Four More Years

They'll Just Fly By

The southern wind
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves
Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.
—Henry IV, Part 1, Act V, i

In a bar in New Orleans, my wife’s cousin took a break from the joking we were doing to ask me a serious question: what will President Donald Trump’s second term be like? “It will be nothing like anything we can imagine,” I told him.

We’re starting a new era, the second Trump era, with his inauguration on Monday. You thought getting up on Monday was rough before.

We’re already seeing signs that the second term won’t just be a continuation of the first term. Trump was unprepared for his first inauguration and his first days in office. The agenda was largely set by former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and his fellow Wisconsinite White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Trump brought in the generals to staff his administration, and it looked like the adults might run the show.

Well, we weren’t that fortunate as it turned out. Given how the “adults” were treated, it was too much to expect that Trump would bring them back for a second term, if any of them could still be found.

Instead, we’re getting the “MTV unplugged” version of Trump. No heavy production values here. Look at the nominations the Senate is considering: Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, credibly accused of sexual assault; Kash Patel for FBI director, who promises to punish Trump’s enemies; Pam Biondi for attorney general, who dropped an investigation in Trump’s business activities after receiving a campaign donation; anti-vaccine nut Robert Kennedy Jr for Health and Human Services; Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, known for her pro-Russian sympathies; Congressman Elise Stefanik for United Nations Ambassador; South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, who bragged about shooting a dog to prove her toughness; pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon for education secretary; television quack doctor Mehmet Oz to run Medicare and Medicaid; Russell T. Vought, an architect of Project 2025, as director of the Office of Management and Budget; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another television personality, as ambassador to Israel; and Charles Kushner, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka. Kushner served two years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, retaliating against a federal witness and lying to the Federal Election Commission before being pardoned by Trump in his first term.

This isn’t a list of serious people who will hold serious positions of power. At best, many of them are candidates to have their pictures on the wall at the post office. At worst, many of them remind you of a Batman comic book “rogues gallery.”

On top of all this, billionaire Elon Musk, who has come out of the closet as a supporter of white nationalists, and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ that will somehow find government spending cuts without affecting entitlement spending.

The parade of dangerous men marching towards the White House is so alarming, and so numerous, that little attention is getting paid to Trump placing his personal legal team in important positions, including his defense attorney Todd Blanche who will serve as Deputy Attorney General.

And this isn’t even a complete list of Trump’s awful nominees. The Ambassador to Greece will be Kimberly Guilfoyle, whose claim to fame is getting fired from Fox News allegedly for sexual harassment and dating one of the Trump children. The Ambassador to the Bahamas will be former football player Herschel Walker, known for his enjoyment of “Russian Roulette,” among other scandals.

Beyond Trump’s appointees are the policies, many of them described in the aforementioned “Project 2025.” But the biggest impacts Trump will have domestically will be on trade, where Trump has promised a massive increase in tariffs, and immigration.

Five of the first ten executive orders will be about illegal immigrants, according to Trump advisor Stephen Miller. The plan is for “shock and awe,” a Trump presidency that will begin with mass immigration raids. While the proposed efforts to stop illegal immigration sound popular now, will the public put up with the cost, the raids, the economic disruptions, the separation of families, the creation of deportation camps, and possible violence (including the use of the American military) if Trump has his way?

Then there is Trump’s foreign policy. So far, instead of promising support for our ally Ukraine, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment, the president is hoping to annex Canada and Greenland while re-taking the Panama Canal. While Trump has, so far, cooperated with the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden in ending the conflict between Hamas and Israel, there is no way of knowing what Trump’s Middle East policies will be. And then there are the growing doubts among our allies, in NATO and elsewhere, that Trump will honor our mutual defense commitments.

What will our foreign policy be like? If it is anything like Trump’s first term, it will be subject to Trump’s economic and political interests. But we have no way of knowing if that will be the limit of Trump’s policies, or just the starting point for his mad dreams.

What we do know about the next four years is that there will be no brakes on Trumpism from the Republican Party. Already, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson removed Rep. Mike Turner as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, possibly at Trump’s request because Turner supported Ukraine and was not a Trump loyalist. Turner also voted to certify the 2020 presidential election. Republicans have been largely silent, or supportive, on Trump’s comments regarding Panama and Greenland.

The good news is that four years will just fly by under Trump. Every day will bring us a new scandal, a new controversy, a new social media post, that will make us forget the previous day. We will have chaos and authoritarianism in such doses that soon we will be completely numb to the madness.

Oh wait, that’s not good at all, is it?

Bits and Bites

Goodbye, Mr. Baseball

I was in New Orleans, just waking from a nap, when I saw the news. “No.”

“What’s wrong?” the Lovely Doreen asked.

Tears were already beginning to form. “Bob Uecker died.”

“You better cry that way when I die,” Doreen said.

“I’ve been with Bob longer,” was my reply.

For so many of us, baseball was Bob Uecker. I can remember where I was when I heard Uecker’s call on Easter Sunday in 1987. I can still hear the speech he gave when County Stadium closed. I can also remember Uecker’s last words describing the loss to the New York Mets at the end of last season, “I'm telling you, that one had some sting on it.”

Somehow you knew what he meant. Uecker was 90, calling fewer games, and sounding frailer each time. You could see comments on social media from fans, saying the Brewers needed to win last year for Uecker. Nobody wanted to say why. But you knew. It was the end of the endless summer, of baseball legends and lore, of home run calls and excitement over amazing catches, of tales of old stadiums and young players.

I saw Uecker a couple of years ago at the car dealership getting his car serviced. Everyone was treating him with respect and I respected his privacy by not approaching him. Instead, I pointed him out to my daughter, who has never forgiven me for not taking her to game 163.

The man of the Miller Lite commercials, the Tonight Show appearances, and the Major League movies was much smaller in person. Age, diseases. ill-health, had taken their toll.

But on the air, his voice still commanded our attention. When he told a story, you almost wished the game would stop to let him finish it. However, he never let a good story interfere with the game, and they would be woven together in an unforgettable tapestry of sound and memory.

Still, you knew. You knew it would come to an end, even if we never wanted to admit it. Just one more at bat before the sun sets on the field, please? Just one more home run call.

No, it’s time to go. The season is over and winter is here. Baseball has broken our hearts again.

“It is here where boys became men, men became champions and champions became legends. It is a very sad time for me, for I have been here as a fan, as a player, and for the last 30 years as a broadcaster. But tonight is the final curtain. It’s time to say goodbye. We will never forget you. For what was will always be. So long, old friend, and good night, everybody.”
— Bob Uecker, September 28, 2000
at the closing of Milwaukee County Stadium