{"id":16303,"date":"2025-04-30T01:21:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T08:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16303"},"modified":"2025-11-15T22:58:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T06:58:33","slug":"issue-of-the-week-human-rights-economic-opportunity-hunger-war-environment-population-disease-personal-growth-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=16303","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: Human Rights, Economic Opportunity, Hunger, War, Environment, Population, Disease, Personal Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TK\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I Run The Country And The World<\/em>, The Atlantic, April 28, June 2025 Cover story<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hundred days are upon us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some, as if quantity equaled quality, compare Trump\u2019s to Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s in this regard, without any serious multi-dimensional commentary on the content of the comparison. Atomic and sub-atomic impact? Yes, there\u2019s a comparison that holds\u2013for now. FDR changed everything forever (unless the world is ended by the actions of the current 100 day subject), even with the setbacks, including especially the anti-FDR nature of Trump\u2019s unprecedented actions in 100 days. FDR helped make sure people got their daily bread, Trump starves them here and world wide in ways heretofore unimaginable. Which is to say starves America of it\u2019s soul\u2013and creates an American flag (that stood in the main, despite all terrible flaws, for democracy, human rights and human needs) into an object of destruction and hatred. Setting up, in short run or long, the most explosive potential boomerang of all times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t think for a moment, however, that this is the work of just one person (and the rest of the enabling elite). It is the result of inequality run amuck and social, personal, community and technological corruption, with the victims too being in collusion with Hanah Arendt\u2019s banality of evil writ large. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a new era that is testing the limits of the human spirit to survive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More to come as usual. But for now, the extraordinary reporting on the main character, a month in advance of the June cover story, in The Atlantic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special Preview: June 2025 Issue<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I RUN THE COUNTRY AND THE WORLD\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Donald Trump believes he\u2019s invincible. But the cracks are beginning to show.By Ashley Parker<\/a> and Michael Scherer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Illustration by Dale Stephanos. Source: Ethan Miller \/ Getty.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

APRIL 28, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before we begin, a primer on the science of arranging an interview with a sitting American president:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In ordinary times, reporters seeking an on-the-record encounter with the commander in chief first write an elaborate proposal. The proposal details the goals of the interview, the broad areas of concern, and the many reasons the president must, for his own good, talk to these particular reporters and not other, perfectly adequate but still lesser reporters. This pitch is then sent to White House officials. If the universe bends favorably, negotiations ensue. If the staff feel reasonably confident that the interview will somehow help their cause, they will ask the president\u2014with trepidation, at times\u2014to sit for the interview. Sometimes, the president will agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such is what happened recently to us. We went through this process in the course of reporting the story you are reading. We made our pitch, which went like this: President Donald Trump, by virtue of winning a second term and so dramatically reshaping the country and the world, can now be considered the most consequential American leader of the 21st century, and we want to describe, in detail, how this came to be.<\/em> Just four years ago, after the violent insurrection he fomented, Trump appeared to be finished. Social-media companies had banned or suspended him, and he had been repudiated by corporate donors. Republicans had denounced him, and the country was moving on to the fresh start of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency. Then came further blows\u2014the indictments, the civil judgments, and the endless disavowals by people who once worked for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, here we are, months into a second Trump<\/a> term. We wanted to hear, in his own words, how he\u2019d pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in political history, and what lessons, if any, he\u2019d internalized along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump agreed to see us. We were tentatively promised a meeting and a photo shoot\u2014likely in the Oval Office, though possibly the Lincoln Bedroom. But then, as is so often the case with this White House, everything went sideways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The week our interview was supposed to occur, Trump posted a vituperative message on Truth Social<\/a>, attacking us by name. \u201cAshley Parker is not capable of doing a fair and unbiased interview. She is a Radical Left Lunatic, and has been as terrible as is possible for as long as I have known her,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTo this date, she doesn\u2019t even know that I won the Presidency THREE times.\u201d (That last sentence is true\u2014Ashley Parker does not know that Trump won the presidency three times.) \u201cLikewise, Michael Scherer has never written a fair story about me, only negative, and virtually always LIES.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, as word of our meeting spread through Trump\u2019s inner circle, someone had reminded him of some of the things we (specifically Ashley) had said and written that he didn\u2019t like. We still don\u2019t know who it was\u2014but we immediately understood the consequences: no photo shoot, no tour of the newly redecorated Oval Office or the Lincoln Bedroom, and definitely no interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we\u2019ve both covered Trump long enough to know that his first word is rarely his final one. So at 10:45 on a Saturday morning in late March, we called him on his cellphone. (Don\u2019t ask how we got his number. All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump\u2019s personal communication devices.) The president was at the country club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. The number that flashed on his screen was an unfamiliar one, but he answered anyway. \u201cWho\u2019s calling?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his attacks on us a few days earlier, the president, evidently feeling buoyed by a week of successes, was eager to talk about his accomplishments. As we spoke, the sounds of another conversation, perhaps from a television, hummed in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president seemed exhilarated by everything he had managed to do in the first two months of his second term: He had begun a purge of diversity efforts from the federal government; granted clemency to nearly 1,600 supporters<\/a>who had participated in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, including those caught beating police officers on camera; and signed 98 executive orders and counting (26 of them on his first day in office). He had fired independent regulators; gutted entire agencies; laid off great swaths of the federal workforce; and invoked 18th-century wartime powers to use against a criminal gang from Venezuela. He had adjusted tariffs like a DJ spinning knobs in the booth, upsetting the rhythms of global trade and inducing vertigo in the financial markets. He had raged at the leader of Ukraine<\/a>, a democratic ally repelling an imperialist invasion, for not being \u201cthankful\u201d\u2014and praised the leader of the invading country<\/a>, Russia, as \u201cvery smart,\u201d reversing in an instant 80 years of U.S. foreign-policy doctrine, and prompting the countries of NATO to prepare for their own defense, without the protective umbrella of American power, for the first time since 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had empowered one of his top political donors, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, to slice away at the federal government and take control of its operating systems. He had disemboweled ethics and anti-corruption architecture installed after Watergate, and had declared that he, not the attorney general, was the nation\u2019s chief law-enforcement officer<\/a>. He had revoked Secret Service protection and security clearances from political opponents, including some facing Iranian death threats for carrying out actions Trump himself had ordered in his first term. He had announced plans to pave over part of the Rose Garden, and he had redecorated the Oval Office\u2014gold trim and gold trophies and gold frames to go with an array of past presidential portraits, making the room look like a Palm Beach approximation of an 18th-century royal court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old foes were pleading for his grace. Meta\u2014whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, had become an enthusiastic supplicant\u2014had paid $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with Trump that many experts believed was meritless. Amazon\u2019s founder, Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post<\/em>, announced that he was banning his opinion writers from holding certain opinions\u2014and then joined Trump for dinner the same night at the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s 100 percent. He\u2019s been great,\u201d the president told us, referring to Bezos. \u201cZuckerberg\u2019s been great.\u201d\u201cYou saw yesterday with Columbia University. What do you think of the law firm? Were you shocked at that?\u201d Trump asked us. Yes\u2014all of it was shocking, much of it without precedent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked Trump why he thought the billionaire class was prostrating itself before him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a higher level of respect. I don\u2019t know,\u201d Trump said. \u201cMaybe they didn\u2019t know me at the beginning, and they know me now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI mean, you saw yesterday with the law firm,\u201d he said. He was referring to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, one of the nation\u2019s most prestigious firms, whose leader had come to the Oval Office days earlier to beg for relief from an executive order that could have crippled its business<\/a>. Trump had issued the order at least partially because a former partner at the firm had in 2021 gone to work for the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office, where he was part of an investigation of the Trump Organization\u2019s business practices. Also that week, an Ivy League institution, threatened with the cancellation of $400 million in federal funding, had agreed to overhaul its Middle Eastern\u2013studies programs at the Trump administration\u2019s request, while also acceding to other significant demands. \u201cYou saw yesterday with Columbia University. What do you think of the law firm? Were you shocked at that?\u201d Trump asked us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes\u2014all of it was shocking, much of it without precedent. Legal scholars were drawing comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the early stages of the New Deal, when Congress had allowed FDR to demolish norms and greatly expand the powers of the presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As ever, Trump was on the hunt for a deal. If he liked the story we wrote, he said, he might even speak with us again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTell the people at The Atlantic<\/em>, if they\u2019d write good stories and truthful stories, the magazine would be hot,\u201d he said. Perhaps the magazine can risk forgoing hotness, he suggested, because it is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, which buffers it, he implied, from commercial imperatives. But that doesn\u2019t guarantee anything, he warned. \u201cYou know at some point, they give up,\u201d he said, referring to media owners generally and\u2014we suspected\u2014Bezos specifically. \u201cAt some point they say, No m\u00e1s, no m\u00e1s<\/em>.\u201d He laughed quietly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media owners weren\u2019t the only ones on his mind. He also seemed to be referring to law firms, universities, broadcast networks, tech titans, artists, research scientists, military commanders, civil servants, moderate Republicans\u2014all the people and institutions he expected to eventually, inevitably, submit to his will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked the president if his second term felt different from his first. He said it did. \u201cThe first time, I had two things to do\u2014run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the second time, I run the country and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For weeks, we\u2019d been hearing from both inside and outside the White House that the president was having more fun than he\u2019d had in his first term. \u201cThe first time, the first weeks, it was just \u2018Let\u2019s blow this place up,\u2019\u200a\u201d Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and an ally of the president\u2019s, had told us. \u201cThis time, he\u2019s blowing it up with a twinkle in his eye.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we put this observation to Trump over the phone, he agreed. \u201cI\u2019m having a lot of fun, considering what I do,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, what I do is such serious stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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EXILE<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

that trump now finds himself once again in a position to blow things up is astonishing, considering the depth of his fall. So much has happened so fast that the improbability of his comeback gets obscured. Perhaps no one in American history has had a political resurrection as remarkable as Donald Trump\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the waning days of his first term, his approval rating stood at a pallid 34 percent. A few weeks earlier, he had watched on television while an insurrection he incited overran the Capitol; polls showed that a clear majority of Americans believed he bore responsibility for the attack<\/a>. The House of Representatives had just impeached him for the second time\u2014making him the only president to ever achieve that ignominy. And although the Senate failed to reach the two-thirds majority required for conviction, seven Republican senators voted to convict\u2014the most members of a president\u2019s own party to vote for an impeachment conviction in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter and Facebook, his favorite social-media platforms, had banned or effectively silenced him, along with Instagram and YouTube. To try to reestablish direct connection with his followers, he would launch a blog, \u201cFrom the Desk of Donald J. Trump.\u201d But it gained little traction and was abandoned within weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major corporations announced that they were cutting off political contributions to officials who had supported Trump\u2019s election lies. Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank decided to stop doing business with Trump and his companies. Perhaps most painful to the president, the PGA of America yanked its scheduled 2022 championship tournament from Trump\u2019s Bedminster golf course. Former members of his own Cabinet and staff\u2014people he had hired\u2014would declare him, or had already declared him, \u201ca moron<\/a>\u201d (Rex Tillerson, secretary of state), \u201cmore dangerous than anyone could ever imagine<\/a>\u201d (James Mattis, secretary of defense), \u201cthe most flawed person I have ever met<\/a>\u201d (John Kelly, chief of staff), and \u201ca laughing fool<\/a>\u201d (John Bolton, national security adviser). And now longtime allies were abandoning him. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, had discussed pushing Trump to resign from office<\/a>. On the evening of the insurrection, Senator Lindsey Graham, a compass reliably magnetized toward wherever power in the Republican Party lies, pointed away from Trump for the first time in four years. \u201cCount me out,\u201d Graham had declared on the Senate floor<\/a>. \u201cEnough is enough.\u201d Rupert Murdoch, then the chairman of Fox Corporation, sent an email to a former Fox Broadcasting executive<\/a> in which he declared, \u201cWe want to make Trump a non person.\u201d Coming from Murdoch himself, the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told us recently, \u201cthat\u2019s a papal bull.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the morning of Joe Biden\u2019s inauguration, Trump was a dozen miles southeast of the festivities, at Joint Base Andrews, preparing to depart for Florida. (Trump was the first president since Andrew Johnson, in 1869, to boycott the swearing-in of his successor.) Standing before a modest crowd, his dark overcoat a meager bulwark against the cold, the soon-to-be-former president cut a diminished figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just before boarding Air Force One for the final time, to head to Mar-a-Lago, Trump spoke to those gathered to bid him farewell. \u201cWe will be back in some form,\u201d he said, a notably modest framing from such a formerly oversize figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few believed him. It didn\u2019t even sound like he believed it himself. The Trump era was over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost as soon as Trump arrived at his gilded Elba, he began plotting his return. He missed the press pool\u2014the gaggle of reporters that tails every president\u2014and once tried to summon it<\/a>, only to be told that no such pool still existed. But it would turn out that the lack of attention in those first months\u2014and the lack of access to social-media platforms\u2014was a blessing. Enforced obscurity gave him the time and clarity he needed to plan his comeback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand how Trump rose from the political dead, and how he set himself up to wield power in his second term, we spoke with dozens of top advisers, senior aides, allies, adversaries, and confidants. Many who talked with us did so only on the condition of anonymity, in order to be more candid or to avoid angering the president. The story they told us revealed that Trump\u2019s time in the political wilderness is crucial to understanding the way he\u2019s exercising power now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had been in Palm Beach a week when an opportunity presented itself. Trump heard that Kevin McCarthy would be in South Florida for fundraisers. Though the two men had clashed after the Capitol riot, Trump invited McCarthy to Mar-a-Lago. Even before the meeting happened, news of it leaked to The New York Times<\/em>, shaking the political universe: Were Republican leaders, who had seemed so intent on purging Trump, embracing him again? When Trump and McCarthy met in person, the former president asked the minority leader who had tipped off the Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TK\"\/
Donald Trump departed Washington in 2021 a pariah, twice impeached, abandoned by former allies, and banned or suspended from his favorite social-media platforms. (Photo-illustration by Paul Spella. Sources: Noam Galai \/ Getty; Alex Edelman \/ AFP \/ Getty; Sepia Times \/ Universal Images Group \/ Getty.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know who leaked it\u2014you did,\u201d McCarthy replied, multiple people briefed on the exchange told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good for both of us,\u201d Trump shot back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both men were right. McCarthy had already concluded that the path back to Republican control of the House in the 2022 midterms\u2014and his own path to the speakership\u2014required a unified party, one that included Trump and his MAGA base. After the meeting, each man separately released the same photo: the two of them grinning amid the ostentatious splendor of Mar-a-Lago. Trump had taken his first step toward political redemption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a truism that Trump has never felt governed by the traditional rules of politics. And he has always been convinced of his own genius, his pure gut instincts. But never more so than today. The past four years have turned him into a Nietzschean clich\u00e9. Banishment, multiple indictments, a 34-count felony conviction, repeated brushes with assassins\u2014all have combined to convince him that he is impervious to challenges that would destroy others. Those years also strengthened in him the salesman\u2019s instinct that he can bend reality to his will\u2014turn facts into \u201cfake news,\u201d make the inconceivable not just conceivable but actual, transform the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America, make people believe what he\u2019s selling in defiance of what they see with their own eyes. This is the core lesson that Trump and his acolytes internalized from the 2020 election and January 6. The real-estate mogul who branded buildings with his name everywhere from Turkey to Uruguay, who sold the \u201cworld\u2019s greatest steaks\u201d and the \u201cfinest\u201d wine and \u201cfantastic\u201d mattresses, had mastered the alchemy of perception. Reality, to Trump, is fungible. While reporting on Trump over the past four years, we were repeatedly struck that, in failing to drive a stake directly through his heart, all of the would-be vampire slayers\u2014Democrats, Never Trumpers, Republican-primary opponents, prosecutors, judges, media critics\u2014only strengthened him. Which brings us to a second lesson: Trump and his team realized that they could behave with near impunity by embracing controversies and scandals that would have taken down just about any other president\u2014as long as they showed no weakness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even now, Trump\u2014who described himself to us as \u201ca very positive thinker\u201d\u2014struggles to admit that his return to power was a comeback. To concede that he\u2019d had to come back would be to admit that he had fallen in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early in our reporting for this article, we asked the Trump loyalist and former Breitbart News<\/em> editor Raheem Kassam to explain how the president had been able to bend the country, and the world, to his will. Over a meal of oysters br\u00fbl\u00e9es, duck confit, and fries cooked in beef tallow at Butterworth\u2019s, the new MAGA haunt on Capitol Hill, he responded crudely, if vividly. \u201cHe didn\u2019t bend them to his will,\u201d Kassam said. \u201cHe bent them over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we spoke with Trump in late March, his approval ratings seemed steady, his political base apparently unshakable. Institution after institution was submitting to him\u2014\u201cobeying in advance,\u201d as the historian of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder has put it. Trump was carrying out his agenda with surprisingly little resistance, even from Democrats. But in the days and weeks that followed, the patina of infallibility began to crack. At the instigation of Elon Musk\u2019s DOGE team<\/a>, critical workers had been getting fired\u2014and then hired back. An embarrassing (and possibly illegal) operations-security snafu, in which the editor of this magazine was included on a Signal group chat<\/a> that discussed imminent attack plans on Houthi targets in Yemen<\/a>, made the administration look incompetent, in a fashion reminiscent of the clown-car chaos of Trump 1.0. The president\u2019s tariff rollout was shambolic<\/a>, tanking the stock market and causing even some loyalists to question him publicly. His approval rating on the economy, long a buttress of his polling support, went negative. Was this what happens when a feeling of indomitability curdles into hubris? Or was this just the next setback for Trump\u2014some combination of Houdini and Lazarus\u2014to recover from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump advisers like to tell a story from November 5, 2024, Election Night, just before the networks called Wisconsin, and thus the election, in his favor. He and his aides were preparing to head to the West Palm Beach convention center, where he would deliver his victory speech. His whole senior team was crowded into his private office at Mar-a-Lago. Addressing no one in particular, as though just musing aloud, Trump spoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know, they made a big mistake,\u201d he said. \u201cThey could have been getting rid of us by now. But actually, we\u2019re just beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THE ART OF THE COMEBACK<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

he had almost been destroyed before. After a real-estate downturn in the early 1990s, Trump found himself on the brink of financial ruin. His near bankruptcy and recovery led to his 1997 book, The Art of the Comeback<\/em>. For his political advisers in exile, this book became essential reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first pages list Trump\u2019s \u201cTop Ten Comeback Tips.\u201d When we met one of his advisers recently, this person recounted from memory some of the rules on the list. \u201cRule 1 is: Play golf,\u201d this adviser told us. \u201cRule 9 is: Get even.\u201d (Rule 10, \u201cAlways have a prenuptial agreement,\u201d seemed less applicable to politics.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To stage a comeback, Trump would need the right staff. He had realized, in his exile, that at nearly every turn in his first term, someone on his own team\u2014Reince Priebus, John Kelly, James Mattis, Bill Barr, Gary Cohn\u2014had blocked him. He needed smart people who would figure out how to let him do everything that he wanted to do, in whatever way he wanted to do it. His first key hire was a political operative who had impressed the former president with her retrospective analysis of the 2020 election. Biden had won the election that year by flipping back into the Democratic column five key states\u2014Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (along with a lone congressional district in Nebraska). One of the few bright spots for Trump in 2020 had been Florida, where he had increased his winning margin from 2016. What, Trump began asking his allies after the election, had he done right in Florida that he hadn\u2019t done in the rest of the country?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer, in large part, boiled down to Susie Wiles, who had run Trump\u2019s 2016 and 2020 campaigns in the state. Wiles, the daughter of the legendary NFL announcer Pat Summerall, is an experienced campaign operative (she was a scheduler for Ronald Reagan\u2019s 1980 presidential campaign), who over the past three decades had developed deep Florida ties. After every campaign she runs, Wiles writes an \u201cafter action\u201d report, documenting what worked and what didn\u2019t. Over dinner with Trump on the patio at Mar-a-Lago in early 2021, she delivered \u201cthe Florida memo.\u201d Soon after, he hired her to run his political operation, which eventually became his 2024 campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wiles saw that one thing that had held Trump back in 2020 was that he had not finished taking over the Republican Party during his first term. Part of Trump\u2019s leverage had been his ability to endorse in Republican primaries\u2014influence he was eager to reprise. \u201cWhen I endorse somebody, they win,\u201d Trump told us on the phone. \u201cBut even when I endorse them in the general election, mostly they win. It\u2019s important.\u201d (Now when Trump calls to pressure a fellow Republican about an issue or a vote, they are almost always grateful for his past support, or feel that they owe their seat to him.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wiles process for evaluating potential endorsees\u2014which she undertook with James Blair, now a deputy chief of staff in the White House, and Brian Jack, now a congressman representing Georgia\u2014involved researching how they had spoken about Trump in the past. \u201cThe basic thing was their loyalty and their political viability,\u201d one adviser told us. \u201cSo we were looking for things like: So, what did they say on J6? What did they say during the Access Hollywood<\/em> tapes? What is their voting record with us?\u201d Trump was building a coalition of loyalists, something he hadn\u2019t sufficiently done during the first term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wiles had plenty of experience managing men with big personalities. But colleagues say a key reason she\u2019s been successful working with Trump (she is now his White House chief of staff) is that she never tries to manage him. She does not imagine that she can control him, as some former top advisers attempted, and she tends not to offer advice unless specifically asked. Her primary role, as she sees it, is to set up processes to help ensure Trump\u2019s success, and then to execute his directives, whatever they may be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, Trump\u2019s banishment from the big social-media platforms, along with mainstream media outlets\u2019 reluctance\u2014including Fox News\u2019s\u2014to give him much coverage, seemed potentially devastating. But Trump turned to the far-right platforms and activists still welcoming him. Taylor Budowich\u2014now a White House deputy chief of staff\u2014worked with MAGA influencers to evade the Twitter and Facebook bans: They would print out pro-Trump social-media posts; Budowich would have Trump sign the paper with his Sharpie, and then mail the signed post back to the influencer; almost invariably, the influencer would then post the signed missive, flexing their access and building their audience\u2014while simultaneously amplifying Trump\u2019s voice. At the same time, a video ecosystem grew up around Trump, with streaming platforms such as Right Side Broadcasting Network stepping in to cover his events when cable networks would not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHim being banned gave rise to people like me, because the president\u2019s supporters followed me to find out what he was saying,\u201d one MAGA influencer told us. \u201cIt backfired on the tech people who deplatformed him, because it platformed all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump, meanwhile, continued to promote the lie that he\u2019d won the 2020 election, and that January 6 was just an ordinary Wednesday. Normal political logic suggested that this was a bad strategy. But his shamelessness, as ever, remained a strength. By repeating something frequently enough, he could slowly make it feel true, at least for his supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long ago, we sat in Steve Bannon\u2019s Capitol Hill rowhouse, where he records his War Room<\/em> podcast, pressing him on Trump\u2019s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, and his denial of what transpired on January 6. \u201cOur reality is that we won\u201d and that January 6 was a \u201cfedsurrection,\u201d Bannon said, referring to the conspiracy theory that FBI agents had incited the crowd on the Ellipse that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this reality, we pointed out to Bannon, is simply not true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, here\u2019s the interesting thing,\u201d Bannon said. \u201cWho\u2019s won that argument? I think we have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cBE READY!\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

the first televised hearing of the House select committee on January 6 was scheduled for the beginning of June 2022, and it was sure to be a spectacle that reminded viewers of the horror of the insurrection and emphasized the former president\u2019s culpability. Trump\u2019s team at Mar-a-Lago was desperate to distract attention from the hearing. At one point, someone proposed a brazen gambit: Trump could announce his 2024 bid for the presidency just minutes before the hearing gaveled in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s response was telling. \u201cI\u2019m not ready for this,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not ready for this right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was the first moment of, like, \u2018Okay, he\u2019s not just thinking about it; he\u2019s seriously thinking about how he wants to do it,\u2019\u200a\u201d one of his advisers told us. \u201cHe\u2019s not going to just use it as a stunt to make a moment. He wants to win.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before long, Trump began emphasizing behind the scenes that he was serious. \u201cBe ready,\u201d he would repeat to people who had served with him the first time around. \u201cBe ready! Be ready! We\u2019re coming back! Be ready!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, when Trump did launch his campaign, in November 2022, it did not get off to an auspicious start. Even his most fiercely supportive advisers concede that the announcement, in the form of an hour-long speech at Mar-a-Lago, was a dud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprisingly few political reporters from major outlets were in attendance; it was as though the mainstream media still didn\u2019t believe that Trump could be a viable candidate again. Worse, some members of Trump\u2019s own family hadn\u2019t bothered to show up. As the speech dragged on, even Fox News cut away, switching to what Bannon called \u201ca C-level panel,\u201d before returning for the final few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The campaign struggled to gain traction. Trump\u2019s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio told us that even months later, into early 2023, getting donors to attend the first big super-PAC event \u201cwas like pulling teeth.\u201d And although Trump was now a declared presidential candidate, his team said it was still having trouble getting him booked even on shows such as Fox & Friends<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first turning point, several advisers told us, came in February 2023. A Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border, spewing toxic material. Sitting in the West Palm Beach campaign headquarters one day, Trump\u2019s team watched Joe Biden\u2019s press secretary struggle to answer a question about the president\u2019s plans for outreach to East Palestine. Soon after, Susie Wiles received a call from Trump\u2019s oldest son, Don Jr., saying that his father ought to just show up there himself. When Wiles brought the suggestion to Trump, in the living room of Mar-a-Lago, his response was unequivocal: \u201cThat\u2019s a great idea,\u201d he enthused. \u201cWhen can we go?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s visit to East Palestine\u2014and the footage of him buying McDonald\u2019s for the first responders\u2014had a potent effect. \u201cIt just reminded everyone that people still like this guy,\u201d one adviser told us. \u201cHe\u2019s still a draw.\u201d Nearly two years later, Trump\u2019s visit continued to resonate. \u201cPeople are living their lives and they don\u2019t delve that easily into policy,\u201d a woman across the border in the swing state of Pennsylvania told our colleague George Packer<\/a> before the election last fall. \u201cAll they know is that Trump was here buying everyone McDonald\u2019s\u201d and that Biden hadn\u2019t visited for more than a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The halting start to the campaign kept Trump off the radar, giving his team time to plan. Former Trump advisers had used their years out of power to set up their own groups\u2014America First Legal, America First Policy Institute, Center for Renewing America\u2014to prepare for a second Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe people who were the true believers knew Trump was going to run again and win,\u201d Caroline Wren, a former top Trump fundraiser, told us, adding that Trump\u2019s policy loyalists \u201csat there and prepared executive orders for four years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The time out of the spotlight also allowed the team to build a new election strategy. By now, Trump had alienated a significant share of the voting public, and he was polling lower among some demographic groups than in previous elections. The conventional wisdom was that the criminal investigations and legal proceedings then under way would only increase that alienation. His campaign directors decided that the best tactic was to turn this problem into a strength. Chris LaCivita, who was a co\u2013campaign manager alongside Susie Wiles and a military veteran wounded in the Gulf War in 1991, took to exhorting younger staffers with a Marine slogan: \u201cEmbrace the suck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impulse to let Trump be Trump, so contrary to the instincts of much of the first-term staff, was laid out in a memo that James Blair and Tim Saler, the campaign\u2019s lead data expert, sent to Wiles in early 2024. This became known around the campaign as the \u201cgender memo.\u201d \u201cInstead of saying, \u2018Look, we did two points worse with white suburban women between 2016 and 2020\u2019 and \u2018How do we get those points back?,\u2019 what if we did it the other way?\u201d an adviser familiar with the memo told us. \u201cWhat if we said, \u2018We gained eight points with non-college-educated men. What if we won them by 12?\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TK\"\/
During his brief political exile, Trump hired the campaign operative Susie Wiles. (Photo-illustration by Paul Spella. Sources: ablokhin \/ Getty; Tom Brenner \/ The Washington Post<\/em> \/ Getty; ZUMA Press \/ Alamy.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The strategy had the benefit of letting Trump be the version of himself that appealed to those men. In a moment when the Democratic Party often felt like an amalgamation of East Coast elitists, niggling scolds, and far-left activists, Trump appeared to offer judgment-free populism to a populace sick of being judged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s own view, we were told, was more self-referential: \u201cWhy would I distance myself from my people? They love me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\u201cIT MADE ME STRONGER\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

on friday, may 31, 2024, the day after Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges in a New York City courtroom, the treasurer at Make America Great Again Inc., the main super PAC supporting the former president, called his boss, Taylor Budowich, with good news. A large wire transfer was incoming\u2014a record $15 million. The call set off an internal scramble, because the bank needed the donor\u2019s name to approve the transfer, and nobody knew who it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly thereafter, the treasurer called back. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d he told Budowich. \u201cI misheard him. It\u2019s not $15 million\u2014it\u2019s $50 million.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be sorry!\u201d Budowich said. (The donation was eventually traced to Timothy Mellon, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrats assumed that Trump\u2019s legal issues would politically neuter him. \u201cA convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency,\u201d Biden would say<\/a>. But all the scandals and controversies that would have sunk a different candidate became background static. \u201cThe thing about the court cases is there were too many of them, and this is one of Trump\u2019s superpowers\u2014he never just breaks the law a little bit; he does it all over the place,\u201d Sarah Longwell, a formerly Republican, anti-MAGA political strategist who regularly conducts focus groups, told us. \u201cAnd as a result, there were so many court cases that it was just white noise to voters. They couldn\u2019t tell them apart.\u201d\u201cIf I\u2019m not president, you\u2019re fucked,\u201d Trump told a roomful of oil executives at Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democratic base remained outraged. Trump\u2019s base continued to believe his claims that all the criminal investigations and January 6 hearings constituted a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d But for the sliver of voters who would actually decide the election, the Democratic argument that Trump was a threat to democracy was too far removed from their more urgent concerns about grocery prices. As time passed and Trump continued to rewrite history to turn insurrectionists into \u201cpatriots,\u201d the events of January 6 receded into abstraction for many of these voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you said, \u2018What\u2019s J6?,\u2019 it\u2019s like, \u2018What is that? Bingo? Are you playing Battleship?\u2019\u200a\u201d the adviser familiar with the gender memo told us, describing what the campaign\u2019s voter research had found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s felony conviction actually proved to be a boon. This did not surprise his advisers. A year earlier, in the spring of 2023, when Trump had been indicted over hush-money payments to a porn star, his support in Republican-primary polls jumped 10 points within a month, to more than 50 percent\u2014a level it would never drop below again. In the first three months of 2023, MAGA Inc. had reported raising only about $600,000; in the three months following the indictment, the group took in nearly $13 million. \u201cDemocrats just played right into our hands,\u201d Fabrizio, the Trump pollster, told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Trump\u2019s base, the cases were energizing, and they put his Republican-primary opponents in the difficult position of having to defend Trump against \u201clawfare\u201d or risk being seen as supporting the Democrats\u2019 position. So even while campaigning against him for the nomination, they were in effect campaigning for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his 2016 campaign, Trump had ignored the traditional fundraising circuit, which increased donor skepticism of him. But during his time in the wilderness, he began to enjoy raising money. He asked advisers to schedule more call time for him with top donors. He wrote personal notes, and he regularly invited wealthy supporters and potential donors to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago. He judged generosity not by the size of the check, his allies told us, but by the size of the check relative to the donor\u2019s net worth. He liked pressuring donors to bet on him\u2014and watching them squirm if they hedged. Sometimes he was blunt, invoking the specter of a President Kamala Harris taking their wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(\u201cIf I\u2019m not president, you\u2019re fucked,\u201d he would tell a roomful of oil executives at Mar-a-Lago after the election. \u201cLook at your profit-and-loss statements. You realize what would have happened to you if she was president? What\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court decision in July 2024 regarding a legal challenge to the federal prosecution of Trump for interfering in the 2020 election gave Trump and his allies further momentum. Trump v. United States<\/em> addressed the question of legal liability for a president, but Trump\u2019s allies focused on how the Court described the presidency itself, suggesting that all the powers of the executive branch were imbued in the personage. \u201cUnlike anyone else,\u201d the Court wrote, \u201cthe President is a branch of government.\u201d That the prosecution of Trump both revivified his candidacy and then gave him more executive power in his second term remains a stinging irony for Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we talked with Trump, we asked him if he thought the criminal prosecutions had made him stronger. \u201cShockingly, yes,\u201d he said. \u201cNormally, it would knock you out. You wouldn\u2019t even live for the next day. You know, you\u2019d announce your resignation, and you\u2019d go back and \u2018fight for your name,\u2019 like everybody says\u2014you know, \u2018fight for your name, go back to your family.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He paused. \u201cYeah, it made me stronger, made me a lot stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final months of the campaign, Democratic strategists working for Vice President Harris focused on seven swing states. Trump, by contrast, told aides that he wanted to put resources into picking up voters even in states he was already certain to win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want anyone to know\u2014it\u2019s a surprise\u2014but I think we might win the popular vote,\u201d Trump would say to his advisers. \u201cWe have got to run up the score.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During breaks between events, his team would place calls to groups of voters in red states and put him on the line. \u201cThis is your favorite president, Donald Trump,\u201d he\u2019d say, before launching into brief remarks. They would make calls from the motorcade, from the campaign plane, as many as 10 a day. In this way, working around the old mass media, Trump reached thousands of voters directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there was someone in America in some state, still awake, Donald Trump would find a way to get to them,\u201d Chris LaCivita told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, Trump had been so frustrated about losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton that he\u2019d falsely asserted, \u201cI won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.\u201d Eight years later, he didn\u2019t have to pretend. As Election Night gave way to dawn in Palm Beach, Trump basked in the comprehensiveness of his victory\u2014all seven swing states, and a strong showing in the popular-vote tally, which he ultimately won. Several aides got calls from him around 4 a.m. \u201cYou won\u2019t believe it,\u201d Trump crowed, according to one. \u201cI\u2019ve already had 20 world leaders call me. They all want to kiss my ass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some time later, Trump addressed a gathering of supporters in the living room at Mar-a-Lago. During his first term people would say, \u201cYeah, he won, but he doesn\u2019t have a mandate,\u200a\u201d Trump told the crowd. \u201cNow they can\u2019t say it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
THE TRANSITION<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

people who worked with Trump in his first term used to play a parlor game of sorts. What would happen, they wondered, if they, the human guardrails, weren\u2019t there to correct the president\u2019s errors, to explain to him all the things he did not know or understand, to talk him out of or slow-walk his most destructive impulses?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his first term, he faced resistance and obstruction from all over the government: from the courts and from the Democrats, but also from Republicans in the House and Senate, who at times treated him like a floundering student. The contempt was mutual. \u201cPaul Ryan was a stupid person,\u201d Trump told us in March, referring to the former Republican speaker of the House. \u201cAnd Mitch, Mitch wasn\u2019t much better,\u201d Trump said of Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader and, lately, the epicenter of GOP resistance to Trump<\/a>, such as it is. But some of the most crucial pushback came from within the executive branch. At times, his chief of staff and his White House counsel declined to carry out his orders. Trump had been apoplectic when \u201chis\u201d Justice Department, under Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, opened an independent-counsel investigation into whether the Russians had influenced the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign had colluded with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time would be different, because he\u2019d learned from experience. \u201cWhen I did it before, I never did it, you know?\u201d he told us. \u201cI didn\u2019t know people in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On January 15, at 8 p.m., five days before the inauguration, Trump sent out an incendiary post on Truth Social. In it, he described the sorts of people his incoming administration would not be hiring<\/a>\u2014a list that included anyone who had ever worked for, in his words, \u201cAmericans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch), \u2018Dumb as a Rock\u2019 John Bolton, \u2018Birdbrain\u2019 Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, disloyal Warmongerers Dick Cheney, and his Psycho daughter, Liz,\u201d and anyone \u201csuffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.\u201d For those staffing Trump\u2019s second term, the missive was doctrine: This time, loyalty would be absolute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, few experienced Republicans had been involved in Trump\u2019s campaign, so the pool of presumptive loyalists to draw from was small. His incoming team also used key transition picks\u2014Cabinet secretaries, West Wing advisers\u2014to reassure a still-skeptical Republican Party that Trump was one of them. This produced a dysfunctional dichotomy in which Reince Priebus, a mild-mannered traditional Republican from Wisconsin, and Steve Bannon, a revolutionary hell-bent on dismantling the administrative state, shared top billing in the West Wing. The competing camps\u2014the MAGA fire-breathers, the establishment swamp creatures, \u201cJavanka\u201d and the globalists\u2014leaked relentlessly to the media and tried to knife one another. A miasma of chaos surrounded Trump, and impaired the administration\u2019s ability to carry out its policy agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by 2024, Trump had effectively consumed the party, and he had no need to recruit traditional Republicans, if any even remained. Cliff Sims, who during Trump\u2019s first term had served as a communications aide in the White House before going to work for the director of national intelligence, helped the transition team manage hiring for the second term. The formula for staffing the administration wasn\u2019t hard this time, Sims told us: \u201cDon\u2019t hire anyone who wasn\u2019t committed to the agenda last time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew that Stephen Miller would ultimately run the policy operation, with immigration as a top priority,\u201d Sims told us, referring to Trump\u2019s senior domestic-policy adviser<\/a>, who is, famously, an immigration hard-liner. \u201cSo I just asked him, \u2018Who do you want? Who should prepare DHS? Who should prepare ICE? Who are the rock stars from your team? Let\u2019s get them all rolling.\u2019\u200a\u201d Same, too, with trade. Sims called Jamieson Greer, who had served as the chief of staff to the U.S. trade representative in Trump\u2019s first term before taking over the role himself this time around. He asked Greer who Trump\u2019s pro-tariff \u201ckillers on trade\u201d were. \u201cAnd he\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019ve been sitting here hoping someone would call about this; I\u2019ve already got a list ready,\u2019\u200a\u201d Sims told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the transition hiring for the second term harvested a uniformly loyalist crop of staffers, getting things done the way Trump wants became easier. In the first term, executive orders designed by the MAGA faction were sometimes rushed through without proper legal vetting, in an attempt to prevent a warring faction from killing the directive, someone familiar with this process told us\u2014which made them vulnerable to court challenges. This time around, the process for generating the orders is more disciplined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s aides and advisers also now understood the hydraulics of the government better. They\u2019d learned, for instance, that immigration policy was not contained solely within the Department of Homeland Security, and that to curb the flow of immigrants across the southern border, they also needed to install loyalists in crucial roles at the Department of Health and Human Services. When it came to the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department, they now knew they needed MAGA diehards in key roles. This kind of knowledge would now be applied to thousands of hires across dozens of agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When his cabinet nominees hit trouble in the Senate, Trump and his team were determined to test their new power. \u201cIt was \u2018You\u2019ll eat your breakfast and you\u2019ll like it,\u2019\u200a\u201d a veteran Republican operative told us. The first major test came during the former Fox News host Pete Hegseth\u2019s quest for confirmation as defense secretary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, a Republican, was skeptical about Hegseth\u2019s qualifications. Ernst is the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate; Hegseth had previously said that women should not serve in combat roles. Ernst is also a sexual-assault survivor; Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault and other misconduct, including alcohol abuse. (Hegseth has denied the accusations<\/a>.) But when Ernst publicly signaled that she might not be able to support the nomination, Trump\u2019s allies leaped into action. On private text chains, they talked about how failing to win confirmation for Hegseth was untenable. The consensus was clear: Because Matt Gaetz had already had to withdraw as Trump\u2019s pick for attorney general, if they lost another major nominee, there would be blood in the water. Even the most controversial\u2014Hegseth<\/a>, Tulsi Gabbard<\/a>, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/a>, Kash Patel<\/a>\u2014needed to be muscled through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TK\"\/
Trump and his team saw the confirmation of their most controversial Cabinet nominees\u2014Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard\u2014as a chance to flex their power over the Republican Party. (Photo-illustration by Paul Spella. Sources: Rebecca Noble \/ Getty; Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty; Philip Yabut \/ Getty; Print Collector \/ Getty.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

They decided to make an example of Ernst, as a warning to other senators about what to expect if they stepped out of line. An op\u2011ed implicitly excoriating her appeared on Breitbart News\u200a<\/em>; Bannon and the gang on his War Room<\/em> podcast hammered her relentlessly; and the powerful young conservative activist Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point USA team threatened to send resources to Iowa to oppose her reelection in 2026. Ernst\u2019s effort to \u201cend Pete Hegseth,\u201d Kirk posted on X in early December, \u201cis a direct attempt to undermine the President and his voters. Pete Hegseth is the redline. If you vote against him, primaries will ensue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s team knew that once the most prominent MAGA figures began their onslaught, second-tier influencers would follow. Ernst called around to Trump allies, begging them to stop the attacks. But they wouldn\u2019t relent; she voted to confirm Hegseth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator and physician from Louisiana, also briefly found himself in the hot seat as he struggled with his confirmation vote on Kennedy, a vaccine critic who has misstated scientific findings, to lead the nation\u2019s top health agency. (Cassidy was also viewed as a problem by Trump supporters because he\u2019d voted to convict the president for his role in the January 6 insurrection.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cassidy ultimately supported Kennedy\u2019s nomination, though he maintained that the vote had nothing to do with his own reelection prospects in 2026. Afterward, in the course of general conversations about the midterms, Cassidy\u2019s team sought Trump\u2019s support in his upcoming GOP primary. Trump told an aide to relay to Cassidy: \u201cI\u2019ll think about it.\u201d (A Trump adviser told us that, for the moment, the president and Cassidy have reached \u201can uneasy d\u00e9tente.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business leaders fell more quickly in line. After the election, they descended on Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At dinner with Silicon Valley moguls, Trump would sometimes play \u201cJustice for All\u201d\u2014a song by the J6 Prison Choir that features men imprisoned for their actions on January 6 singing \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner,\u201d interspersed with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. One Trump adviser gleefully recounted how confused the tech billionaires appeared when \u201cJustice for All\u201d started, looking around for cues before inevitably rising and putting their hands over their hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe troll is strong,\u201d the adviser told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Thursday before the inauguration, a friend of Trump\u2019s was sitting with him at Mar-a-Lago when the once and future president held up his phone to show off his recent-call log.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook who called in the past hour,\u201d Trump boasted, then scrolled through a list that included Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tiger Woods. Apart from Woods, all were former Trump critics who, eight years earlier, had tried to keep their distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
SHOCK AND AWE<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

the start of a new presidency is a famously harried and jury-rigged affair. But Trump and his team had spent his time out of office preparing for his return. Longwell, the anti-MAGA strategist, told us\u2014echoing something our colleague David Frum had warned about four years ago\u2014that watching Trump\u2019s second-term team attack the federal bureaucracy was like watching \u201cthe velociraptors who have figured out how to work the doorknobs.\u201d Day one of the second term, the product of weeks of meticulous planning, was all about\u2014in the Trump team\u2019s words\u2014\u201cshock and awe.\u201d \u201cWe did all the immigration and border executive orders,\u201d an adviser told us. \u201cIf we just left it at that, all the stories would have been about what bad people we are\u2014we\u2019re kicking people out of this country. But then right after he signed those border executive orders, bam<\/em>: the J6 pardons.\u201d The adviser explained that, along with Trump\u2019s multiple speeches that day and inaugural balls that evening, this meant \u201cthe media had to choose what to cover. It\u2019s either the J6 pardons or the immigration executive orders.\u201d This convulsion of activity, the adviser told us, was all \u201cplanned\u201d\u2014designed to overwhelm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have everyone kind of in the barrel, like everyone\u2019s on the spin cycle, just getting whipped around, and that\u2019s advantageous for us,\u201d another adviser told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his first term, Trump had floated the idea of buying Greenland<\/a>\u2014speaking of it almost offhandedly as a potentially intriguing if unusual real-estate acquisition. But now, even before taking office again, he had suggested that Canada should be America\u2019s 51st state, threatened to reclaim the Panama Canal, and vowed to gain control of Greenland\u2014\u201cone way or the other,\u201d as he would later put it. He followed this during his inaugural address by invoking \u201cmanifest destiny,\u201d the 19th-century idea that the United States has a divinely ordained right to control North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis time it\u2019s \u2018Hey, fuck you, Greenland\u2019s ours,\u2019\u200a\u201d Bannon told us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that many of the things that, in his first term, Trump had floated as provocations or trollings or idle musings are now things the president realizes he can actually do. \u201cThese are all doable,\u201d Bannon told us. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve come back from such long odds, you clearly feel, \u2018I can do anything.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his first term, Trump and his team had not done certain things\u2014fired key bureaucrats, upended certain alliances, overhauled various initiatives\u2014because, as one former adviser told us, \u201cwe thought they were red-hot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd then you touch it,\u201d the former adviser continued, \u201cand you realize it\u2019s actually not that hot.\u201d This may be the key insight of Trump\u2019s second term. The first time around, aides were constantly warning him that the stove was too hot. This time, no one is even telling him not to touch the stove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tradition holds that artists honored with lifetime-achievement awards at the Kennedy Center meet with the sitting president. During Trump\u2019s first term, some of the most prominent artists refused to do so. He, in turn, didn\u2019t attend a single performance there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really get to go the first time, because I was always getting impeached or some bullshit, and I could never enjoy a show,\u201d Trump said, according to an adviser familiar with the comments. But as planning for the second inauguration got under way, someone mentioned the possibility of holding an event there, impelling Trump to muse aloud about naming himself chairman of the Kennedy Center, a position that had long been held by the philanthropist and Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein. Trump ordered, \u201cCall David Rubenstein and tell him he\u2019s fired.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TK\"\/
Overnight, Trump\u2019s cultural remit went from queuing oldies on his iPad on the patio of Mar-a-Lago to being chairman of the Kennedy Center, one of the nation\u2019s premier arts institutions. (Chip Somodevilla \/ Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some of Trump\u2019s advisers have learned to operate by an unofficial rule: They make sure to do things after he says them twice. This is a necessary and important rule because, as one adviser explained, \u201che says a lot of shit.\u201d So the second time Trump mentioned wanting to take over the Kennedy Center, his aides got to work, and in early February, Trump fired most of the board and named himself chairman<\/a>. His cultural remit had gone overnight from entertaining his aides by playing oldies on his iPad on the patio of Mar-a-Lago to being chairman of the board of one of the nation\u2019s premier arts institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most chaotic departures from convention has been Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s prominent role in the administration. The disruption Musk has unleashed through DOGE, putting swaths of government \u201cinto the wood chipper,\u201d as he described it, has tended to obscure the fact that the richest man in the world, who is one of Trump\u2019s biggest financial donors, is attending Cabinet meetings while continuing to run his private businesses, which benefit from billions of dollars in federal contracts. The conflicts of interest here run fathoms deep. But Trump has confidently normalized all of it, even going so far as to conduct an infomercial for Tesla on the White House grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In previous presidencies, Musk\u2019s role in the administration would have been a scandal that dominated the media and congressional hearings for months. In Trump\u2019s second term, this\u2014by design\u2014gets drowned out by everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, too, does Trump\u2019s complete departure from convention regarding the Justice Department, which has historically had some independence from the president. In April, Trump ordered the DOJ to investigate Chris Krebs<\/a>, who in Trump\u2019s first term ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which declared the 2020 election secure and Biden the legitimate winner. Trump, in short, wanted to prosecute Krebs for accepting reality. He has also made clear that he wants the attorney general to protect his supporters, including Musk, whose Tesla dealerships and charging stations have been targeted by vandals. \u201cWhen I see things going on like what they\u2019re doing to Elon, that\u2019s terrible,\u201d Trump told us. \u201cThat\u2019s a terrible thing. That\u2019s terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump boasted to us of Musk\u2019s private business successes as if they were his own. One of Musk\u2019s companies, SpaceX, had just helped to retrieve astronauts who had been marooned for months on the International Space Station. \u201cThey don\u2019t come out of there at some point, you know, the bones start to break down,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump marveled at the media\u2019s coverage of the splashdown. \u201cThey said, \u2018And the rocket\u2019s coming down in the Gulf of America.\u2019 They didn\u2019t make a big deal. They didn\u2019t say Trump named it,\u201d he told us. \u201cIt was like it was old hat. And it\u2019s been the Gulf of Mexico for hundreds of years, literally hundreds of years. The Gulf of Mexico, before our country was formed. It\u2019s been a long time. And that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cTHAT IS NOT WHAT THEY SIGNED UP FOR\u201d<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

for all of trump\u2019s success in dominating the political sphere, Democrats have grown more optimistic that his political fortunes may be changing. Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who gave the Democratic rebuttal to Trump\u2019s address to Congress in early March, told us that some of her constituents say their votes for Trump were born of despair. \u201cThey\u2019ll say to me, \u2018Look, it\u2019s like I\u2019m a Stage 4 cancer patient. My life has been getting worse, from my grandfather to my father, from my father to me, and my kids are going to do worse than me, so I need experimental chemo. Trump is my experimental chemo. It may hurt like hell. It may not work at all. But I\u2019m at the end of my rope, and I\u2019ll try anything.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked her whether now, several months into the second Trump administration, her constituents think the chemo is working. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many Trump voters have said to me, like, \u2018Look, I voted for him to make the economy work. I did not vote for all of this craziness, and I certainly didn\u2019t vote, for instance, for cuts to the VA,\u2019\u200a\u201d Slotkin said. \u201cThat is not what they signed up for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in nearly every conversation we had with various Trump advisers, they told us that delivering on what people had voted for was in fact essential to holding the House and the Senate in the 2026 midterms. Trump himself has his eyes on a larger, long-term political realignment. \u201cIt\u2019s a much different party,\u201d he told us. \u201cI got 38 percent of the male Black vote. Nobody knew that was possible. That\u2019s a lot. I got 56 percent of Hispanics. How about that one? Every county along the Texas border is Hispanic. I won every one of them.\u201d Though every single number he cited was wrong, the general thrust of his observation was correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delivering on Trump\u2019s campaign promises, his advisers told us, was the key not only to securing his legacy but to transforming the MAGA base into Republican voters for decades to come. (This project\u2014persuading MAGA supporters to vote for Republicans even when Trump is not on the ballot\u2014is a \u201ccentral theme\u201d of this presidency, one adviser repeatedly told us.) During the campaign and then the transition, Trump\u2019s aides kept a shared document that meticulously cataloged and updated his promises for what he would do on day one, as well as what he\u2019d promised to do more generally. The advisers we spoke with said that voters had absolutely known what they were asking for when they pulled the lever for Trump\u2014and Trump\u2019s team was determined to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is where the now nationally ingrained tendency to take Trump seriously but not literally may have created a disconnect between what Trump\u2019s supporters thought they were voting for and what they are now getting, even among his most committed base. Over the years, Trump said many things that never came to fruition. Or he spoke with such hyperbole that everyone substantially discounted the reality of what he was ostensibly committing to. Or the policy implications of what he said would get obscured in the cloud of his ruminations about shark attacks and electrocutions and Hannibal Lecter\u2014allowing voters to focus on what they liked and to ignore the riskier, more worrisome aspects of his promises. So although it\u2019s true that Trump is delivering on commitments to impose tariffs, cut government waste, and aggressively deport immigrants, many of his voters are only now beginning to realize the effect these policies will have on their daily lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several months into his second chance, the blitzkrieg of the early days continues\u2014but it seems to be meeting more substantial resistance. Federal courts are once again blocking\u2014or at least trying to block\u2014Trump plans that flout the Constitution or stretch legal reasoning. The repeated rollouts and rollbacks and re-rollouts of his tariff measures have pushed the world toward an economic breaking point. (Even in the best-case scenario, any renaissance of the U.S. industrial base remains a long way off.) The Federal Reserve recently adjusted short-term-inflation projections higher, and GDP projections are getting lower. Financial analysts say the odds of a recession have risen significantly. The stock market just had its worst quarter in three years. When we talked with him in March, Trump had told us that Vladimir Putin \u201cis going to be fine\u201d in the Ukraine peace negotiations\u2014but Putin has thwarted Trump\u2019s promise of a quick deal. (\u201cI\u2019m trying to save a lot of lives in the world,\u201d Trump told us. \u201cYou know, Ukraine and Russia\u2014it\u2019s not our lives, but it could end up in a Third World War.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Signalgate fiasco<\/a> appalled even a majority of Republicans<\/a>. (Here Trump has so far stuck to his second-term policy of conceding essentially nothing, of never admitting weakness or a lie. To date, no one has been fired over Signalgate\u2014though advisers we spoke with privately predicted that National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, who inadvertently added The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s editor in chief to the attack-planning chain, would exit the administration by the end of the year, if not much sooner.) Mass anti-Trump protests, notably absent during the first two months of this term, have become more frequent, including in red states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as Trump continually seeks to expand his presidential powers, he at times seems to acknowledge that they have limits. In our March conversation, he seemed frustrated at the notion that a court might try to curb his ability to deport anyone he wanted, however he wanted. Yet when we asked if he would go so far as to actively disregard a judicial order, his answer suggested that he understood the Constitution would not allow that. \u201cI think the judge is horrible,\u201d he said, referring to James Boasberg, the federal-district-court judge who had tried to stop deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. But Trump then referenced the Supreme Court\u2019s more congenial opinion in Trump v. United States<\/em>, which had given him immunity from criminal prosecution for anything he does as part of his core \u201cofficial\u201d duties as president. \u201cBut I\u2019ve had a lot of horrible judges, and I won on appeal, right? I got immunity on appeal,\u201d he said. He told us that the Court is \u201cgoing to do what\u2019s right\u201d when reviewing his expansive use of executive power, and he spoke with uncharacteristic charity about the Court\u2019s Democratic appointees. \u201cI see them at the State of the Union, things that I do, and I think they\u2019re very good people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When questioned, Trump has sought to evade direct responsibility for individual deportations by his administration, legal challenges to which are wending their way through the courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know, I\u2019m not involved in that. I have many people, many layers of people that do that,\u201d Trump told us when we asked if he was worried that he may have mistakenly deported innocent people. \u201cI would say they are all extremely tough, dangerous people. I would say that. And, don\u2019t forget, they came in the country illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s advisers argue that, overall, the shock-and-awe approach is working. \u201cThink about everything that\u2019s happened immediately on immigration,\u201d Cliff Sims told us. \u201cOh, we\u2019re just going to ship gang members to a prison in El Salvador? \u2018Sure.\u2019 We\u2019re going to send Tom Homan\u201d\u2014Trump\u2019s border czar\u2014\u201cto kick down the door of every criminal illegally in the country? \u2018Have at it.\u2019 It is the ultimate example of the ruthless efficiency of Trump 2.0.\u201d\u201cI got indicted five different times by five different scumbags, and they\u2019re all looking for jobs now, so it\u2019s one of those things. Who would have thought, right? It\u2019s been pretty amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked Trump about the portraits on the walls of the Oval Office. Who, we wondered, had a legacy that he himself might like to have? \u201cRonald Reagan, I like in terms of style. But he was not good on trade\u2014terrible on trade,\u201d Trump replied. We pointed out that Reagan was also far more welcoming of immigrants. \u201cWell, the toughest one in immigration was Eisenhower, believe it or not,\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe was tough, and he just didn\u2019t want people to come in illegally, like, you know, me. Well, I\u2019m great on trade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has also started talking publicly about running for a third term, which the Twenty-Second Amendment clearly prohibits. This started as joking comments with advisers\u2014before making them, he would sometimes teasingly instruct the sober-minded Wiles, \u201cSusie, close your ears\u201d\u2014but now seems to have become more serious. MAGA acolytes outside the administration have said they\u2019ve been investigating ways of getting around the Twenty-Second Amendment<\/a>, and an adviser acknowledged that if Trump thought a third term could somehow be made feasible, he would likely consider it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RECOMMENDED READING<\/h2>\n\n\n\n