Trump’s Second Term Might Have Already Peaked

Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a credible threat to return to the White House, the guardrails that seemed to restrain him in his first term—political, legal, psychic—have collapsed with astonishing speed. His nominees are sailing through their confirmation hearings, including some who are underqualified and ideologically extreme. Titans of business and media are throwing themselves at his feet as supplicants. He has obliterated long-standing norms, unashamedly soliciting payoffs from corporations with business before the government. (The Wall Street Journal reports that Paramount, whose parent company needs Trump’s approval for a merger, is mulling a settlement of one of his groundless lawsuits.) Steps that even his allies once dismissed as unthinkable, such as freeing the most violent, cop-beating January 6 insurrectionists, have again reset the bar of normalcy.

These displays of dominance have convinced many of Trump’s critics and supporters alike that his second term will operate in a categorically different fashion from the first. Where once he was constrained by the “deep state”—or, depending on your political priors, by the efforts of conscientious public servants—Trump will now have a fully subdued government at his disposal, along with a newly compliant business and media elite. He will therefore be able to carry out the sorts of wild policy objectives that failed to materialize during his first term.