On Monday, January 20, a big political event will take place, when Republican Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president for a four-year term.
Four years ago, as Democrat Joe Biden took office, it was certainly not clear that Trump would return as president. The nation in spring 2021 was just beginning to have vaccinations for people to address the coronavirus pandemic, and the economy was weak.
Some people didn’t want to look back for Trump to return, particularly after an insurrection of people sought to keep him in office on January 6th.
Biden pursued and was able to see large pieces of legislation enacted, in packages that directed billions towards infrastructure and green energy programs. Inflation was very high for the first three years of Biden’s term. Two huge conflicts began in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Through all that, Trump showed he wanted to return as president, while denying that he had lost in the first place in 2020.
He was the subject of many lawsuits, and lost several, including one that makes him the first president to be a convicted felon.
As the 2024 presidential race went on, Trump seemed to exert an even larger hold on grassroots Republicans, and Never Trumpers were on the outs.
Of course, the contest that at one point looked to pit 81-year-old Biden with 78-year-old Trump took a turn in July. That’s when Biden dropped out and his vice president, Kamala Harris, got the Democratic Party nomination.
Polls showed a narrow lead for Harris in the seven crucial swing states in the fall, but on Election Day, Trump prevailed in all of those to win the presidency in the Electoral College. He narrowly won the popular vote, with 77.3 million compared to 75 million for Harris.
Now, the question is how a Trump presidency might unfold.
During the campaign, he promised mass deportations of people without legal status, a renewal of the tax cuts that were perhaps the top achievement of his first term, and heavy tariffs applied to nations that send a lot of products to the U.S. He also said he would end the war of Russia and Ukraine in one day.
The first of his nominees for federal cabinet positions were being worked on this week, a few days before he takes office.
The guests here to discuss a host of topics related to the upcoming second Donald Trump presidency are the same three academics who met 2.5 months ago to dissect the election results.
For this Frequency show, we devote an entire episode to preview what Trump may carry out in the next few years with the help of Republican federal legislators. Well, except with a short look back on what President Biden did well or not well.
Those political science professors from Siouxland colleges are Julia Hellwege of the University of South Dakota, Bradley Best of Buena Vista University, and Patrick McKinlay of Morningside University.
*Click on the audio link above to hear the entire show.
What's The Frequency, Episode 49
