With his first year now complete, counting from the day of his inauguration, there are not a few who reminisce, based at least on his actions in these 365 days, of the good old days of his first term, when – despite the outbreak of the pandemic – the rules-based world order and the rule of law in and internationally, appeared clearly more stable, while the institutional counterweights in the US were more operationally.
In this context, it would be interesting to think as if you were a Donald Trump voter yourself in 2026. If his first term was a rebellion against the establishment, the second is its institutionalization. Trump is no longer the outcast learning how power works, he is the incumbent who has reengineered its levers to serve his own political identity and vision, aiming for a radical reshaping of the world order solely for the benefit not of the US as a whole, but of conservative America.
The “scratches” of Trump’s first term
During his first term, Donald Trump, beyond some “surface scratches” on the world stage, with the edicts on immigration, the withdrawal of the US from international organizations, the relatively mild trade war he declared, the US president failed to impose “America First”, nor to “make America great again” (MAGA). In a general context, as far as foreign policy is concerned, he succeeded in a limited withdrawal of the USA from its traditional allies despite the fact that the war in Ukraine had not yet broken out.
Domestically, the first Trump presidency (beyond tax policy) provided only a first taste of what happened in the second, as he focused mainly on laying the carpet for what came with his interventions in the Judiciary (by installing conservative judges). Trump then made moves and made decisions against the rights of women or minorities within the US, culminating in the Unaccompanied Minor Immigrant Act, which separated children from their parents and placed them in detention centers. Another key moment that also determined the developments was the rebellion in the Capitol, with the “bang” of which his first term effectively ended.
Where did Trump spend his first term?
For roughly four years from 2017 to 2021, much of President Donald Trump’s political capital was spent in conflict with Democrats over the “witch hunt” against him over relations with Russia and all of his then-open cases.
The hurricane that is now sweeping the world order was almost all the years locked up in the rooms of the White House and its destructive fury was directed, as can be seen from the testimonies, against his close associates and his ministers. The difference in this matter between the two terms is really huge.
In his first term, Trump made extremely frequent changes to his associates, and there were too many government leaks, conflicting testimony or opinions.
An important detail is that a significant part of the people he had chosen for many critical positions in his administration and in the presidency had significant experience, for example such cases were for example John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, John Kelly, Wilbur Ross, and even Mike Pompeo.
With most of them, Trump had intense conflicts as in several cases they made “damage limitation” interventions and somehow managed to prevent decisions that could have serious implications on a number of issues both in the US and in international politics.
What changed in the second one?
At least from what we have seen so far, in his second term in terms of the staffing of the government, but also at the level of associates, Trump does not show the same fluency in removing those who make a mistake (see the case of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles).
This is for two main reasons, most of his associates are tried and trusted people (even his relatives), while several have no previous experience (such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who was a TV host for a decade on Fox or real estate entrepreneur Steve Witkoff).
The differences are noticeable at all levels, since within the first year alone, Trump’s policy had a heavy transformative imprint inside and outside the US.
The imprint of the first 365 days of the second term
The withdrawal of the US from 66 international organizations, including the UNFCCC and the IPCC on climate, the deployment of its own version of the Monroe doctrine (the Donroe doctrine), the operation against Venezuela, with the naval blockade and the removal of Maduro from power, the demands for Greenland, the trade war, the strikes against the nuclear facilities in Iran, the “Riviera for Gaza” plan that eventually became a 20-point plan, the end of support to Ukraine, 5% of GDP in NATO, contempt for European institutions, are all pieces of the puzzle of US foreign policy in this term.
All of this happened at the same time as the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was driving cuts to federal government spending that led to about 300,000 federal employee layoffs, while National Guard forces under the guise of fighting crime along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) forces of immigrants were growing in (Democratic) American cities and states.
They were also happening while the American president, almost from the beginning of his second term, dismantled minority protection legislation, including the framework in favor of “Diversity, equality, inclusion” that aimed to limit social inequalities and ensure the rights of vulnerable parts of American society.
