Author: Eric Cortellessa, Time Magazine; Translator: Baishui, Golden Finance
Three days before Thanksgiving, Mar-a-Lago was quiet. Late that morning, Donald Trump's Moorish palace seemed empty, with a junior staffer or silent aide occasionally walking around the spacious living room of the seaside estate. Trump's traces were everywhere. Framed magazines with him on the cover hung by the front door. On the table near the fireplace was a cast bronze eagle given to him by singer Lee Greenwood. In the men's room, a photo of him and Arnold Palmer hung near the urinal. On the wall of the library bar hung a painting titled "Visionary Man," depicting Trump in a tennis sweater, neat and youthful. The empty room felt less like a millionaire members' club than a museum.
By mid-afternoon, the president-elect was set to arrive, with carefully staged speakers offering selections from Trump's personally curated 2,000-song playlist. A handful of transition leaders and soon-to-be administration officials arrived at Mar-a-Lago, sitting on overstuffed couches and huddled in corners. Incoming chief of staff Susie Wells spoke with Mike Waltz, Trump's designated national security adviser. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance strode in with a phalanx of staff. An aide stood near a window overlooking the courtyard, setting down Trump's personal cellphone, which occasionally lit up with calls and texts from favored media figures and Cabinet picks. You can sense Trump before you see him, and a small group of senior aides stood up in anticipation.
The most powerful man in the world entered with an air of unhurried affability. Trump, 78, in his signature navy suit and red tie, looked older than he had been when he last spoke to TIME seven months ago — softer, less verbose, the same speech patterns but with the volume turned down. Before the 65-minute interview, he sat for 30 minutes under bright lights for photos and was asked to explain the bruises on his right hand. "That comes from shaking hands with thousands of people," he said.
Trump’s political rebirth is unparalleled in American history. His first term ended in disgrace, with his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. In late 2022, amid multiple criminal investigations, he announced his candidacy but was shunned by most party officials. More than a year later, Trump swept the Republican field and won one of the fastest-contested presidential primaries in history. The fact that he spent six weeks in a New York City court during the general election, becoming the first former president to be convicted of a crime, did little to dent his approval ratings. In July, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, an assassin’s bullet missed his skull by less than an inch. Over the next four months, he defeated not one but two Democratic opponents, swept all seven swing states, and became the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. He has recalibrated American politics, reshaped the Republican Party, and made the Democratic Party think hard about what went wrong.
Trump already has a ready explanation for his seemingly improbable return to office. “I call it ‘72 Days of Angry,’ ” he said at the start of our interview. “We touched a nerve in the country. The whole country was angry.” And it wasn’t just the MAGA faithful. Trump tapped into deep national discontent over the economy, immigration, and culture. His grievances resonated with suburban moms and retirees, Latino and black men, young voters, and tech-savvy teens. While Democrats estimate that a majority of the country wants a president who can uphold liberal democratic norms, Trump sees a country ready to shatter them, tapping into a growing sense that the system is rigged.
If America is hungry for change, look at how much change Trump can bring. His strongman vision has proposed deporting millions of immigrants, dismantling parts of the federal government, retaliating against political opponents and dismantling institutions that millions of people believe are censorious and corrupt. "He understands the cultural zeitgeist," said Kellyanne Conway, his 2016 campaign manager and still a close adviser. “Donald Trump is a complex man with simple ideas, while too many politicians are just the opposite.”
Trump has also vowed to attack the overseas roots of what he blames for America’s economic malaise: economic interdependence, transnational crime, traditional allies he sees as free riders, and America’s long history of global favors. He believes he has the tools to fight back: punitive tariffs, naked negotiations, and threats to withdraw U.S. military, humanitarian, and economic support. He is willing to upend America’s postwar role as a bulwark against authoritarianism and has pledged to pursue a foreign policy rooted in “America First” transactionalism.
There are still many obstacles in his way. Republicans hold slim majorities in the House and Senate. A conservative Supreme Court may not support all of his boundary-pushing policies. Enduring institutional resistance within the federal bureaucracy could thwart his plans. The public remains a powerful check on any president. Trump has now demonstrated twice that he can rise to power on anti-incumbent sentiment, a cult of personality and divisive rhetoric, including racist and xenophobic attacks. He has yet to prove he can deliver on the radical vision he campaigned on. Those closest to the president-elect say he will surprise people by delivering on his promises. “Most politicians don’t,” Wiles said, “but he will.”
Whether Trump can truly address the sources of Americans’ anger is another question. He will now have to contend with the same forces he faced when he entered the White House — a globalized economy, mass immigration and more — that beset predecessors in both parties and drove out incumbents around the world. He will also see how far the country is willing to let him go. If he succeeds, he can reshape the country. Along the way, he risks destroying the constitutional norms and institutions that have made America’s great democratic experiment a quarter-century old.
On April 2, in the private cabin of a plane en route to a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump picked up a document that Wiles had placed on top of a pile of papers. The title was not subtle: “How a national abortion ban would cost Trump the election.” Trump raised an eyebrow. “That title is kind of gross, isn’t it?” he asked.
The incident was a turning point in the central issue of the campaign: whether Trump, after playing a key role in Roe v. Trump’s defeat, could find a position on abortion that would limit his electoral defeat among women. That, in turn, was part of a larger challenge facing Trump: How to deliver change for everyone who wants it, including voters who have been put off by his positions or actions. “There aren’t enough MAGA people to actually win an election,” a Trump campaign official told TIME. “So who do you turn to? How do you expand this?”
Before considering the memo, Trump had at one point been ready to support a 16-week federal abortion ban. Conway showed him a poll showing that banning the procedure after 16 weeks of pregnancy was more popular than banning it after 24 weeks of pregnancy. But Vince Haley, a speechwriter and policy adviser to Trump, objected during a late March call, according to three people familiar with the matter. The moderator asked, “Does he know that a 16-week ban would be stricter than existing laws in many states?” There was a silence. “Probably not,” said James Blair, Trump’s political director. He prepared a slide deck arguing that such a ban would hurt Trump’s interests in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which offer women access to the procedure until at least 20 weeks of pregnancy.
After flipping through Blair’s speech on the plane, Trump looked up: “So we leave it to the states, right?” The advisers agreed. “Great,” Trump said. “We’re going to do a video.” Within minutes, he was dictating his speech to Haley. Days later, Trump posted the video on his social media platforms. For the rest of the campaign, a politician who once claimed “there has to be some kind of punishment” for women who get abortions stuck to his stance as a states’ rights issue.
That same month, Trump made another momentous decision: ending his campaign against mail-in voting and early voting. For more than a year, senior advisers have urged him to embrace the practice that Trump has baselessly accused since the 2020 election of being rife with fraud. Several of his top deputies, including Wiles and Blair, are Florida operatives trained in the science of storing early votes. Wiles wrote Trump a memo showing data on the toll that rejecting mail-in ballots had on the Republican Party in a series of narrow 2022 races. Wiles and Trump’s daughter-in-law, Laura, believed that opposing the practice would be self-defeating.
Trump listened, but it wasn’t until a visit from Rob Gleason, the former chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, that he framed the matter in terms that he agreed with. “Sir, your people are so excited to vote for you, and they want to vote as quickly as possible,” Gleason told him during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in April, according to two Trump officials familiar with the matter. “They don’t want to wait. But you have to tell them that’s OK. You have to give them permission.” Trump has since promoted absentee and early voting and directed the Republican National Committee to launch a mobilization campaign for mail-in voters.
By summer, Trump had the confidence that he had history on his hands. In late June, Joe Biden’s weak debate performance sparked an open revolt among panicked Democrats. On July 13, Trump survived an assassination attempt, sparking widespread support and sympathy. For many Americans, his defiance after the shooting—rising bloodied, fist raised, chanting “Fight!”—made him an inspirational figure for the first time. “That was a moment that changed a lot of people,” Trump told TIME over a Diet Coke at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s strengthened position prompted Biden to drop out of the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. Within days, Harris had consolidated support, raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and galvanized a moribund Democratic base. After the Democratic National Convention was a success, Trump’s inner circle gradually felt that he might lose. Vance said this was “the most worrying moment.” “There was a sense that the honeymoon with Kamala Harris would last until the election?” he said.
Trump is a big believer in Don Draper’s maxim: If you don’t like what someone is saying, change the conversation. So does his team. He had long developed a rapport with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was running for president as an independent in 2024 and was enjoying astonishing support, especially among disillusioned young people. Fearing that Kennedy’s candidacy could steal crucial votes, Don Jr. began negotiating in secret as the talks progressed. Trump Jr. began coordinating with Kennedy’s campaign manager, his daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, to remove him from the ballot in swing states and endorse Trump. The pitch, as Vance tells it, was simple: “You’re not going to win. You’re not going to have any impact on this race other than taking votes away from Donald Trump. So why don’t you actually join the team, put aside your differences, and focus on the big issues that we care about?”
Once Kennedy bought into the plan, Wiles suggested waiting until after the Democratic National Convention to announce it, because he thought it would stall Harris’ momentum. For Wiles, the endorsement was one of the campaign’s key moments. It removed the threat that Kennedy would siphon votes away from Trump. But more importantly, “He allowed us to expand the base of the party,” she says. “He’s a critical pathway to that.”
Other new voters were followers of Elon Musk, who supported Trump after the Butler attack. Musk ultimately poured more than $250 million into his support, turning X into a de facto campaign arm and a key validator for the tech and business executives who have largely shunned Trump on the political stage.Now, Musk will become one of the billionaires with direct access to the Oval Office, creating a web of competing conflicts of interest.
To sharpen the contrast, the campaign subtly portrayed Harris as too left-wing. It drew attention to a questionnaire Harris filled out for the American Civil Liberties Union during her last run for president in 2019, in which she supported taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery for detained undocumented immigrants. Taylor Budowich, a Trump adviser, and Pat McCarthy, the ad’s creator, trumpeted a line that defined his most powerful campaign ad: “Kamala is for them/them. President Trump is for you.” The Trump campaign spent nearly $20 million to air the ad about 55,000 times in the first half of October.
Strategists in both parties are divided over whether the Trump team’s blueprint will work in a close race or whether Harris’ headwinds — from pandemic-induced inflation to widespread concerns about Biden’s age — will be too hard to overcome in a brief campaign against Trump. “We’re facing a travesty of dangerous liberalism,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, head of Harris’s campaign, said at a Harvard Institute of Politics conference. The vice president’s unwillingness to distance herself from her unpopular boss may have as much of an impact as anything Trump has done right. “It’s a huge, looming negative that’s been hanging over us,” said Quentin Fulks, Harris’s deputy campaign manager.
On election night, Trump campaign staff set up a war room in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office to pore over the incoming results as Trump schmoozed with Musk and UFC president Dana White in the club’s ballroom. After North Carolina and Georgia rolled into his column, Trump peeked in. “Anything about you?” he asked.
“No,” an aide replied. “Feeling good.”
“Fine,” Trump said. When he returned to the ballroom, the jubilant crowd was dancing to “YMCA” by Village People — a staple of Trump rallies that has become a cultural touchpoint, with everyone from professional athletes to TikTok enthusiasts mimicking his signature moves. Trump stood for a moment, mulling it all over, then turned to an aide to ask when they should head to the nearby convention center, where he would deliver his victory speech.
This election has given Trump the political capital to address sources of discontent in the United States at home and abroad.The question now is how he plans to spend it. By Trump's own account, he will push the limits of presidential power and the law. Trump told TIME that one of his first official acts as president would be to pardon most of the rioters accused or convicted of attacking the Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden's victory. "It's going to start within the first hour," he said. "Maybe the first nine minutes." Trump also plans to move early to overturn many of Biden's executive orders and expand oil drilling on federal lands.
Pro-Trump rioters gathered on the stage of Inauguration Day, waving flags and chanting slogans on January 6, 2021
Trump's most radical move will be immigration enforcement. He has vowed to tighten U.S. policy through a series of executive orders and aides, ending the "catch and release" program on the U.S. border with Mexico and resuming construction of the border wall. At the same time, he said he would order the U.S. to Law enforcement agencies — and possibly the military — begin a mass deportation operation aimed at removing more than 11 million undocumented immigrants from the country. Although the Local Police Act prohibits the deployment of the military against civilians, Trump has said he is willing to call up the military to round up and deport immigrants. "If it's an invasion of our country, it's not going to stop the military," he said. Asked how he would respond if the military refused to carry out those orders, Trump said, "I'm not only going to do what the law allows, I'm going to do it to the highest level that the law allows."
Trump told TIME that he does not plan to reinstate the policy of separating children from their families to discourage border crossings. But he also didn't rule it out. "I don't think we have to do that because we're sending whole families back," he said. "I'd rather deport them together." Tom Homan, Trump's incoming border czar, said there was "no deliberate policy to separate families." But he also left open the possibility that children could again be ripped from their parents. “You can’t say zero, it’s not going to happen,” Homan said.
For mass deportations of this magnitude, Trump’s advisers are planning to build more detention centers to hold immigrants until they can be deported to their home countries, a process that could take weeks, months or even years of negotiations with receiving governments. It’s unclear whether all would be willing to take the migrants back. Trump has said he will use the market for access to the United States as leverage to force foreign governments to cooperate. “I’ll let them into every country, or we’re not going to do business with those countries,” Trump said. ”
The plan would be costly. The nonprofit American Immigration Council estimates that the total cost of Trump’s mass deportation plan could exceed $300 billion.Trump is likely to seek funding from Congress, according to aides. “It’s going to be expensive,” Homan said.
American taxpayers could bear the brunt of the cost in other ways. Economists say deporting many of the low-wage workers who underpin multiple industries could lead to higher prices. Douglas Rivlin for Vox “If you eliminate the jobs of the people who build the houses, the people who do the accounting, the supervision, the personnel, the people who run the companies, then those jobs are gone, too,” said Andrew Motomura, an immigration scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a self-inflicted disaster.” And that’s before you take into account the social and psychological costs of friends and neighbors being rounded up and driven out of their communities. “When you see the raid on Joe’s Pizza on the nightly news, it becomes very real,” added Hiroshi Motomura, an immigration scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. ”
Trump’s aggressiveness will depend in part on support from the Justice Department, which will be led by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was one of Trump’s defense lawyers in his first impeachment. Trump has vowed revenge against his political enemies , saying Biden, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, special prosecutor Jack Smith and others will face investigations and possible prosecutions. Trump was vague in an interview with Time magazine about whether the Justice Department would target his domestic political opponents, saying only that the decision would be made by Bondi if she is confirmed. “It’s up to her,” he said. Regardless, his victory means the end of a federal indictment that charged him with crimes including subverting the election and willfully withholding classified documents. (Trump has denied the charges.)
On May 30, New York, Trump faced a jury in Manhattan Criminal Court for his criminal hush money trial
To dismantle the federal bureaucracy, Trump invited Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a committee called DOGE, aimed at reducing the size of government.Musk and Ramaswamy have announced massive layoffs of the federal workforce, especially civil servants, and cut regulations on everything from the water we drink to the air we breathe. They promised to do so in July Government administration experts say the commission could reduce the nation’s ability to function. “It would undermine the government’s ability to do the things Congress has legally given it to do,” such as administering Social Security and Medicare, said Peter Shane, a law professor at New York University. If the Musk-Ramaswamy commission cuts out large swaths of the civil service, the government will likely have to rely on private companies. “There’s no guarantee that contractors will be cheaper or more capable,” Shane said. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would not order the Justice Department to enforce the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that banned mail-delivered abortion pills. When Trump spoke to Time magazine before Thanksgiving, his stance on women’s reproductive rights changed in a matter of a few sentences. First, he left open the possibility that the Food and Drug Administration might revoke its approval of medication abortions, then said it was “highly unlikely,” before announcing that “we’re going to look at all of them.” Asked to clarify whether he was committed to stopping the FDA from stripping access to abortion pills, Trump responded, "That was always my commitment."
Former first lady Melania Trump (center right) and Elon Musk at a Trump campaign event at Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 27
Although Trump's Republican Party will have a majority in both the House and Senate, in addition to extending his first-term tax cuts and funding an immigration crackdown, he has signaled that he will take some major legislative steps. Trump has said he supports keeping the filibuster, which allows the Senate minority to block legislation. He said he would take executive action if that hindered the passage of bills through Congress. “If I get in even the slightest bit of trouble,” he said, “I’m going to file for executive order because I can get it done.”
It’s a glimpse into how Trump’s broad view of executive power will shape his second term when he runs into the inevitable roadblocks. “The idea of an imperial presidency is not new, but he’s taken it further than anyone,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “He doesn’t care about the same kind of constraints that Richard Nixon still had. None of that matters to him. So there’s the potential for presidential power to be used extraordinarily aggressively.”
For all the focus on Trump’s domestic agenda, much of the action during TIME’s visit to Mar-a-Lago was about foreign affairs. Waltz, the incoming national security adviser, rushed through the meeting to talk to Vance and Steve Witkoff, the incoming Middle East envoy. A source who attended the national security meeting said the goal was to ensure that America’s adversaries and allies don’t try to take advantage of the transition of power between administrations.
Many of Trump’s solutions to the nation’s problems, including his immigration and trade policies, rely on successful diplomacy. “America First” may be both a campaign slogan and governing North Star, but it will end wars for good and move America forward.
Trump’s plan could upend relationships with allies and traditional trading partners by imposing sweeping tariffs on all imports. He has already imposed 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, a move most economists predict will lead to higher prices. He also plans to raise tariffs on Chinese imports, aimed at forcing manufacturers to make products in the United States.
On the campaign trail, Trump liked to boast that he brokered a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours. He personally admitted it was trickier than he let on. “The Middle East is easier to deal with than Russia and Ukraine,” he said. "The number of young soldiers dying in fields everywhere is staggering. It's insane what's going on." Trump criticized Kiev for firing U.S.-made missiles into Russian territory last month. "I strongly object to firing missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why would we do that?" he said. "We're just escalating this war and making it worse." Asked if he would abandon Ukraine, Trump said he would use U.S. support for Ukraine as leverage against Russia in negotiations to end the war. "I want to make a deal," he said, "and the only way to make a deal is to not give up." Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call during the campaign to end the Gaza war before his inauguration, but that timeline now looks highly unlikely. Many in Israel and the United States suspect Netanyahu is prolonging the fight to prevent a snap election that could remove him from power. "He knows I want it to be over," Trump told Time magazine. Asked if he believed Netanyahu would get to a second term, Trump hesitated before answering, "I don't trust anybody." Trump also wants to expand the Abraham Accords, which he brokered between Israel and several Arab states, to include Saudi Arabia. But he has been less specific about a resolution between Israel and the Palestinians. In his first term, he proposed the most comprehensive two-state solution since President Bill Clinton and blocked Netanyahu from extending Israeli sovereignty to about 30 percent of the West Bank. But on November 12, he was nominated as the incoming U.S. president. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an ardent supporter of the settlement movement, has advocated for Israel to annex the West Bank.
Assad's rule in Syria collapsed abruptly on December 12. It brought to power a rebel group once affiliated with al-Qaeda, but also marked another setback for the already weakened Iranian regime in Lebanon and Gaza. Some analysts worry that the losses could make Iran more likely to push for nuclear weapons. Tehran has moved closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon since Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. As of April, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that Tehran had enough weapons-grade uranium to build a bomb within weeks. Iran and its proxies have waged a multi-front war against Israel and have targeted U.S. assets in the region. According to the Justice Department on November Trump is facing federal charges filed in June that Iranians conspired to assassinate Trump during the presidential campaign. While the president-elect has prided himself on not getting involved in any new wars during his first term, he has left open the possibility that a war might be necessary in his second. Asked about the possibility of war with Iran, Trump paused before responding, "Anything could happen." ”
As dinnertime approached, crowds streamed into Mar-a-Lago’s ornate reception area, transforming it into a bustling king’s court. Job seekers camped out on couches, awaiting their turn to appear before Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street executive who is his transition co-chair. Lutnick is also Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, tasked with vetting Cabinet appointees for the trait Trump values most: loyalty.
Sam Kerr Illustration for Time Magazine; Credit: Getty Images: Trump: Saul Loeb – AFP; Bondi, Musk, Vance: Andrew Harnik; Lutnick: Christopher Goodney – Bloomberg; Watt: Stephanie Reynolds – Bloomberg; Homan: Bill Clark – CQ-Roll Call; Blondie: Chip Somodevilla; Waltz: John Nathan; Miller: Tom Williams – CQ-Roll Call; Wiles: Jabin Botsford – The Washington Post; Twitter: Blair, Budovich
Trump has chosen unconventional nominees who have demonstrated loyalty to him and his agenda: former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary; Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence; Kash Patel as FBI director. He rewarded Kennedy by nominating him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and picked a pro-union labor secretary to pay tribute to working-class voters, while also appointing billionaires to top posts to appease donors who favor Trump's tax cuts and deregulation. The formation of the Cabinet reflects the fragmented coalition that propelled him to victory, with Trump diehards mixed with mainstream choices like Secretary of State Sen. Marco Rubio and Treasury financier Scott Bessant.
As Trump prepares to wage war on Washington, the Washington establishment is cautiously fighting back. Republican senators forced Trump to abandon his first choice to run the Justice Department, far-right former congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, because they were disgusted by his flamboyant style and allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. (Gatez denied this.) When it became clear there were no votes, Trump told Gaetz, “Matt, I don’t think this is worth fighting,” he told Time. Hours later, he announced that another loyalist, Bondi, would succeed him. Senators expressed shock at Hegseth’s inexperience and allegations of sexual assault and alcoholism, which he has denied. Some also worried about having Gabbard at the helm. She became a fixture in the intelligence community, given her previous positions supporting Russia and Assad’s Syria.
Trump said he would respect the Senate’s role in confirming or rejecting his appointees but did not rule out using recess appointments or appointing acting agency heads to circumvent Senate approval. “I really don’t care how they get approved,” he told Time, “as long as they get approved.” Are recess appointments out of the question? “No,” said a senior Trump adviser. “He will not accept being bullied.”
Trump at an election night vigil party in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump said he would not require members of his administration to sign a formal loyalty pledge.“I think I’m going to be able to decide to a large extent who’s loyal,” he said, and anyone who clashes with him would be quickly removed. That would include firing not only his own Cabinet secretaries and political appointees, but also civil servants working in the executive branch. “If they don’t follow my policies,” he said, “absolutely.”
Trump’s aggressive use of presidential power will test the judiciary, the last line of defense against actions that threaten constitutional norms. His critics worry that even if the high court overturns the president’s actions, his Justice Department may not enforce them. Trump and his aides are bracing for a torrent of lawsuits from groups challenging everything from his immigration measures to his attacks on the federal bureaucracy and his attempts to withhold congressional funding. “We’re limited in some ways by the realities and processes of government, but he’s going to try to do something big,” said a Trump official.
With unified control in Washington, Trump will face greater pressure to deliver on his campaign promises to lower the cost of living, revive manufacturing, reverse the U.S. trade deficit with China and make peace abroad. Donald Kettl, an expert on government administration and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, believes Americans are not ready for the level of disruption that a second Trump term in the White House would bring, from potential changes to the education system to a reexamination of routine childhood vaccines, which Kennedy falsely linked to autism despite scientific evidence to the contrary. “The scale of the changes we’re going to see is unprecedented, and the impact on government is huge,” he said. Kettl added that voters view government as wasteful and untrustworthy, but if Trump follows through on his promises to cut a slew of programs, “you could very quickly get a backlash that affects the lives of many, many ordinary Americans.”
By the end of Trump’s first term, voters were tired of the chaos, fed up with his antics and frustrated with his handling of an unprecedented global health crisis. He left office with low approval ratings. Trump’s victory in November may be partly the result of a short memory. Trump, for his part, is confident in his ability to negotiate. “We could use the same words,” he said, “but maybe the look in your eyes will work.” Yet the president-elect has begun to backtrack on some of his promises, such as lowering grocery prices. "Once things go up, it's hard to get them down," Trump said. "You know, it's very hard."
If his approach doesn't work, Trump feels trapped, and critics worry he'll become more extreme. For his closest aides, the president-elect's unpredictable style will give him an edge over America's rivals. "There's a real fear that if you don't listen to him, bad things are going to happen, and that there are consequences for ignoring him," Vance said. Faced with the challenges of governing, Trump seemed almost eager that his final campaign was behind him. "It's sad in a way," he said of his election victory as shadows began to fall on the manicured lawns surrounding his mansion. "It's never going to happen again."
But a lot can happen in four years under President Donald J. Trump.
Joy
