Trump Spends First Year of Second Term Getting in His Own Way

Ruben Navarrette
Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:47:36 -0800
Opinion

SAN DIEGO — Americans have finally arrived at the point where we can take a deep breath and tally up the good, the bad and the ugly of President Donald Trump II at the end of year one.

First, it is crazy to think that it has only been about 365 days since Donald Trump's second inauguration. It seems much longer.

Part of the reason for that may be that, when Trump put his hand on the Bible and took his oath of office, he may have had his fingers crossed. On that day, Trump gave lip service to the idea that he would protect and defend the Constitution. But throughout his presidency, he has ignored and defiled the founding document whenever it got in the way of what he wanted to do.
Updated: Tue Jan 20, 2026

SAN DIEGO — Americans have finally arrived at the point where we can take a deep breath and tally up the good, the bad and the ugly of President Donald Trump II at the end of year one.

First, it is crazy to think that it has only been about 365 days since Donald Trump's second inauguration. It seems much longer.

Part of the reason for that may be that, when Trump put his hand on the Bible and took his oath of office, he may have had his fingers crossed. On that day, Trump gave lip service to the idea that he would protect and defend the Constitution. But throughout his presidency, he has ignored and defiled the founding document whenever it got in the way of what he wanted to do.

Not everything he has done is negative. Even though I'm a Never Trump'er, I've been wanting to give the president credit for his accomplishments. You'll never hear it from the Trump-hating liberal media, but there is actually a lot of material to work with.

But every time I tried to put together an accounting of what the president has done right, I got distracted by all the things that he has done wrong. The second list is longer than the first one.

For the New York real estate developer turned reality TV star turned Leader of the Free World, many of his troubles and triumphs came from loving power too much and understanding the effective use of it too well.

In fact, if there is just one thing for which the American people should thank Trump, it's for showing us that all the other presidents who came before him — over the last 40 years or so — were either lying, weak, afraid or incompetent when they claimed they didn't have the executive power to do this or the constitutional authority to do that. The presidential power was always there. They must have known that. Trump found it and used it as aggressively as any U.S. president ever has.

In his reckless and unrestrained use of power — both legitimate and illegitimate — the president did some good things. He also did some bad things. Mainly, he did whatever he wanted.

It is a good thing that Trump successfully pressured NATO countries to pay more for their own defense and rely less on the alliance to make up the difference. But it is a bad thing that Trump could now destroy the alliance altogether by giving Greenland — aka property of Denmark, not on the market — an ultimatum to become part of the United States "the easy way" or "the hard way" and threatening to impose more tariffs on U.S. imports from any NATO ally (i.e., France and Germany) that opposes the land grab.

It is a good thing that Trump toppled former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. The dictator ignored an election defeat, abused his own people, jailed opponents and partnered with drug cartels to enrich himself while most Venezuelans lived in poverty. But it is a bad thing that Trump replaced him with someone who is seen by the Venezuelan people as an accomplice to his crimes — Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro's vice president — instead of installing rebel leader Maria Corina Machado, who recently traveled to the White House to give her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump.

Finally, it's a good thing that Trump has put the immigration issue front and center by attempting to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, re-establishing the rule of law by removing those who are in the United States illegally and pressuring Congress to come up with a comprehensive solution to this vexing issue. But it's a bad thing — very bad — that the way that Trump has tried to achieve that is with a combination of sticks (pink slips) and carrots (cash incentives) to turn Immigration and Customs Enforcement into an example of state-sponsored terrorism. ICE agents — some with just a few weeks of training — have abandoned due process, condoned racial profiling, disrespected the concept of U.S. citizenship, beaten and killed protesters and corrupted the concept of policing in America.

Trump is cruising through his second term as president without guardrails or accountability. As he told The New York Times in a recent interview, he thinks that he is hemmed in by only "my own morality" and "my own mind."

Heads up, Mr. President. At least one of those things isn't working very well.