This text appeared in the ‘Top Story’ email newsletter sent on Jan. 18, 2025.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House marks the end of a decades-long approach to governance and the beginning of a new kind of presidency that could reshape the institution and the nation well into the future.Post-Cold War policy marked by expanding federal intervention at home and globalist policy abroad will be replaced by Trump’s lone governing strategy: put America first.
Early signs indicate that Trump has governing momentum among business leaders and foreign heads of state, and, above all, within the Republican party that he now firmly controls.
Even so, Trump’s return to power may be the most dramatic and improbable comeback in American political history.
And it began with a campaign marked by a series of unprecedented events.
Shortly after announcing this third presidential campaign in November 2022, Trump was indicted on dozens of charges in four criminal cases, two in federal courts and two in state courts. Trump maintained that all charges were politically motivated. Others said they were proof that no one is above the law.
His conviction for falsifying business records in New York seemed only to solidify his standing as a Washington outsider on a mission to upend the political establishment.
An assassin’s bullet clipped Trump’s ear at a campaign rally in July. After dropping to the floor amid continued gunfire, Trump rose, ear bloodied, surrounded by Secret Service agents, and raised his fist in the air shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Two weeks later President Joe Biden ended his presidential campaign under pressure from Democratic Party leaders. Vice President Kamala Harris was nominated 15 days later, creating what amounted to a second presidential campaign of just 92 days.
Assembling an unlikely coalition of billionaires and working-class Americans, Trump won the Nov. 5 election to claim a rare nonconsecutive presidential term.
“It was clear from the election results that a lot of the things that Trump was saying on the campaign trail had resonance, far beyond the base,” Peter Campbell, associate professor of political science at Baylor University, told The Epoch Times.
Trump returns with a broader base and, perhaps more importantly, the executive experience he lacked in 2017. This second term will likely differ from the first not in direction but in effectiveness, experts say.
“Trump has a very good sense now that he didn’t have in his first term of what power is and how it’s used,” Michael A. Genovese, a professor of political science and international relations and president of Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University, told The Epoch Times.
While other presidents have chaffed under the limitations of the office, Trump has been especially frustrated by roadblocks to implementing his agenda.
“Biden was more of what I would call a traditional president,” Joe Wert, a professor of political science at Indiana University Southeast, told The Epoch Times. “He was less likely to break the norms [of the presidency] than Trump has been.”
Biden, the institutionalist, understands the workings of government and makes good use of tools like federal regulations and budget negotiations to get things done. Trump likes to push boundaries, according to Wert, and will likely do more of it this term.
The inauguration is set for noon on Monday at the Capitol, and the changes will begin almost immediately.
Shortly after taking the oath of office, Trump is expected to sign the first of more than 100 executive actions that will be enacted during his first two days in office.
