According to the 47th president of the United States, we are living in a newly dawned “golden age of America.” The assertion, for many, is as inspiring as it is vague — particularly given the deluge of executive actions and policy changes that have flooded the first working week of President Donald Trump’s second term in office.
As he claimed at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, this administration has “accomplished more in less than four days” than other presidents achieved in four years. While obviously untrue, the Trump 2.0 White House is not just a continuation of his previous term, nor is it a wholesale reinvention. After his first week in power, what have we learned about how the president plans to govern for the coming years?
What did the commentators say?
Trump’s first few days back in office have been a “jarring shift” in both “style and substance,” said The Washington Post. Even the extent to which he’s changed the West Wing’s decor is “revealing about Trump’s desire to leave his mark on the presidency a second time.” Trump’s many “sweeping actions” to revoke protections for transgender people, pardon Jan. 6 rioters and severely curtail immigration are an opening salvo in a broader effort to “concentrate executive branch power in the West Wing while moving the country sharply rightward,” said The Associated Press.
While many of Trump’s week-one moves are “almost certain to be challenged in court,” while others remain “largely symbolic,” they suggest a larger, more holistic “intention to sharply turn away from the direction of the Biden administration,” as well as “break what he and his aides cast as a ‘deep state’ effort to thwart his agenda,” said The New York Times.
Trump’s first week was also marked by “rapidly materializing” evidence that “bygones will not be bygones,” said Axios. He is flexing “vast new powers” that suggest “resentment against Democrats, former allies, prosecutors and the media will be a driving force in his second term.” It’s a show of force that extends to the “intramural disputes” within the GOP, Politico said. Even within his own party, Trump’s first week has shown he’s “more concerned with using his political muscle to perform acts of dominance” than he is with settling the internal fractures that are “holding up his agenda.” Based on the “immediate evidence” from this first week, Trump’s read of how to best lead the GOP seems “absolutely correct.”
What next?
For many observers, Trump’s first week signaled less of an intention to project longstanding political power and more of an effort to plant a flag for himself and his supporters. “He wants to move boldly and immediately,” said University of California San Diego political science Professor Thad Kousser to The Washington Post. No matter if the rule is overturned by the courts or a subsequent administration, “you’ve made a clarion call for what you stand for and have delivered at least a temporary victory.”
While Trump’s first week has provided a “mix of shock and familiarity among the president’s fans and foes alike,” The Hill said, Democrats “bracing for four more years” like the past week are looking at a “bleak prospect.”