CNN
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Donald Trump will return to the White House if he wins the election, but his supporters and detractors alike have made it clear that his second time around will be very different from his first.
With the Republican Party now fully in his hands and anti-Trump figures permanently purged, Trump has become more aware of his previous experience in the office and of what he believes the system has failed him. He will enter the Oval Office with both an abundance of resentment.
Unlike when he first won the electoral college in 2016, Trump is on track to win the popular vote this year, something he failed to do last time. It was an opportunity to assert the obligation of national support.
“America has given us a powerful and unprecedented mission,” President Trump told an enthusiastic crowd in West Palm Beach, Florida, early Wednesday morning. He summarized his efforts for his second term as follows. “I govern by a simple motto: I promise and I keep my word.”
Therefore, the next four years will be an uncertain period that the first President Trump cannot easily predict. Her rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, tried to warn voters of the risks. But for his supporters, what mattered was his promise to repair what he called a “broken country,” even if it meant abandoning long-held principles.
A series of chiefs of staff, secretaries of defense, national security advisers, national intelligence advisers, attorneys general and others once expected to serve as stabilizing forces have deserted Trump and replaced him. It left behind a condemnation of his character and abilities.
They were replaced by a group of advisers and officials with no interest in keeping Trump in check. This time, rather than acting as a bulwark against Mr. Trump, those working for Mr. Trump share Mr. Trump’s views, never mind the norms, traditions, and laws that past aides sought to uphold. He is eager to keep the extreme promises he made as a candidate.
Trump’s axis of influence has changed significantly since he left office in January 2021. Daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, once prominent campaign agents and senior White House staffers, have since distanced themselves from the turmoil of day-to-day politics. . Ivanka Trump has made it clear she has no plans to return to the West Wing, and Kushner is involved in transition efforts, but people familiar with Trump’s thinking say he has no plans to return to the West Wing. It is unlikely that they will leave.
Instead, Trump found himself relying on people like Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk and Susie Wiles throughout his third bid for the White House.
The former president is also eager to reward those who supported him, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., even if their viewpoints are far outside the mainstream. It seems so. Despite believing in vaccine conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic rhetoric, RFK Jr. recently said that President Trump said Kennedy would “fight like hell” for him if he wanted to take control of the Department of Health and Human Services. spoke.
Inspired by his experience dealing with government law firms, President Trump now has lawyers in the government to find legal basis for even his most radical ideas, rather than to raise concerns. I would consider trying to do so.
President Trump continues to bypass the traditional transition process, refusing to sign an ethics agreement that would allow his campaign to begin handover work with the Biden administration, which typically occurs six months before an election. will be started. The holdup stems from Mr. Trump’s deep distrust of federal agencies, which are certainly not run by his supporters. This meant his team did not have to reveal its donors to the transition process, but was also blocked from receiving millions of dollars in funding for national security briefings and transition assistance. do.
A protracted fight over the text of the agreement and missed key deadlines has left Trump’s allies unable to obtain security clearance. (Some are considering acting independently without the FBI.)
Once-moderate Republicans in Congress sometimes criticized Trump’s most outlandish actions, but loyalty to Trump is now nearly uniform within the party. Over the past four years, efforts to limit presidential power have largely failed, with anti-Trump Republicans either retiring or being voted out of office.
The federal courts have also been reorganized since President Trump took office, and the Supreme Court now has an overwhelmingly conservative majority, which was rejected by the high court when Trump first took office. There is a possibility that the lawsuit that would have been filed would be affirmed. He is also seeking to regain the top position in the federal government with vastly expanded powers after the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are exempt from official acts while in office. Trump’s victory would allow him to fight most, if not all, of the lawsuits.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump himself has changed, say those who know him. It has been four years since he left Washington in 2021, and although he has not provided details about his health, he has appeared tired or unsteady at times.
He is currently a convicted felon and still faces dozens of charges in separate cases, and his future is currently uncertain.
And he is preoccupied both publicly and privately with the issue of retribution in a way that was less visible, at least in the early years of his first administration. He gets even angrier and does little to hide his anger.
President Trump’s first four years in office were marked by constant staff turnover, chaotic decisions based on whims, and constant complaints on his part that the federal government was unable to bend to his will.
For example, he believes he was at times enraged by the Justice Department’s failure to properly investigate or prosecute political opponents. And although he sought to overturn the 2020 election results and was later impeached, that effort failed.
Similarly, when it comes to policy, much of what President Trump tried to do was either due to the incompetence of the aides who circled around the president to blunt the effectiveness of his orders, or the incompetence of staff, most of whom came from outside the government. , canceled.
This time, many of the guardrails against the most extreme actions proposed by President Trump will be absent. And those working for him are increasingly adept at pulling the government’s levers to exercise power more effectively.
Trump is preparing a slew of executive orders, policy documents and regulatory rollbacks as soon as he takes office, two people familiar with the plans said.
As Mr. Trump and his aides look to staff the new administration, they have made it clear that they seek loyalty above all else, inspired by senior appointees who were enemies of Mr. Trump in the previous administration. President Trump has said his personnel decisions were perhaps the biggest mistake of his first presidency.
That means this staffing decision will be intentionally designed around people who won’t try to undermine their policies from within, which is similar to the people Trump fired from the White House. This is an accusation made against
Former Attorney General Bill Barr warned in a CNN interview last summer that loyalty was “a one-way street for him” and that Trump would “just let all this carnage go.” But despite this, many first-timers have expressed interest in working for Mr. Trump.
Transition co-chair Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick nominated thousands of employee candidates to the newly elected president. Trump famously revamped his transition team within days of winning the White House in 2016.
President Trump has also made clear in recent weeks that he is willing to bypass the typical confirmation process for appointees by Congress and the Cabinet as he considers potential high-level positions. President Trump has repeatedly asked candidates whether they would be willing to serve as acting secretary, giving him more flexibility if he changes his mind.
The work to find these people began well before the election, as various organizations aligned with Mr. Trump began compiling lists of supporters who would introduce him to the transition team if he won. President Trump has begun taking steps to remove government employees deemed insufficiently loyal in the final year of his first term, an effort led by his former bodyman John McEntee. . These efforts will now be implemented from the start of the administration.
Mr. Trump himself has vowed to apply the lessons learned from his first time in the White House, partly to avoid saying it was a mistake that hindered his ability to govern the way he wanted.
“I didn’t know anyone[in my first term]. I wasn’t a Washingtonian. I wasn’t there much,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News last week. “I (now) know everyone. I know the good, the strong, the weak, the stupid. I know – I know everyone. And We are going to make this country great again, and we have to save this country.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
