OPINION:
Had Donald Trump not gone into real estate, tabloid smack talk, reality TV, marketing, steak sales, the gold sneaker business and — ultimately — politics, he would have been a brilliant deejay. Just ask him.
And whatever you do, never get between Donald Trump and the jukebox as a magical evening at the club starts winding down. Just because you have a pocket full of quarters does not mean you can compete with Donald Trump to pick the perfect song for the perfect moment.
In 2016, it was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones. He played that song to close every rally. Never before has such an honest politician run for public office.
Because, really, you can’t always get what you want — especially if you think you are going to get it from a government of politicians.
Even after the Rolling Stones complained about Mr. Trump playing the song at campaign rallies, Mr. Trump did the most un-politician thing. He told the band to screw off. He paid for that song. He could play it all he damned well pleased.
And play it he did.
By the time 2024 rolled around, another Trump song had taken hold: “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People.
It wasn’t about the words. It was about the groove. We all knew one another by then. At that point, it was just a good feeling.
Other campaigns talked about “vibes.” But only the Trump campaign had them. As he likes to point out, Mr. Trump gets the biggest crowds of anybody without a guitar.
Now, as Mr. Trump returns to the White House having defeated, well, the entire world, the song that keeps playing in my head on a constant loop is “New York Groove,” sung by Kiss founder and lead guitarist Ace Frehley. (Incidentally, Mr. Frehley — the Spaceman with painted stars around his eyes — is a Trump supporter.)
The song, written in the mid-1970s, is about a bad boy returning as a conquering hero to the very city that invented Donald Trump.
“Many years since I was here,” the song starts. “To the left and to the right, buildings towering to the sky. It’s outta sight in the dead of night.”
And then the refrain: “I’m back! Back in the New York groove!”
Even a little Trumpian detail: “In the back of my Cadillac, a wicked lady sittin’ by my side, sayin’, ‘Where are we?’
“Stopped at Third and Forty-three, exit to the night. It’s gonna be ecstasy. This place was meant for me.”
And then back to the refrain: “I’m back! Back in the New York groove!”
Indeed, Mr. Trump is back. In roaring form.
At a news conference Tuesday, one day after Congress certified his “impossible” reelection, Mr. Trump held forth on a range of issues from the economy to visions of American imperialism to smoldering hot spots around the world.
Mr. Trump was electric, engaged, deeply informed and reeling with imagination — blowing the minds of the press assembled at his Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida. Among his most incendiary gems: Rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, buy Greenland and subsume Canada as America’s 51st state.
Mr. Trump refused to rule out the use of military force to achieve these conquests.
Also: Demand back the Panama Canal, which President Jimmy Carter so stupidly gave away for $1. Mr. Trump said this, of course, as Carter’s body was still in the air being flown back to Washington to lie in state.
The assembled press was shocked Mr. Trump would speak so honestly of the dead. But such is the courageous nature of an honest man in politics.
Certainly, Mr. Trump looks like a giant compared with the political pygmies who have governed us for so long. Two of the powerful political foes he dispatched to become president — Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden — were deemed by federal prosecutors mentally unfit to face criminal charges for crimes they committed in office. A third — Kamala Harris — was deemed by her own campaign mentally unfit to hold an actual news conference.
Even by world standards across history, Mr. Trump is proving to be a giant.
He is back. Back in the New York groove.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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