Kamala was not available for that proverbial 3 am phone call. 

That is, she didn’t pick up a telephone to contact Donald Trump to say, “Congratulations, Mr. President-elect-twice. Obviously, the numbers are rolling in, and you’re coming out ahead. It was a long road and a tough campaign, and we said a lot of things, and the country is divided. But life goes on. And now, considering what we know, you can say that I conceded and also that I wish you and your family well. Looking ahead, we all must work to get the country back on track. Best wishes, sir.”

Nope. Instead, the losing candidate summarily sent the crowd home from her now-irrelevant “victory” watch and, per various accounts, berated her campaign staff. 

Return of the Trump

Yes, he’s back. Donald J. Trump, once and future president: Numbers 45 and 47. Grover Cleveland redux, one might say. With promises to build the wall. Deport criminal illegals. Tariffs on imports. End wars. Higher wages. Less inflation. Lower prices. No more DEI from government. Crackdown on crime. No tax on tips. Rebuild the military. Drain that swamp. And more. 

Hey, that’s just on Day One.

The other side is apoplectic. Two days ago, the inaptly named sourpuss Joy Reid of MSNBC compared Trump to Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and even Venezuela’s Maduro, all in about two run-on sentences. As I understand it, Joy attended Harvard in the 1990s and majored in Film Studies, meaning she watched movies for four years. Along such lines, thank goodness for cue cards, I suppose. Because I don’t think she really knows much about, say, real history.

Meanwhile, the New York Times sniffily chastised Trump for claiming victory before all the “official” numbers were certified from every state. Yeah, like, let’s await those cliffhanger results from Alaska and Hawaii. I think there’s some guy on Attu Island in the Aleutians whose ballot hasn’t quite made it to Cold Harbor yet. 

With Trump inbound, the price of oil is holding steady. Gold dropped a small fraction, reflecting a very slight strengthening in the dollar. The Chinese yuan fell as Asian traders priced in the likelihood of Trump tariffs on exports. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s Truth Social company (DJT) shares are up pre-market, as are shares in Elon Musk’s Tesla. And I suspect that the underlying value of X, formerly Twitter, just firmed up quite a bit as well.

If you didn't see this coming, it’s time to short the Green New Scam. Offshore windmills are definitely out; Trump told Joe Rogan that they kill whales, which is basically correct. The low-frequency, long wavelength, whump-whump-whump infrasound is inaudible to human ears, but rings like a gigantic bell to the sensitive hearing of whales, dolphins, etc. 

Electric vehicles, too, are a fading play. Yes, there’s room for EVs in specific niche markets, but the national-scale mandates are toast. So no, unlike the case with the unfortunate whales, there will be no large-scale die-off of internal combustion engines, not for the foreseeable future. Car companies that went all-in, like Ford, have a rocky road ahead. 

Drill baby, drill? Considering the long supply and personnel chains required to ramp up any major energy effort, it's not as easy as it sounds. But yes, it’ll be easier with Trump and his people in office; and note the looming Republican Senate, which means that Trump’s appointees will get confirmed. 

Also, along those energy lines, look offshore into the Gulf of Mexico. The Biden administration has been awful for offshore development these past four years, especially deepwater, where the large oilfields remain. But again, drilling offshore takes time, about five to ten times the fracking timetable on any sort of project. 

With regard to overseas military expeditions, Trump said on the campaign trail that he’d “settle the wars” before he even took office. Well, no, because the U.S. has only one president at a time, and right now, that guy is Joe Biden, and he’s preoccupied with other matters like binge-watching Netflix shows.

Frankly, I’m a “Commander in Chief” sort of voter. I served my early Navy days under President Reagan, and always believed he had our back. Other presidents, not so much. And then there was this Biden-Harris administration, which turned the Afghan withdrawal into a debacle. And famously, Biden himself looked at his wristwatch during the return ceremony of dead personnel at Dover Air Force Base. I’ll leave it at that.

More broadly, I suspect that Vladimir Putin will be interested in learning what Trump wants to do about Ukraine, certainly, now that President-elect 47 is on the cusp of returning to political power. In other words, it’s one thing to sit in the bleachers, even 50-yard line seats, and critique the plays. And it’s quite another to be the head coach down on the field. 

More specifically, how much money and how many more weapons will Trump dump into the Ukrainian cauldrons? Or will he tell the Ukrainians that it’s over and the Russians are going to present terms, and we’re going to deal with it? No easy answers here. 

And then there’s Israel-Iran. Again, beware of a country that has 50,000 long-range missiles stored in caves. If they shoot 100 per day, that’s enough for a 500-day war, and there’s no way that Israel can handle it. 

All this while those Houthis in Yemen have all but closed the Red Sea to ship traffic that they don’t want cruising past their shores. How bad is it? Well, recently, both the German and British navies decided to sail their flagged warships back to Euroland by taking the long route around Africa versus risking getting shot at in the Bab el Mandeb. 

Okay, there’s plenty more to discuss about what happened two days ago, November 5, 2024, and into the evening and night as the vote tallies rolled in. People will write books.

For now, just go about your business and day. The lights are still on. There’s water in the pipes. Food on the shelves. And the Deep State cowers in fear in the Beltway shadows. 

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