Two columnists believe his legacy isn’t as secure as he probably thinks.
New analysis by Axios suggests that Donald Trump may not have as lasting an impact on the federal government as it seems.
While the president has managed to do a whole lot of damage in the first year of his second term, one thing he has not done is translate his ideas and policies into laws, the report explains.
The columnists, Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen, call it “the Santa and Grinch presidency,” defined as a tenure “in which almost every day reveals a new promise to give something of financial value to a nation, group or individual – or take it away.”
But those promises have rarely transpired into legislation.
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“This reality reflects Trump’s improvisational and dealmaking impulses,” Vandehei and Allen explain. “But it also means that a lot of what he does will be easily reversible.”
Many of the administration’s policies or proposed policies have come to fruition through Trump merely musing about them in interviews or on Truth Social, the authors say, pointing to a recent post of his claiming that a $2,000 dividend from his tariffs will be paid to each American who is not high-income.
Out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made it clear in an interview shortly after that he and the president had not discussed a plan for this.
Tariffs, they continue, have also not been approved by Congress, making them vulnerable to nullification in court, and even his announcement that pharmaceutical companies will lower the cost of GLP-1 weight loss medication took place due to pressure he put on the corporations, not the law.
“He has attacked health insurance companies in recent days and over the weekend called for Americans to receive cash directly with which to buy health insurance,” they write, “but he hasn’t engaged in negotiations with congressional Democrats over extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that currently help millions afford insurance — the core of the shutdown fight.”
“The bottom line: Almost all of Trump’s astonishing expansions of precedent-stretching presidential power flow not from law, or even congressional approval. It’s just Trump doing what he wants… to whoever he wants… when he wants.”
As a result, they argue, it may not be as difficult as it seems to undo some of the messes the Trump administration has made.
Of course, certain institutions will need a lot of TLC if Democrats can indeed take back power, but these columnists believe that at least some of the administration’s anti-democratic actions can be undone with the slam of a gavel or stroke of a pen.
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