Trump's mega-MAGA month transforms America
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.
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.