President Donald Trump marked the anniversary of his return to the White House with a nearly two-hour press conference in the briefing room, speaking for more than an hour before he started taking questions from reporters.
Trump, more than most politicians, has a keen sense of who his friends and enemies are. Thus, he must surely be aware that time is not on his side.
WAR FOR THE TOP OF THE WORLD: ALLIES PANIC AS TRUMP EYES GREENLAND
The president has less than a year to rescue the Republicans’ congressional majorities, which both history and the current polling say are in serious jeopardy in this year’s midterm elections. This will likely require reversing public perceptions of the economy, which remain sharply negative after inflation hit a 41-year high under former President Joe Biden.
When President Ronald Reagan slayed stagflation more than four decades ago, it wasn’t in time for Republicans to stave off losses in the 1982 midterm elections. It took another election cycle that Trump doesn’t have.
If Republicans lose their slender majority in the House, Trump will almost certainly be impeached for a third time. He will also find it impossible to advance any tax or spending legislation without Democratic cooperation. In the less likely event that Republicans lose control of the Senate, it will cost Trump his ability to easily confirm judges and most new members of his administration.
Trump is an acquired taste. His “shock and awe” strategy induces fatigue in all but his most ardent supporters. He doesn’t wear well with swing voters, and the MAGA movement’s enthusiasm for him isn’t readily transferable to other Republicans when he isn’t on top of the ticket.
Soon after the midterm elections, the political world’s attention will turn to 2028 before the calendar does. With apologies to Alan Dershowitz, Trump will not be a legally viable candidate for reelection by that time.
In June, before voters again head to the polls, Trump will turn 80. He will only be the second president to reach that milestone while still in office. Legacy media that largely ignored Biden’s steep decline until a presidential debate made it undeniable will eagerly cover every Trump yawn, verbal slip, change in public schedule, or impromptu doctor’s visit. Many of last year’s Biden mea culpas from the press were clearly meant to soften up readers, listeners, and viewers for much tougher coverage of Trump’s aging.
The opening weeks of 2025 illustrated the advantages of nonconsecutive presidential terms, something Americans last experienced in a radically different political era under Grover Cleveland. Trump got off to a fast start, and Democrats didn’t know what hit them. In 2026, it will become increasingly apparent that time is limited. There is a lot still left to do and less than eight years in which to do it.
Trump is challenging decades of entrenched progressivism and a century of the administrative state but may have less than two years left of a free hand in domestic affairs. Trump will campaign this year like he is on the ballot himself but also govern as if the GOP trifecta’s days are numbered.
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This sense of urgency could inflame some of Trump’s worst tendencies, on display at times in the Greenland gambit Dominic Green analyzes in this issue. It also may encourage him to continue sharing the spotlight as never before, especially with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump may have envisioned such transitions in his family business, but he has never participated in anything like it since he has been in politics. Nor have we seen anything quite like it.
Only time will tell.