President Trump calls protesters ‘paid agitators’ after interrupting speech
President Donald Trump called protesters “paid agitators” after his speech in Iowa was interrupted.
Within a week, President Donald Trump reversed course on Greenland. What is the threat of that invasion? Never mind – and he’s in the middle of a retreat over his pride and joy, immigration enforcement policies.
Is a second season curse looming?
No president in modern times, Republican or Democrat, has been more successful in his second term than his first. Richard Nixon had to resign. Bill Clinton was impeached. Ronald Reagan was embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal. Lyndon Johnson was embroiled in a divisive war.
And of the seven presidents who served two terms after World War II, six lost their House seats in the second midterm election.
President Trump has scheduled one of those for November.
Of course, it would be foolhardy to forget that Trump’s political signature has accomplished unprecedented things, starting with his unexpected election in 2016 and his reelection eight years later.
So far, Trump 2.0 is going more smoothly than Trump 1.0. His first term was marked by turmoil, a spate of White House chiefs of staff, anonymous dishing from behind the scenes, and a drama that ended with two House impeachments, although the Senate both acquitted him.
Susie Wiles has been Trump’s only chief of staff during his second term, and his cabinet has remained stable despite the presence of controversial figures such as Army Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Tantalizing leaks from his inner circle are rare.
But that relative civility appears to be slipping away in the wake of the uproar over the killing of protester Alex Preti by federal agents in Minneapolis. False claims by government officials that an ICU nurse brandished a gun have been debunked by citizen video showing an entirely different confrontation.
Triggering a blame game: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is facing calls for her resignation or impeachment in Congress, blamed false statements by White House aide Stephen Miller, who blamed guidance from the Border Patrol, where the Border Patrol agent carried out the fatal shooting.
It was a rare display of damage control from Mr. Trump, who usually pushes through controversy without apologizing or compromising. He spoke by phone with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and said he wanted to “de-escalate” clashes on city streets by sending Border Patrol Secretary Thomas Homan to the scene.
He promised a “very honorable and honest investigation” and belittled his own Border Patrol commander, Greg Bovino, as “a pretty eccentric guy.”
In that and other ways, some of the factors that contributed to the missteps, stumbles and occasional disasters of President Trump’s second-term predecessors may be coming to light in the White House.
Three warning signs of the second trimester curse:
1. A brave president can go too far.
Perhaps it is human nature that many men who have accomplished the extraordinary political feat of winning not just one but two terms in the White House begin to think of themselves as invincible.
In 1937, during the second of his eventual four terms, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a plan to fill the Supreme Court with justices more sympathetic to his New Deal legislation. Even Congressional Democrats joined in the pushback against the idea, but to no avail.
Nearly 70 years later, George W. Bush began his second term with a radical proposal to open up Social Security to individual retirement accounts. That didn’t work either.
“President Bush’s approval rating was 58% in January and 38% in September because he gave us a gift,” then-California Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gleefully recalled in an interview with USA TODAY. “He was going to privatize Social Security. He said, ‘Nancy, I was only partially privatizing.'” And I said, ‘That’s good enough for me.’ ”
President Trump’s second-term policy proposals are bolder and far-reaching than those of his first term, including imposing the toughest tariffs since the 1930s. He faces fewer constraints in ordering military action to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and capture Venezuela’s president.
Over the objections of state and local officials, it deployed thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents to the streets of Minneapolis to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.
As this episode shows, bolder proposals come with greater risks.
The Supreme Court is now poised to rule on whether the president’s tariffs are a constitutional exercise of presidential power. His now-abandoned threat to seize Greenland by force if negotiations fail has fractured the NATO alliance and alarmed traditional allies such as Britain and France.
The impact on world order continues.
2. Campaign priorities and traditional concerns may conflict
Election campaigns are subject to certain discipline. Focus on the issues that matter most to voters or face the consequences.
However, the president, who is prohibited from running for a second term by the constitution, is certain to step down. Their priority may not be voters’ concerns, but a desire for historic achievements and legacies.
President Trump is determined to leave his mark on the nation’s capital during his second term. He added his name to the Kennedy Center and demolished the east wing of the White House to make way for what will surely be known as the Donald J. Trump Ballroom. He has waged a very public (if so far unsuccessful) campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize.
At least in public, the president does not pay much attention to the issues at the table that determine elections and his approval rating. Even trips announced as all about the economy, like his speech in Clive, Iowa, on Tuesday, often end up being dominated by the day’s tumultuous news, like the Minneapolis shooting.
President Trump’s job approval rating has been on the decline in national polls, reaching record lows of 38% approval and 58% disapproval in a January 23-25 Reuters/Ipsos poll. That’s 9 points lower than when he began his second term.
His rating for his handling of the economy fell further, to 35%, lower than at any point during his first term.
3. The political calendar is ticking: Who’s next?
2028 presidential election? It’s already underway.
The race between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is expected to be very close, with the possibility that Trump’s successor, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as other candidates presenting a different path to the Republican Party, will compete. The number of Americans who identify as independent is now at an all-time high, potentially drawing third-party candidates into the race.
But not Trump.
He remains the most powerful and decisive force in American politics of his generation. The Republican Party is shaped by its support for him, and the Democratic Party is shaped by its opposition.
However, attention in the political world has begun to shift to who will be next, and up until now, the calendar reality has been that re-elected presidents will be reduced to authority and become lame ducks sooner than they had hoped.
That’s part of the second season curse.
