Trump's mega-MAGA month transforms America
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Trump's first month in office has exceeded the wildest dreams of his most loyal supporters, and the darkest nightmares of his fiercest detractors.
Why it matters: Both groups can agree: The America that Joe Biden left behind on Jan. 20 is no longer recognizable, erased in four frenetic weeks by an empowered, implacable and historically popular MAGA presidency.
- Like Trump 1.0, the firehose of news and norm-busting behavior is — and will continue to be — the defining feature of this administration.
- Unlike Trump 1.0, the chaos is calculated — and explicitly designed to institutionalize MAGA, paralyze the president's enemies and permanently break the Washington establishment.
Zoom in: Above all else, Trump's first month has been dominated by his war on the federal bureaucracy — and his various efforts to prod, probe and blow through the limits of presidential power .
- The White House's early attempt to freeze federal funding has set the stage for a massive legal fight over Congress's "power of the purse," which is laid out in Article 1 of the Constitution.
- Elon Musk and his DOGE allies are slashing and burning their way through government agencies — cheered on by the MAGA faithful as they fire thousands of federal workers , sometimes with reckless abandon .
- The rapid dismantling of USAID and the government-wide assault on DEI have sent clear signals that any programs misaligned with Trump's MAGA will be on the chopping block. The Department of Education could be next.
- At the Justice Department — which haunted both Trump's first term and his next four years as a private citizen — the purging of career prosecutors and FBI agents has punctured any veneer of independence from the White House.
Between the lines: Trump and Musk's shock treatment of the U.S. government has overshadowed the two main issues that dominated the 2024 campaign: immigration and inflation.
1. On immigration, Trump has moved with lightning speed to enforce his promise of a sealed border.
- Arrests from border crossings plummeted to 21,593 in January — down from 47,316 in December, and an all-time high of 250,000 in December 2023 — after a blizzard of Day One immigration-related executive orders.
- Trump's goal of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants has proven more difficult , with the pace of operations stalling because of a lack of funds, detention space, officers and infrastructure.
2. "Inflation is back," Trump acknowledged in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity this week. "I had nothing to do with it," he then argued, pinning the blame on Biden's spending policies.
- Despite promising to "end inflation" starting on Day One, Trump is right that the effects of his new policies won't immediately show up in consumer prices.
- The danger: Trump's sweeping use of tariffs is injecting deep uncertainty into global markets, and could turn inflation into a long-term feature of the U.S. economy.
What to watch: With the dust still settling on America's new normal, Congress soon will move to codify vast swaths of Trump's agenda .
- Trump on Wednesday endorsed House Republicans' budget resolution , which includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts — including to Medicaid.
- With a razor-thin majority in the House, Trump's vision for "ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL" is a huge gamble — but one that would clear the way for a historic, and enduring, reordering of the American economy.
Zoom out: In the meantime, Trump's return to a deeply transactional foreign policy has exhilarated his "America First" base while alarming U.S. allies worldwide.
- This week alone, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky a "dictator without elections" and repeatedly endorsed the Kremlin's false narrative that it was Ukraine — not Russia — that started the war.
- Even more shocking was Trump's proposal to take over and redevelop Gaza into "the Riviera of the Middle East." Critics say the plan — which Trump says would involve relocating Palestinians to Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere — is unworkable and would amount to the ethnic cleansing of 2 million Palestinians.
- The president's aides and allies say his provocations should be viewed through the lens of dealmaking. For now, most foreign leaders are opting to take him at his word.
The bottom line: For all the scar tissue already accumulating in Washington, Trump is only 2% through his four-year term.
- If his bets pay off, he'll have rewritten the rules of American governance for generations.
- If they backfire, the consequences could be just as historic.
Zachary Basu
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His legacy is completely in his own hands.
Didnt see anything in there about historically popular, probably because its not true. There is zero "evidence" Trump is historically popular.
Anyone who thinks otherwise, please lets hear it.
Three polls today showed that Trump isn’t historically popular.
He has the second worst approval rating for a new president since the polling started 75 years ago.
I would love to see the UNBIASED poll of voters who voted for Trump as to whether they regretted what they did.
A message to those who regret voting for Trump and are now afraid to admit it :
Rachel Maddow had some graphics on her show tonight about new polls that came out today, both about Trump in general and about specific issues. Major polls, Ipsos, Washington Post, and Quinnipiac. They were all very bad for Trump.
Many of Trump’s early actions are unpopular, Post-Ipsos poll finds
14 hours ago · Overall, the Post-Ipsos poll finds 45 percent of adults approve of the way Trump is handling his job, while 53 percent disapprove. That net-negative rating is worse than
They really don't mean much for a second term President.
You seeded something that says Trump is historically popular. Based on what? The most recent polling is terrible for him.
Election results say otherwise. But why bring fact into it.
For some, those are very hard to swallow.
I imagine it's hard to accept something while crying and throwing tantrums about it.
I know how much you all love her, so...
One does create their own legacy.
She did inadvertently prove he paid taxes while crying that he didn't pay taxes.
Big whoopie. Got any other useless bits of information to the question at hand?
Did you recognize the point of the video?
That Trump is the only PotUS in Gallup history to be underwater once sworn in. And that Trump is now 5 points underwater which is 15 points lower than the average of all other PotUS' at this point in their presidency in the 75 year history of the Gallup polls?
Did this register?
He isn't popular with those who voted for him?
BTW the point of the piece was that he is at a point to do great things or fail miserably. I suggest you go back and get the meaning.
He is failing miserably. I am waiting to see the emergence of some great positive accomplishment. I figured that his best shot would be to negotiate a fair end to the Ukraine war. My confidence in that has plummeted. His next best shot is to genuinely reduce the waste in federal government without fucking up operations by using wildly swung hatchets rather than well-reasoned, analyzed cuts. So far, I am not encouraged. After that, he has a shot to improve handling of the border. His rhetoric suggests that this is easy to do; waiting.
I do not consider trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico a great accomplishment. Nor do I consider threatening Panama, Greenland, Canada, Mexico, EU, etc. to be a great accomplishment. Imposing tariffs, triggering a trade-war is clearly not a great accomplishment ... it is actually a major negative. Embarrassing the USA on the world stage ... further harming our international relationships is not a great accomplishment.
So what have you imagined these great potential accomplishments to be?
His polling is going down.
It is literally a Fire Sale. Everything must go!
Just so he can raise the debt limit by 4 trillion dollars to hand it back to Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the Billionaires Boys Club.
Fire staff without cause creating massive unemployment. The job loss numbers are rising fast.
The admission that firing workers who protect and manage our nuclear program was a mistake, but they don't know how to get them back? Not great!
The admission that firing epidemic preparedness staff was a mistake and once again, they don't know how to find them after wiping them off the payroll. Not great!
Firing critical firefighting staff, firing IRS agents who bring in tax cheats and tax dollars, firing staff at the Veterans Administration, firing critical staff that do cancer research, firing staff at the National Park Service causing chaos to visitors, firing staff at JFK Library and Museum which brings in money due to ticket sales, shutting down the Consumer Protection Bureau which has saved Americans millions and millions of dollars, just a fraction of the damage to the American people.
Today announcing he plans to shut down the USPS before any backup plan is in place.
How will seniors, veterans, or the disabled get their Medications by mail? Chaos in the business supply chain with products delayed or stuck that consumers already paid for.
Firing FEMA staff after trashing them and no plans to replace or hire anyone to do a better job in hard hit southern states.
Randomly taking an ax to American jobs that affect the lives of millions of Americans is NOT making America great again.
Anybody can shout "You're Fired" like it's a reality show.
Without knowing which departments and which positions are critical it's performative nonsense. Nonsense MAGA loves no matter which Americans get hurt.
Civil servants go through a more rigid vetting process than anyone in politics serving.
At least 30% of American civil servants are United States military veterans.
I never want to hear the Bush "tea party" chant of "Support Our Troops" ever again. Because if MAGA won't stand up for our veterans serving us once again in Civil Service jobs then they never cared about our troops at all. These are Americans and firing them taking their jobs away is cruelty these veterans don't deserve.
The new polls are what I expected. And I'll bet his approval will continue to plummet as more people lose their jobs and life will become more expensive. But why would he give a damn? As long as he and his sheep are okay....
Yes yes yes it has
All in totally predictable ways. The sad thing is that the disruptions caused by just one month of Trump governance are only starting to be felt. It is like that drop of water that we see in the slow-motion videos: The Drop has just pierced the surface of the water, the ripples are just starting, the semi-choate column of water is towering over the circular ripples, ready to crash down and give them more energy, ready to push them outward into the economy, into employment, into the tiny towns and the big cities alike. And it has just begun. I am sure that the people are glad that they voted for a reduction in inflation. All of this was predictable. All of this was predicted.