NO. 2 | THE AGITATOR DONALD TRUMP
THE SHOW OFTEN STARTS BEFORE dawn. With a flicker of anticipation or a feeling of dread, people around the world roll over in bed, fumble for their phones and learn whether one of the most powerful people on the planet has tweeted. It’s an uncanny kind of intimacy. He tells us what he’s watching on television, what grudges he’s nursing and what he wants us to think. This is life during the presidency of Donald Trump.
By the traditional measures of presidential influence—legislation passed, policies enacted, visions projected onto the world—Trump has used his first year in office to considerable effect. He has backed out of multilateral trade deals and edged closer to nuclear confrontation with North Korea. He has appointed a Supreme Court Justice who thrilled conservatives and is reshaping the judiciary. He has rolled back regulations and has shrunk the federal government. He has removed millions of acres of wilderness from federal land protection. As the year’s end nears, he is tantalizingly close to signing a sweeping tax bill that would touch almost every corner of American life, slashing the corporate tax rate, closing multiple loopholes, ballooning the federal deficit, rattling real estate markets and undermining Obamacare. For all that, the Administration’s record doesn’t nearly live up to Trump’s own hype—“just about the most successful in our country’s history,” he bragged at the 100-day mark—and it is an open question how permanent his accomplishments will be.
The greater impact of Trump’s first year in office is that he has changed the presidency. The passing feuds, the wild
