The Journal. - Trump 2.0: A Fast Start to a Second Term

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball are back! This time to unpack the new administration's first 100 days. Today, we discuss President Trump’s slew of executive orders and what they tell us about the next four years. Plus, they speak to WSJ’s Sadie Gurman about changes taking shape at the Justice department.  Further Listening: - Trump Declares a ‘Golden Age’ for America  - Trump’s Immigration Overhaul   Further Reading: - Trump’s Immigration Playbook: Breaking Down His Moves This Week  - Trump Takes Office Determined to Bend Government to His Singular Will  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Molly. Hey, Ryan. So it's been 78 days, not that I'm keeping track, since our last episode of Red, White and Who, our special series on the 2024 election. I thought you'd never have me back. No, Molly, of course I'd have you back. I just, you know, I wanted some, you know, downtime. Right?

We've been through a lot, Ryan, and we needed some space. Yeah, yeah. But so we're back now, and instead of covering the race to the White House, we're going to talk about President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office. His second first 100 days in office. Right, of course. So how would you describe the first week of Trump's second first 100 days in office?

I would term it intense. And we had reason to expect this from the transition, which was also pretty intense. The last 78 days since you and I spoke have also been pretty action packed, despite my desire to go into hibernation. We didn't get a few months off. And he's really hit the ground running, you know, an inauguration address that really pulled no punches, very aggressive, and a very aggressive first week with a flurry of presidential activity, including dozens

and dozens of executive orders and actions and proclamations and what have you. So what do you think this first week tells us about what his administration is going to be like over the next four years? It's going to be a much more intense and focused administration than the first time around. He had four years out of power to really plan what he would do if he got back in. And a lot of people around him putting a lot of thought into what exactly that would look like knowing where the levers of power are, knowing what a president can do or can try to do.

So they wanted to hit the ground running, and they really have. All right, well, it's time for us to hit the ground running. From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knudson. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, January 24th. Coming up, executive orders, the Justice Department, and a fast start to start off with one of our favorite things to do, which is

to take listener questions. This question is exactly what I wanted to talk about today, which are all the executive orders that Trump signed. Hi, this is Christina Averill from Waukesha, Wisconsin. With all of the focus on Trump's executive orders for this term, I'm curious how executive orders have impacted America's policies from past presidencies. And are there any that really stand out to you as making a difference? Thanks.

Thanks for your question, Christina. It's a great question. I think we have this misconception that executive orders are a modern thing that presidents have just started doing because they're so frustrated with Congress and the only way for them to get things done is by whipping out the pen and going around the people who are supposed to make the laws. But that's actually not true. They've always been a feature of politics and past presidents have used them to great effect. I mean think

of the Emancipation Proclamation that was an executive order. Japanese internment. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security. DACA, President Obama's executive order, deprioritizing deportations for immigrants who came to the country illegally when they were young. So a lot of significant policy making has been done through executive order. So a lot of significant policy making has been done through executive order. So let's talk about what Trump tried to do this week. He signed a lot of executive orders

using his signature Sharpie. What are some of the ones that stood out to you? Well, the big ones are in the areas where he made the most campaign promises, chiefly immigration. He even said in one of his inaugural speeches on Monday that even though everyone talks about the economy, he believes that immigration is the number one reason

he was elected and the number one issue he was hired by the voters to tackle. They all said inflation was the number one issue. I said, I disagree. I think people coming into our country from prisons and from mental institutions is a bigger issue for the people that I know. And I made it my number one.

I talked about inflation too, but how many times can you say that an apple is doubled in cost? And indeed, we saw a flurry of executive orders dealing with immigration, designating the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, curtailing asylum even further than the Biden administration already had, and proclaiming the end of birthright citizenship, which has historically been considered a constitutional right, so that's going to have to make its way through the courts. Right, and it's already running into some trouble there,

because yesterday a federal judge temporarily blocked that executive order. But there's also been a lot of executive orders on race and gender in the culture war. That's right. Ending DEI programs in the federal government and in federal contracting, proclaiming that the federal government will no longer recognize transgender identity. This is another area where Trump really feels he has a mandate. He feels like this was a big part of the campaign. Another executive order that struck me was, you know, Trump obviously was elected in large

part because voters were grumpy about inflation and he promises to bring down prices. So he issued an executive order basically directing the federal government to bring down prices. So he issued an executive order, basically directing the federal government to bring down prices. And so this is the kind of thing that's so broad and so amorphous that like, sure, we'd all like to bring down prices, but there's no actual mechanism in it for how these government departments

could actually seek to do that. And so it does look like something that's more symbolic in practice, but at least you can point to it and say, see, I ordered them to bring down prices. On day one, I took action. Exactly. Got it. I was also struck by the things that he didn't issue executive orders about.

Like what? Chiefly tariffs. There's an executive order that sort of directs the government to study the possibility of imposing tariffs. But he repeatedly promised that he was going to impose sweeping across the board tariffs on allies and enemies alike on day one. And as he was sitting there signing these orders on day one, he talked about, well, maybe we'll do it on February 1st. And now he's threatening Putin with tariffs if the Ukraine war doesn't end so... Do you have a sense of why that is? Like why would that be something

he might be delaying on? There's a lot of controversy both within the administration and in the broader community particularly the business and financial community about tariffs. Economists almost unanimously believe that these tariffs would disrupt the economy and cause inflation to skyrocket prices to go up. Right, because if you're taxing goods coming into the country at the border, that's just more prices that Americans have to pay because those goods now are more expensive. Well, that's what economists believe. Trump doesn't believe that. Trump has a different

economic theory. It's rather exotic, but he believes it. Right. And just to say his belief is that foreign governments will pay the tariff in order to retain access to the US market, thus boosting US tax revenue, which isn't exactly how tariffs have typically played out in the past. That's exactly right. And then there's a school of thought that says he doesn't really want to do this. It's a negotiating tactic, right? He's looking for leverage with so that he can get Canada and Mexico to come to the table and get an even better deal on the trade agreements that we already have with them. The problem with that is you can only make this threat so many times until people figure

out that it's an empty threat. So at some point, and maybe that point is February 1st, he's going to have to either do the tariffs or not. So when it comes to sort of following through on campaign promises, how effective are these executive orders? You know, they're not legislation, they're obviously not permanent. Another president of a different party in four years could come in and undo them. But how effective would you say that these are in terms of him accomplishing his goals?

The answer is it depends because some of these executive orders have the force of law because they are within the purview of the executive branch. Tariffs with some nuance generally fall under that category. Some of them are just sort of notional, you know, or just aren't a very big deal. Things like proclaiming that from now on the flags will always fly at full staff during presidential inaugurations. Some of them are pardons. That can't be undone. The president has wide-ranging unilateral pardon authority. And then some of them are not within the president's authority or at least not believed to be within the president's authority.

Things like birthright citizenship, right? Courts for more than 100 years have held that that is guaranteed by the Constitution. And so there's already lawsuits around it, including from a lot of state attorneys general, and it will have to make its way through the courts to determine whether this new novel interpretation of the Constitution is actually going to hold sway. So one executive order that I wanted to talk about is titled Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government. And we're going to talk about this order with our colleague, Sadie Gurman, who covers the Justice Department

after this short break. Alright, so we want to talk about the changes Trump is planning for the Justice Department. We've got our colleague, Sadie Gurman here, who covers the DOJ, to talk about it. Hi, Sadie. Hi there. So what is this executive order? Ending the weaponization of the federal government, it's aimed right at the Justice Department. What is this executive order designed to do?

So this is basically, I see it as a roadmap for the retribution that Trump promised against the Justice Department and in particular the prosecutors who pursued criminal charges against him over the past four years. But also the Republicans have been very critical of DOJ arguing that it's, you know, that it was infected with politics and that it was biased against conservatives, not just Trump, and it, you know, sought to silence certain voices. So this sweeping executive order calls for the attorney general to literally go through all of the Justice Department's work over the past four years during the Biden

administration and examine it for instances of perceived bias and rectify it. Hmm. Rectify it how? Well, I mean, we have already started to see people being moved out of their positions, being marginalized, pushed into different roles. So they can do stuff like that, but they can also, you know, Trump and his nominees have also threatened to take legal action against employees.

And people who have left the Justice Department are also in fear that they could face criminal charges, civil litigation, things like that. So there's really no limit to the way that Trump could make these DOJ employees' lives hell over the next few years. So this executive order says that one example of the weaponization of the Justice Department is the prosecutions of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. The order calls those cases ruthless. The Biden administration, of course, has said those cases were justified.

And one of Trump's other actions this week was to pardon 1,500 people associated with January 6th. I know that Trump signaled during the campaign that he might pardon people who had been prosecuted for January 6, but were you surprised that he pardoned basically everybody on his first day in office? Yes, I was surprised because even in in recent days he had been telling people close to him that he would consider granting clemency to these people on a case-by- case basis. Vice

President JD Vance went on television and said that people who committed violence against police officers during the riot, of course, should not be pardoned. Look, if you protested peacefully on January the 6th, and you've had Merrick Garland's Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned. And so I definitely thought it was going to be a narrower swath of people. I mean, there are many, many people charged with misdemeanors who didn't commit violence, but there were also hundreds of people who beat cops and destroyed property and just ransacked the

Capitol. So it was stunning. Molly, what's your take on this? Do you think this is something, like how do you think that this move might affect Trump politically? Well, it's not popular, at least it wasn't when it was asked as a hypothetical

before Trump took office. Most voters are not as enthusiastic about January 6th as Trump is. He sees it as a justified and patriotic thing that his supporters did. And most Americans don't feel that way, I think particularly about the violence and the attacks on law enforcement. And there's even some talk that Trump may invite some of the rioters he's pardoned to appear with him in the White House. So he really is going all in on rewriting the history of what actually happened that day and

valorizing, not just pardoning, but valorizing these rioters. Another big change Trump is planning for the department is who's gonna lead it. So his nominee for attorney department is who's going to lead it. So his nominee for attorney general is Pam Bondi. She actually wasn't Trump's first choice for attorney general. He first nominated Matt Gaetz, as we may remember, but Matt Gaetz withdrew after facing sexual misconduct allegations. And then Trump nominated Pam Bondi, who's the former attorney general for the state

of Florida and has been a big supporter of Trump for a while. Sadie, how are lawmakers responding to Pam Bondi's nomination? I think we saw a very favorable reaction from senators during Pam Bondi's confirmation hearing. Of course, Democrats are strongly opposed to her, but in comparison to some of Trump's other more controversial nominees, Pam Bondi has not generated that many negative headlines. She was certainly speaking to a friendly crowd. She sought to sort of walk this line between Trump's ardent defender and this sort of old school traditional tough on crime prosecutor.

I believe that the Justice Department must be independent and must act independently. The number one job is to enforce the law fairly and even-handedly. And that's what will be done if I am confirmed as the Attorney General. And that was intended to appeal to both the Republican base and to sort of give a nod to the error that the Attorney General is supposed to appeal to both the Republican base and to sort of give an odd to the air that Attorney General is supposed to be independent from the White House. Does it seem like based on how she answered questions in her confirmation hearing and things that she said in the past that she's going to carry out Trump's objectives here when it comes to really transforming the Justice Department and you know,

quote-unquote ending its weaponization? Yes, it did seem to me like she was on board with that agenda completely. I mean she said things like politics won't play a role in my decisions and I'll be the one making the decisions not the White House. So you will provide an insurance to every member of this committee that the Justice Department will only follow the facts and the law and the White House will play no role in cases investigated or brought? Senator, it will be my job, if confirmed, as Attorney General to make those decisions.

Politics will not play a part. But throughout the hearing, she basically echoed the central criticisms that Trump has been saying time and time again, that the Justice Department was turned into a crudgel to go after him. She certainly shares that view. There's basically no daylight between them in terms of, you know, the types of changes that they think need to be made to this institution. Sadie, how are people inside the Justice Department reacting to this potential change in leadership and direction?

I mean, people inside the Justice Department, the career employees, are scared. You know, they're worried for their own jobs, but they're also feeling very angry and disappointed that the work that they've done over the past four years and beyond is bit by bit just being totally undone. And I think you saw that with the January 6 pardons, people who pursued those cases, who were detailed from other cities to the US Attorney's Office in Washington, DC for years to pursue those cases are now seeing the effects of their work washed away to some extent.

And so I think there's just a lot of bad feeling within the Bureau. Interesting. And so I think there's just a lot of bad feeling within the bureau. Interesting. Can I ask you, Sadie, is this a through line through multiple administrations of federal prosecutions being seen as more political in nature, or has there been more continuity across administrations where like career prosecutors could stay there for decades and work under presidents of different parties? Yeah, I mean, there's always some growing pains and some changes that take place

when a Republican administration comes after a Democrat and vice versa. I mean, the priorities of these parties are just different, and so, you know, there's always some movement. But this is really, really striking, and it's more intense and more poignant than it was during Trump's first administration. And I just think there's a lot less concern being paid to, can we do this? It's more just like, let's do it. Sadie, what are your big questions or what are you going to be watching for with the

Justice Department over the next hundred days and four years? Well, recall that Trump openly lamented choosing his first two attorneys general when they resisted some of his more extreme demands. And given what we've seen in the first few days in office, he seems more determined now than ever to bend the Justice Department to his will. And so what I will be watching for, of course, are signs of when senior Justice Department officials cave to that pressure or agree with that pressure.

And I will look to see how close this historically independent institution, how much it becomes more fully an arm of Trump's agenda. So the last question I have for you, Molly, is that it feels like President Trump is entering the White House with arguably more power than any president in a long time, certainly in my lifetime. He has this team in place that, as we've talked about, is hitting the ground running. He has both chambers of Congress. The Supreme Court is filled with three of his appointees. You're seeing the CEOs of tech companies

loosen their content moderation policies in ways that Trump has been pushing for. And there's also that Supreme Court ruling from last year that dramatically limited what a president can be held accountable for once they're out of office. I think the vibes have really shifted in Trump's direction. You know, when he won eight years ago, it seemed to a lot of people like sort of a fluke. He hadn't won the popular vote, so you could make the argument that actually the will of

the people was to have Hillary Clinton be president. It was unexpected. Even Trump didn't expect it. He was surprised when that happened. So the transition was really bumpy and they didn't know what they wanted to do or who they wanted to put in a lot of these positions. He's much more prepared this time. And he also, to your point, has spent his four years out of power building his political power, building his political movement, taking over the Republican Party in a very intentional way. So the party that's behind him now, you know, he had a trifecta in 2017,

but it was a trifecta of old school Republicans who wanted to do things like pass Paul Ryan's privatization of Social Security and repeal Obamacare and other things that Trump didn't really care about. Whereas now this is a much trumpier Republican party. They're much more on board with his agenda and his vision and just him himself. I think you're right that the culture has shifted as well. I would say, however, presidents almost inevitably overreach when they get into office. And that's why you almost always have that first midterm election going in the other direction, right?

And, you know, while he does come in with a trifecta, it's a very, very narrow trifecta. In the House in 2017, Paul Ryan could afford to lose 27 Republican votes. The current speaker, Mike Johnson, can lose two. So it's going to be really hard for them to get things done through Congress. And that's part of the reason that Trump is doing so many things unilaterally. All right. Well, Molly, Sadie, thank you so much for your time today. This has been fascinating as always.

It's just going to keep being fascinating. Fascinating and fascinating-er. Before we go, do you have any questions about this new administration? What do you think of what Trump has done so far? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournal at wsj.com. That's thejournal at wsj.com. ["The Journal"] Trump 2.0 is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify

and The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Katherine Whalen. I'm Ryan Knudson. Molly Ball is The Wall Street Journal's senior political correspondent. This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard.

Additional music in this episode by Katherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, and Emma Munger. Fact-checking by Kate Gallagher. Artwork by James Walton. Thanks for listening. Trump 2.0 will be back with a new episode next Friday morning. See you then.