Trump returns with wind at his back—then trips

Trump squanders – In 2016, Donald Trump entered the White House as the economy was recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession; during his first term, he took credit for a healthy economy while failing to manage the Covid-19 pandemic. In January 2025, he r

When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. the political conditions looked tailor-made for a clean legacy rewrite: a smartly recovering economy. a party “completely submissive to his will. ” and a global moment that. in the account presented. was “open to new ideas and looking for leadership.”.

It was a rare setup after an equally rare rebound. Trump had come back from losing in 2020. when he had been “abysmal” through the Covid-19 pandemic and managed. in this telling. to exacerbate America’s divisions at the worst possible time. Yet he was also among the first incumbents to benefit when the anti-incumbent fever that followed the pandemic was still “in full effect.” Running again in 2024 as a challenger. he convinced “a plurality of voters” to take another chance on him after voters remembered the “good economy” from his first term—despite the insistence that he “did little to affect it.”.

The story starts earlier than the election headlines. As a ghostwriter for Trump’s “The Art of the Deal. ” Tony Schwartz tells it. Trump was once caught at 13 with a hidden cache of switchblades. Fred Trump, Schwartz writes, was “a very brutal guy”—a martinet who shipped his son off to military school. Donald Trump. described as “a poor student” and “apparently not much of a leader. ” still ended up “leading the parade down Fifth Avenue” in a flamboyant cadet uniform. an early indicator—according to this broader narrative—that he can “fail up” into prestige and get rewarded even when the underlying story doesn’t add up.

In 2016. Trump “sneak[ed] into the White House without winning the popular vote. ” taking over when the economy had finally recovered from the shock of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. The account says Trump was new to politics and had “no knowledge of history. ” so he didn’t know how to implement the vague ideas he’d developed back in the 1980s. Instead. it describes advisers putting the brakes on his “craziest notions. ” leaving him focused on undoing former President Barack Obama’s actions where possible and letting the GOP enact its “perennial tax cuts.”.

Trump’s pugnacious style remained unpopular with the majority of the public. but he still got credit for a healthy economy during his first term—again. even though. as this piece frames it. he “did little to affect it.” The break in the luck came with Covid-19. The argument is blunt: he “probably would have squeaked out a victory in 2020” if he had shown the ability to guide the nation through its first crisis of that era. He didn’t. The result was a loss, followed by the aftermath familiar to voters.

But luck and timing are where the account keeps returning. Once again, the piece says, Trump was positioned by global politics after the pandemic. When incumbents tumbled abroad. he was “among the first of them.” Then. when he ran in 2024. the economy was still recovering from the pandemic shock and—because “the president in office was held liable”—that backlash “blew back on the Biden administration.” The voters. it says. also remembered Trump’s earlier economy and gave him a path back.

So when Trump returned in January 2025. Democrats were described as having done “the heavy economic lifting” in the post-pandemic period. guiding the country to what the author calls a “soft landing.” The piece adds that The Economist ran a cover story before the election describing the American economy as “The Envy of the World.” Trump. in that frame. had “the wind at his back”—and “a perfect opportunity to remake his legacy” into the opposite of what the author says voters saw in 2020: incompetent. divisive. and a sore loser.

Instead, the argument tightens on a simple premise: Trump could have taken a good situation and made it look like his work. “That did not happen,” the piece says, because he has a “lifelong propensity to take a gift horse and punch it in the mouth.”

The economic grievance is laid out through specific actions described in the account. It cites Vox’s Eric Levitz. who is quoted saying Trump “could have presided over a pristine economy. if he’d simply refrained from increasing import prices. reducing labor-force growth. and launching a war of choice near the aorta of the global energy market.” Levitz’s quote is connected to a framing described as the “‘We had a good thing’ account of Trump-era economic performance. ” invoking a pop-culture reference to the “much-memed scolding” of Walter White in AMC’s “Breaking Bad.”.

Then comes the practical through-line: “Trump’s tariffs have wreaked havoc on the economy. ” not only by raising costs for businesses and consumers. but by creating uncertainty through a “mercuil system of threats and rewards” that “stalled the recovery.” In the timeline laid out here. the Supreme Court enters as a brief reprieve. The piece says the Supreme Court reversed the original “Liberation Day” tariffs. allowing businesses “some breathing room” and enabling them to “recover some of the money from the government.”.

But the reprieve doesn’t last. Trump is described as “appealing the judicial order that’s been allowing companies to recover and boost the economy.” The author then connects that to a separate escalation: Trump “decided to make things even worse” by “starting a war for no good reason” that “has strangled the world’s oil supply.” Even if that war ends soon. the account says. the “excursion” will still “hobble the economy for months.”.

All of it sits inside a mood: the sense that a recovering economy. and the political coalition the author claims includes “the fastest-growing segments of the population: young people and Latinos. ” was within reach to build a durable comeback—and instead. the story is of opportunity being squandered.

The sequence also points in one direction for the reader. because the piece links each step to a consequence already described: import-price increases and labor-force setbacks are tied to a “pristine economy” that could have existed. tariffs are tied to uncertainty that “stalled the recovery. ” and a new conflict is tied to oil-supply strangulation that will linger even after it ends.

Where this lands politically is also part of the warning. Trump is described as “very incompetent and very lucky,” with the author arguing that luck may hold again. The piece predicts he is “likely to survive the disaster he is making of the country by the skin of his teeth. ” and “will probably leave office with a massive fortune derived from his presidency.” It adds that there will likely be “no accountability for the vast corruption and abuse of power” by him personally because his “friends and allies have seen to that.”.

The final beat turns outward from Washington to a broader national feeling. The author says America has been “equally lucky. ” blessed with “vast resources and resilient people. ” but that it’s possible “our fortune has run out” and the country might not be “lucky enough to survive Donald Trump.” In the closing thought. the piece returns to its core claim about outcomes: Trump’s “good luck almost always leaves nothing but carnage for the people he leaves behind.”.

United States politics Donald Trump tariffs Supreme Court Liberation Day tariffs Covid-19 economic recovery import prices labor-force growth global energy market oil supply