Amy Walter:
Yes, this is what’s so interesting, especially in these past, I don’t know, let’s call it the last 10 years or so, that the first few weeks of a president — new president’s administration, they do these executive orders, which are basically just undoing the last president’s executive orders.
In fact, when I lined up, what did President Biden do in his first, say, 40 days in office or first weeks in office compared to where Trump is, you could literally just say one is just negating the other on building the wall, on support for the WHO, on support for transgender Americans and diversity and equity.
So it is literally, when one side wins, they believe that they have a mandate to basically null and void the last four years. What we also know, though, is that instead of saying, well, what America voted for was they thought this side went way too much over here, so we’re going to just bring it back to the center, they tend to then go way off on the other side, which gives the party out of power an opportunity to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you took this one step too far.
And that’s what’s going to be fascinating to watch for these next two years. Tam’s right that so much needs to get done substantively through the legislative process, but on issues like tariffs and immigration, we have only seen the beginnings of this. We have absolutely no idea how this is going to play out over the next week, nonetheless these next couple of years.
