TRUMP’S FIRST YEAR BACK BROUGHT CHANGE AT AN UNPRECEDENTED PACE
BY DAN VALENTI
PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY
(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE WEDNESDAY FEB. 18, 2026) — First, a tip of THE PLANET doiby to the Pittsfield Police Department for their great work in nabbing the man suspected of the recent, horrific hit-and-run fatality. Job well done.
Donald Trump has always been an acquired taste, like all the great ones of modernity–Nietzsche, Bierce, Mencken, Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, Picasso, Shostakovich, Mussolini, Mao, Ruth, Eisenhower, Nixon, and so on. Like then, he posts down a large footprint then says, “Fill it.”
He made his chops in business, became a TV star, then a non-politician politician. He shoots not just from the hip but the tailbone. He speaks not just off the cuff but off the entire sleeve. He’s outrageous, temperamental, frank, and outspoken, which is the absolute best that democracy can produce–an honest crook. He has no “off” switch.
He’s precisely the type of person America needed, a creature of and for his time.
———- ooo ———-
First time he ran, THE PLANET needn’t remind you, after first being taken as a joke, Trump outslugged a field of more than a dozen, seasoned GOP hopefuls and went on to smok Hilary Clinton. Second time, the Democrats cooked the books, nominating a senile has-been then inventing a “pandemic” to shut down the rest of America. After four years of prosecution and hounding by the young, loon, largely feminized leftists, once again Trump defined all odds and rose from the ashes and asses to overwhelm an aimless, leaderless opposition. Kamela Harris?! Seriously?!
If Bill “It Depends on the Definition of Is” Clinton was the Comeback Kid, Trump is the Return of the Native. He’s outrageous, a walking sound bite, and not for the timid or feint of heart. He talks big and acts bigger, pushing boldness to the point of recklessness.
If America didn’t have a man like this, it would have had to invent him, if nothing else than for sheer survival. His is the type of precipitous behavior that takes two steps forward and one back. After four years of Autopen-Harris and endless steps back in an engine that had only one gear, reverse, the turnaround has caused whiplash to the right people in politics.
———- ooo ———-
Let’s take this chance to look at the first year of Trump’s second time around. What a difference year makes.
Let’s take a look from 40,000 feet. Since his second-term inauguration:
You know who.
- Median household income rose to an all-time high of $86,000. Every income and ethnic group had on average more money in their pockets. After inflation, median home income jumped $1,250.
- Incomes rose nearly twice as fast as inflation. This includes the bottom 25% of the income brackets.
- Trump’s Education Savings Accounts will mean more access the better-performing public school. THE PLANET needn’t remind you that this will not include Bitchfield’s sochols.
- Under Biden, average 401K plans dropped $20,000. Under Trump, 401Ks were up $21K.
- On Jan. 1. the president’s No Tax on Tips legislation will put more dollars in the pockets of millions of workers.
- Trump tax cuts will do the same for millions of families.
- In the first two months of FY26, America trimmed $170 billion off its dangerous deficit.
- Every man and woman in the armed forces got a year-end bonus of $1,776 as a “Thank you for your service.”
- Crime is down and public safety up compared to the Biden years … except in big cities run by Democrats.
- Trump cut the influx of illegals by 92%.
- Biden’s gasoline prices of $4+ are down, at the end of the year at $2.89 a gallon.
- The bloated and corrupt Federal government saw 300,000 fat jobs terminated. Draining the swamp.
- More than 400 government regs have been cut.
- Racial quotas imposed by the federal government have been sent to the dust bin.
- No more ridiculous “loan forgiveness” for student loans. You borrow, you pay back. Be an adult.
- The S&P, Nasdaq, and the Dow all set records for all-time highs.
- The country’s porous borders, slit opened by Biden-Harris, have been sealed.
- Criminal aliens and illegals are being found and deported.
It’s not perfect. The debt monster continues to hulk over the future, among other problems. Hostility has made Congress dysfunctional and hostage to the majority party. World hotspots continue to bubble. Nonetheless, Trump’s first year second time around was a good one.
It brought about change, largely positive, at a pace once thought unthinkable.
You make like it, love it, scorn it, or hate it.
You can’t, however, deny it.
THE PLANET‘s gotta go. Gotta get the doiby cleaned. Have a great weekend, everybody.
————————————————————–
“Better is better” — Sir Donald Turpentine, Knight of the Bath.
“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”
LOVE TO ALL.
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I wonder what Governor Maura Healey would have to say about last week’s criticisms of her administration and this weekend’s glowing praises of U.S. President Donald Trump by blogger Dan Valenti?
Would Governor Maura Healey point out Trump’s severe cuts in federal funding to Medicaid (Mass-Health), SNAP (food stamps), homeless programs, public education, and so on?
Would Governor Maura Healey point out that Trump’s federal budget cuts will cost Massachusetts billions of dollars over the next 3 years?
Would Governor Maura Healey point out the political violence committed by federal agents under the Trump administration over the past year?
Blogger Dan Valenti recently wrote several posts against Governor Maura Healey, while today’s post has him telling us that Trump is the best U.S. President for the times we live in in the mid-2020’s.
I believe the opposite. I hope for a would-be U.S. President Maura Healey in 2029. I am proud of her for saying that she will stand up to Trump as part of her 2026 reelection campaign for Governor of Massachusetts.
You are truly a brainwashed Marxist.
If you disagree, watch this video and reread your post: class warfare, cutting big government (wasteful spending on able bodied adults and illegal aliens) is bad, government should own all property and dictate wages to level the playing field, and capitalism (rich get richer) is bad.
What is Marxism? | Marxism Explained | Who was Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? Communist Manifesto
February 18, 2026
I am not a Marxist. I hate Communism. It has resulted in more mass deaths and genocides than any other form of government in human history. Under Communist rule, the people have no legal rights. They are placed in “show trials” and sent to abusive prisons to suffer and die.
When Karl Marx wrote his essays on Communism, the U.S.A. had the legal system of SLAVERY. I don’t know what was WORSE to tell you my views on human history and government. I believe that in the around 300,000 year record of human history, that times change, but human nature and human behavior never really changes.
How many times have you posted on The Planet about the “US needing gun control,” without defining what “gun control” really means?
Answer that first.
Then, read about what happened to Pol Pot’s citizens after he instituted “gun control.”
Instead it’s just easier to pump out Marxist, aka- democRAT, talking points without any clarification.
If we ask questions, we are “Nazi’s, “far right extremists,” or “Orange Man cult members,” because we aren’t obedient government puppets (Communist) like you?
Who tried to institute a Disinformation Czar again? You know, restrict free speech, unless the government (Communist) approved the messaging. Not the message.
What Marxist Zohran “free” Mammelle and fellow comrades believe is what’s promoted and amplified to all of them from an overloaded clown car full of Marxist people and media. Everything free they want costs a lot of money to the earning taxpayers…
Well, if Healey vows to waste and steal Federal tax revenues, it be my hope the Commonwealth sees none.
Melle, D-Healey gave federal tax dollars to CRIMINAL ALIENS TO THE TUNE OF ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
“…severe cuts in federal funding to Medicaid (Mass-Health), SNAP (food stamps), homeless programs, public education, and so on?”–JM
Yes those programs right there. ^^^^^^
She also slashed the LIHEAP fuel assistance and poor seniors will be hoping the furnace don’t run out of oil before spring.
If anyone votes for her they are insane.
And yet all the news is about his association with Jeffrey Epstein. Why is that? Why are most of the files being hidden when the welfare of children is involved? He could get them all out there if he wanted to.
Democrat administrations also have had access to evidence of Epstein’s criminal activity for years under Presidents Biden 4 years, 8 years under Obama. They chose not to release any of it. Why is that? Never mind, you know the answer! It is now only being pushed and used to find anything that can be spun into web of lies to destroy Trump and ultimately all conservatives but has now come back to bite democrats in the A$$.
Oh. Preciate the clarification.
Under Biden the DOW went from 20k to 46k. You know about Google.We are now at 49k Dan or treading water.
Almost all of that 50,000 is the Hyperscalers tech stocks and they are being propped up within their own circle. As they devour one another the whole house of cards caves in and with it the stock market, IRAs and other retirement pensions. this is a horrible time to get a mortgage or buy an expensive car or to carry any large amount of debt.
I read your piece, and I want to begin by addressing the single most revealing line in your entire argument.
You chose to place a modern American political figure in a lineup that included Nietzsche, Churchill, Picasso, Mao, Mussolini, and Hitler under the label of “the great ones of modernity.”
That is not clever rhetoric. That is historically reckless framing.
Hitler was not an “acquired taste.”
He was the leader of a genocidal regime responsible for the systematic murder of millions and the dismantling of democratic structures in favor of totalitarian control.
Mao was not merely bold or disruptive.
His policies contributed to mass famine, political purges, and the deaths of tens of millions.
Mussolini did not simply leave a “large footprint.”
He destroyed democratic institutions and established fascist rule.
These are not theatrical personality archetypes.
They are some of the most destructive authoritarian leaders in human history.
So when you casually include them in a praise-based comparison meant to elevate a modern democratic political figure, you are not strengthening your argument. You are exposing a fascination with strongman mythology rather than presenting a grounded political analysis.
Serious commentary does not romanticize dictators to make a point about boldness, temperament, or disruption. That is not intellectual depth. That is narrative inflation.
Your opening comparison alone undermines the credibility of everything that follows, because it signals that scale and spectacle matter more to you than historical proportion or factual rigor.
The problem does not stop there.
You present sweeping economic and policy claims as unquestionable truths without sourcing, context, or methodological grounding. Statements about income growth, 401K performance, gas prices, deficit reduction, and crime trends are complex macroeconomic indicators influenced by global markets, Federal Reserve policy, multi-year fiscal cycles, and international events. They are not singularly controlled by the personality or rhetoric of any one president.
Reducing global economic dynamics to a single political figure is not analysis. It is oversimplification designed to produce emotional certainty.
Even more concerning is the dismissal of a globally documented pandemic as “invented.” That assertion is not a matter of political interpretation. It directly contradicts international medical data, excess mortality records, and the consensus of scientific institutions across the world. Including a claim of that magnitude without evidence signals ideological narrative, not factual evaluation.
The tone of your writing further reinforces this pattern. Repeated use of dismissive and caricatured language toward political opponents suggests that the intent of the piece is not to inform or analyze, but to emotionally prime readers toward a predetermined conclusion.
That is persuasion writing, not policy commentary.
Perhaps the most telling line in your conclusion is the assertion that readers may “like it, love it, scorn it, or hate it” but cannot deny it.
In fact, it can be denied.
It can be questioned.
And it can be critically examined.
Unsourced statistics can be challenged.
Historical comparisons can be rejected as disproportionate.
Economic claims can be contextualized.
And rhetorical framing can be exposed for what it is.
What you have presented is not a measured evaluation of governance outcomes. It is a narrative constructed through selective framing, emotionally charged language, and mythologized comparisons designed to elevate personality over policy.
If your argument requires invoking dictators responsible for mass death simply to make modern political rhetoric appear grand or inevitable, then the issue is not with the reader’s denial.
It is with the foundation of the argument itself.
Confidence in tone does not equal credibility in substance.
And spectacle, no matter how loudly delivered, is not a substitute for historically grounded analysis.
Now…. how about them Epstein files?
VV
Can you at least change the formulaic “That is not _____________. That is ______________.” It’s in every one of your alleged critiques. AI produced, perhaps? Keep trying, girl.
RE: “That is” offends my taste for precision.
Sounds like she is saying,
“The tone of your writing further reinforces this pattern….That is persuasion writing, not policy commentary”
wherein ‘that’ refers to the tone of your writing.
DJT is the antithesis of those brutal men, obviously. However, I seriously question it a matter taste when it comes to evaluating man’s behavior.
I’m not certain what taste is ascribed to, but I know that it is not art, morality, and character.
*evil men.
PIXAR has made a great video of VendettaChatGPT and her liberal ideology…..until it comes home.
Right, VendettaChatGPT?
Jaimee Michell on X: “Not gonna lie @Pixar COOKED with this one… https://t.co/fP91xLX1nS” / X
” It is a narrative constructed through selective framing, emotionally charged language, and mythologized comparisons designed to elevate personality over policy.” Ummm…Sounds like the Democrat playbook to me.
Ditto that
Only on ‘Planet Trump’ could Hitler, Moa and Mussolini be described as an ‘ acquired taste, like all the great ones of modernity’ and such dictators be heralded as great men.
You may not like the historical facts that support their heavy hand and role in oppression, Fascism, destruction, murder and Genocide, but as you say ‘ you can’t deny it! ‘
CF
I’m using the superlative in the Hegelian sense (not to get all philosophical and stuff), that is, the idea of “world historical individuals.” These are the people who propel an epoch in their fields. We could add Einstein, Stalin, Carver, Tito, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammed, Napoleon …
Best to ditch Hegel. Sophistry. Vile philosophy.
The Left is actually inherently attracted to the cast of Mao and Hitler. And it was the NAZI debris that landed throughout the Middle East and in South Anerica that founded the communist states and Baathism in nations such as Itaq and Egypt.
I’m only using Hegel for that marvelous turn of phrase, “world historical individual.” It’s never been articulated better.
But people don’t propel epochs.
They most certainly do. It can’t be done any other way. Another word for this is “h-i-s-t-o-r-y-“.
No.
Example, Michelangelo is often seen as the defining moment of the break between centuries, but he was just a man, and when gone the likes and influence forever locked in time.
Not gone, but not present either.
History is just what we know. Nothing more than that.
Except that history, that abstract concept to delineate a known past, is done by people. I’m talking about events in the sense that Bloom does, in your other post. That’s an important distinction. Geological and astronomical “epochs” happen outside of humanity. But politics and the attempts of government to enshrine “freedom and equality”– or, for that matter restraints and recognition of inequalities — happen only because of people and, among them, leaders (again, “world historical individuals”). All men and women are “just people,” a an incredibly tiny amount of them, through power, creates tectonic shifts. One quick example. If Adolph Hitler, a talented artist, gets accepted into the Vienna academy and pursues that for the rest of his life, we not have the shift brought about by WWII.
P55 Closing of the American Mind, Bloom, S&S 1987
“Americanness tells one story: the unbroken, ineluctable progress of freedom and equality. From its first settlers and its political founds on, there has been no dispute that freedom and equality are the essence of justice for us. No one serious or notable has stood outside this consensus. You had to be a crank or a buffoon (e.g., Henry Adams or H.L. Mencken, respectively) to get attention as a nonbeliever in the democracy. All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality, not about their rightness. Nowhere else is there a tradition or a culture whose message is distinct and unequivocal – certainly not in France, Italy, Germany, ir even England. There the greatest events and the greatest men speak for monarchy and aristocracy as well as for democracy, for established religion as well as for tolerance, for patriotism that takes primacy over liberty, for privilege that takes primacy over equality of right. Belonging to one of these peoples may be explained as a sentiment, an attachment to one’s own, akin to the attachment to father and mother, but Frenchness, Englishness, Germanness remain, nonetheless, ineffable. Everybody can, however, articulate what Americanness is. And that Americanness generated a race of heroes – Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lincoln and so on – all of whom contributed to equality. Our imagination is not turned toward a Joan of Arc, a Louis XIV or a Napolean who counterbalance our equivalent of 1789. Our heroes and the language of the Declaration contribute to a national reverence for our Constitution, also a unique phenomenon.”
So, who you are is wholly a product of what you read, what you know, and what you believe in. “Epochal” ideas vanish in a snap of time.
I have read Alan Bloom’s critique. He’s at his best when blasting the manner in which higher education has snuffed out critical thinking (and that was in 1987!). He’s right in that. When he wanders into “political founds,” however, he falls apart. Anyone who can think of Mencken as a “buffoon” needs a realignment on all four tires.
Allan Bloom does not believe we have a right to be pleased by what we read/
I agree with him there. There is no such thing as “right.”
He is a Romantic scholar; thinking HA a crank and HLM a buffoon is perfectly correct.
Then neither you nor he know Mencken. I have two excellent biographies I can recommend, if you wish to know more.
But I have no opinion of Mencken. I have not read him – I do not take a position. The quote belongs to Bloom. I don’t believe Menchken is argumentative here; he’s probably egging the professor who had an office two doors down from him.
Taconite girls blew it. If Coach Hoops was there they would have easily won.
That’s really a terrible shame.
Iraq and Syria. Not Egypt.
DV-
Oh I see, now! ‘Men who propel an epoch in their field’ . In that sense, I see the similarities you admire and Trump’s similarities and ethos do align with Hitler, Mussolini Mao, Stalin and Napoleon. Cut from the same cloth one could say. The others not so much to me, but like you said, all ‘an acquired taste!’
For sure, my palate must not yet be mature or Hegelian enough to appreciate such destructive and oppressive delicacies and admirations. I’ll work on it for sure and keep that in mind as I educate my misguided taste buds through your daily digest of Planet Trump.
President Trump telling the country and the world that there are only 2 genders was so wonderful, but also sad that he had to say something so obvious, but this is the world that we live in. After President Trump declared that we only have 2 genders he said, “Wow, that was easy”. If only people could process this basic truth, but the tricky media and politicians have a nefarious agenda to keep people confused about basic truths.
A good watch of Tom Fitton/Judicial Watch.
He addresses illegal mail in voting.
The Trump assassination attempt in Butler PA and the stonewalling of information by the SS and LE. We still know very little of Thoma Crooke and weather he may have had accomplices.
And the rash of fatal accidents caused by Criminal Alien truckers who never should have been given a license to drive. Many of whom do not understand basic English/traffic signs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnyhBIzXSdA&t=33s
He had to have had help. No way he he could have reconnect and prepared solo.
*reconned and prepared