Love him or hate him, President Trump has had a consequential first year back in the White House.
At a recent speech in Detroit, even he seemed a bit surprised at everything he’s been able to do.
“I told you we were going to do a lot of things,” he said. “Nobody thought it was going to turn out like this. This has been crazy.”
One big reason is Trump has faced less internal resistance from his staff, Cabinet and the Republican majority in Congress than in his first term.
Back then, Trump bristled at aides who reined in his impulses – and there were a lot of them, says Ty Cobb, an attorney who served as Trump’s special counsel in 2017 and 2018.
“Trump was still learning the levers of government and had not yet determined, as he has now, that he can do whatever he wants if he finds the people who are willing to be loyal to him,” he said.
Cobb gave examples, saying former chief of staff John Kelly, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley would all tell the president “no” from time to time. Others he said would stall or parry Trump’s demands.
Marc Short puts it a little differently. He was chief of staff for Vice President Pence during the first term. He says initially Trump wanted people with experience, who could give him advice.
“The second time around, the president knows what he wants and he intentionally put together a team that would execute that,” he said.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said as much in a sit down with a pro-Trump podcast called The Mom View.
“There’s one star of the show,” said Wiles. “There’s one most powerful. And our job is to make him the best he can be. And that’s what we do, all day, every day.”
Trump doesn’t always listen or do what she recommends, but Wiles added that she doesn’t want him to.
Wiles’ approach was affirmed by Vice President Vance in an interview with Chris Whipple, an expert on White House chiefs of staff who spent months interviewing Wiles and other top officials for a piece in Vanity Fair.
“There is this idea that people have that I think was very common in the first administration,” Vance told Whipple, “that their objective was to control the president or influence the president, or even manipulate the president because they had to in order to serve the national interest. Susie just takes the diametrically opposite viewpoint, which is that she’s a facilitator, that the American people have elected Donald Trump. And her job is to actually facilitate his vision and to make his vision come to life.”
As a result, Whipple says Trump has faced very little friction as he and his administration moved at light speed to enact an agenda with his wishes guiding the way.
“He’s governing by whim. He’s unconstrained,” Whipple said in an interview with NPR. “He’s certainly without someone who can tell him hard truths.”
In his second term, Trump is indeed pushing the bounds of what was thought to be established law, citing nearly unlimited Article 2 executive power.
The president signed more executive orders in his first year than in his entire first term. He sent the National Guard into cities in blue states and is threatening to invoke the insurrection act. He ordered the prosecution of his enemies and pardoned his supporters, including those convicted of assaulting police. He used emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs and took military action in Iran and Venezuela all without congressional approval or even much pushback.
“Presidents have always had discretion, but Trump has taken it to another level,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.
“You know, he’s pushing on an open door. There’s a reason he’s able to get away with so much because we’ve created such a powerful institution, but he’s going further than we’ve ever seen a president go,” he added.
It appears likely the US Supreme Court will pare back some of the powers Trump has claimed, though with a conservative super majority he has already notched a lot of wins.
But there may be political costs to being able to do whatever he wants.
Trump’s approval rating is at a low point, though his base is still with him. But independent voters have broken away. A new poll from the New York Times and Sienna finds a majority of voters believe Trump has focused on the wrong priorities.
