Abby McCloskey, the Dallas Morning News, January 19, 2025

“. . . It’s a strange coincidence, one that happens only every few decades, for Inauguration Day to happen on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr.’s remembrance. It’s an awkward pairing this time: the felon president and the reverend. But it has me thinking about dreams and what history might be trying to say.

We might live in a secular age, but who doesn’t love a dream? Who doesn’t admire the dreamer, the one who can see what others can’t see, do what others won’t do?

I’ve come to believe that dreams are the magic of Donald Trump, love him or hate him. They’ve always been there with Trump: his beautiful wives, his gold-encrusted residencies, Mar-a-Lago and escapist resorts, his name in gold emblazoned across buildings all over the world.

Dreams were there in his first presidential run. When he rode down a golden escalator and believed that a reality TV star could become president, when he promised a big beautiful wall that somehow Mexico would pay for. They motivated one of the most shocking political comebacks in American history heading into his second term, with the political decks and dozens of felony charges (and convictions) against him, and a bullet just grazing his ear, sparing his life.

Trump’s dreams are getting bigger now, like how, in my dreams, familiar houses all of a sudden include new rooms. This time it’s to expand America and acquire Greenland; to slap 20% tariffs, or more, on all imports; to revive domestic manufacturing long sent over to China; to make Europe pay for our security treaties with them; to set up a Department of Government Efficiency led by the man on a mission to colonize Mars; to retool how Washington’s labyrinth gets business done — what 3 million federal workers do and how $23 trillion in expected new debt over the next decade debt gets paid down; to make America completely safe and secure, where we know everyone’s comings and goings and anyone here without a document gets taken out the back door to goodness knows where while the citizenry parties in the front with the flag and gold souvenirs.

Dreams aren’t always good. . . “