On the Clock

One of the most important traits to have as a football coach is to be open-minded enough to understand why you won a game and also why you lost a game. If you understand why your team won, then you’ll keep doing the things they will help your team win in the future, and if you understand why your team lost, you’ll make the proper changes which will also help your team win in the future. Too often, coach’s egos get involved and they have a misunderstanding of why their team won or lost. They take too much credit for wins and point too many fingers for losses. They end up double downing on things that are not really working and change things that are working, and eventually, the team collapses.

Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday was 4 years in the making. The Democrats did everything wrong the last four years. They changed the policies that were working and pushed policies that had no chance of success. I cannot think of one successful policy they implemented – the overspending which created inflation, the war on oil and gas, the open borders, the soft on crime policies, overregulating businesses, the implementation of the woke agenda into government agencies and public schools, a weak foreign policy which led to two foreign wars. Everything was disastrous, and very little of what they actually ran on. If they did the things that they ran on, they would probably be looking at another four years in power. But they didn’t. They never understood why they won. They were blinded by their own egos.

They believed that if they could call their opponents “racists” and “sexists” and a “threat to democracy” enough, the American people would reelect all of their failed policies. But the majority of the American people are not that stupid. They go to the grocery store every week; they fill their cars up with gas; they see their paychecks; they witness the crime and homelessness in the streets; they know someone who died of fentanyl poisoning. The American people deal with the real problems in their own houses, not the made-up problems claimed by members of the House.

In the wake of this election, the Democrats are continuing to fail to understand why they lost. They are blaming their defeat on racism and sexism of America. They claim that the American people want a fascist dictatorship. The Democrats lost because for four years, they put America last, and the American people voted for the candidate who they believed was going to put America and Americans first. That’s it. It is not any more complicated than that.  

And this brings me to Donald J. Trump. Mr. President – You are on the clock. So, understand why you won. Please! If winning this election was only about repairing your ego because of what happened in 2020, then all your detractors will be proven right. Yes, you got robbed in 2020, but the next four years is not about rehashing the 2020 election; it’s not about your ego; it’s not about avenging past wrongs committed against you. It’s not about the January 6th committee, the two impeachments, Hunter Biden’s laptop. None of it. The next four years is about the issues that you ran on. It is about securing the border, stopping the scourge of fentanyl, bringing down inflation, energy independence, ending foreign wars, low unemployment, higher wages, manufacturing jobs, beating Hamas, beating Russia, beating China, peace in the Middle East.

Resist the temptation to squander your time and your political capital enacting revenge against your political enemies. Yes, you have been unfairly attacked more than any other politician in the history of our republic. Forget about it. Let it go. Trying to put Liz Cheney or Nancy Pelosi in jail (where they belong), will not lower grocery prices, will not put Americans back to work, will not save our kids from drugs and violence, will not protect 20-year-old nursing students from being rape and murdered by an illegal immigrant.

The election is over. You don’t have to win any more press conferences or any more Twitter wars. That’s over. When they attack you, pretend like you didn’t hear it, and continue doing the work that we put you in the White House to do. Do not get into a verbal back-and-forth with anybody, stop with the name-calling. The success of this term will be determined by what you get done, not whether you won a verbal spat with some Democrat Senator or Congressman, or some liberal media pundit. They are irrelevant. They are distractions. Lock in and focus.

Don’t play their game on their terms, force them to play your game on your terms. Never assume that they want what’s best for the country. They don’t. They want what’s best for themselves and for the party, always. That’s why they opened the border, not because it’s what’s best for the country and the citizens, it was what they thought was best for their party, their donors, and themselves.

The only goal of the Democratic Party for the next four years will be to trip you up, to derail your agenda to make your Presidency irrelevant. They have no plans on working with you. They are going to do everything in their power, legal or illegal, to trip you up, to take you out of your game. Do not fall for it. Do not get caught up in their tactics. They will try to impeach you, again. They will try to enact the 25th Amendment on you. They’ll call you all sorts of names. They will accuse you of some of the most heinous things in the world. They may even create another national crisis like we saw with Covid, see it for what it is.

On the other hand, don’t make the mistake that the Democrats made the last four years, going too far to the extreme. They believed that because they had all the power, they could do whatever they wanted, they could steer the country to the far left. And the majority of the people did not want that. Do not fall into that mind trap, thinking that you can impose whatever you want on the rest of the country. If you do that, we will have a blue wave in 2026, and a blue tsunami in 2028. And the Republicans and the Republic will never recover.

Go back through all of the issues that you ran on. That is why you were elected. For once in my lifetime, let’s have a President, who actually does what he promised he would do during the campaign. Be the President Trump that candidate Trump said he was going to be during the campaign.

They say the best revenge is living well. For you, the best revenge is Americans living well. The best revenge is making America great again. We trusted you, now act worthy of our trust.

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Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.