Those of us blessed enough to work in the Trump administration all share one common problem: we can’t keep up with the president.
Whether it’s in my field of National Security, or diplomacy writ large, or international trade and commerce, or domestic policies within our borders, the speed at which the Commander-in-Chief operates is inhuman. From the perfection of Operation Midnight Hammer flying deep into Iran, to the sheer audacity of the Maduro arrest and extraction, to the eight peace deals he has already brokered, many settling previously intractable decades-old conflicts, to the wholesale deployment of tariffs that will reform global trade for decades to come in favor of American and Americans, to the almost instantaneous securing of our border and the deportation of almost two million illegals in less than a year, the strategy and the pace has been set by the one man who sits behind the Resolute Desk, and there is no one who can match his alacrity, pace, and unwavering sense of mission.
How is this possible? The majority of that answer lies with the president himself, with the familial and genetic qualities he inherited, for I have known him for more than a decade now, having advised him first in 2015 during the GOP primaries, then worked on his official Transition Team, in his first administration, and now on the National Security Council of his second term; and in all those years, whether in Trump Tower, at Mar-a-Lago, or in the White House, I have never seen the man flag, wilt, or simply say “give me a minute,” or “I need a double-espresso to keep me going.” The man is indefatigable. But there is another contextual reason for his inordinate pace and success thus far.
As our ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, shared with all the Senior Directors of the National Security Council right after the Inauguration, at one of our first meetings, “Outsiders make the big mistake of thinking the president was golfing for the last four years. He wasn’t. He was preparing for his second term, and as such we are now in the ninth year of his presidency.” And he was right.
White House National Security Council Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka attends a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office on March 28, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Thanks to the true MAGA members of his first White House, and the institutional home many of them found after 2020 at the America First Policy Institute, the real MAGA think-tank, the president had worked everything out in advance for the day the American people would sweep him back into office in a landslide victory. In fact, he was so ready that even before he arrived back in the Oval Office, on his way from being sworn in for a second time as the Chief Executive, when he stopped on the way to the White House at a D.C. arena to thank his supporters on a frigid January day that was so cold the Inauguration had two be held indoors, President Trump’s team had him sit down at a table brought to the stage in order that he could sign his first flurry of Executive Orders before he even made it back into the West Wing — orders that had been prepared weeks and sometimes months and years in advance. And one of those day one E.O.’s presaged the essence of the policies and actions to come from the next year.
For all the asinine “expert” commentary on how President Trump is so “unpredictable,” the Executive Order on designating cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations demonstrates just how utterly predictable the president is and what his primary geographic focus remains.
The Commander-in-Chief is very simple to understand and predict: if the policy and action is good for American and Americans, he will do it, if it is bad for Americans, he will prevent it. And as a man who lives in the real world, he knows that geography matters, therefore our own hemisphere, obviously, is the most important region if we are to protect the Homeland. It was utterly unacceptable that cartels and gangs would exploit the open borders of Biden and Harris to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year with the deadly wares they brought from one part of the region onto our soil to poison our people.
And so it was that with the help of Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Border Czar Tom Homan, first the border was sealed. Then it was the turn of the Security of War Pete Hegseth and our brave warfighters to stop the drug boats dead in their tracks, literally. But hitting the cartels was not enough.
When nations in our Hemisphere collaborate with and harbor not only the drug-peddlers but inimical regimes such as Iran, they too must be dealt with. Thus we could all witness the most exquisite combined law enforcement/special operations mission of its kind as the Department of Justice, the FBI, and our Tier 1 military units removed Nicolas Maduro, drug lord and dictator, from his safehouse to stand trial for his crimes in a U.S. court. This was all part of the rebirth of the historic Monroe Doctrine, or as the new U.S. National Security Strategy calls it, the Trump Corollary.
When it comes to older, more internationally dispersed irregular threats like global jihadism, the story is just as stirring and empirically impressive. Since day eight of the president’s second term, when he formally returned America to the rules of engagement of his previous term and took out a senior ISIS leader in Somalia who had American blood on his hands, our Counterterrorism professionals have permanently neutralized 516 violent Islamists.
As if that were not enough, thanks to the uncompromising leadership coming out of the Oval Office, America has brought 90 American hostages back to the U.S. without paying one dollar in ransom, not to mention the 168 hostages Hamas had also taken in Israel. This is what Peace Through Strength looks like in real life.
The above is just one aspect of the last year of President Trump’s second term. For the list of his hundreds of other AMERICA First success go here.
In the meantime, buckle up for the next three years!
Sebastian Gorka PhD is Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Senior Director for Counterterrorism in the US National Security Council and former National Security Editor for Breitbart News.
