February 23, 2025
Trump Must Speak
By J.R. Dunn

In the span of a few weeks, Donald Trump has carried out one of the most sweeping political revolutions in modern history. Using DOGE as his battering ram, he has crippled the Democrats, exposed machinery of corruption that would have beggared the imaginations of Boss Tweed and Ted Pendergast, and effectively ended a political era going back a century or more. He—along with Elon Musk and his merry band of nerds—has uncovered a system of public theft and money laundering that, in the end, may account for trillions of dollars over the last eighty years. And it has just started. Wait until the DoJ and Congress enter the field.

It will likely be years before we grasp the full magnitude of the DOGE revolution. The Democrats already have—and they’re running like rabbits. The D.C. housing market has collapsed, with more than 14,000 houses listed over the past two weeks. You won’t find many Republicans selling. Google Analytics reveals that the most common search terms in D.C. over the past week have included “defense attorneys,” “statute of limitations,” and “overseas accounts.”

The impact of this has been muted, largely by the media, which instead has spent its time bleating about “constitutional crisis” and “President Musk.” So, the public at large has not quite grasped the import of what has occurred, appearing to look at it as a Beltway uproar that sensible people should pay no attention to.

Which is why Donald Trump needs to make a speech.

The role of speeches as political events can scarcely be overemphasized. When we think of critical events in the historical record, we often think first of the speeches associated with them. In his Funeral Oration in 431, Pericles, as presented in Thuycides, outlined for all time the role of the republic in human affairs. At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln, in a few short words, reiterated the promise of American democracy. In 1940, in the midst of near-catastrophe, Winston Churchill rallied Great Britain to stand alone against one of the most vicious tyrannies in the historical record. We could go on: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream,” Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall.” A speech can act as a kind of historical punctuation, telling us when something has ended and when something has begun…or is beginning.

It’s true that Donald Trump is not a speechifyin’ man. He’s a first-rate communicator—none better on the current scene. But memorable speeches or phrasemaking don’t leap to mind where Trump is concerned. Trump gets his point across with simple words, a rather ornate form of repetition (the literati who like to sneer seem to have missed the fact that Trump’s repeated phrases are usually variations, making the point clearer by adding a kind of three-dimensional effect), and a syntax all his own. All of which is fine. He gets his point across, which is all that counts. But there comes a time for something more formal, and that time has now arrived.

Such a speech would be simple in outline. It would consist of Donald Trump explaining what we’re fighting against, how the Deep State and its bureaucratic appendages began, how it grew and flourished, becoming the universal tumor that exists today, and how such a thing cannot be tolerated in a healthy republic. (A simple reason would be the fact that concentrating the incredible levels of funding required by this monolith will always attract grifters, hustlers, and cheats, as it plainly has. We could call this “the Hunter effect.”)

He could then go into the damage that it has caused on all levels. This wouldn’t take much—everybody has their own story.

He could then explain what he did about it and why.

He would go on to tell what we can expect, and how the American people can benefit. (We’re not going to hear this anyplace else. The legacy media has been almost dead silent about Trump’s tax refund plan, which guarantees that all Americans will share in the windfall created by Elon’s efforts. From what I can see, the only thing wrong with this is that it could be inflationary—it might be best to split it into two payments—one for 2025 and one a year later.)

Trump could then move on to the opposition, the people who want to reassert bureaucratic control and take back all those billions. (Or is it trillions by now?) He should name names and lay down challenges. It would be interesting to see how Chuck and Adam and Nancy respond to this.

Finally, he could tell the American people what the results will be—what we can look forward to with all the savings, all the extra cash, and that tremendous political weight removed from our shoulders. There are a lot of things that have been put on the back burner over the past half century due to stolen funds, bureaucratic interference, and simple political indolence and inertia. The possibilities that could be opening up are tantalizing. Elon Musk’s vision of a humanized Mars is only one example.

A renewed world is beginning to attain clarity, a world I could not have imagined as recently as a month ago. With a few well-chosen words, Trump could help usher it into existence. He has knocked down the wall. Now, let him tell the world about it.