USA Today OpEd: “I expected to be embarrassed by Trump. But I’m not. I’m pleasantly surprised.”

Perhaps there is hope after all?

Hope of a broad-based great awakening?

A great red-pilling?

I’ve often asked at what point do even the most ardent anti-Trump’s look up and say “by God, he IS saving this Country!  Why am I opposing this?”

I’m not saying the author of this USA Today OpEd piece is the most ardent anti-Trumper.  I don’t know her.  But by her own writing, she says she is one of those people who basically “held their nose” when they voted for Trump because the alternative was so terrible.  So she doesn’t sound like the biggest MAGA fan, but perhaps not suffering from TDS either.

In any event, Nicole Russell just wrote the following OpEd for the USA Today and it’s pretty crazy to read this headline:

Opinion: I expected to be embarrassed and outraged by Trump. Instead, I feel lucky. | Opinion https://t.co/ybaQkYPu8T

— USA TODAY Opinion (@usatodayopinion) March 27, 2025

According to her profile page with the Newspaper, this is the author:

Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm.

Now here’s a small portion of what she wrote, from the USA Today:

It was easy to hate Donald Trump when he jumped from reality TV to politics a decade ago. In 2015, Trump campaigned for president as an obvious populist: personality over party, policy and even country. He positioned himself as a conservative, but he really wasn’t one.

Instead, Trump claimed that he was the miracle vaccine that would cure what ailed America. MAGA fans couldn’t get enough.

After Jan. 6, 2021, I really disliked him. And as the 2025 campaign began, I didn’t want to support a former president who wouldn’t cede his election loss and who had a sordid personal history, including his mistreatment of women and a felony conviction. He also whined on social media like a 9-year-old boy who’d lost gaming privileges. I thought there were stronger Republican candidates who would better embrace conservative ideas.

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But Republican primary voters chose to back Trump in 2024, and he picked an excellent ally in Ohio Sen. JD Vance as the vice presidential candidate. By then, the choice was obvious: Support a guy who hates leftism or support far-left progressives who would push America even further into decline. Our elections are binary, despite what my Libertarian friends think, so the choice was clear.

By now, two months into Trump’s second term, I had expected to be embarrassed and outraged by our new president. But I’m not. I’m pleasantly surprised.

Actually, my mind is blown. I feel lucky that I’ve been a witness to some of the most radical changes ever attempted in the federal government − and in an extraordinarily short amount of time.

There are times when moderation makes good sense. But the current domestic and international climate calls for dramatic changes. Maintaining the status quo was not tenable. We needed a leader to aggressively make changes on many fronts, including the economy, the size and reach of the federal government and America’s approach to foreign relations.

Trump is reforming government and restoring liberty

Americans who are alarmed by Trump should recognize the significance of the nation’s decline under progressive leaders. President Joe Biden drove the country to the far left, losing control of our borders, driving up the budget deficit and the national debt and imposing a progressive social agenda that ignored what most Americans believed. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz were even more progressive and would have made it even harder to turn the ship around.

Will we start to see more of this going forward?

Is there hope after all that the veil will finally be lifted from some of the Far Left’s eyes?

Time will tell!