unless they get a glimpse during a White House tour?
But that’s not all. It’s not just a bad look. It was sold to the American public under false pretenses. We were originally told that the East Wing would not be disturbed. Now the East Wing doesn’t exist. We were told that it would cost $200 million. Now it costs $300 million. We were told taxpayer money wouldn’t be involved, but who knows? Most importantly, we the people were left out of the process. It’s just possible that we liked our White House just the way it was – a symbol of power that was in its own way humble and simple.
Another grating aspect of this vanity project is that if us regular folks wanted to demolish part of a building on the National Register of Historic Places, we would have to go through a process. “Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires Federal agencies to take into account the effects of their undertakings on historic properties and afford the [Advisory] Council [on Historic Preservation] a reasonable opportunity to comment on such undertakings.”
Did anyone get a chance to comment? Did anyone take into account the effect of tearing down the East Wing? Of course not. Apparently the White House is not on the official registry of historic places, but that’s just because no one thought to put it there – because we all know its historic significance.
So yes, the country is winning a White House ballroom, but for Republicans it may turn out to be a win too far. It hands Democrats one more issue with which to drive a wedge between Trump and his base going into the 2026 midterm elections. The truth of the matter is that with all the changes going on, people are understandably growing increasingly anxious.
To add global dimensions to the terror, President Trump last week ordered the Defense Department to start up nuclear testing, which hasn’t happened since 1992. Any chance he was giving us a hint of something to come when he renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War? Maybe not, but really you have to wonder when it will all stop.
So even if there were no ballroom for Democrats to politicize and weaponize against Trump, the long-term effect of so many changes has much of the citizenry begging for a respite – and that can only spell trouble for Trump and Republicans in the midterms.
If I were JD Vance, I’d start planning for a 2028 campaign with a slogan like “Enough Already” or “Time for a Breather.” Or just “We did it! Now let’s enjoy it!” Turns out, people can only take so much winning after all.
About Heartland Diary USA
Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,” “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.
