By Ezra Klein

February 2, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Look closely at the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s second term and you’ll see something very different than what he wants you to see.

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

    Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. …

    All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to —

    Michael Kirk: What was the word?

    Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be King. His plan this time is to first play King on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team.

It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.

You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.

But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.

The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.

I suspect Musk thinks of the federal workforce as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?

The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters.

Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

I had a conversation a couple of months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.

There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.

In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.

This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.

Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.

The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.

Ezra Klein is an American liberal political commentator and journalist. He is currently a New York Times columnist and the host of The Ezra Klein Show podcast. He is a co-founder of Vox and formerly was the website’s editor-at-large.

By Pepper Parr

February 10^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

 

They are calling it “the Great Man Theory” as what is behind all the noise coming out of the mouth of the President of the United States and his apparent desire to make Canada the 51^st state.

Trump is said to believe that he is a great leader and can remake America – expand its boundaries to include the provinces and territories.  He still has huge support within the United States – the reckoning that Americans will eventually face when it becomes clear that Donald Trump is not going to solve the very real problems the average American faces.

Canadians, to date, haven’t been all that upset over this challenge to our sovereignty. We accept that the American are different and they are free to be whatever they choose to be.

Can you imagine a Canada with the health system the Americans have; can you imagine Canada having people walking down streets with a weapon in a holster on their hip?

Canada doesn’t have the rampant level of racism that pollutes a lot of what American’s do.   We created and value the social safety net we have in place.  We have two languages that are part of what we are as a country.

It is becoming clearer that Donald Trump is going to do whatever he can to make Canada part of what is now the United States if we continue to be asleep at the switch

In an interview aboard Air Force One Trump continued to threaten a country that has long been one of the U.S.‘s closest allies. He claimed that Canada is “not viable as a country” without U.S. trade, and warned that the founding NATO member can no longer depend on the U.S. for military protection.

There is a timidity to Canadians – time to thicken our skin and stand firm.  Our response to whatever Trump announces today has to make it clear that Canadians see his plans to be an affront against our sovereignty.

The Prime Minister who is out of the country, somewhere in Europe, discussing Alternative Intelligence, needs to be on a plane and in the country leading the response to whatever Trump announces.

Salt with Pepper is an opinion column reflecting the observations and musings of the publisher of the Gazette, an on-line newspaper that is in its 12 th year as a news source in Burlington and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.

 

 

By Pepper Parr

February 9^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

UPDATED February 10th

Among the Directions the Mayor issued to staff on the matter of possible tariffs the Mayor included:

Staff to undertake research and provide advice to the head of Council on potential responses to the tariff threats, including attendance at Mayor’s Tariff Task Force meetings as required in a research and advisory capacity.

No mention is made of just who is on this Task Force and what its immediate objectives are.

The tariffs that President Trump had put on hold for 30 days – that didn’t last.  Before heading off to the Super Bowl Game in New Orleans Trump announced that he would announce 25% steel and aluminum tariffs Monday; with more import duties coming.

This President has made monkeys out of the American media.  He keeps flooding the media with announcement- which they take and run with.  While media is chasing announcements the President gets on with what matters to him.

He needs his Cabinet in place and it appears he will do everything he can take get them there.

This is a completely different President – the rules do not matter to him.  David Frum, a respected news analyst, has described Donald Trump as a predator who uses every tool and new outlet to get his message out.

He has taken away the security clearance former President Biden had; he has removed senior people from the FBI; he has removed Inspectors, the people who are in place to ensure a federal agency is doing the job it is supposed to do to protect the public interest.  The President is required to advise Congress if he wants to do this.  Trump doesn’t pay attention to rules.

All the while confusing everyone as to just what he plans to do.

This is the guy Doug Ford wanted to vote for – 1000% said Ford. Remember that 18 days from now when you cast your ballot for member of the provincial Legislature.

Canada has a lot of very strong options.  Cut off the power they buy from Canada that keeps the lights on in New York City; stop selling them the oil they need.

Wear velvet gloves but make sure the Americans know that they need us as much as we need them. The threat of doing things like this is all that is needed – time to see the Canadian government showing that they have options – and in the meantime look for better customers.

The Mayor has yet to announce who the members of the Task Force will be.

 

 

By Staff

February 9th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

 

What a day for a horse and sleigh!

A great Canadian winter.

The kids will be out on the slopes with whatever they can get their hands on to slide down to the bottom, climb back up, and do it all over again.

Will it be sloppy when it melts – probably?

By Nate Erskine Smith

February 8^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

 

While the House of Comments isn’t meeting, the Prime Minister appears to be at his desk on occasion.  Minister of Housing Nate Erskine Smith has made it very clear what he wants to do in the time that he has left:

Drive down the costs of home building, double down on our commitment to community housing, end homelessness, and treat housing as a home first and an investment second.

“I’ve been busy making transit and housing-related announcements across Ontario these last few weeks, and we’re set to travel across the country going forward. As a result, I’m a little behind on writing and sharing ideas.

Continue reading How Minister of Housing, Nate Erskine Smith is addressing Canada’s housing crisis

By Staff

February 7th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

 

After meeting with the nation’s provincial leaders and the prime minister on Jan. 15, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that it was time to put Canada first, even ahead of provincial interests, in dealing with tariff threats from American President Donald Trump. By Jan. 29 the province had begun an election campaign, after Ford announced an early call in order to garner a stronger mandate over the next four years.

New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds residents not sold on the timing or motivation of the election. Four-in-five Ontario residents (78%) – and in fact three-in-five who currently say they’ll support Ford’s party – say that this election call was made to serve Ford’s interest and not those of the province. Seven-in-10 (68%) characterize the election as “unnecessary”.

Continue reading Four-in-five Ontario residents say this election call was made to serve Ford’s interest

By Staff

February 6^th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

Today, Mayor Meed Ward issued a Mayoral Direction focused on supporting Canadian businesses, workers, and the broader Burlington community, aligning with provincial and federal efforts to bolster national economic resilience.

The Mayoral Direction issues the following directions to staff:

Continue reading Mayor Meed Ward: We have to Stand Up for Canadian Businesses and Burlington’s Future

By Pepper Parr

February 6th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

The properties bounded by James, Martha Lake Shore Road, and Pearle provide a snapshot of what is taking place in the downtown core.

In the picture below there is the Mattamy development on the corner of James and Martha.  In the background, on the left is the ADI Nautique, and to the right the Beausejour.

South of the ADI and Beausoleil developments, in the football space between Lakeshore Road and Old Lakeshore, thereat are four skyscraper-level developments that are in various stages of development.

The people who live north of Upper Middle Road have, for the most part, little in the way of understanding how the city is changing – downtown for them is Sound of Music, Ribfest and events that get them out to Spencer Smith Park which is now past capacity.

The small stretch of Martha, on the east side of the street just south of where James turns into New Street there is a patch of land that will see buildings that are in the six to eight-storey range.

Interesting how development has changed the downtown core and the Save the Waterfront group that Marianne Meed Ward used to get herself elected to Council in 2010 has managed to save the waterfront – if you can see it.

The sales sign on the Nautique doesn’t represent the reality that most people deal with when looking at condo space.

In the beginning – when Rick Goldring was Mayor the then Waterfront Advisory Committee invited former Mayor David Crombie out to talk to the group.  At the time Crombie urged the community to invite architects to come up with some ideas on what could be done with the football properties.  At that time no one had begun to consolidate the 18+ lots.

That idea didn’t find any traction – what you see rising out of the five-level underground garages is what Burlington is going to look like well into the next century.

Pity

By Staff

February 5th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

It has been a whirlwind past week in Canada-U.S. relations, after announced tariffs on Canadian goods entering America – set to take effect on Tuesday – were delayed 30 days. This, after a call between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump, where Trump claimed victory but by many accounts received little.

Continue reading Pride in Canada rebounds in face of Trump threat