President Donald Trump has entered the season almost every president finds themselves in during their final two years in office: he is a lame duck. In fact, thanks to the trouncing congressional Republicans took in the midterms, one of the worst such defeats in recent administrations, Trump may find himself to be one of the lamest ducks.
With the incoming Democrat majority sizable enough to make any question of bipartisanship a nonstarter, Trump will likely find little to no legislative success for any of his policy goals.
So, what can Trump get done, and what can Americans look forward to over these next two years?
Well, right off the bat, Trump elevated Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff, revealing he has no intention of backing down to Democrats. This move aligns with his most consistent guiding principle: never admit defeat. Just notice how Trump has brushed away any personal culpability for his party’s midterm shellacking.
During his “60 Minutes” interview, Trump resisted accepting any blame, stating, “Well, number one, I was not on the ballot.” Really? Not according to Democrats and their voters. Indeed, not according to Trump himself, as he campaigned across the nation, repeatedly telling folks at his rallies, “Vote like I’m on the ballot.”
But this is nothing new. We’ve long known this about Trump, and it’s not wrong to note that his stubbornness is as much an asset as a liability. It has helped him accomplish much in Washington and beyond, like shutting down the border, facing off against China, and getting NATO nations to finally start meeting their defense spending obligations, to name a few.
But it also means he won’t project the statesmanship needed to reach across the aisle, win over opponents, and make concessions on tertiary issues.
Trump’s inability to secure legislative victories, whether due to a lack of patience or simply an unwillingness to engage in deal-making packages, means that most of his changes were primarily via executive order, which the next Democrat president will easily overturn with a stroke of his pen, as Joe Biden did to great fanfare when he entered the White House six years ago.
One would have thought, given that reality, that Trump would have used Republican control of Congress to make enduring legislative victories a top priority, but alas, he did not. Instead, he got caught up pushing a tariff-first economic agenda, which has failed to deliver for the American people.
Over the next two years, Trump’s relationship with Congress will be more of the same; only now, Democrats will have the power to pass several legislative bills packed with their special-interest agenda items, only for Trump to veto them. Democrats will then campaign on the talking point in 2028 that Trump and the do-nothing Republicans obstructed their repeated efforts to deliver affordability for the American people because they refused to work with Democrats.
In short, Trump will blame Democrats, and Democrats will blame Trump and, by extension, all Republicans. Maybe having Democrats in control of Congress will make things easier for Trump, since he won’t have to worry about pushing members of Congress to support his legislative agenda. He’ll be freer to lead via executive orders.
If he can get a decisive victory over Iran and oversee an economy that appears to be gaining steam, especially in the nuclear energy sector and a manufacturing renaissance, it could result in quite a boon for the nation.
Furthermore, Democrats might overreact to their midterm win, interpreting it as a mandate to push the very radical leftist policies that Americans repeatedly reject. Also, an appetite for retribution against Trump and his administration could produce a stream of Democrat-led lawfare efforts that will only sour Americans on them.
Republicans eyeing the 2028 presidency face a tough question: How do they escape Trump’s shadow while building the kind of support that carried him to victory in 2016 and 2024? It’s difficult to see how that could happen right now, but a lot can and will happen in the next two years.
