Alan Zendell, January 22, 2025

A presidential term lasts 1,461 days. If, like me, you’re concerned that Donald Trump is capable of permanently harming our country, knowing there are 1,459 days left in his term isn’t reassuring. But realistically, he only has about 600 days to solidify his agenda before the mid-term Congressional races heat up in 2026.

Ever since then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced, the day after Barrack Obama was inaugurated, that his mission was to assure Obama was a one-term president, the role of Congress has changed from seeking common ground to obstructionism. To be fair, though, the credit for that change should go to Newt Gingrich. Even with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, 600 days is not a huge amount of time, and we’re already seeing Democrats and Democrat-controlled states attempting to slow down the Trump train.

The Trump administration’s strategy is to hit the ground running and start so many fires in week one, the opposition won’t have the resources to fight them all. Thus, an aggressive release of Executive Actions on day one, followed immediately by lawsuits from most of the blue states. Trump demonstrated the power of delaying tactics over the past four years, tying up criminal and civil cases that stalled prosecutions for his most serious alleged crimes. Those tactics are now fair game to try to prevent Trump from making harmful permanent changes before voters have a chance to weigh in in the midterms.

The first thing Trump did supports the claim that his two main reasons for running for president again were to kill the criminal indictments he was facing and once elected, to use the presidency to enrich himself. He began that process with a bang that will be difficult or impossible to counter. He launched his own cryptocurrency, which means that anyone who wants something from Trump can get his attention by making deposits into his crypto account. Such deposits are not tracked by any regulating agency and are not required to be disclosed under current ethics rules. Some critics view this as a massive billion dollar bribe machine. Trump was reported to have increased his net worth by $60 billion on the launch of his cryptocurrency.

Trump’s cryptocurrency neutralizes the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits a sitting president from receiving gifts from foreign governments. Walter Schaub, who headed the Office of Government Ethics during Trump’s first term described the whole thing as corruption and naked profiteering. But while the crypto launch seemed to fit into a gray area of law with few precedents, the slew of Executive Actions released immediately after Trump took office are clearly aimed at undermining present laws and regulations and challenging critical guarantees in our Constitution.

If you’re all in on MAGA, the Executive Actions are exactly what you wanted Trump to do. Pardoning and commuting the sentences of people convicted in connection with the January 6^th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, especially those who assaulted law enforcement, offended 70% of people polled, but Trump understands that pumping up those in his base like The Proud Boys has a more lasting impact than whatever negative reaction he gets. We know from experience, that feeble retorts by people like Susan Collins (R, ME) are largely for show. She’s probably forgotten about it by now.

Trump wasted no time withdrawing us from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords, two actions that are unpopular with well-informed Americans, but they reveal much about Trump’s real agenda. They make no logical sense, but both of Trump’s targets offended him by being smarter and obviously more in touch with the needs of people than he is, so in typical Trump fashion, he declares them bad for America and moves on.

One of his Executive Actions directly challenges the validity of the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants American citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Whether he’s serious about this isn’t clear. Trump loves to fire up salvos of missiles, most of which are chaff designed to distract from things he really wants done. With Democrats controlling half the states, deleting an amendment is a monumental effort, and one that entirely affects Dreamers, who have the support of a majority of Americans. It’s likely that this is just noise, surely not something that can be done before the midterms. Likewise, his absurd promise to deport millions of undocumented aliens. (Does he think we’ve been invaded by Martians?) Now, it’s clear that all he intends to do is deport illegals who’ve been incarcerated for committing crimes. After the low hanging fruit is gone, this too will pass.

Perhaps the scariest thing about the new administration is that Trump now claims he’s a messenger from God, who wants America to change to a Christian Nationalism form of government. Normally, I’d assume that’s another of Trump’s lies, but it’s entirely possible that his narcissistic personality disorder and his obviously declining cognitive functions have made him delusional enough to believe it.