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CNN —
The 47th president is in many ways a different man than the 45th president, even though they are both Donald J. Trump.
He’s unafraid to swear in public or on social media and he’s more emboldened, willing to directly challenge the Constitution and the courts and capable of demanding more loyalty from Republicans.
But Trump 2.0 is also in direct competition with his former self in several important ways, starting with the fact that he can’t seem to remember appointing people he now loathes.
Trump’s aides are looking at ways to oust Jay Powell, the Fed chairman Trump nominated to the role during his first term. Trump told House Republicans he had drafted a letter to take the unprecedented step of firing the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Markets beware.
At the White House Wednesday, Trump seemed to forget that he had nominated Powell.
“I was surprised he was appointed,” Trump said. “I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him, but they did.” Biden renominated Powell. Either Trump can’t remember or he is willing himself to forget his role in the process.
If Trump ultimately tests the Fed’s independence and tries to fire Powell, he’ll point to a building renovation that got underway during Trump’s own first term.
Before Trump took office for the second time, the FBI director appointed during his first term, Christopher Wray, quit early rather than wait to be fired.
On the Supreme Court, CNN has reported on Trump’s gripes behind closed doors about his nominee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in particular.
When Trump today threatens burdensome tariffs on Canada and Mexico, who he accuses of “taking advantage” of previous US presidents, he’s also talking about his prior self.
Trump’s first-term administration negotiated the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a reboot of NAFTA. Back then, it was hailed as the major accomplishment of his trade policy.
He has also evolved on issues including bitcoin and cryptocurrency, although that could have something to do with his family’s business interests.
And Trump used to support banning TikTok in the US, but now, after making inroads with young men in the last election, he very much wants a US-based company to step up and buy the platform.
“He’s undoing himself with a vengeance,” the CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali told me.
The relatively moderate mainstream policy hands who marked the first Trump term are on the outs. Outsiders and MAGA figureheads are in.
“Donald Trump clearly is angry about what his advisers forced him to do in the first term,” Naftali said, pointing specifically to trade policy.
“His approach to Canada and Mexico is inexplicable given his first term, unless you realize that he wasn’t happy with what he ended up doing in the first term,” he said.
Naftali said Trump deserves credit for Operation Warp Speed, the effort to quickly develop a Covid-19 vaccine at a time when the country was largely shut down by the pandemic.
But rather than build on that legacy, Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Health and Human Services director, elevating a vaccine skeptic to a top policy role.
Kennedy fired all the members of a CDC vaccine advisory panel and brought in vaccine skeptics to review the vaccine schedule.
I put the idea of Trump 2.0 correcting Trump 1.0 to a number of CNN reporters and anchors who pay close attention to foreign affairs, the economy and the environment.
On world affairs, he’s more erratic and is taking less advice
CNN’s Jim Sciutto, who wrote a book, The Madman Theory, about Trump’s first-term foreign policy, notes that Trump is more aggressive this time, and appears to be more inclined to listen to his own gut.
Allison Morrow, who writes the Nightcap newsletter for CNN Business, agrees there’s a difference to this president, but he remains the same in one very important way.
Trump and his aides also clearly learned from his first term. Instead of trying repeatedly to repeal Obamacare, they cut future spending from Medicaid, which will have a similar effect by pushing millions of lower-income Americans off their health insurance in the years to come.
CNN’s Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter noted that in this term, Trump is acting more forcefully against news outlets.
CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes isn’t sure Trump is undoing his first term as much as he is better prepared this time.
Holmes’ point carries over to immigration, Trump’s signature issue. He is more effectively carrying through with mass deportations than he did in his first term. With a more pliant Congress, he has money for his border wall, the go-ahead to turn ICE into the nation’s largest and best-funded police force, and the help of Republican governors to create new detention centers to hold undocumented immigrants — not just violent criminals — he wants to deport. When he leaves office, the country will look a lot different after his second term than it did after his first.
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