Winston Churchill once said of a rival that gave “excellent speeches, very long, very careful and very lucid speeches, delivered without a note and often without a point.” Too many writers are like that, filled with platitude without really teaching you anything or citing any facts. Kevin Williamson once wrote for The Dispatch, “The poet laureate—the Homer, the Dylan Thomas, the Tupac by-God Shakur—of that kind of smug, self-satisfied, utterly ignorant way of looking at the world is, of course, Ezra Klein.”

Klein writes for the New York Times, “Trump has overwhelmed himself.” The thesis is that every time there is a problem, the administration does something big to distract without solving the underlying problem, only to open a new wound. Now, there are so many issues lingering beyond the administration’s capacity to fix. I wish that I could go through each example to verify if he is right or wrong, but he hardly cites any. So I cannot go through the list.

The piece focused on ICE, arguing that the administration’s emphasis on deportations is preventing it from doing more important things, like regulating the labor market and artificial intelligence. Which is funny because illegal immigrants are a part of the labor market, and immigration policy is regulating the labor supply.

But also, while AI and labor matter, so does illegal immigration. Americans elected Trump to fix the problem that Joe Biden had created. According to Gallup when Presdient Trump was elected, 63% of voters supported allowing the president to close the border. And in many ways, he has succeeded. Illegal border crossings are virtually zero—which Klein ignores.

Additionally, to say that ICE has gone too far is a legitimate argument. The president himself agrees, having pledged to change the policy. The thing is, this is as normal a first-year thing as you can get. Every president, in his first year, enacts a bunch of policies and sticks to the ones that are working and modifies or drops the ones that are not. The only two exceptions in recent memory are the two Bushes. Here are some examples for the rest in their first years:

Clinton: Gun control, gays in the military, and Hillarycare, NAFTA

Obama: Obamacare, stimulus, partial nationalization of the auto industry, Dodd-Frank, closing Guantanamo

Biden: American Rescue Plan, Build Back Better, DEI, opening the border, AUKUS, infrastructure spending

Every single one of these presidents became very unpopular in the first year, eventually having to moderate some of those policies. The result is the same: the policies Americans liked stuck, and the rest were scaled back or entirely revoked.

Trump is doing the same. Here is a partial list of what Trump has done in his first year:

  • Focus on the critical minerals competition with China

  • Blowing up Iran’s nuclear program

  • Changing the leadership of Venezuela

  • Ending the Gaza War

  • Deregulating the economy

  • Boosting energy production, especially nuclear

  • Getting NATO allies to increase defense spending

  • Getting tech companies to pay for their data centers’ power consumption

  • Tariffs

  • Deportations

  • Closing the border

  • Greenland

  • The biggest positive change in the Pentagon’s acquisition policy in half a century

  • Making the tax cuts permanent

  • DOGE and government reform

  • Ending DEI programs

  • Forcing universities to reform

Some items on the list are popular, and some are not, which is typical for most administrations. The Trump administration is sticking to popular policies and moderating unpopular ones, like deportations. This is not overwhelming yourself. It is a normal first year.

But not every administration is the same. Clinton was a shrewd politician. He started out as a far-left president but moderated once he realized Americans did not like what he was doing. Nobody ever accused Biden of being politically savvy, and he waited until his fourth year to change his border policy, which is why the Democrats lost. Trump is more like Clinton, reassessing things only after a year.

Some of Trump’s accomplishments will bear fruit long after he leaves office. The best example is the increased production of critical minerals. Some, nobody will notice. Russia will not invade Europe because Trump got NATO to boost its defense, but nobody will mention it because the planes that land do not get reported. Some will show results quickly, such as deregulating the economy and ending DEI mandates. The rest are the few policies that are not working, which are already being discarded or altered.

Klein claims that all Trump does is create distractions. His evidence is a comment by Steve Bannon, who has a podcast, but, last I checked, he did not work at the White House. The problem is that a White House trying to distract people from headlines would not be focusing on topics as hot as critical minerals and data center power consumption. In fact, if you want to make sure nobody will ever talk about what you are doing, you should get into the Pentagon acquisition business or the mining industry regulations.

ICE deportations are not chasing the headlines or distractions. They are a perfectly legitimate policy that has become unpopular because of its implementation, and the president is modifying it. Likewise, getting NATO members to pay into their defenses and nuclear energy boost are not overwhelming yourself. These are things that will guarantee American (and European) peace and prosperity for decades. Trump is governing like a normal politician, and he is better at it than the last guy.