WASHINGTON — Months into his first term as president, Donald Trump was furious with the snowballing Russia investigation and ordered White House Counsel Don McGahn to make sure that special counsel Robert Mueller got fired.
“Mueller has to go,” McGahn recalled Trump saying. “Call me back when you do it.”
But McGahn didn’t do it, and Trump didn’t even bring it up the next time they saw each other. Such incidents were common during Trump’s initial experience in the White House, where officials would soften or ignore his most outrageous decisions and the president seemed unwilling to enforce his will.
It’s hard to imagine the same thing happening during Trump’s second term. Instead of repeating his laissez-faire attitude toward his own administration, the Republican president is asserting control at every opportunity, backed up by loyalists at all levels of government. Despite occasional disorganization and confusion, there’s a headstrong determination to push through any obstacles.
Trump doesn’t just want to change course from Joe Biden’s presidency, his team is holding back congressionally authorized funding championed by his predecessor.
Not only did Trump officials tell the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop working, his team set up a tip line so people could report unauthorized actions taken by staff at the agency.
Trump wasn’t satisfied with simply firing all the board members at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He made himself chairman.
This time, Trump seems to be saying, his orders will not be ignored. This time, there will be follow through.
The White House summarizes Trump’s approach with the mantra “promises made, promises kept.” Administration officials also dismiss concerns that the president is exercising too much control. They say Trump is entitled to impose his vision on the government that he was elected to lead.
Others see something darker and more menacing for the country and its future.
“Donald Trump’s instincts haven’t changed,” said Timothy Naftali, a Columbia University historian. “He’s just angrier, meaner and more effective than he was in his first term.”
Trump often felt like he was undermined in his first term by the “deep state,” a term used by his allies to describe civil servants and career officials. Now, he’s moving swiftly to cut the federal bureaucracy with the help of Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur Trump has empowered to oversee the downsizing of the workforce.
“We’ve never had a president come into office with such a deep desire for revenge,” Naftali said. “Donald Trump is trying to hollow out institutions that he thinks embarrassed him.”
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created to protect Americans from financial fraud, abuse and deceptive practices, has been brought to a standstill. The U.S. Agency for International Development, a leading distributor of humanitarian assistance, was shut down.
A prime target is the Department of Justice, which infuriated Trump by investigating him during his first term and after leaving office. He was indicted twice by federal authorities, although the cases were dropped after he won last year’s election because sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted while in office.
Now Trump has placed loyalists in leadership positions, such as Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general who was previously Trump’s defense attorney.
Last week, Bove pushed to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, saying it was more important for Adams to help Trump enact stricter immigration policies.
“The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior Administration,” Bove wrote.
Several prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned in protest, and a court hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
Trump said that he wasn’t involved in the decision to drop the case against Adams, but he’s previously said that the mayor had been unfairly targeted for political reasons.
Another example of Trump’s heavy-handed approach this time has been his handling of criminal charges against supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Hours after taking the oath of office a month ago, the president pardoned roughly 1,500 people, including those who attacked police officers.
Then his administration decided to push even further. Thousands of FBI employees are being questioned about their role in Jan. 6 investigations, with suggestions that they could face punishment.
Bove said agents “who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner” were not at risk, adding that “the only individuals who should be concerned … are those who acted with corrupt or partisan intent.”
It’s a sharp change from Trump’s first administration, which included a number of establishment figures who resisted his impulses.
Olivia Troye, a former national security official who has been a critic of Trump, said staff members would confer with each other after meetings with the president.
“Why don’t you hold on that before you go do something, and let’s see what happens,” Troye recalled people saying. “Let’s see if it passes.”
The mixed signals were partly a matter of inexperience. The president and some of his advisers had never served in government.
“During the first administration, quite frankly, they had no idea what they were doing,” Troye said. “Now they have people in place who were there the first time around. They’ve been preparing to execute for several years.”
Trump has taken a scorched-earth approach to uprooting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, commonly known as DEI. He’s signed executive orders to end the programs, but that wasn’t enough for his administration.
Messages distributed by the Office of Personnel Management, which functions as the human resources agency for the federal government, said employees should not try to “disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.”
Anyone who sees evidence of DEI should immediately disclose it.
“There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information,” the messages said. “However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”
