I have boiled it down to two paths for these MFers.
In things like immigration enforcement the administration does not have near the manpower or facilities to toss out 11 million illegal immigrants any time soon. Further, while making a big show of sealing the southern border, little has been done to stop those that overstay legal visas who came in as students, tourists, etc, which is how most illegal immigration occurs, so there is an immediate offset to deportation numbers. At present rate of deportations, assuming no backfill from visa overstays etc., it will take over 36 years to deport the 11 million assuming you can even find them after making such a big show and pre-announcements of when and where you are targeting them. Should Trump add denaturalization to this and significantly increase the 11 million number, his failure will be even greater. So the hope is like with his email, that folks will self deport and that it makes those contemplating coming here more reluctant to try, if they read/watch US newspapers and news or hear from their friends already here. Having worked in construction with more than 40% of the workforce being immigrants (many legal), I can tell you they are a group with determination and would bet the vast majority who may be illegal will play the odds of being missed given how few are being picked up and deported monthly.
Similar to immigration, Trump's threats of tariffs are hoped to have foreign countries hew to his whims without actually engaging tariffs. And unfortunately some have tried to placate him, but given the latest figures on just individual Canadians' actions to boycott travel, goods and anything American hitting airline and US travel destinations bottom lines, there can be counter actions detrimental to US interests that are not state mandated but still effectual. I would suspect we will see similar data come in from the EU, Japan and elsewhere.
On cost cutting, DOGE and executive orders it is a lot about symbolic acts and again hoping people resign or otherwise do what you want rather than deal and thereby cut the Federal labor force, stop bringing lawsuits, follow the Trumpian line on policy, etc. So they offer buyouts of employees and the majority that take it were going to retire this year anyway, the normal 5% turnover in any large organization. The best and brightest who can see the BS steamroller and bad management by Trump sycophant cabinet members coming, jump ship because they can. So you take the most experienced and the talent out of the government but you want it to run better and more efficiently even under terrible leadership moving forward. Stupidity in the extreme.
The other path is the magicians trick of look over here while I hide the rabbit over there. Talk about Greenland, the Panama Canal and all such total nonsense is just to distract and diminish focus on the real actions and goals to carry out Project 2025 tasks. There will be foolish talk and symbolic State visits but nothing will come of it. But the MSM and others will chase this and dilute their available reporting time from much more dangerous issues. Unfortunately Denmark and others foolishly reacted to these things publicly which only encourages Trump to keep blustering because folks do react and he can claim some level of victory.
= new reply since forum marked as read