An Unhappy Anniversary: Trump’s Year in Office

Paper and clocks are associated with first wedding anniversaries, or so the gift guides say. As the United States reaches the one-year mark of its increasingly dysfunctional and abuse-laden political marriage to Donald J. Trump, however, the president has made it clear that he will accept almost any kind of gift — even, and perhaps especially, someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize medal. Venezuelan opponent María Corina Machado gave him hers last week, in a large golden frame, ready to hang. Although it was a pathetic gesture, given that the Trump administration appears to have made a deal with the remnants of Nicolas Maduro’s government (while Maduro himself is in a Brooklyn jail), it earned him a boost. After Maduro’s arrest, Trump said Machado was “a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect”; after receiving the medal, she was “a wonderful woman” and her gift “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.” Those words might even get her somewhere, if only she controlled plenty of oil reserves. But clocks can also make good gifts. After a group of Swiss businessmen arrived at the White House in November, carrying an oversized Rolex-shaped desk clock, the country got a reduction in tariffs.

Those not trying to please the President could still keep the clocks ahead this January 20, because the country is in a countdown. Three hundred and sixty-five days of Trump means there are one thousand and ninety-six days left, including a leap year. (That doesn’t count every day of Trump’s first term, of course; that’s a tragedy of remarriage.) We’ve aged so much during the Trump years that the Biden administration may feel much older than it was. The brief period that Elon Musk ran around the White House may now seem like a fever dream — he and Trump appear to have an on-off relationship — but hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs in its wake or had their lives irrevocably changed, including recipients of U.S. aid around the world. On January 1, millions of Americans lost their health care subsidies. Immigrants, even legal ones, live with a new level of fear. The same goes for many academics, scientists and even lawyers. There is an undercurrent of political violence that was not present in the same way a year ago.

There are only two hundred and eighty-seven days left until the midterm elections, which at least have the potential to significantly shift the balance of power in Washington. Republicans control both houses of Congress, but the margins are slim: 218-213 in the House of Representatives, giving the Republican Party such a tenuous hold that Majority Whip Tom Emmer reportedly indicated he would not excuse absences for matters other than “life and death”; the margin in the Senate is 53-47. The entire House is up for re-election, and it is more than plausible that the Democrats will win; conquering the Senate, where thirty-five seats will be in contention, will be much more difficult, but not impossible. Already before November, special elections will be held for four vacant seats in the House, including the one held, until recently, by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene. His distancing from the Trump majority – spurred, among other things, by the Jeffery Epstein affair – could be an indication that this administration is deteriorating faster than the calendar alone would indicate.

For at least some other Republicans, at this one-year point, the breaking point might be Trump’s eerily serious talk about buying or seizing Greenland, a territory of our country. NATO ally of Denmark. A few MAGA the guys like the idea, but, like Policy According to a report, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said last week that there was “certainly not an appetite for some of the options that have been talked about or considered.” The statement came ahead of Trump’s announcement last Saturday that he would impose tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries “until an agreement is reached for the complete and total purchase of Greenland.” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, raised the possibility of invoking the War Powers Act, a tool available to Congress to control the president. It’s no coincidence that Tillis said he wouldn’t run again this year. His seat is open and a top target for Democrats, who have a strong candidate in former Gov. Roy Cooper.