The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

by Peter Baker

And yet Trump today might very well regain the office he lost. In a second term, many of the restraints that inhibited Trump in the first would be gone. He would have no worry about a future election, assuming he respected the two-term limit in the Constitution. The threat of a third impeachment would hardly serve as a check either, given his survival the first two times. Trump would not make the same mistake of hiring advisers who stood up to him—he would choose matadors like Mark Meadows, not obstacles like John Kelly. He would pursue vengeance against his enemies. He would politicize the courts, the Justice Department, and the military. He would challenge allies and seek common cause with autocrats. We know he would do these things because those are exactly the things that he did and said for all four years of his first term in the presidency.