Nothing grabs the attention of a room quicker than the chaotic sound of glass breaking. Regardless of rhyme or reason, when glass breaks, people listen. It’s a lesson the Trump Administration has applied to the political conversation early and often during its first three weeks in office.
Shutting down federal agencies, mass firing government employees and freestyling Middle East policy has served as music to the ears of his supporters, while instilling panic in others. But much like a fragmented pile of glass, a jarring headline doesn’t clean up the problem.
Take the recent tragic plane accident in Washington D.C. and its aftermath. Trump shattered a lot of glass in the middle of the Potomac River when he inexplicably blamed the horrific air collision between an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter solely on the previous administration’s DEI hiring practices. His lack of human decency and complete disregard for the facts were shallow, even for him, not to mention tinged in racism. His actions garnered attention but solved no problems as it relates to either uncovering facts about the crash or correcting the overswinging pendulum of DEI.
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Last week, Trump intentionally broke another large piece of glass standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he stumbled into the unvetted idea of developing an American owned vacation destination called the “Middle Eastern Riviera” in Gaza. What the what? Even his closest staffers ran out of their seemingly endless supply of magic pixie dust trying to explain the merits of what he just said.
The loudest sounds of broken glass in the ballroom are now coming from newly deputized change agent, Elon Musk. For starters, if DOGE is going to be successful at effectively cutting government waste and spending, it’s going to have to break a lot of glass so we can start paying down our $36 trillion bar tab. Reducing our national debt is a national imperative and should garner bipartisan support.
Here’s the problem: Elon has come out of the gates like a clumsy waiter who can’t seem to safely make it from the bar to the table without flipping over the drink tray. You must look no further than the mounting number of federal court cases challenging the legality of DOGE’s brazen efforts on multiple fronts. Several of the court cases have already been temporarily halted by judges, including U.S. District Judge Paul Engel where he cited the risk of “irreparable harm” in response to DOGE’s work deep in the bowels of the Treasury Department.
Without some mature minded self-restraint, not only will Musk fall short of his goal, but he has a high likelihood of being included in the next batch of fired government employees.
We must ask ourselves, did America hire Donald Trump to break glass or solve problems? If intellectual honesty is still the mother’s milk of good decision making, then the answer to the question is both.
Make no mistake: the federal government needs some glass broken, especially as it pertains to immigration, spending, healthcare inflation and yes, efficiency. Families and small businesses know that spending and spending with no end in sight is a recipe for disaster, and why should the federal government be any different. If given a small dose of truth serum, both political persuasions would agree with this reality. But breaking glass without solving problems just recreates the classic conundrum of mistaking activity for progress. “We the People” must start requiring Trump and his handpicked cast of characters to solve problems and not make Americans walk barefooted through miles of broken glass.
If we lean into the intellectually honest side of our brains, it becomes easier to see the unproductive and outright ridiculousness of some of these early actions. Using the threat of massive regional tariffs to fix our countries’ fiscal problems without increasing inflation is in its most substantive form, a shiny object. So is dispatching Elon Musk and his garage band on a scavenger hunt to gain access to our countries’ financial nuclear codes for what is starting the feel like a weekend hack-a-thon. Additionally, blaming 67 tragic deaths on DEI and proposing to build beach front condos in Gaza is nothing short of stupid.
This administration is not my cup of tea, but I do love America and want us to succeed for all the right reasons. I’m hopeful they start doing a better job balancing the amount of glass they break versus the problems they solve.
An AJC contributor, Geoff Duncan served as Georgia’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023. He is a former professional baseball player and the author of “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.” He also is a contributor to CNN.
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