The new president’s advisers have become masters of the government bureaucracy they have promised to upend.
During his Inaugural Address on Monday, President Trump made a point of telling the country that he had learned “a lot” over the past eight years.
The four and a half days since have revealed what he meant.
Gone are the Washington outsiders who took the reins of government in 2017 and struggled to get its wheels turning. Instead, we’ve seen a hailstorm of action that reflects how Trump’s advisers have become masters of the government bureaucracy they have promised to upend.
My colleague Charlie Savage has covered law, government and the way presidents use their power for more than two decades. He reported extensively on the first Trump administration as well as on Trump’s plans for his second, and I asked him to talk us through just how much is different this time around — and what that could mean for the presidency to come.
Our conversation was condensed and edited for clarity.
JB: You covered the first Trump administration, and now you’ve covered the first week of the second one. What was different in the opening days of Trump II, compared with Trump I?
CS: The opening of the first Trump administration was chaotic and dysfunctional. Trump had little support from the Republican establishment during the 2016 campaign. He and many of the officials he gathered around him when he took office simply did not know what they were doing at first — and it showed. Trump issued only four executive orders in his first five days in office in 2017. Even when the pace later picked up, many of his early directives were effectively press releases that did not do much of substance, or were so poorly developed that it was a no-brainer for courts to block them.
By contrast, the second Trump administration has begun with a blizzard of consequential executive orders. A few are vague nothing-burgers — like ordering the government to think about ways to reduce prices — but most are very substantive. Many of his policy changes will strike many people as extreme. Some, as I wrote this week, pushed at the limits of legitimate executive power and may not survive court challenges. One about ending birthright citizenship has already been blocked for now. But inarguably, Trump is moving much more quickly to achieve his goals.