Today’s the day when you get to drop the “-elect” from your title, Donald. Eight years ago, you began with a memorable speech about “American carnage,” setting a tone for what would come to be a chaotic presidency that culminated in the mishandling of a deadly pandemic and your attempt to nullify the results of the 2020 election, which you lost. You must do better, in today’s address from inside the Capitol Rotunda, and for the next four years. For your sake, for the country and for the world.
So, here we are again after your resounding 2024 victory. You’re going to get something precious in this world: a second chance, an opportunity to do things differently. You’re entrusted with the awesome responsibility of delivering a better reality for the nation, and one whose level of global power and influence ties its future inextricably to the rest of the world.
So far, we’re afraid that you seem on track to squander this opportunity, having pledged to spend this afternoon, your first newly at the helm of the federal government, instituting some sort of mass deportation scheme to commence tomorrow, implementing tariffs, attempting to subvert the Constitution via an end to birthright citizenship, pardoning Jan. 6 defendants and other destructive policy.
You don’t have to do any of this. You might think that this is what your electorate wants, but that’s not true. The bulk of your voters have the belief that you will improve their personal economic situation, and each one of those moves will work against that goal.
Indiscriminate tariffs, per essentially every economist of every ideological bent, will enormously raise costs on consumer goods and necessities ranging from food to fuel to electronics, especially with big levies against our largest trading partners and neighbors, Canada and Mexico (both of which you are threatening with annexation or military incursion, a posture unlikely to provoke much cooperation, economic or otherwise).
You’ll notice, too, that we said you are tasked with leading a nation of 335 million, not 335 million minus the immigrants. Whether you like it or not — and for most of your life, you seem to have been all too happy to accept the benefits and contributions — immigrants are fully and comprehensively integrated into the fabric of American life. If you try to violently change this, you are going to push multiple sectors of the economy off a cliff.
At the very basest level, the economic miracle of the 20th century United States comes down to one principle: stability. Some degree of predictability and institutional stability is the reason that the dollar is a global reserve currency, that the financial markets work, that domestic and foreign investment flows, people start businesses, plan long-term with savings and homeownership, start families.
Pardoning insurrectionists and giving license to further right-wing violence, weaponizing federal law enforcement and regulatory authorities against perceived enemies, restricting rights and taking aim at democratic processes is a terrific way to dynamite the stability that the nation has spent centuries building up, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.
At that point, the skyrocketing price of eggs will be the least of the concerns of the population. Rather than all this, why not go in a different direction? You could channel some of your and your supporters’ establishment-skeptical streak to a good end, such as taking aim at the monopolized industries that have hurt workers around the country.
There’s a reason that the tech barons have in the past year rushed to support and appease you; they know that there’s been renewed interest in having the government do its part to regulate what have become the primary shapers of public social and political understanding. Show you won’t be bought.
For all the ink we’ve spilled on what are eminently valid criticisms of you and your policies over the years, we hope you’ll set aside the most destructive parts of your agenda. You’ve got four years to prove us wrong.
