The biggest challenge President Trump faces is restoring trust in government. Americans feel beaten about the head and ears, abused, overtaxed, overregulated, mandated, investigated, culturally denied, are fit to be tied. Restoring trust is hard, but that is the mandate. So, how?

Yes, get rid of overreach by the Departments of Justice, Education, HHS, and EPA. Stop pushing Marxism via CRT, DEI, ESG, confusing genders, lawfare, giveaways, and delegitimizing advancement by merit. Start enforcing laws at the border, against drug and human traffickers.

But more is needed, something fundamental: The outrage many feel goes beyond ousting left-leaning policies and faithless leaders who push power consolidation. Missing is trust.

Americans operate at their best when they can trust “the system” to leave them alone, and let them make their own, well-grounded choices, moral, family, political, job, and purchasing. They only trust the “system” when the government is limited – not trying to remake, oppress, and distress them.

History is crystal clear about what happens when a government oversteps, causing people to feel denied their carefully (often painfully) reached life decisions about family, work, and faith. One day, people just rise up. In a republic, they revolt with their vote. That is what just happened.

The major takeaway of Election 2024 is this: “The People” have lost trust in government, and its self-appointed cheerleaders throughout the media, social media, and high tech, all manipulators.

Over the past many years however, people of all walks – young and old, men and women, rural and urban, black, white, Hispanic and Asian, have grown disenchanted, now to distrust leaders.

The reason is not mysterious, not to average voters. Power begets arrogance, and arrogance begets abuse. Abuses create resentment that, over time, bubbles up. Free people do not like being told they must conform to being taxed, inflated, mandated, and manipulated out of their values.

They hate the idea and despise those who push it on them. The last thing people will do – once trust is lost – is empower those who abuse the power they were given. For good reason, many are disillusioned with those in high office, those who regularly forget where power comes from: us.

What did our Founders say, tell us never to forget? They foresaw all this, this kind of abuse. They knew something, too, about being abused. They cautioned us to turn out bad leaders and implored us to keep our government limited. They told us, which we know, to be suspicious.

They were wise, these fighters for liberty who gave us a written Constitution, backed by a clear defense. They warned against oversized, ambitious government, and warned us to contain it or be contained by it. Their words still resonate, especially now.

A great deal now turns on restoring trust in government, but this is a necessary but tough task. We need leaders – at all levels – who understand what the majority feels and wants, and who will keep federal and state governments limited, reducing size and spending, across all branches.

Wrote James Madison, Father of our Constitution, in his thoughtful way: “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” We live among such “encroachments.”

More direct was Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense. “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, and intolerable one.” Leaders are faithful only when they limit government; the rest are faithless, self-serving, and not to be trusted.

Thomas Jefferson, reader of six languages, author of our Declaration, governor, and our third president wrote: “A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

So, to be happy, we need only a limited government, one that keeps us from injuring each other and operates at the lowest possible cost, with the least possible intrusion on our daily “pursuits.”

Over and over, our Founders warned us: Trust only those who cherish individual liberty, preserve public safety, and are passionate about limiting government; all others scrutinize, distrust, and discard.

For too long, freedom-loving Americans have stood aside, watched the federal government – and many state governments – grow in power, abuse power, spend and indebt, overstep and forget, our leaders debasing themselves, defiling our Constitution, and diminishing our rights.

Suddenly, in 2024 – as if we heard our Founders’ words on the wind – much of America awoke and spoke, a mandate: Reduce government, restore our trust. Hard to do, but that is the mandate.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).