"President Trump’s early moves to slash the federal government and expand American territory represent significant ideological swings from his first term.
For all of the shock and awe of President Trump’s first weeks back in office, much of it should come as little surprise. Many of his actions are extensions of his first-term agenda, when he pledged to crack down on immigration and bolster the country’s advantage in international trade.
But in a few important ways, Mr. Trump’s return to power has been signified by some profound ideological swings as he moves to remake Washington, America and the world. On both the domestic front and in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump has shifted to a different, even more aggressive approach toward the role of government and the posture of the United States on the global stage.
The 45th president was never much of a shrink-the-government conservative; in fact, he was as free spending as many Democrats and, thanks in large part to Covid-19 relief, left behind the largest peacetime government in history. But now the 47th president has unleashed Elon Musk to put the federal government through his “wood chipper,” as the billionaire put it, one agency after another. “BALANCED BUDGET!!!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media last week.
Likewise, the first President Trump denounced overseas nation-building and sought to extricate the United States from the Middle East to focus the country’s resources inside its own borders. The second President Trump seems determined to expand those borders by swallowing up foreign territory, including a Middle East enclave in desperate need of nation-building, as America First isolationism gives way to a form of America First imperialism.
“In these particular ways, Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 look very different,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton historian who edited a book on Mr. Trump’s first term. “If we look back at the first term, there’s room for some of this — he was against government but he didn’t do much about it; he was against nation-building but he wasn’t entirely isolationist. It’s very Trumpian. There’s room for lots of stuff, but it’s where the emphasis is.”
Indeed, Mr. Trump has never been particularly rooted to one ideology for all that long. He switched political parties five times before first running for president as a Republican in 2016, and at one point or another was for abortion rights, gun control, higher taxes on the rich and the invasion of Iraq before he was against all of them.
His most consistent through line going back to his days as a real estate developer in the 1980s has been a conviction that the United States was being cheated by friends and enemies alike, which has informed his views of trade, security and alliances. Otherwise, he has been willing to shift direction if it suits his interests.
“Trump clearly has not changed,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official in the Obama administration who is now at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “What has changed is his administration — that is, the people around him. The guardrails are gone and the adults have left the room. We are now seeing a much purer version of Trump, less filtered by traditional advisers and the institutions of U.S. governance.”
Absent those limits, Mr. Trump appears to be gravitating toward an ideology driven by the pure flexing of power.
The past week put that on vivid display. Even as Mr. Musk’s team effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and targeted other agencies for the same, Mr. Trump was floating a breathtaking plan to assert U.S. ownership over Gaza and displace the entire population of two million Palestinians.
The Gaza plan came after Mr. Trump in recent weeks repeatedly expressed his desire to buy Greenland, seize the Panama Canal and make Canada “the 51st state,” ideas that were not aired on the campaign trail.
Although he broached the notion of buying Greenland in his first term, he dropped it when Denmark (which oversees the autonomous territory) rejected it and never mentioned it in any of his public speeches or interviews during the 2024 campaign, according to a search of Factba.se, a service that compiles and analyzes data on Mr. Trump’s presidency. He never suggested during the campaign that Canada become part of the United States, nor did he mention U.S.A.I.D. even once, according to the search.
While Mr. Trump has for years assailed the U.S. transfer of the Panama Canal back to Panama, he never proposed taking it back during his latest campaign, the search showed.
When he entertained such provocative ideas during his first term, the establishment Republicans and retired four-star generals in his orbit sought to dissuade him — often successfully. Mr. Trump has made clear that he came to regret heeding their counsel. Now, those advisers are gone, replaced by Mr. Musk and a crew of far-right crusaders who are cheering him.
Indeed, some of the most contentious moves of the past few weeks were ideas that Mr. Trump toyed with the last time around but was ultimately persuaded to drop. During his first term, for instance, he contemplated trying to overturn the birthright citizenship guarantee of the 14th Amendment, but never actually did in the face of Republican opposition.
This time, however, Mr. Trump shrugged off warnings that he had no constitutional power to do so and signed an order barring birthright citizenship in the earliest hours of his new term, although he has so far been blocked by the courts.
He has also pivoted in other ways that have been more transactional. He loudly called for banning TikTok during his first term, saying its Chinese ownership posed a national security threat. But after discovering the advantages of reaching young voters through the app during his campaign last fall, Mr. Trump flip-flopped. He is currently defying a law requiring that TikTok be shut down.
Likewise, he regularly assailed technology tycoons in his first term and called for legislation to limit the power of Facebook, Google, Twitter and others. But after Mr. Musk bought and reoriented Twitter into X and invested $288 million in electing Mr. Trump, the president has embraced Big Tech.
Jeremi Suri, a presidential historian at the University of Texas at Austin, said that presidents over time tend to shut out advice they do not want to hear in favor of counsel that reinforces their instincts. “This actually fits a historical pattern,” Mr. Suri said. “Over time, presidents rely on a closer and more limited circle. They become isolated and often more out of touch.”
Mr. Musk, in particular, has shown a willingness to blow up the existing government in a way that Mr. Trump’s past advisers never did. That has only fueled Mr. Trump’s desire for retribution against a government that he contends tried to thwart him during his first term and prosecute him during the last four years.
“This is more about getting the deep state rather than getting the fiscal house in order,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Mike Pence when he was Mr. Trump’s first vice president. “I still think conservatives should celebrate those cuts. But I’m not yet ready to claim that that’s a sincere effort to reduce the size and scope of government.”
Indeed, Mr. Trump’s advisers have sold the idea of paring back government to him by framing it as part of the culture war. Russell T. Vought, who has just been confirmed as Mr. Trump’s budget director, produced a budget plan in 2023 titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.”
Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said that in addition to the culture war, another factor behind Mr. Trump’s newfound enthusiasm for the budgetary ax was his desire to renew the tax cuts of his first term and add more. “In order to extend and expand the 2017 tax cuts, they need to cut spending or they will blow out the deficit,” Mr. Strain said.
Mr. Trump gave a nod to scaling back government during his first term, but put little muscle into it. He proposed capping Medicaid and cutting food stamps, federal pensions, farm subsidies, energy subsidies and other programs as part of his formal budget plan. But Congress promptly disregarded that plan and Mr. Trump let it go.
One key test of Mr. Trump’s shifting views on government will come when he proposes his first budget, which will be prepared by Mr. Vought’s Office of Management and Budget, and if the president pressures a Congress with narrow Republican majorities to adopt it.
“Of course, presidential budgets are usually ignored by Congress, but this year may be different,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Trump is riding high in popularity within his party, so if he decides to embrace the upcoming O.M.B. spending cuts, he should be able to gain headway in Congress.”
But no matter how painful or headline-grabbing they may be, Mr. Musk’s attacks on federal agencies will do little to actually get to the balanced budget that Mr. Trump trumpeted on social media as long as he rules out cuts to Social Security, Medicare and the military. About 71 percent of federal spending goes to those areas, other health care expenses and interest on the debt.
Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said Mr. Musk’s focus on high-profile items like diversity, equity and inclusion programs or subscriptions to news media organizations might “excite the MAGA base” but amounted to “essentially budget dust” in the scheme of things.
“Trump is still a big spender,” she said. “Cutting $1 billion from D.E.I. government contracts and Politico subscriptions will not make up for increasing defense and border spending by $325 billion, as Congress is preparing to do.”" [1]
1. Trump 2.0 Heralds an Aggressive Flexing of Power: News Analysis. Baker, Peter. New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Feb 10, 2025.
