Trump's Golf-Cart Diplomacy Is a Revolution Against the Deep State

It might have been the greatest moment in modern American diplomacy since Ronald Reagan traveled to West Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in 1987 and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

But instead of delivering an unforgettable line, literally across a cement wall from an enemy capital, Donald Trump went to Trump National Doral Miami for 18 holes of golf and killed some time on Truth Social — and shivved the establishment.

I'm sure by now you know what happened. At the third hole, Trump announced — via Truth and from his golf cart — punishing tariffs on Colombia after socialist President Gustavo Petro refused repatriation flights of Colombian illegal aliens. Petro put up an online fight, aided by the Complicit Media. But by the eighth hole, just 40 minutes later, Petro caved. He even offered to fly illegals home on his presidential jet because "muh dignity" or something.

Please take note that by the time the legacy Complicit Media had gotten their illegals-friendly talking points out the door, Petro had already folded or was about to. All on Truth Social. Trump moved inside the media's OODA loop.

Defined by U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Col. John Boyd, the OODA loop is a continuous decision-making process: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. Boyd was talking about dogfights, but OODA applies to any confrontation, physical, political, or business. The point is that once you're "inside" the other guy's OODA loop — going through the steps faster than he is — you get to A (Act) while he's still putzing around with OOD.

The ultimate inside-the-OODA-loop action is sticking an air-to-air missile up the other guy's tailpipe (Act) before he even notices you're there (Observe). Trump wasn't quite that fast versus the press on Sunday, but it's impossible to argue that they weren't still diddling with Orient or Decide when his Act on tariffs forced Petro to back down.

And Another Thing: I quipped on Instapundit the other day that the spending power of American consumers is one of the most powerful forces in the Universe, right up there with compound interest. Trump is willing to wield that power against recalcitrant foreign powers, and they don't like it one bit. Because it works. So expect me to remind you a LOT about that over the next four years.

More importantly, Trump bypassed his own behemoth State Department.

In one of his epic X rants, Cynical Publius laid down the semi-comic truth about how things would have played out with Petro and virtually any other American president. "To fully understand just how remarkable today’s exchange with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues," Publius wrote.

In the traditional approach he described, Trump would not have settled anything between the third and eighth holes on Sunday. In the non-Trump world, the State Department would convene "an interagency task force with DoD, NSC, DEA, INS, ICE, Commerce, Treasury and Homeland Security."

"The task force meets for four days and develops a position paper," but it is "rejected by the Secretary of State, who is unhappy that insufficient equity considerations are built into the process." While you should read Publius's entire post, it ends many steps later with this: "Over a month after the issue is first raised, the State Department Public Affairs Officer holds a press conference announcing that Colombia has agreed to try to send fewer criminals into the US and everyone declares victory."

Hardly anything ever gets done in Washington because nobody wants to get things done, particularly not the establishment when it comes to illegal aliens. Except for Trump, who whipped out his iPhone and got inside the whole world's OODA loop from a golf course on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The Deep State never stood a chance.

By the way, Trump shot a 69 — perhaps three under par depending on which course he played.