Donald Trump has the upper hand.
Once upon a time and long ago, back when Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies on the basis of one misdemeanor, I wrote a quick piece whose opening paragraph I will now revive, but for very different reasons:
“What’s in the box?” Brad Pitt disconsolately wailed at the end of a film starring a pervert playing a pervert. But he, by then, already knew. We do not.
Well, you have to laugh about how we’ve all come around again, I suppose. That was from May of 2024, long before Joe Biden blew away into dusty clumps of particulate matter onstage, long before Trump was nearly assassinated, or Kamala Harris was installed as the Democratic candidate, and November drew to its decisive presidential — yet decidedly ambiguous congressional — conclusion.
But we can still repurpose the sentiment, can’t we? What do you think is really going to result from the next four years of Republican governance? What will we get when we open this wonderful surprise? Is there a cake in the box, or a human head? Nobody can know for sure, but I’d bet on the cake being a lie.
I’ve got other work to do, so before Trump formally takes the oath of office, I wanted to quickly sneak my broad-brush predictions for the upcoming administration under the wire (at least its near-term; only an obvious fool would try to broadcast beyond the 2026 midterms, and I strive to be a less obvious sort of fool). Keep in mind, I’m the guy who — two weeks before the election — predicted with 100 percent accuracy the state-level outcome of the 2024 race . . . and then one week before the election, said, “No, forget all that, actually maybe Kamala Harris will squeak it out after all.” So take my predictions with appropriate skepticism; I’ve only got the tune the times, the outward habit of encounter, and no deeper insight into the future.
Overall, I expect little good outside of the courts. Donald Trump may currently be on the outs with Leonard Leo, but nobody within his current inner circle — or with access to his ear on judicial appointments — is going to be pushing a new generation of David Souters upon him. He is likely to replace at least one Republican-appointed justice during his term, perhaps two, and if a reelected George W. Bush couldn’t slip Harriet Miers past a far squishier Senate, then I doubt Trump will be nominating Matt Gaetz or the like.
The only other substantive area I expect immediate and sustained improvement is with respect to the border, and immigration. I do not believe in “the Wall” — or rather, I will believe in it when I see it actually being built in any substantive way, just as I’ll believe in the “miracle” of high-speed rail when Gavin Newsom manages to connect Bakersfield with anything in California’s Central Valley outside of a general sense of despair. No, I instead believe in the power of international signaling, because illegal immigrants aren’t mindless lemmings: They respond just as well to disincentives as they do incentives.
Donald Trump cannot repeal birthright citizenship no matter how many executive orders he issues; such a move will not survive judicial review. But I expect many of his changes to tamp down on the blight of illegal immigration, and in any event the message is already clear to the waves of fortune-seekers attempting to steal America out from underneath the inattentive eyes of its detached governing class: The door is once again barred, for as long and as firmly as it can possibly be. (The true test will be whether Trump successfully executes on his promise of mass deportations.)
On the economy, I expect nothing but disaster. A recession seems overdue in any event, and setting that aside the chances of a positive outcome over the next several years is entirely dependent upon Trump not getting his way in terms of his avowed policy positions. I am no apostle of unqualified free trade, particularly on the pretense that it plays an inevitably civilizing or liberalizing influence — such illusions are what find us currently intertwined in vastly uncomfortable ways with Communist China, a truly inimicable culture that could never be bent or broken by mere money. If I thought Trump’s tariff threats were meant as a way to disentangle us from them, I might support short-term pain as preparation for a longer-term economic war. But I am not a fool, so I grasp that Trump’s preferred tariff policy is showboating, and a quick and easy path to rising prices and misery for no end. I assume he will not get his way, or else we are all in trouble.
With respect to matters of foreign policy . . . ah, that is where I genuinely do not know what to expect. (“Events, dear boy, events.”) Trump’s doubling back on the TikTok ban is a wildly inauspicious way for his term to begin — and the fact that he did this with Elon Musk, whose business interests with the Chinese Communists are an acute pressure point, whispering policy advice in his ear suggests far too much. But the other side gets a vote, too. And it is simply impossible to know what Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, or the mullahs of Iran will do next. But I have generally been less panicked about Trumpian foreign policy than the vast majority of skeptics, simply because I respect that his weaknesses — the guy really doesn’t know what he’s talking about much of the time with respect to geopolitical issues — are counterbalanced by strengths that are frankly (and sadly) unusual for a modern American president: Donald Trump believes in America and is not afraid to drone you if you step out of line.
Forget about predictions. (Mine are usually incorrect anyway.) Instead, I would like to end with my hopes: I pray for the success of Donald Trump in his second term in office, just as I did for his success during his first term in office, and as I did for Joe Biden when he began his first term in office. (I also prayed for Barack Obama and George W. Bush.) It has nothing to do with partisanship, and rather everything to do with the burden these men all carry. We are living in incredibly fraught times, both domestically and abroad, and as I said above, the enemy gets a vote too. Donald Trump is going to face enormous challenges, and he carries with his administration the fortunes and hopes of millions of Americans, as well. I can be as pessimistic as possible, because that is my native disposition, but it is a pessimism that never closes the door upon hope, hope that things can turn out better for us over the next four years than they were over the last four. Godspeed, Mr. President.