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What To Expect in Fiscal Policy During Trump's First Year (2024) (Investopedia)
​Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman serving as the 47th president of the United States since January 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 45th president from 2017 to
2021.

Trump was born in New York City, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He became president of his family's real estate business in 1971 and oriented it to luxury hotels and casinos.

After a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s and 2000s, he began side ventures.
In his first term, Trump imposed a travel ban on citizens from six Muslim-majority countries, expanded the U.S.–Mexico border wall, and implemented a brief family separation policy.

Domestically, he rolled back environmental and business regulations, signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and appointed three Supreme Court justices.

In foreign policy, he withdrew the U.S. from agreements on climate, trade, and Iran's nuclear program, began a trade war with China, and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without reaching an agreement on denuclearization.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he downplayed its severity, contradicted guidance from public health officials, and enacted the CARES Act stimulus package.

Trump was impeached in 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and in 2021 for incitement of insurrection; the Senate acquitted him in both cases.

After his first term, scholars and historians ranked him one of the worst presidents in American history.

Trump is the central figure behind and namesake of Trumpism. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged, racist or misogynistic, and he has made false and misleading statements and promoted conspiracy theories to a degree unprecedented in American politics.

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden but refused to concede, falsely claiming electoral fraud, and attempted to overturn the results, including through his involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack in 2021.

He founded Trump Media & Technology Group that year. Trump ran again for the 2024 presidential election, defeating incumbent vice president Kamala Harris. 

Trump faced legal issues between presidencies and during his 2024 campaign:
After his victory in the 2024 presidential election, Trump was sentenced to a penalty-free discharge in 2025, and two other felony indictments against him were dismissed.

Trump began his second presidency by pardoning around 1,500 January 6 rioters, attempting to reduce the size of the federal workforce, and initiating a deportation program of illegal immigrants.

His broad and extensive use of executive orders has drawn dozens of lawsuits challenging their legality.

Early life and education

Pictured below: Trump at New York Military Academy, 1964:
Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at Jamaica Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens, the fourth child of Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. He is of German and Scottish descent. 

He grew up with his older siblings, Maryanne, Fred Jr., and Elizabeth, and his younger brother, Robert, in a mansion in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. Fred Trump paid his children each about $20,000 a year, equivalent to $265,000 a year in 2024. Trump was a millionaire at age eight by contemporary standards.

Trump attended the private Kew-Forest School through seventh grade. He was a difficult child and showed an early interest in his father's business. His father enrolled him in New York Military Academy, a private boarding school, to complete secondary school. 

Trump considered a show business career but instead in 1964 enrolled at Fordham University. Two years later, he transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1968 with a bachelor of science in economics.

He was exempted from the draft during the Vietnam War due to bone spurs in his heels.


Business career:
Real estate:

Starting in 1968, Trump was employed at his father's real estate company, Trump Management, which owned racially segregated middle-class rental housing in New York City's outer boroughs.

In 1971, his father made him president of the company and he began using the Trump Organization as an umbrella brand. 

Roy Cohn was Trump's fixer, lawyer, and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s In 1973, Cohn helped Trump countersue the U.S. government for $100 million (equivalent to $686 million in 2023) over its charges that Trump's properties had racial discriminatory practices.

Trump's counterclaims were dismissed, and the government's case was settled with the Trumps signing a consent decree agreeing to desegregate. Before age thirty, Trump showed his propensity for litigation, no matter the outcome and cost; even when he lost, he described the case as a win. 

Helping Trump projects, Cohn was a consigliere whose Mafia connections controlled construction unions. 

Cohn introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump, who enlisted Stone's services to deal with the federal government. Between 1991 and 2009, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six of his businesses:
In 1992, Trump, his siblings Maryanne, Elizabeth, and Robert, and his cousin John W. Walter, each with a 20 percent share, formed All County Building Supply & Maintenance Corp. The company had no offices and is alleged to have been a shell company for paying the vendors providing services and supplies for Trump's rental units, then billing those services and supplies to Trump Management with markups of 20–50 percent and more.

The owners shared the proceeds generated by the markups. The increased costs were used to get state approval for increasing the rents of his rent-stabilized units.

Manhattan and Chicago developments​:

Pictured below: ​Trump in 1985 with a model of one of his aborted Manhattan development projects
Trump attracted public attention in 1978 with the launch of his family's first Manhattan venture: the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal. 

The financing was facilitated by a $400 million city property tax abatement arranged for him by his father who also, jointly with Hyatt, guaranteed a $70 million bank construction loan. The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and that same year, he obtained rights to develop Trump Tower, a mixed-use skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.

The building houses the headquarters of the Trump Corporation and Trump's PAC and was his primary residence until 2019. In 1988, Trump acquired the Plaza Hotel with a loan from a consortium of 16 banks. The hotel filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992, and a reorganization plan was approved a month later, with the banks taking control of the property.

In 1995, he defaulted on over $3 billion of bank loans, and the lenders seized the Plaza Hotel along with most of his other properties in a "vast and humiliating restructuring" that allowed him to avoid personal bankruptcy. The lead bank's attorney said of the banks' decision that they "all agreed that he'd be better alive than dead". 

​In 1996, Trump acquired and renovated the mostly vacant 71-story skyscraper at 40 Wall Street, later rebranded as the Trump Building. In the early 1990s, he won the right to develop a 70-acre (28 ha) tract in the Lincoln Square neighborhood near the Hudson River.

Struggling with debt from other ventures in 1994, he sold most of his interest in the project to Asian investors, who financed the project's completion, Riverside South. 

Trump's last major construction project was the 92-story mixed-use Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago which opened in 2008.

In 2024, The New York Times and ProPublica reported that the Internal Revenue Service was investigating whether he had twice written off losses incurred through construction cost overruns and lagging sales of residential units in the building he had declared to be worthless on his 2008 tax return.

Atlantic City casinos

​Pictured below: Entrance of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City
  • In 1984, Trump opened Harrah's at Trump Plaza, a hotel and casino, with financing and management help from the Holiday Corporation. It was unprofitable, and he paid Holiday $70 million in May 1986 to take sole control. 
  • In 1985, he bought the unopened Atlantic City Hilton Hotel and renamed it Trump Castle. 
  • Both casinos filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1992. 

Trump bought a third Atlantic City venue in 1988, the Trump Taj Mahal (see preceding illustration). It was financed with $675 million in junk bonds and completed for $1.1 billion, opening in April 1990. He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1991.

Under the provisions of the restructuring agreement, he gave up half his initial stake and personally guaranteed future performance. To reduce his $900 million of personal debt, he 
sold
  • the Trump Shuttle airline;
  • his megayacht,
  • the Trump Princess, which had been leased to his casinos and kept docked;
  • and other businesses.

In 1995, Trump founded Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (THCR), which assumed ownership of the Trump Plaza. THCR purchased the Taj Mahal and the Trump Castle in 1996 and went bankrupt in 2004 and 2009, leaving him with 10 percent ownership He remained chairman until 2009.

Clubs:

In 1985, Trump acquired the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1995, he converted the estate into a private club with an initiation fee and annual dues. He continued to use a wing of the house as a private residence. He declared the club his primary residence in 2019. 

Trump began building and buying golf courses in 1999, owning 17 golf courses by 2016.

Licensing the Trump name:
See also: List of things named after Donald Trump

The Trump Organization has licensed the Trump name for consumer products and services, including foodstuffs, apparel, learning courses, and home furnishings. According to The Washington Post, there are more than 50 licensing or management deals involving his name, and they have generated at least $59 million for his companies. By 2018, only two consumer goods companies continued to license his name.

Side ventures:

​Pictured below: ​Trump and New Jersey Generals quarterback Doug Flutie at a 1985 press conference in Trump Tower
  • ​In 1970, Trump invested $70,000 to receive billing as coproducer of a Broadway comedy.
  • In September 1983, he purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League. After the 1985 season, the league folded, largely due to his attempt to move to a fall schedule (when it would have competed with the National Football League [NFL] for audience) and trying to force a merger with the NFL by bringing an antitrust suit. 
  • Trump and his Plaza Hotel hosted several boxing matches at the Atlantic City Convention Hall.
  • In 1989 and 1990, he lent his name to the Tour de Trump cycling stage race, an attempt to create an American equivalent of European races such as the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia. 
  • From 1986 to 1988, he purchased significant blocks of shares in various public companies while suggesting that he intended to take over the company and then sold his shares for a profit, leading some observers to think he was engaged in greenmail. 
  • The New York Times found that he initially made millions of dollars in such stock transactions, but "lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously".
  • In 1988, Trump purchased the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle, financing the purchase with $380 million (equivalent to $979 million in 2023) in loans from a syndicate of 22 banks. He renamed the airline Trump Shuttle and operated it until 1992.
  • He defaulted on his loans in 1991, and ownership passed to the banks.
  • In 1996, he purchased the Miss Universe pageants, including Miss USA and Miss Teen USA. Due to disagreements with CBS about scheduling, he took both pageants to NBC in 2002.
  • In 2007, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work as producer of Miss Universe. NBC and Univision dropped the pageants in June 2015 in reaction to his comments about Mexican immigrants.
  • In 2005, Trump cofounded Trump University, a company that sold real estate seminars for up to $35,000. After New York State authorities notified the company that its use of "university" violated state law (as it was not an academic institution), its name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010. 
    • In 2013, the State of New York filed a $40 million civil suit against Trump University, alleging that the company made false statements and defrauded consumers.
    • Additionally, two class actions were filed in federal court against Trump and his companies. Internal documents revealed that employees were instructed to use a hard-sell approach, and former employees testified that Trump University had defrauded or lied to its students.
  • Shortly after he won the 2016 presidential election, he agreed to pay a total of $25 million to settle the three cases.

Foundation
Main article: Donald J. Trump Foundation

The Donald J. Trump Foundation was a private foundation established in 1988. From 1987 to 2006, Trump gave his foundation $5.4 million which had been spent by the end of 2006.

After donating a total of $65,000 in 2007–2008, he stopped donating any personal funds to the charity, which received millions from other donors, including $5 million from Vince McMahon. 

The foundation gave to health- and sports-related charities, conservative groups, and charities that held events at Trump properties. In 2016, The Washington Post reported that the charity committed several potential legal and ethical violations, including alleged self-dealing and possible tax evasion.

Also in 2016, the New York attorney general determined the foundation to be in violation of state law, for soliciting donations without submitting to required annual external audits, and ordered it to cease its fundraising activities in New York immediately. ​Trump's team announced in December 2016 that the foundation would be dissolved. 

In June 2018, the New York attorney general's office filed a civil suit against the foundation, Trump, and his adult children, seeking $2.8 million in restitution and additional penalties. 

In December 2018, the foundation ceased operation and disbursed its assets to other charities.In November 2019, a New York state judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million to a group of charities for misusing the foundation's funds, in part to finance his presidential campaign.

Legal affairs and bankruptcies:
Main article: Personal and business legal affairs of Donald Trump

According to a review of state and federal court files conducted by USA Today in 2018, Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions. 

While he has not filed for personal bankruptcy, his over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009.

They continued to operate while the banks restructured debt and reduced his shares in the properties. 

During the 1980s, more than 70 banks had lent Trump $4 billion. After his corporate bankruptcies of the early 1990s, most major banks, with the exception of Deutsche Bank, declined to lend to him. After the January 6 Capitol attack (below), the bank decided not to do business with him or his company in the future.

Wealth
Main article: Wealth of Donald Trump

​Trump has often said he began his career with "a small loan of a million dollars" from his father and that he had to pay it back with interest. 

He borrowed at least $60 million from his father, largely did not repay the loans, and received another $413 million (2018 equivalent, adjusted for inflation) from his father's company.

Posing as a Trump Organization official named "John Barron", Trump called journalist Jonathan Greenberg in 1984, trying to get a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans. Trump self-reported his net worth over a wide range: from a low of minus $900 million in 1990, to a high of $10 billion in 2015. In 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.3 billion and ranked him the 1,438th wealthiest person in the world.


Media career
Main article: Media career of Donald Trump
See also: Bibliography of Donald Trump

Trump has produced 19 books under his name, most written or cowritten by ghostwriters. 

His first book, The Art of the Deal (1987), was a New York Times Best Seller, and was credited by The New Yorker with making Trump famous as an "emblem of the successful tycoon". The book was ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz, who is credited as a coauthor.

Trump had cameos in many films and television shows from 1985 to 2001. 

Starting in the 1990s, Trump was a guest 24 times on the nationally syndicated
Howard Stern Show. 

He had his own short-form talk radio program, Trumped!, from 2004 to 2008. 

From 2011 until 2015, he was a guest commentator on Fox & Friends. 

​In 2021, Trump, who had been a member since 1989, resigned from SAG-AFTRA to avoid a disciplinary hearing regarding the January 6 attack. Two days later, the union permanently barred him.

The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice:
Main articles: 
Producer Mark Burnett made Trump a television star when he created The Apprentice, which Trump hosted from 2004 to 2015 (including variant The Celebrity Apprentice).

On the shows, he was a superrich chief executive who eliminated contestants with the catchphrase "you're fired". 

The New York Times called his portrayal "a highly flattering, highly fictionalized version" of himself.

The shows remade Trump's image for millions of viewers nationwide. With the related licensing agreements, they earned him more than $400 million.


Early political aspirations
Further information: 
​In 1987, Trump placed full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, expressing his views on foreign policy and how to eliminate the federal budget deficit. In 1988, he approached Lee Atwater, asking to be put into consideration to be Republican nominee George H. W. Bush's running mate. Bush found the request "strange and unbelievable".

Trump was a candidate in the 2000 Reform Party presidential primaries for three months, but withdrew from the race in February 2000.

In 2011, Trump speculated about running against President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, making his first speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February and giving speeches in early primary states. 

In May 2011, he announced he would not run.


2016 presidential election
Main article: Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign
Further information: 
Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015. He became the Republican front-runner in March 2016 and was declared the presumptive Republican nominee in May. 

His campaign statements were often opaque and suggestive, and a record number were false. He was highly critical of media coverage and frequently made claims of media bias. 

Hillary Clinton led Trump in national polling averages throughout the campaign, but, in early July, her lead narrowed. In mid-July, he selected Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, and the two were officially nominated at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Trump and Clinton faced off in three presidential debates in September and October 2016. He twice refused to say whether he would accept the result of the election.

​Trump described NATO as "obsolete" and espoused views that were described as noninterventionist and protectionist. 

His campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U.S.–China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA and strongly enforcing immigration laws.

Other campaign positions included:
Trump's proposed immigration policies were a topic of bitter debate during the 2016 campaign:
According to an analysis in Political Science Quarterly, Trump made "explicitly racist appeals to whites" during his 2016 presidential campaign. In particular, his campaign launch speech drew criticism for claiming Mexican immigrants were "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists"; in response, NBC fired him from Celebrity Apprentice.

Trump's FEC-required reports listed assets above $1.4 billion and outstanding debts of at least $315 million.

He did not release his tax returns, contrary to the practice of every major candidate since 1976 and his promises in 2014 and 2015 to do so if he ran for office.He said his tax returns were being audited, and that his lawyers had advised him against releasing them.

After a lengthy court battle to block release of his tax returns and other records to the Manhattan district attorney for a criminal investigation, including two appeals by Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court, in February 2021 the high court allowed the records to be released to the prosecutor for review by a grand jury. 

In October 2016, portions of Trump's state filings for 1995 were leaked to a reporter from The New York Times. They show that he had declared a loss of $916 million that year, which could have let him avoid taxes for up to 18 years.

On November 8, 2016, Trump received 306 pledged electoral votes versus 232 for Clinton.After elector defections on both sides, the official count was 304 to 227. The fifth person to be elected president while losing the popular vote, he received nearly 2.9 million fewer votes than Clinton, 46.3% to her 48.25%. 

Trump was the only president who neither served in the military nor held any government office prior to becoming president. Trump won 30 states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states which had been considered a blue wall of Democratic strongholds since the 1990s. His victory marked the return of an undivided Republican government—a Republican president combined with Republican control of both chambers of Congress. 

Trump's victory sparked protests in major U.S. cities.


First presidency (2017–2021)
Main article: First presidency of Donald Trump

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Donald Trump presidencies.

Early actions
See also: First presidential transition of Donald Trump and First 100 days of the first Donald Trump presidency

Pictured below:  Trump took his first oath of office, administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., at the Capitol on January 20, 2017
​Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. The day after his inauguration, an estimated 2.6 million people worldwide, including a half million in Washington, D.C., protested against him in the Women's Marches. 

During his first week in office, Trump signed six executive orders, including:
  • authorizing procedures for repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"),
  • withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations,
  • advancement of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline projects,
  • and planning for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Conflicts of interest
See also: First presidency of Donald Trump § Ethics

Before being inaugurated, Trump moved his businesses into a revocable trust, rather than a blind trust or equivalent arrangement "to cleanly sever himself from his business interests". He continued to profit from his businesses and knew how his administration's policies affected them.

Although he said he would eschew "new foreign deals", the Trump Organization pursued operational expansions in Scotland, Dubai, and the Dominican Republic. 

Lobbyists, foreign government officials, and Trump donors and allies generated hundreds of millions of dollars for his resorts and hotels.

Trump was sued for violating the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the first time that the clauses had been substantively litigated. 
  • One case was dismissed in lower court. 
  • Two were dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court as moot after his term.

Domestic policy
Main articles: 
Trump took office at the height of the longest economic expansion in American history, which began in 2009 and continued until February 2020, when the COVID-19 recession began. 

In December 2017, he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. It reduced tax rates for businesses and individuals and set the penalty associated with the Affordable Care Act's (AFC) individual mandate to $0. 

The Trump administration claimed that the AFC would not decrease government revenue, but 2018 revenues were 7.6 percent lower than projected. Under Trump, the federal budget deficit increased by almost 50 percent, to nearly $1 trillion in 2019. 

By the end of his term, the U.S. national debt increased by 39 percent, reaching $27.75 trillion, and the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-World War II high. Trump also failed to deliver the $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on which he had campaigned.
Trump is the only modern U.S. president to leave office with a smaller workforce than when he took office, by three million people.

Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He reduced the budget for renewable energy research by 40 percent and reversed Obama-era policies directed at curbing climate change. 
  • He withdrew from the Paris Agreement, making the U.S. the only nation to not ratify it. 
  • He aimed to boost the production and exports of fossil fuels. Natural gas expanded under Trump, but coal continued to decline. 
  • He rolled back more than 100 federal environmental regulations, including those that curbed greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and the use of toxic substances.
  • He weakened protections for animals and environmental standards for federal infrastructure projects, and expanded permitted areas for drilling and resource extraction, such as allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
  • Trump dismantled many federal regulations on health, labor, and the environment, among others, including a bill that made it easier for severely mentally ill persons to buy guns.
  • During his first six weeks in office, he delayed, suspended, or reversed ninety federal regulations, often "after requests by the regulated industries".

The Institute for Policy Integrity found that 78 percent of his proposals were blocked by courts or did not prevail over litigation. 

During his campaign, Trump vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. In office, he scaled back the Act's implementation through executive orders. 
  • He expressed a desire to "let Obamacare fail";
  • his administration halved the enrollment period and drastically reduced funding for enrollment promotion.

In June 2018, the Trump administration joined 18 Republican-led states in arguing before the Supreme Court that the elimination of the financial penalties associated with the individual mandate had rendered the Act unconstitutional. Their pleading would have eliminated health insurance coverage for up to 23 million Americans, but was unsuccessful. 

During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to protect funding for Medicare and other social safety-net programs. In January 2020, he expressed willingness to consider cuts to them.
​
In response to the opioid epidemic, Trump signed legislation in 2018 to increase funding for drug treatments, but was widely criticized for failing to make a concrete strategy. 

He barred organizations that provide abortions or abortion referrals from receiving federal funds. 

He said he supported "traditional marriage", but considered the nationwide legality of same-sex marriage "settled". 
  • His administration rolled back key components of the Obama administration's workplace protections against discrimination of LGBTQ people. His attempted rollback of anti-discrimination protections for transgender patients in August 2020 was halted by a federal judge after a Supreme Court ruling extended employees' civil rights protections to gender identity and sexual orientation. 
  • Trump has said he is opposed to gun control, although his views have shifted over time.
  • His administration took an anti-marijuana position, revoking Obama-era policies that provided protections for states that legalized marijuana.
  • He is a long-time advocate of capital punishment, and his administration oversaw the federal government execute 13 prisoners, more than in the previous 56 years combined, ending a 17-year moratorium. In 2016, he said he supported the use of interrogation torture methods such as waterboarding.

Race relations:

​Trump's comments on the 2017 Unite the Right rally, condemning "this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" and stating that there were "very fine people on both sides", were criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter-protesters. 

In a January 2018 discussion of immigration legislation, he reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and African nations as "shithole countries". His remarks were condemned as racist.

​In July 2019, Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen—all minorities, three of whom are native-born Americans—should "go back" to the countries they "came from".

Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240–187, mostly along party lines, to condemn his "racist comments". White nationalist publications and social media praised his remarks, which continued over the following days. 

He continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign. 

In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, federal law-enforcement officials controversially removed a largely peaceful crowd of lawful protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House. Trump then posed with a Bible for a photo-op at the nearby St. John's Episcopal Church, with religious leaders condemning both the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself.

Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned his proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police-brutality protesters.

Pardons and commutations:
Further information: List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump

​Trump granted 237 requests for clemency, fewer than all presidents since 1900 with the exception of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. 

Only 25 of them had been vetted by the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney; the others were granted to people with personal or political connections to him, his family, and his allies, or recommended by celebrities. 

In his last full day in office, he granted 73 pardons and commuted 70 sentences. Several Trump allies were not eligible for pardons under Justice Department rules, and in other cases the department had opposed clemency. The pardons of three military service members convicted of or charged with violent crimes were opposed by military leaders.

Immigration:
Main articles: 
​In his first days in office, Trump:
  • instructed border patrol agents to summarily deport migrants crossing the border,
  • disabled the CBP One app that was being used to schedule border crossings,
  • resumed the remain in Mexico policy,
  • designated drug cartels as terrorist groups,
  • and ordered construction to be resumed on a border wall.
  • He indefinitely paused the refugee admissions program.

Trump sought to implement mass deportations, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) setting a goal of 1,200 to 1,500 daily arrests. However, actual numbers of arrests have lagged these goals and the rates of arrests under the Obama and Biden administrations. 

Trump initially focused deportation operations in sanctuary cities and against individuals on "target lists" of criminals formed prior to the Trump administration. Removals were also expedited for asylum applicants who failed to meet requirements. 

Trump also suspended refugee processing for four months and revoked the parole status of migrants who entered the U.S. under CBP One and CHNV humanitarian parole. 

He attempted to remove birthright citizenship. On January 29, 2025, he signed the Laken Riley Act into law.

Foreign policy, 2025–present ​
Trump's second term foreign policy has been described as imperialist and expansionist.

He ordered the U.S. government to stop funding and working with the World Health Organization (WHO)  and announced the U.S.'s intention to formally leave the WHO. 

He and his incoming administration helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas alongside the Biden administration, enacted a day prior to his inauguration.

Personnel, 2025–present:
Main article: Second cabinet of Donald Trump
Further information: Political appointments of the second Trump administration and 2025 United States federal mass layoffs

On February 3, 2025, the White House said that Elon Musk was a special government employee. Trump gave Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—which is not a federal department—access to many federal government agencies. Musk teams operated in eleven agencies by early February, including:
Political practice and rhetoric
Further information: 
Beginning with his 2016 campaign, Trump's politics and rhetoric led to the creation of a political movement known as Trumpism. His political positions are populist more specifically described as right-wing populist. 

He helped bring far-right fringe ideas and organizations into the mainstream. Many of his actions and rhetoric have been described as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding. His political base has been compared to a cult of personality.

Trump's rhetoric and actions inflame anger and exacerbate distrust through an "us" versus "them" narrative. He explicitly and routinely disparages racial, religious, and ethnic minorities,[ and scholars consistently find that racial animus regarding blacks, immigrants, and Muslims are the best predictors of support for Trump.

His rhetoric has been described as using fearmongering and demagogy. The alt-right movement coalesced around and supported his candidacy, due in part to its opposition to multiculturalism and immigration. 

He has a strong appeal to evangelical Christian voters and Christian nationalists, and his rallies take on the symbols, rhetoric and agenda of Christian nationalism.

Racial and gender views:

Many of Trump's comments and actions have been described as racist. In national polling, about half of respondents said that he is racist; a greater proportion believed that he emboldened racists. 

Several studies and surveys found that racist attitudes fueled his political ascent and were more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters. Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a powerful indicator of support for Trump. 

He has also been accused of racism for insisting a group of five black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, even after they were exonerated in 2002 when the actual rapist confessed and his DNA matched the evidence.

In 2024, the men sued Trump for defamation after he said in a televised debate that they had committed the crime and killed the woman.

​In 2011, when he was reportedly considering a presidential run, Trump became the leading proponent of the racist "birther" conspiracy theory, alleging that Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, was not born in the United States. 

In April, he claimed credit for pressuring the White House to publish the "long-form" birth certificate, which he considered fraudulent, and later said this made him "very popular". In September 2016, amid pressure, he acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S.

In 2017, he reportedly expressed birther views privately. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he made false attacks against the racial identity of his opponent, Kamala Harris, that were described as reminiscent of the birther conspiracy theory.

Trump has a history of belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media. He made lewd comments, disparaged women's physical appearances, and referred to them using derogatory epithets. 

At least 25 women publicly accused him of sexual misconduct, including rape, kissing without consent, groping, looking under women's skirts, and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. He has denied the allegations. 

In October 2016, a 2005 "hot mic" recording surfaced in which he bragged about kissing and groping women without their consent, saying that, "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy." He characterized the comments as "locker-room talk". 

The incident's widespread media exposure led to his first public apology, videotaped during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Link to violence and hate crimes
Further information: Rhetoric of Donald Trump § Violence and dehumanization

​Trump has been identified as a key figure in increasing political violence in America, both for and against him. He is described as embracing extremism, conspiracy theories such as Q-Anon, and far-right militia movements to a greater extent than any modern American president, and engaging in stochastic terrorism.

Research suggests Trump's rhetoric is associated with an increased incidence of hate crimes, and that he has an emboldening effect on expressing prejudicial attitudes due to his normalization of explicit racial rhetoric. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. 

Numerous defendants investigated or prosecuted for violent acts and hate crimes, including participants in the storming of the U.S. Capitol, cited his rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive leniency. 

A nationwide review by ABC News in May 2020 identified at least 54 criminal cases, from August 2015 to April 2020, in which he was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence mostly by white men and primarily against minorities. 

Trump's normalization and revisionist history of the January 6 Capitol attack (see next topic), and grant of clemency to all January 6 rioters, were described by counterterrorism researchers as encouraging future political violence.

Conspiracy theories:
Main article: List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump

Before and throughout his presidency, Trump promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including: 
During and since the 2020 presidential election, he promoted various conspiracy theories for his defeat that were characterized as "the big lie".

Truthfulness:
Main article: False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
​
Pictured below: False or misleading claims by Donald Trump as compiled by the Washington Post:
​As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently makes false statements in public remarks to an extent unprecedented in American politics. 

His falsehoods are a distinctive part of his political identity and have been described as firehosing. His false and misleading statements were documented by fact-checkers, including at The Washington Post, which tallied 30,573 false or misleading statements made by him during his first presidency, increasing in frequency over time.

Some of Trump's falsehoods were inconsequential, such as his repeated claim of the "biggest inaugural crowd ever". Others had more far-reaching effects, such as his promotion of antimalarial drugs as an unproven treatment for COVID-19, causing a U.S. shortage of these drugs and panic-buying in Africa and South Asia. 

Other misinformation, such as misattributing a rise in crime in England and Wales to the "spread of radical Islamic terror", served his domestic political purposes. His attacks on mail-in ballots and other election practices weakened public faith in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, while his disinformation about the pandemic delayed and weakened the national response to it. 

Trump habitually does not apologize for his falsehoods. Until 2018, the media rarely referred to his falsehoods as lies, including when he repeated demonstrably false statements.

Social media:
Main articles: 
Trump's social media presence attracted worldwide attention after he joined Twitter in 2009. He tweeted frequently during his 2016 campaign and as president until Twitter banned him after the January 6 attack. He often used Twitter to communicate directly with the public and sideline the press. In June 2017, the White House press secretary said that his tweets were official presidential statements.

After years of criticism for allowing Trump to post misinformation and falsehoods, Twitter began to tag some of his tweets with fact-checks in May 2020. In response, he tweeted that social media platforms "totally silence" conservatives and that he would "strongly regulate, or close them down".

​In the days after the storming of the Capitol, he was banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. The loss of his social media presence diminished his ability to shape events and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter. 

In February 2022, he launched social media platform Truth Social where he only attracted a fraction of his Twitter following. Elon Musk, after acquiring Twitter, reinstated his Twitter account in November 2022. Meta Platforms' two-year ban lapsed in January 2023, allowing him to return to Facebook and Instagram, although in 2024, he continued to call the company an "enemy of the people". In January 2025, Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit filed by Trump over his suspension.

Relationship with the press:
Further information: 
​Trump sought media attention throughout his career, sustaining a "love-hate" relationship with the press. 

In the 2016 campaign, he benefited from a record amount of free media coverage. The New York Times writer Amy Chozick wrote in 2018 that his media dominance enthralled the public and created "must-see TV".

As a candidate and as president, he frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the "fake news media" and "the enemy of the people". In 2018, journalist Lesley Stahl said that he had privately told her that he intentionally discredited the media "so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you".

The first Trump presidency reduced formal press briefings from about a hundred in 2017 to about half that in 2018 and to two in 2019; they also revoked the press passes of two White House reporters, which were restored by the courts. 

Trump's 2020 presidential campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for defamation in opinion pieces about his stance on Russian election interference. All the suits were dismissed. The Atlantic characterized the suits as an intimidation tactic. 

​By 2024, he repeatedly voiced support for outlawing political dissent and criticism, and said that reporters should be prosecuted for not divulging confidential sources and media companies should possibly lose their broadcast licenses for unfavorable coverage of him.

In 2024, he sued ABC News for defamation after George Stephanopoulos said on-air that a jury had found him civilly liable for raping E. Jean Carroll. The case was settled in December with ABC's parent company, Walt Disney, apologizing for the inaccurate claims about Trump and agreeing to donate $15 million to his future presidential library.


Personal life:

Family
Further information: Family of Donald Trump

In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelníčková. They had three children: Donald Jr. (b. 1977), Ivanka (b. 1981), and Eric (b. 1984).

The couple divorced in 1990, following his affair with model and actress Marla Maples. He and Maples married in 1993 and divorced in 1999. They have one daughter, Tiffany (b. 1993), whom Maples raised in California. 

In 2005, he married Slovenian model Melania Knauss. They have one son, Barron (b. 2006).

Health
Main article: Age and health concerns about Donald Trump

Trump says he has never drunk alcohol, smoked cigarettes, or used drugs. He sleeps about four or five hours a night. 

He has called golfing his "primary form of exercise", but usually does not walk the course. He considers exercise a waste of energy because he believes the body is "like a battery, with a finite amount of energy", which is depleted by exercise.

In 2015, his campaign released a letter from his longtime personal physician, Harold Bornstein, stating that he would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency".

In 2018, Bornstein said Trump had dictated the contents of the letter and that three of Trump's agents had seized his medical records in a February 2017 raid on Bornstein's office.

Religion
Main article: Donald Trump and religion

Trump declared that he was a Presbyterian and a Protestant in 2016, though in 2020, he began to identify as a nondenominational Christian.


Assessments:

Public image:
Main articles:  See also:
A Gallup poll in 134 countries comparing the approval ratings of U.S. leadership between 2016 and 2017 found that:
  • Trump led Obama in job approval in 29 countries, most of them non-democracies; 
  • approval of U.S. leadership plummeted among allies and G7 countries. 
  • By mid-2020, 16 percent of international respondents to a 13-nation Pew Research poll expressed confidence in him, lower than China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin.

During his first presidency, research from 2020 found that Trump had a stronger impact on popular assessments towards American political parties and partisan opinions than any president since the Truman administration. 

In 2021, he was identified as the only president never to reach a 50 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll, which dates to 1938, partially due to a record-high partisan gap in his approval ratings: 88 percent among Republicans and 7 percent among Democrats. 

Trump's early ratings were unusually stable, ranging between 35 and 49 percent. He finished his term with a rating between 29 and 34 percent—the lowest of any president since modern polling began—and a record-low average of 41 percent throughout his presidency.

In Gallup's annual poll asking Americans to name the man they admire the most, Trump placed second to Obama in 2017 and 2018, tied with Obama for first in 2019, and placed first in 2020. Since Gallup started conducting the poll in 1946, he was the first elected president not to be named most admired in his first year in office.

According to Gallup, Trump began his second term with an approval rating of 47% and a disapproval rating of 48%. His approval rating was extremely politically polarized, being approved by 91% of Republicans, 46% of independents, and 6% of Democrats.

Scholarly rankings:
Further information:  Historical rankings of presidents of the United States

In C-SPAN's "Presidential Historians Survey 2021", historians ranked Trump as the fourth-worst president. He rated lowest in the leadership characteristics categories for moral authority and administrative skills.

The Siena College Research Institute's 2022 survey ranked him 43rd out of 45 presidents. He was ranked near the bottom in all categories except for luck, willingness to take risks, and party leadership, and he ranked last in several categories. In 2018 and 2024, surveys of members of the American Political Science Association ranked him the worst president.

See also







JD Vance: Vice-President under Donald Trump (2025-2029)
2/23/2025: ​James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman; August 2, 1984) is an American politician, author, attorney, and Marine Corps veteran serving as the 50th vice president of the United States since 2025 under President Donald Trump in the second and current administration. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate from 2023 to 2025.

Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio. After high school, Vance joined the Marine Corps, where he served as a military journalist from 2003 to 2007, and was deployed to the Iraq War for six months in 2005.

He graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in 2009 and Yale Law School with a law degree in 2013. He practiced briefly as a corporate lawyer before embarking on a career in the tech industry as a venture capitalist. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, was published in 2016  and adapted into a film in 2020.

Vance won the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio, defeating Democratic nominee Tim Ryan. After initially opposing Donald Trump's candidacy in the 2016 election, Vance became a strong Trump supporter during Trump's first presidency.

In July 2024, Trump selected Vance as his running mate before the Republican National Convention. He served as Ohio's senator until his resignation in preparation to assume the vice presidency in January 2025. Vance is the third-youngest vice president in U.S. history, as well as the first millennial to hold the office.

Vance has been characterized as a national conservative and right-wing populist, and he describes himself as a member of the postliberal right. His political positions include opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control.

Vance is an outspoken critic of childlessness and has acknowledged the influence of Catholic theology and Scotch-Irish Americans on his sociopolitical positions.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about J.D Vance:







Project 2025: 
​The Far-Right Playbook for American Authoritarianism
YouTube Videos below: 


​Below, we offer two sources of the risk to our Democracy if Project 2025 prevails:
Project 2025: A Primer:

​The Far-Right Playbook for American Authoritarianism:

​With a 100-member advisory board composed of a “Who’s Who” of extreme far-right groups including Christian Nationalists and bigoted organizations, and tens of millions of dollars in funding from dark money donors, Project 2025 maps out a clear plan of sweeping reforms that would erode multiracial democracy should a “conservative” win the 2024 presidential election.

Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 seeks to “rescue the country” from “elite rule and woke cultural warriors,” replacing democracy with Christian-based authoritarianism.

The guidelines for the first 180 days of the administration are detailed in a 900+-page document authored by leading far-right voices.

This Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise calls for draconian rollbacks of sexual health and reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, racial equity, public education, climate, and environmental protections, all the while preferencing an exclusionary interpretation of Christianity and stripping rights from multiple communities.

Among policies called for in the first 180 days of a conservative presidency:
  • Eliminating LGBQI+ and transgender rights.
  • Eradicating federal funding for DEI programs.
  • Participation in any critical race theory or DEI initiative will be grounds for termination of government employees.
  • Ending reproductive freedom and replacing the Department of Health and Human Services with the “Department of Life.”
  • Ending climate change and environmental policies by shutting down:
    • the Office of Domestic Climate Policy,
    • the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations,
    • the Office of Environmental Justice, and External Civil Rights,
    • and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
    • to name a few.
  • Climate science will no longer be used in National Security.
  • Slashing of the Department of Justice and dismantling the FBI and replacing their traditional independence from political pressure with fealty to the administration.
  • Purging the government of apolitical civil servants by firing as many as 50,000 and hiring replacements from a database of personnel vetted for conservative values and loyalty, a “Conservative Linked In.”
  • Successful candidates will undergo training at a “Presidential Training Academy” and be furnished “with the insight, background knowledge, and expertise in governance to immediately begin rolling back destructive policy and advancing conservative ideas in the federal government.”
  • Eliminating the checks and balances built into three branches of government in favor of expanded control by the executive branch.
  • Replacing the Department of Homeland Security with:
    • a 100,000-worker-strong immigration department,
    • militarization of the border and an end to refugee programs.
  • Fundamentally altering American diplomacy to push:
    • anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ agendas,
    • adopt a “human rights” regime distinct from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
    • and abandon international organizations and traditional diplomatic and security alliances.

This plan is made easier if a “conservative” president is elected soon, but it’s not dependent upon upcoming elections. This is the plan that will continue to drive far-right thinking into the future as Christian Nationalist groups push for these changes. Elements of the plan are already being put in place on the local and state level.

[End of Article]
___________________________________________________________________________

​Project 2025:​ (Wikipedia)

Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) is a political initiative to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies. The plan was published in April 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, in anticipation of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.

The ninth iteration of the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership series, Project 2025 is based on a controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory that states that the entire executive branch is under the complete control of the president. 

Proponents of Project 25 say it would dismantle a government bureaucracy which they say is unaccountable and mostly liberal. 

Critics have characterized it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan that would steer the U.S. toward autocracy. 

Legal experts say it would undermine:
The project calls for merit-based federal civil service workers to be replaced with people loyal to Trump to take partisan control of key government agencies, like:
Other agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Education (ED), would be dismantled or abolished. The president would then be free to implement the Project 25 agenda, including:
Project 2025 calls for reducing environmental regulations to favor fossil fuels and proposes making the National Institutes of Health (NIH) less independent, and defunding its stem cell research. It proposes:
The project recommends the arrest, detention, and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and deploying the military for domestic law enforcement. The plan also proposes enacting laws supported by the Christian right, such as criminalizing those who send and receive abortion and birth control medications, and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception.

Most of Project 2025's writers and contributors either worked within Trump's last administration or his election campaign. Trump campaign officials maintained contact with Project 2025, seeing its goals as aligned with their Agenda 47 program.

Trump later attempted to distance himself from the plan. After Trump won the 2024 election, he nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his administration. Four days into his second term, analysis by Time found that nearly two-thirds of Trump's executive actions "mirror or partially mirror" proposals from Project 2025.

Click on any of the following hyperlinks for more about Project 2025:
​

​




Department of Government EfficiencyPictured below: (L) Elon Musk and (R) Donald Trump
​The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is an initiative of the second Donald Trump administration in the United States. It was established on January 20, 2025, by an executive order which renamed the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) the U.S. DOGE Service (USDS) and created the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization (USDSTO) within USDS.

DOGE's stated goal is "modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity". Its actions have included:
Its actions unilaterally shuttering USAID and Elon Musk's de facto leadership was found to be likely unconstitutional by a federal judge.

DOGE emerged from discussions between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who was later appointed a senior advisor to the president and assumed the role of the initiative's de facto leader. 

Trump has publicly said that Musk is the head of DOGE, in conflict with White House court filings which deny that Musk is a DOGE employee or that he has authority to make government decisions. 

USDS is organized in the Executive Office of the President, and its administrator, currently Amy Gleason, reports to the White House chief of staff. USDSTO is scheduled to be terminated on July 4, 2026.

DOGE is controversial and has spawned opposition and lawsuits: 
Democratic Party members challenged DOGE's authority, and some called its actions a "coup". Further criticism has focused a lack of oversight and Musk's potential conflicts of interest, as he has not divested from his companies, which have billions of dollars in federal contracts and are in active disputes with federal regulators. 

Musk has said DOGE is maximally transparent, yet Trump has declared DOGE exempt from public disclosure rules. The White House says that DOGE complies with federal law, and that Musk would "excuse himself" if his DOGE activities and business interests conflicted.

Independent analysis has found that DOGE's reports misaccounted tens of billions of dollars, with more than a third of canceled contracts already obligated or yielding no savings. 

Musk, DOGE, and the Trump administration have made multiple claims of having discovered significant fraud, none of which have held up under scrutiny. 

According to watchdogs, DOGE is redefining fraud to target federal employees and programs to build political support for their cuts; former Republican budget experts said DOGE cuts were driven by political ideology more than frugality. 

Despite widespread criticism, Trump has reiterated his support for Musk and DOGE.


Background

Starting in 2023, Musk gave Trump and Republicans US$290 million for the 2024 election cycle, becoming the largest individual donor. 

In September 2024, Musk has described deregulation as the only path to his SpaceX Mars colonization program. In his November 2024 Tucker Carlson interview, he admitted: "If Trump loses, I'm fucked".

On September, 5, 2024, Trump promised to the Economic Club of New York: "at the suggestion of Elon Musk... I will create a Government Efficiency Commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms." 

Javier Milei revealed that, prior to the public declaration, Musk had called Federico Sturzenegger to discuss emulating his ministry's deregulation model in the United States.

The New York Times compared the project to: 
Emergence:

The project emerged from a discussion in the summer of 2024 between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, where Musk floated the idea of a "government efficiency commission". 

In an August 18 interview to Reuters after a campaign event, Trump said that, if elected, he would be open to giving Musk an advisory role. The next day, an X user suggested "Department of Government Efficiency"; Musk replied "That is the perfect name", and then posted "I am willing to serve", along with an AI-created image of him standing in front of a lectern marked "D.O.G.E.". 

The DOGE acronym refers to an internet meme, and to Dogecoin, a meme coin that Musk promotes.

On October 27, at a Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden, Musk stated that he believed DOGE could reduce federal government spending by $2 trillion. That figure appears higher than the federal government's total discretionary spending in 2023.

On November 1, Musk mentioned that 89 years old Ron Paul could work with DOGE; Paul vowed to join; they agreed on cutting military spendings; this led nowhere.[59]

Days after the election, a small group, including Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Howard Lutnick, and Brad Smith, started meeting at Mar-a-Lago. On November 12, Trump announced that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead DOGE and analogized it to the Manhattan Project.

During an interview with Tucker Carlson on the same day, Musk proposed consolidating the 400 federal agencies: "99...is more than enough". On November 17, Ramaswamy stated that DOGE may eliminate entire agencies and reduce the federal workforce by 75%.

On January 2, 2025, Musk posited that DOGE had a good shot at cutting $1 trillion, but that $2 trillion was the best-case scenario. At the first cabinet meeting of the second Trump administration in February, Musk remained optimist to cut $1 trillion–15% of the budget.

DOGE caucuses and House subcommittee:

On November 19, 2024, representatives Aaron Bean (R-FL) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) launched the congressional Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency Caucus (DOGE Caucus) to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. 

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced plans two days later for a new subcommittee, called Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee, and chaired by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). 

On November 22, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) was appointed to lead the corresponding Senate DOGE Caucus.

Several Democrats have expressed willingness to work with the Congressional Caucus, including Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), and Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR). 

Other Democrats offered ideas:
  • Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on agency redundancies, self-populating tax forms, fossil fuel subsidies, and IT systems;
  • Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) on the size of government forms such as financial aid applications and tax returns;
  • Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) on permit processes for infrastructure and development projects;
  • Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) on a bill to "move all the federal agencies out of D.C." and send them to states.

On December 17, the Congressional Caucus held its first meeting, with over 60 members in attendance. It included three Democrats--Steven Horsford (D-NV), Hoyle, and Moskowitz. 

Lawmakers described it as largely organizational, with discussions about:
  • "worthwhile lifts",
  • "quick wins",
  • "lower priority",
  • and "low-hanging fruit": an example of a low-hanging fruit was "people going back to work". 

The very next day, Ernst proposed a "Drain the Swamp Act" bill, requiring executive agencies to relocate 30 percent of Washington, D.C. employees outside the D.C. metro area while restricting the ability to telework.

A few days later, Moskowitz, the only Democrat to have joined the DOGE Caucus, proposed reorganizing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by removing agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Secret Service from its jurisdiction. 

By February 5, Moskowitz was unsure to stay in the commission, stating: "I need to see one of my Republican colleagues in the caucus explain the point of the caucus, because it seems that Elon doesn't need them, because it seems what Elon is doing is destroying the separation of powers. And I don't think the DOGE caucus at this moment really has a purpose."

On January 23, Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Musk with 30 recommendations to cut at least $2 trillion in federal spending.

On February 12, Karoline Leavitt asserted that the DOGE Subcommittee discovered $2.7 trillion in improper Medicaid and Medicare payments to people overseas. One day later Musk shared the claim on his social. Since then the claim has been refuted.

Self-deletion date:

On December 2, 2024, Ramaswamy posted that "Most government projects should come with a clear expiry date"; Musk replied that the final step of DOGE was "to delete itself". 

Trump stated that the entity's work will "conclude" no later than July 4, 2026. This termination will coincide with a "Great American Fair" that Trump has proposed on the 250th anniversary of the United States. 

Trump called the promised results "the perfect gift to America".

Trump's January 20 order on DOGE (E.O. 14158) created and divided DOGE into a permanent part and a temporary part/ What exactly the temporary part consists of has yet to be determined.

Trump's February 26 DOGE executive order (E.O. 14222) does not stipulate any termination date.

Ramaswamy steps away:

On January 19, 2025, CBS News reported that Ramaswamy would step away from DOGE and instead run for Ohio governorship; it also reports internal friction between Ramaswamy and Musk, with Musk's supporters "privately undercutting" Ramaswamy for his perceived lack of engagement. 

A Republican strategist has confided that Ramaswamy was wanted out of D.C. after his post on how Americans “venerated mediocrity over excellence”.

On January 20, following the second presidential inauguration of Trump, the White House confirmed that Ramaswamy would not join DOGE. On January 27, Ramaswamy denied being ousted and announced his resignation, contrasting his focus on "constitutional law, legislative-based approach" and Musk's "technology approach, which is the future approach".

Early fraud claims:

In his November 12, 2024, announcement, Trump stated that DOGE will work with the Office of Management and Budget to address what he called "massive waste and fraud" in government spending. 

NewsGuard identified 28 false claims made by Musk on his social since 2022 (more than half related to DOGE) and estimate that they attracted 825 million views. Less than a week in his presidency, Trump fired 17 inspectors general, whose job is to audit federal agencies.

In their February 11, 2025, joint Oval Office appearance, Trump and Musk used the word "fraud" or "fraudster" about a dozen times:
  • Trump said DOGE discovered "billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse" 
  • while Musk suggested that 20 million people received Social Security past age 100, which he later called "the biggest fraud in history". That claim has since been refuted; it rests on a misunderstanding of the database.

By mid-February, two judges had rebuked the Trump administration for alleging fraud without evidence. In his speech to Congress on March 4, Trump still hinted at the "dead people" claim.


Executive orders
See also: List of executive orders in the second presidency of Donald Trump

Trump has issued several executive orders involving DOGE:
  • On January 20, executive order 14158, "Establishing and Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency'", established various DOGE entities.
  • On January 20, executive order 14170, "Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service", asks his assistant for domestic policy to produce a hiring plan in consultation with the OMB director, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director, and the DOGE administrator.
  • On February 11, executive order 14210, "Implementing The President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Workforce Optimization Initiative", ordered significant reductions in workforce.
  • On February 19, executive order 14219, "Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Regulatory Initiative", ordered the review of a wide-ranging set of laws with an eye toward rescinding many of them.
  • On February 26, executive order 14222, "Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Cost Efficiency Initiative", issued directives to transform the registration of contracts, grants, and loans.

United States DOGE Service:

The existing United States Digital Service (USDS) was renamed to "United States DOGE Service" and established within the Executive Office of the President. The move to the Executive Office of the President insulated the group from Freedom of Information Act records requests until at least 2034.

The executive order also proclaimed that the new USDS would have "full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems" to the "maximum extent consistent with law" (E.O. 14158 Sect. 4b).

USDS Temporary Organization:

The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization (USDSTO) was established within the USDS, intended to advance the president's 18-month DOGE agenda (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3b).

The temporary organization will terminate on July 4, 2026 (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3b).

DOGE agendaThe expression "DOGE agenda" is used three times in the text of the first executive order (E.O. 14158): 
  • The first (Sect. 1) is to state that DOGE is established to "implement the President's DOGE Agenda";
  • the second (Sect. 3b) to state that the USDSTO "shall be dedicated to advancing the President's 18-month DOGE agenda";
  • the third (Sect. 3c) to state that DOGE Team leads "coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President's DOGE Agenda."

Executive order 14222 does not mention the DOGE agenda, but rather refers to a "cost efficiency initiative".

USDS administrator:

There is a USDS administrator who reports to the White House chief of staff. This administrator also heads the USDSTO (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3b). The administrator's work includes heading a government-wide software modernization initiative.

Among the foci are working with agency heads both to promote the interoperability of agency systems, and to enable USDS access to unclassified agency records and systems (E.O. 14158 Sect. 4a, b). 

The administrator is among those tasked with developing a federal hiring plan for agency heads, and will provide advice on its implementation (E.O. 14170 Sect. 2a, d). 

Within 240 days of February 11, 2025, the administrator is to provide the president with a report about the implementation of his workforce optimization initiative, including "a recommendation as to whether any of its provisions should be extended, modified, or terminated" (E.O. 14210, Sect. 3f).

DOGE Teams:

"DOGE Teams" will be embedded within all federal agencies, consisting of at least four employees, some of whom may be special government employees, typically including a team lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney.

The members of each team will be determined by the agency head in consultation with the USDS administrator (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3c).

New career appointments at each federal agency are to be made in consultation with the agency's DOGE team lead, who also plays a role in determining whether career appointment vacancies will be filled. The team lead provides the USDS administrator with a monthly hiring report (E.O. 14210, 3b).

Executive order 14222 Sect. 3a tasks DOGE teams with assisting agencies in the elaboration of "a centralized technological system" to record payment issued by the agency, along with justification by the employee who approved it; this system shall also give agency heads a kill switch to override decisions.

Disclosure exemption:

On November 2, 2024,Musk reiterated on social media a statement he repeatedly made while campaigning with Trump: "There should be no need for FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests. All government data should be default public for maximum transparency."

By repurposing DOGE as a temporary organization, Trump has apparently sidestepped FOIA transparency laws that apply to congressional-funded agencies such as its predecessor, the USDS, when the USDS was under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Special Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields asserted that DOGE "falls under the Presidential Records AcY which would exempt USDS from disclosing its documents, communications and records to the public and in most judicial actions until at least 2034.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) contested this move and filed a complaint against USDS on February, 20, 2025. CREW argues that "The American people have a right to know how USDS is managing their tax dollars and their data, how it is exercising its authority to influence government operations and the extent to which it is operating outside of its slim legal mandate." 

On March 10, Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that the unprecedented authority, the unusual secrecy, and the rapid pace of DOGE justified the release of its internal documents. 

On March 17, 2025 two Representatives from the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees filed a FOIA request questioning whether DOGE is operating outside the bounds of federal law and stated "the Administration and Mr. Musk have hidden behind a veil of secrecy as they systematically dismantle the federal government of the United States”.


Funding:

At the time of its announcement, DOGE budget was unknown, and several of the employees were expected to be unpaid volunteers. Little from its budget has been disclosed so far.

To cover for DOGE costs until January 29, 2025, $6.75 million had been apportioned to DOGE from the Information Technology Oversight and Reform (ITOR) account that funded the legacy USDS. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) observed that this was “nearly twice the annual salaries and expenses budget of the White House”. DOGE also has a Treasury account, separate from ITOR. 

From Jan. 30 to Feb. 8, DOGE's budget had more than doubled to $14.4 million; filings show that latest $7.7 million is reserved “for anticipated reimbursements from agencies in support of Software Modernization Initiative”.

After reviewing Office of Management and Budget records, ProPublica discovered that, by February 20, DOGE budget neared $40 million. DOGE’s funding has come from other federal agencies, in the form of transfer payments allowed by the Economy Act. This form of payment implies that DOGE has been treated like a federal agency by the Trump administration. 

John Lewis & Daniel Jacobson underlines the dilemma:

"The Trump administration’s view is untenable. USDS is either an agency or it is not. And if USDS, as seems apparent, is doing more than advising the President and is instead wielding independent authority, then it faces a more fundamental challenge to its existence: no statute created USDS or vested it with the power it now appears to wield".

DOGE has asked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to pay for 20 full-time DOGE employees at the highest federal pay grade to modernize its information systems; the terms stipulate that OPM must pay each month in advance, and give DOGE access to its data and systems, as well as provide "operational and technical support".

At the current employment rates, this would mean $4.1 million for the work between January 20 and July 4, 2026.

Public disclosures forms indicate that at least three DOGE employees are drawing salaries from the General Service Administration (GSA):
  • Jeremy Lewin ($167,000),
  • Kyle Schutt ($195,200),
  • and Nate Cavanaugh ($120,500).

According to DOGE's website, the average employee has worked at the GSA for 13 years and makes $128,565.


Functions:

Pictured below: Musk swings the "Chainsaw for Bureaucracy" at CPAC 2025
​DOGE is executing a plan that scapegoats diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). It has placed on administrative leave DEI employees and shut down DEI offices in ten agencies, placed on leave employees in non-DEI roles who DOGE determined are somehow tied to DEI, and plans to initiate large-scale firings. 


That plan maps onto Project 2025 goals.

To execute this plan, DOGE has gained access to so many digital systems from the government that it may have reached "God Mode". Its takeover of federal government infrastructure is such that it holds information about:
  • American citizens,
  • public properties,
  • scientific datasets,
  • official websites,
  • financial records,
  • classified data,
  • and federal contracts;
  • it gained the capacity:
    • to terminate programs,
    • to destroy data,
    • and to contact every federal employee, including judges.

Controlling US government digital systems:

The New York Times's investigative team recalls a story Musk told at a private party: when he took over Twitter, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers; he mused about having access to the federal government's computers: with passwords, he would trim the government.

The investigative team said: "What started as musings at a dinner party evolved into a radical takeover of the federal bureaucracy." Three weeks into the second Trump presidency, TechCrunch observed that DOGE had "gained unprecedented access to a swath of U.S. government departments—including agencies responsible for managing data on millions of federal employees and a system that handles $6 trillion in payments to Americans. 

As of March 2025, DOGE has secured access to at least seven sensitive federal databases, and it has inserted itself into more than 20 agencies.

On February 4, Charles Ezell sent a memo to agencies recommending that the role of chief information officer (CIO) be redesignated as "general" rather than "career reserved", which allows political appointees and DOGE members to control any decision related to information policy. 

The following CIOs are either connected to Musk or Peter Thiel:
  • OMB has Gregory Barbaccia, from Palantir;
  • OPM has Greg Hogan, from SpaceX;
  • DOE has Ryan Riedel, from SpaceX.
  • SSA has Michael Russo, a DOGE member with Musk ties. 

Before that memo, Thomas Shedd, from Tesla, became the head of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services  after Steven Reilly resigned over Shedd's requests for administrative access to more than 20 government systems.

On January 30, DOGE revoked database access to OPM senior staff. According to a document leaked to Wired, DOGE attempted to use White House security credentials to access to GSA's infrastructure, read emails, listen to meetings, and remotely connect into laptops; this led an employee to exclaim: "They are acting like this is a takeover of a tech company". 

At the SSA, DOGE demanded access to databases with information about any holder of a Social Security number; Akash Bobba, who was working on an OPM remote access, asked for "everything, including source code". 

The principal deputy assistant secretary for operations at HHS, Gary Rice, declared in a February 13 sworn statement that DOGE employees grafted to the agency have full access to all unclassified agency records and software and IT systems and are tasked, among other things, with the obligation to destroy or erase copied HHS data or information when no longer needed for official purposes. 

DOGE has been granted the use of a transfer and remote access freeware at the Labor Department.

DOGE installed a Starlink user terminal at the White House complex which raised conflict of interest concerns. In response the White House said that the terminal was donated by Starlink and approved by legal counsel and the United States Secret Service.

GSA has subscribed to Musk's internet service for its Washington offices in mid-February.

Using diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to purge federal workers
See also: Twitter under Elon Musk § Layoffs and mass resignations

An internal DOGE report obtained by the Washington Post on February 15, 2025, outlined a three phase process by which it would lead a purge of the federal government based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI):
  • In phase one, on his first day, Trump would rescind all DEI-related executive orders and initiatives, dissolve offices at federal organizations with a DEI role and terminate their employees, ask federal websites to remove all DEI material, and terminate all DEI contracts.
  • In phase two, from January 21 to February 19, the government would purge employees without any DEI role but who had been "corrupted" by it. For instance, DOGE has been searching NOAA databases to find employees associated with DEI initiatives.
  • In phase three, from February 20 to July 19, DOGE would commit mass-scale firings of any employee in any part of the government who did not take part in any DEI initiative, but was nonetheless determined through unknown criteria to be "DEI-related".

Records show that those who were workshopping the plan include:
  • Stephanie Holmes, former Jones Day lawyer,
  • Anthony Armstrong, who helped Musk acquire Twitter,
  • Brian Bjelde, longtime SpaceX employee,
  • Noah Peters, involved in Project 2025,
  • and Adam Ramada, a venture capitalist turned DOGE Team lead.

Broadcasting the DOGE agenda:
See also: Department of Government Efficiency § Federal_contract_termination_announcements

On February 11, 2025, in an Oval Office press conference, Musk claimed that DOGE's actions would be "maximally transparent", and promised to publish them on an official government website. 

Doge.gov went live the next day: the main page displayed its Twitter feed, a "Follow on X" button, and a few tabs; the About page linked to the first executive order.  On the same day, the alternative DOGE website Waste.gov was password protected after it was revealed that its landing page showcased the generic theme of a fictional architecture firm featuring the word "diverse", in violation of Trump's executive orders. 

A few days later, unauthorized people posted messages on Doge.gov, reading “this is a joke of a .gov site” and "THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro."

The Daily News observes that, as of end of February, DOGE's website does not "provide names and contact information for the officials and employees associated with its work, an organizational chart or a calendar of past and upcoming activity."

DOGE promised "receipts" on Valentine's Day; they appeared on the 17th, as search results from the FPDS showing contract terminations. How DOGE calculates savings is left unsubstantiated. 

Analyses found significant discrepancies in its reporting: roughly one third of canceled contracts did not yield any actual savings or were already obligated:
  • in one case it miscounted the value of a $8 million contract it had canceled as $8 billion; 
  • $46.5 billion of its purported $55 billion savings were not linked to any specific items.

According to watchdogs, DOGE is redefining fraud to target federal employees and programs to build political support for their cuts;  former Republican budget experts said DOGE cuts were driven by political ideology more than frugality. 

Professional auditors have been asked by Wired to evaluate DOGE's audit, and one of them said: “In no uncertain terms is this an audit...It’s a heist, stealing a vast amount of government data.”

HuffPost reported on February 14 that doge.gov was displaying classified information about the staff of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which designs, launches, and builds American spy satellites. 

Intelligence community leaders and members were critical of the publication and sharing of this information, calling it a security risk. 

On February 21, an NRO spokesperson told Reuters that the "data posted to the Department of Government Efficiency's website detailing headcount and total wages for the National Reconnaissance Office is not classified, but was not intended for public release".

DOGE's website and social media presence is complemented by Musk's media appearances, especially on Fox News where he presents talking points about the next units DOGE intends to target.

On March 13, journalists discovered that DOGE removed federal identification numbers from the publicly available source code, making their receipts hard to verify. A White House official invoked security to justify this lack of transparency. 

Implementing Project 2025:

Vice President JD Vance commented that "The most important thing that [DOGE is] going to do [is not] the cost savings [but] making the bureaucracy responsive to the elected president". Vance has a longstanding collaboration with Kevin Roberts, an architect of Project 2025. 

Trump disavowed that project, finding some of its ideas "ridiculous and abysmal" and denying any implication.

Russell Vought, who founded the Center for Renewing America (CRA), was on Project 2025's advisory board and has also been described as a key architect of the project. No later than the summer of 2024, the CRA had started drafting executive orders, regulations, and memos consistent with Project 2025's agenda. 

Vought also developed a 180-day playbook, a set of actions to take in the Trump administration’s first six months, which the project described as "a comprehensive concrete transition plan for each agency."

For Rep. John Rose, only Project 2025 explains the flow of executive orders. 
  • CNN analyzed the first 53 and found that 36 followed it; 
  • Politico outlined 37 cases where the orders align with it, some nearly verbatim.
  • The BBC suggests that, by unifying decision chains so that Trump controls independent agencies, DOGE implements the unitary executive theory advocated in Project 2025.

On his very first day, Trump restored Schedule F to speed up firing; earlier he nominated its champion, Russ Vought, to lead OMB. In multiple speeches, Vought swore to put career civil servants "in trauma". 

In Chapter 2 of the Project 2025's manifesto, Vought writes that OMB director's role is to "bring the bureaucracy in line with all budgetary, regulatory, and management decisions", a task he would not fulfill if "he lacks knowledge of what the agencies are doing", and so must acquire "sufficient visibility into the deep caverns of agency decision-making". 

As Jill Flipovic notes, "the mass firings, the power grabs, and the agency shutterings are not just Musk’s doing. They were planned and proposed well before Trump was even elected, right there for everyone to see, in Project 2025."

Ed Kilgore described Vought as the glue that ties Musk and Republicans: "OMB can exchange intel with DOGE on potential targets in the bureaucracy, while OMB will definitely guide congressional Republicans as they put together massive budget-reconciliation and appropriations bills". Wired and The New York Times report that Vought helped Musk find his way into the bureaucracy. 

Nine of the fifteen agencies DOGE first targeted had been identified by Project 2025 for elimination or downsizing; Bill Hoagland, former Republican staffer and director of the Senate Budget Committee for more than 20 years, considers that the DOGE playbook "has not been for the dollar savings, but more for the philosophical and ideological differences conservatives have with the work these agencies do".


Workforce:

In his March 10 interview on Fox News, Musk told Larry Kudlow that DOGE had around 100 employees and that he planned to double his staff. He also confirmed that DOGE was present in almost every agency. In February, 2025 Musk said on his social that the DOGE workforce was putting in 120 hours a week. This was questioned for leaving dangerously little time to sleep.

About 20 DOGE employees work at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Musk has reportedly said he was sleeping there. At least 10 DOGE members have been active at the SSA, of whom 7 have been granted data access.

In a sworn declaration on March 19, Amy Gleason stated that 79 people were employed by DOGE, and another 10 people were detailed to it from elsewhere in the government. She added that there is no formal organizational chart, that "every member of an agency’s DOGE Team is an employee of the agency or a detailee to the agency", and that no DOGE Team members report to anyone at USDS.

Some DOGE team members, including Musk, are designated as "special government employees", an advisory role limited to a 130-day work period that can be paid or unpaid.

Those who earn a substantial salary have to disclose it. Unlike federal workers, special employees are allowed to keep outside salaries and may not need to disclose conflicts of interest.

Leadership:

The DOGE administrator officially reports to the White House chief of staff. Except for Amy Gleason, the acting DOGE administrator, the leadership structure of DOGE has not been published. Sources have reported that Gleason is only the nominal leader of DOGE, and in practice Steve Davis is effectively the leader of DOGE and leads the day-to-day work.

In a court filing submitted under seal until its public release was ordered, the Trump administration admitted that Gleason has been working at the Health Department and HHS since February; this contrasts with the testimony Gleason made in the prior week, in which she stated being “full-time” administrator of USDS without revealing her work at HHS.

Elon Musk's role:

In a February 17 affidavit, Office of Administration director Joshua Fischer told Judge Tanya Chutkan that Musk was not the DOGE administrator or a DOGE employee but a special government employee with no "authority to make government decisions." 

At a February 24 hearing, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly questioned the constitutionality of USDS and asked the government attorney, Bradley Humphreys, about its structure. He said that it ignored Musk's role beyond that of Trump advisor.

On February 25, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Musk is "overseeing DOGE" but refused to identify its administrator after being asked repeatedly. 

Later that day, the White House named Amy Gleason as the acting DOGE administrator; Gleason worked from 2018 through 2021 at US Digital Service.

On February 28, in a case before Judge Theodore D. Chuang where Musk is accused of violating the Appointments Clause, Justice Department lawyer Joshua Gardner was unable to identify the administrator of DOGE before Gleason.

Nevertheless, Trump declared on February 19 to have put "Musk in charge" of DOGE. In his March 4 State of the Union address to Congress, he repeated that DOGE "is headed by Elon Musk". 

Two days later, after that statement had been cited in lawsuits, Trump reportedly told members of his Cabinet that they rather than Musk and DOGE were to make staffing decisions for their departments, but a few hours later remonstrated "If they don't cut, then Elon will do the cutting."

On March 18, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland determined that Elon Musk was "the leader of DOGE" and was exercising the authority of its lawful administrator on a de facto basis, and that his actions shuttering USAID were unconstitutional and violated the Appointments Clause.

"DOGE Kids":

​On February 2, 2025, Wired reported that DOGE hired software engineers aged 19–24 with no experience in government, including:
There are reports of 15-minute video interviews DOGE members conducted without identifying themselves, with queries such as "whom they would choose to fire from their teams if they had to pick one person", and surprise code reviews, silently supervised by "extremely young men". The team has been called "Doge Kids" by officials, reporters, and social media users.

According to Brian Krebs, past deeds from these software engineers pose security risks:
Coristine, the 19-year-old son of the owner of snack company LesserEvil, leaked information from the data-security company where he was interning; he managed web domains, some registered in Russia, others referencing abusive or illegal content including rape and child pornography; he mingled with 'The Com', a cybercriminal network. 

Amplification of extremism also raises questions:
  • Kliger, 25, has an edgelord past,
  • crediting Ron Unz for his political awakening 
  • and reposting the likes of Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, along with white supremacist memes.
  • Elez shares similar viewpoints.[tone]

On February 18, 2025, CNN sent FOIA requests for security clearance records of DOGE team members who were granted access to sensitive or classified government networks; the response, from an OPM email address, was: "Good luck with that they just got rid of the entire privacy team". Sources told CNN that employees from the communications staff and those who handle FOIA requests were also dismissed.

On February 24, the Washington Post reported that Farritor and Kliger manually blocked multiple times payments for life critical programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had approved by decree.

Court documents filed on March 14 have revealed that DOGE staffer Marko Elez violated U.S. Treasury Department policy by mishandling personal information.

Doxxing accusations:

After the February 2 Wired article, names of DOGE members started to circulate; Musk accused those who did so on his social of committing a crime. 

The next day, interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin released a statement on Musk's social saying that certain individuals and/or groups have committed acts that appear to violate the law in targeting DOGE employees. 

Musk quoted that statement, adding "Don't mess with DOGE". On February 7, Martin sent Musk and his deputy Steve Davis a letter (also posted on his social) announcing that he had opened an investigation into government employees Musk accused of stealing property and making threats. 

According to New York Times reporter Ken Bensinger, Musk was attempting to describe traditional journalism as "doxxing" in order to invalidate the role of the media in government accountability.

After the names of DOGE employees began circulating on Reddit—and some users suggested violence—site administrators posted that Reddit had "seen an increase in content in several communities that violate Reddit Rules. Debate and dissent are welcome on Reddit—threats and doxing are not."

The popular subreddit r/WhitePeopleTwitter was subsequently banned for three days, and a small subreddit called r/IsElonDeadYet was permanently removed.

On February 11, Musk reshared a post by Laura Loomer with screenshots that identified Judge John J. McConnell Jr.'s daughter, along with her financial disclosure forms from the department. This reshare followed McConnell's order to unfreeze federal grants. 

On February 12, Rep. Andrew Clyde announced that he was drafting "articles" of impeachment against McConnell, echoing Musk's claim that there "needs to be an immediate wave of judicial impeachments, not just one".

Members:

An investigation by TechCrunch categorized DOGE members as inner circle, senior figures, worker bees, or aides. The New York Times divides them into leadership, staffers, and allies. 

The organization extends beyond those with DOGE employee status: Musk himself isn't one, many of his allies have no government tie, and many of his associates have joined other government units.

The first executive order organizes work into small DOGE teams of "at least four employees" with one "Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney". 

Few have a known contractual status. The question if a DOGE employee belongs to the permanent unit (USDS) or the temporary one (USDSTTO) has yet to be settled by the White House.

Click here for a list of Organization Members
​
Actions within federal government:
See also: United States federal agencies targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency

In late February, the New York Times described Musk’s strategy with DOGE the following way:
“His team grabbed control of the government’s human resources agency, the Office of Personnel Management, commandeering email systems to pressure civil servants to quit so he could cull the work force. And it burrowed into computer systems across the bureaucracy, tracing how money was flowing so the administration could choke it off.” 

Government organization and management specialists noted that the DOGE effort “appears to go beyond IT and HR initiatives to include areas such as procurement, real property, and substantive agency operations”. 

While presiding over a March lawsuit featuring DOGE's culture of secrecy, Judge Christopher R. Cooper concluded that it has “obtained unprecedented access to sensitive personal and classified data and payment systems across federal agencies”, and that it “appears to have the power not just to evaluate federal programs, but to drastically reshape and even eliminate them wholesale” without congressional input.

The Washington Post observed that by the end of January DOGE gained access to large parts of the federal government and installed surrogates and former employees of Musk's companies as heads at several agencies. 

DOGE members first joined the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the United States Digital Service (USDS), and the General Services Administration (GSA). They coordinated with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and have tried to shutdown Agency for International Development (USAID), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the Department of Education (ED).

Their bigger targets remain the Treasury (USDT), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and Health and Human Services (HHS): spendings by HHS amount to 31%, by SSA to 16%, and by USDT to 15% of the federal budget.; together they account for almost two thirds of all government expenses. 

As DOGE has forced itself into federal headquarters, many top officials with whom they clashed have been replaced by DOGE members.

Access to employee, payment, property, and citizen information:

The day before Trump's first day in office, Amanda Scales, previously a Musk employee at xAI, was already Chief of staff at OPM, the agency that handles federal human resources. 

On the evening of January 20, the acting administrator of OPM, Charles Ezell, has sent a memo to every agencies reminding them that newly hired federal employees can be terminated while bypassing Merit System Protection Board rights, and giving them the work week to send Scales a list of all probationary employees. Ezell will be replaced by Scott Kupor, managing partner at the investment firm of Musk's ally, Marc Andreessen. 

OPM:
  • manages more than $1 trillion in assets, retirement funds, health and life insurance benefits for federal employees and their spouses. 
  • It provides custody to service records of 2.1 million workers and citizens who have applied for federal jobs;
  • it also maintains an email list of nearly every federal employee.
  • Around the time Trump came into office, DOGE leaders Steve Davis and Nicole Hollander have been sleeping at the GSA headquarters.
  • The agency holds data about federal real estate, procurement, and information infrastructure; according to a former director, it holds “incredible amounts of sensitive or proprietary business information that [businesses] had to share with the government in order to get a contract or take some action”.
  • It manages the SmartPay system, the largest government charge card and commercial payment program in the world.
  • It also oversees the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), which details every contract action over $3,000; DOGE has had the power to modify its records before February 14, the day they promised "receipts".

On January 21, David Lebryk denied DOGE access to USDT systems. Newly confirmed Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, overruled that decision later that day, and Lebryk resigned. He was replaced by Tom Krause, a DOGE member who kept his role of CEO at the Cloud Software Group. 

On February 13, DOGE entered the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and two days later DOGE was seeking access to the Integrated Data Retrieval System. USDT (through IRS) has names, addresses, social security numbers from tax payers, their income and net worth, bank information for direct deposits, itemization detail such as charitable donations, bankruptcy history or identity theft.

On February 18, Michelle King either stepped down from her role at the SSA or was fired, to be replaced by Leland Dudek, a move Musk celebrated on his social; after a belligerent Linkedin post in which he has bragged about having “bullied agency executives” to facilitate DOGE's work, Dudek has been signing off DOGE's decisions.

Chief of staff Tiffany Flick has also retired, after having “witnessed a disregard for critical processes—like providing the ‘least privileged’ access based on a ‘need to know’—and lack of interest in understanding our systems and programs”, and accusing DOGE member Michael Russo of supporting Musk's fantastical claims about dead people receiving benefits.

Its systems contain: records of lifetime wages and earnings; social security and bank account numbers, the type and amount of benefits individuals received; citizenship status; disability and medical information.

Allison Stanger argues that an AI company (like xAI or Cognition AI) that accesses government data without public accountability could pose a threat. Training on large and longitudinal real data treatments, outcomes and costs across diverse population could topple the medical or the insurance industry and influence health care policy.

An AI company with access to USDT data that tracks real-time transactions and money flows could help develop economic and financial forecasting models that would give an investment edge. “A private company with exclusive access to infrastructure data”, Stranger contends, “could allow the company to develop “smart city” systems that city governments would become dependent on, effectively privatizing aspects of urban governance”.

Emails to government staff:
See also: 2025 US federal deferred resignation program

Tapping into OPM systems allowed DOGE to create the [email protected] address, to get a list of federal employees, and to contact them. 

On January 28, 2025, the OPM offered a "deferred resignation" program to federal government employees to announce their resignation by February 6, while stating that employees who resigned would still receive salary and benefits until September 30, 2025. 

The offer made was similar to Elon Musk's notice to employees after he took control of Twitter. By the day before the February 6 deadline, more than 40,000 employees had accepted the offer, well below expectations.
​
A federal judge, Randolph Daniel Moss, appointed by Barack Obama and overseeing a lawsuit aimed at blocking these "fork in the road" offers, received one such buyout offer email, presumably by mistake.

A lawsuit, filed on January 27, 2025, in the federal district court for the District of Columbia by two federal employees against the OPM, alleges that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, responsible for various federal government personnel operations, failed to conduct a federally mandated assessment to evaluate and mitigate privacy risks associated with the alleged new email system's data collection on federal employees. 

On February 3, four unions representing 800,000 federal employees filed suit[e] against the Treasury Department, arguing that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide a legal basis for the buyout offer. On February 6, Judge George O'Toole Jr., appointed by President Bill Clinton, temporarily blocked Trump and DOGE from engaging in any further action related to the buyout until further arguments were heard. 

On February 12, Judge O'Toole ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the buyout offer because they were not directly affected.

On February 22, 2025, Musk posted on X ordering federal workers to summarize their weekly accomplishments, warning that noncompliance would be seen as resignation.

Shortly after, OPM emailed employees requesting five bullet point summaries.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) vowed to challenge any terminations, arguing OPM lacked the authority to send these emails.

Facilitation of Reductions in Force (RIF)
Main article: 2025 United States federal mass layoffs

On January 20, Trump issued a memorandum simply called Hiring Freeze, in which he asked the director of OMB to submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce, in consultation with the director of OPM and "the Administrator of the United States DOGE Service". 

On January 21, Ezell has sent agencies directives to close "DEI offices by 5 PM EST on Wednesday, January 22". and also asked employees to report those who would hide programs "by using coded or imprecise language". On January 27, a memo was sent instructing OPM employees to work on-site full-time. 

Investigative journalist Molly White found that metadata on some of these memos indicate that they were ghoswritten by Noah Peters and Thomas Shenk, both with Project 2025 ties; Peters is also a DOGE member. 

On January 31, Brian Bjelde, senior advisor and DOGE member, has told career supervisors that the target was to cut 70% of OPM workforce.

On January 21, DOGE representatives conducted interviews with USDS employees about their work and asked which colleagues could be fired. On February 25, 21 USDS employees resigned en masse. 

They were among the 65 US Digital Service employees who continued to work with the service when US Digital Service became the US DOGE Service. In a letter, they stated that could not honor their oath under DOGE, warned about the politicization of the department, and declared: "We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services".

One of the 21 USDS technologists who resigned in protest on February 25 stated that DOGE's actions created "a high risk of the American people's data being exposed or being utilized for nefarious means", including the potential for foreign actors to access that data, and she viewed these actions are "completely across the line both legally and ethically".
​
On February 13, OPM advised agencies to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 probationary workers (federal workers who have under one year in their current position).

Following the guidance, layoffs cascaded including:
  • 1,000 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs,
  • 5,200 employees across U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),
  • and 1,300 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Included in the probationary cuts were several Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees hired for radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) employees who are responsible for designing, building, and overseeing the US nuclear weapons stockpile.

On February 24, GSA acting administrator and DOGE member Stephen Ehikian warned that he would apply RIF measures to the agency. On March 7, DOGE has deployed its proprietary AI chatbot, intended to help workers with daily tasks, to 1,500 workers at GSA.

The deployment comes after Thomas Shedd fired around 90 technologists and announced that the GSA branch he supervises would shrink by 50 percent. Among them was the 18F team, which Shedd deemed "non-essential".

On February 28, SSA announced its intention to cut its workforce by 12%, from 57,000 to 50,000 employees.

Coordination to shutdown administrationsOn February 1, members of DOGE gained access to classified information of USAID without sufficient security clearances.

DOGE personnel asked to be let into USAID headquarters and threatened to call the US Marshals, which by law receive their direction from the attorney general and the director of the United States Marshals Service. 

Two security chiefs at USAID attempted to deny DOGE access to the classified material, as they claimed they were "legally obligated" to do; however, they were then placed on leave by the Trump administration.

On February 6, CFPB staff were told by email that DOGE members (including Nikhil Rajpal, Gavin Kliger, and Chris Young) entered the agency building and would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment. 

The next evening, Russ Vought nominated himself head of it, DOGE deleted its X account, and Musk tweeted "CFPB RIP".

DOGE entered ED in early February and got access to internal databases with student information shortly after. One week later, after having fed the department's financial data (including sensitive one) into a cloud-based AI, DOGE announced that it slashed $900 million from the Institute of Education Sciences. 

By that time DOGE members have been pushing ED high ranking officials out of their offices and set up white noise machines to muffle their voices; according to employees, they have been competing with one another to make the biggest budget cuts headlines while making arbitrary demands, for exemple to cut 80% of the funding for student loan applications websites and services. 

On the next day, mass firings began; Linda McMahon, wrestling mogul turned secretary of education, said she would like ED "to be closed immediately" because it "is a big con job". On March 11, almost half of the ED workforce has been fired.

On March 17, Inter-Con security allowed DOGE to enter the United States Institute for Peace; Inter-Con Vice President Derrick Hanna informed USIP that DOGE had contacted them and “threatened all of their federal contracts if they did not permit entry for DOGE”.

Executive branch shakeup:

Besides layoffs and budget cuts, GSA, SSA, and HHS have worked with DOGE to shakeup material and financial resources of the executive branch of the government, from departments, agencies, and offices down to bureaux, boards, and services.

On February 26, Trump issued an executive order that includes the immediate disposal of surplus federal property and reduce non-essential travel. The first agencies to be targeted are international organizations or overseas and educational institutions. 

DOGE has put a $1 spending limit to the SmartPay cards of GSA, OPM, CFPB, and USAID employees, with plans to extend the limits to other administrations. On March 4, the GSA published a list of 443 properties to be sold, including headquarters and courthouses.

That list was edited the same day to remove about 120 properties and then taken off the GSA website the next day. Wired subsequently reported that the list included a previously undisclosed "highly sensitive federal complex in Springfield, Virginia" where the CIA conducts clandestine operations.

GSA listed 47 SSA office closures, 26 planned for 2025. The announcement has come at the same time that SSA declared its intention to shutdown phone authentication. This policy would make services less accessible to children, people without a driver's license, disabled persons, and the elderly. 

In response to a court decision that prevented DOGE to access SSA systems, SSA top official, Leland Dudek, a DOGE member, has been threatening to shut down the agency: “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency”.

On December 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump team and officials from DOGE had inquired about abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

It also reported on several differing plans to combine and restructure the FDIC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Reserve. USDT cuts involve the closure of many IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers.

Federal contract termination announcements:

On February 17, 2025, DOGE released the names of 1,127 federal contracts spanning 39 federal departments and agencies that DOGE says had been terminated. Only 300 of these have been formally terminated.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of these contracts found inaccuracies of DOGE's reported savings, including counting contracts multiple times, listing contracts that have already been paid as savings, and misrepresenting potential savings based on contract limits rather than actual spending. 

​On February 24, 2025, DOGE released more documents, with the total nearing 2,300 contracts released. The Associated Press found that "nearly 40%" of the terminated contracts would not save the government any money.

Below is a dynamic list of documents released by DOGE.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

​(Note that you can double-click on the following chart to see the original image):

​Legal challenges
Main article: Lawsuits involving the Department of Government Efficiency

DOGE is the subject of intense litigation. There are multiple lawsuits concerning its downsizing of USAID, privacy and security concerns related to its accessing of computer systems and records across the government, its refusal to make its own records public, and Musk's authority. Musk has been the target of a subpoena attempt.


Response
Main article: Response to the Department of Government Efficiency

The establishment of the DOGE has garnered attention for its goals of reducing government spending and bureaucracy.

While supporters advocate for increased efficiency and fiscal responsibility, critics express skepticism regarding the feasibility of achieving significant budget cuts without affecting essential services. Concerns have also been raised about potential conflicts of interest, given the private sector backgrounds of key figures involved in DOGE.

As of December 2024, most Republicans had shown support for DOGE. On the contrary, federal workers and supporters have stated during protests that DOGE is conducting a "corporate coup" and a "hostile takeover" of the government. 

Protestors across the United States have demonstrated against Musk, DOGE, Tesla, and the Office of Personnel Management.


See also
Official website
Related committees Click here for Similar commissions
​
Further reading






​
Trumpism Pictured below: From left to right, top to bottom:
​​3/28/2025: Trumpism, also referred to as the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, is a political movement in the United States that comprises the political ideologies associated with U.S. president Donald Trump and his political base. 

Trumpism incorporates ideologies such as: 
Trumpists and Trumpians are terms that refer to individuals exhibiting its characteristics. There is significant academic debate over the prevalence of neo-fascist elements of Trumpism.

Trumpism is associated with the belief that the President is above the rule of law. It has been referred to as an American political variant of the far-right and the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations starting in the mid-late 2010s.

Trump's political base has been compared to a cult of personality. Trump supporters became the largest faction of the United States Republican Party, with the remainder often characterized as "the elite", "the establishment", or "Republican in name only" (RINO) in contrast. In response to the rise of Trump, there has arisen a Never Trump movement.


Themes
See also: Rhetoric of Donald Trump

"Trumpism" emerged during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump's rhetoric has its roots in a populist political method that suggests nationalistic answers to political, economic, and social problems. They are more specifically described as right-wing populist. 

Policies include: 
Former National Security Advisor and close Trump advisor John Bolton disputes that Trumpism exists in any meaningful sense, adding that "[t]he man does not have a philosophy. And people can try and draw lines between the dots of his decisions. They will fail." 

Writing for the Routledge Handbook of Global Populism (2019), Olivier Jutel notes, "What Donald Trump reveals is that the various iterations of right-wing American populism have less to do with a programmatic social conservatism or libertarian economics than with enjoyment."

Trump has been described a demagogue, and there exists significant scholarly study over the use of demagogy and related themes within Trumpism. Trump explicitly and routinely disparages racial, religious, and ethnic minorities, and scholars consistently find that racial animus regarding blacks, immigrants, and Muslims are the best predictors of support for Trump. 

Trumpist rhetoric heavily features: 
Other identified aspects include: 
Grievance:

Sociologist Michael Kimmel states that Trump's populism is "an emotion. And the emotion is righteous i*ndignation that the government is screwing 'us.'" Kimmel posits that Trump manifests "aggrieved entitlement", a "sense that those benefits to which you believed yourself entitled have been snatched away from you by unseen forces larger and more powerful. You feel yourself to be the heir to a great promise, the American Dream, which has turned into an impossible fantasy ..."

Vagueness:

Communications scholar Zizi Papacharissi explains the utility of being ideologically vague, and using terms and slogans that can mean anything the supporter wants them to mean. "When these publics thrive in affective engagement it's because they've found an affective hook that's built around an open signifier that they get to use and reuse and re-employ ... MAGA; that's an open signifier ... it allows them all to assign different meanings to it. So MAGA works for connecting publics that are different, because it is open enough to permit people to ascribe their own meaning to it."

Exit polling data suggests the campaign was successful at mobilizing the "white disenfranchised", the lower- to working-class European-Americans who are experiencing growing social inequality and who often have stated opposition to the American political establishment.

Some prominent conservatives formed a Never Trump movement, seen as a rebellion of conservative elites against the base.

Right-wing authoritarian populism.

Trumpism has been described as right-wing authoritarian populist, and is broadly seen among scholars as posing an existential threat to American democracy His presidency sparked renewed focus and research on restraining presidential power and the threats of a criminal presidency that had died down since the Nixon administration. 

Trump advocated for an extreme position of unitary executive theory, arguing that Article II gave him the right to "do whatever I want". The theory is a maximalist interpretation of presidential power formulated during the Reagan administration and pushed by the Federalist Society to undo post-Nixon reforms.

Future presidents ran with "unitary-adjacent ideas" and aspects of theory held bipartisan support as part of the growing powers of the presidency. 

In February 2025, Trump wrote and pinned a comment on Truth Social and X: "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law", which the White House later reposted on X that day. The phrase itself is a variation of one attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, and was noted to be in line with his administration's aggressive push for expanding presidential power under the theory.

​Yale sociologist Philip S. Gorski warned against the threat of Trumpism, writing that
"the election of Donald Trump constitutes perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There is a real and growing danger that representative government will be slowly but effectively supplanted by a populist form of authoritarian rule in the years to come. Media intimidation, mass propaganda, voter suppression, court packing, and even armed paramilitaries—many of the necessary and sufficient conditions for an authoritarian devolution are gradually falling into place."

Some academics regard such authoritarian backlash as a feature of liberal democracies. 

Disputing the view that the surge of support for Trumpism and Brexit is a new phenomenon, political scientist Karen Stenner and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt state that the far-right populist wave ... did not in fact come out of nowhere. It is not a sudden madness, or virus, or tide, or even just a copycat phenomenon—the emboldening of bigots and despots by others' electoral successes. Rather, it is something that sits just beneath the surface of any human society—including in the advanced liberal democracies at the heart of the Western world—and can be activated by core elements of liberal democracy itself.

Stenner and Haidt regard authoritarian waves as a feature of liberal democracies noting that the findings of their 2016 study of Trump and Brexit supporters was not unexpected, as they wrote:
  • normative threat tends either to leave non-authoritarians utterly unmoved by the things that catalyze authoritarians or to propel them toward being (what one might conceive as) their 'best selves.'
  • In previous investigations, this has seen non-authoritarians move toward positions of greater tolerance and respect for diversity under the very conditions that seem to propel authoritarians toward increasing intolerance.

Author and authoritarianism critic Masha Gessen contrasted the "democratic" strategy of the Republican establishment making policy arguments appealing to the public, with the "autocratic" strategy of appealing to an "audience of one" in Donald Trump. Gessen noted the fear of Republicans that Trump would endorse a primary election opponent or otherwise use his political power to undermine any fellow party members that he felt had betrayed him.

The 2020 Republican Party platform simply endorsed "the President's America-first agenda", prompting comparisons to contemporary leader-focused party platforms in Russia and China.

In January 2025, a CNN-SSRS poll found that:
  • 53% of Republicans viewed loyalty to Trump as central to their political identity and very important to what being a Republican is,
  • beating values such as:
    • "a less powerful federal government (46%),
    • supporting congressional Republicans (42%)
    • or opposing Democratic policies (32%)".

General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, has described Trump as a "wannabe dictator."

Gender and masculinity
See also: 
Opposition to aspects of transgender rights is a theme of Trumpism.

According to Philip Gorski, in Trumpian nostalgia "decline is brought about by docility and femininity and the return to greatness requires little more than a reassertion of dominance and masculinity. In this way, 'virtue' is reduced to its root etymology of manly bravado."

Michael Kimmel describes male Trump supporters who despaired "over whether or not anything could enable them to find a place with some dignity in this new, multicultural, and more egalitarian world. ... These men were angry, but they all looked back nostalgically to a time when their sense of masculine entitlement went unchallenged. They wanted to reclaim their country, restore their rightful place in it, and retrieve their manhood in the process."

Social psychologists Theresa Vescio and Nathaniel Schermerhorn note that "In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump embodied HM [hegemonic masculinity] while waxing nostalgic for a racially homogenous past that maintained an unequal gender order.

Trump performed HM by repeatedly referencing his status as a successful businessman ("blue-collar businessman") and alluding to how tough he would be as president. ... Trump was openly hostile to gender-atypical women, objectified gender-typical women, and mocked the masculinity of male peers and opponents."

In their studies involving 2,007 people, they found that endorsement of hegemonic masculinity better predicted support for Trump than other factors, such as support for :
  • antiestablishment,
  • antielitist,
  • nativist,
  • racist,
  • sexist,
  • homophobic or xenophobic perspectives.

Kimmel was surprised at the sexual turn the 2016 election took and thinks that Trump is for many men a fantasy figure, an uber-male free to indulge every desire. "Many of these guys feel that the current order of things has emasculated them, by which I mean it has taken away their ability to support a family and have great life. Here's a guy who says: 'I can build anything I want. I can do anything I want. I can have the women I want.' They're going, 'This guy is awesome!'"

Neville Hoad, an expert on gender issues in South Africa, sees this as a common theme with another strongman leader, Jacob Zuma, comparing his "Zulu Big Man version of toxic masculinity versus a dog whistle white supremacist version; the putative real estate billionaire turned reality television star".

Both men express a "masculinist fantasy of freedom", similar to Jacques Lacan's mythic leader of the primal horde whose power to satisfy every pleasure or whim has not been castrated.

By activating such fantasies, toxic masculine behaviors:
Gender role scholar Colleen Clemens describes toxic masculinity as "a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression ... where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly 'feminine' traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as "man" can be taken away." 

Writing in the Journal of Human Rights, Kimberly Theidon notes the COVID-19 pandemic's irony of Trumpian toxic masculinity: "Being a tough guy means wearing the mask of masculinity: Being a tough guy means refusing to don a mask that might preserve one's life and the lives of others."

Tough guy bravado appeared on the internet prior to attack on Congress (see topic  below) on January 6, 2021, with one poster writing, "Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in ... . Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die." 

Of the rioters arrested for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, 88% were men, and 67% were 35 years or older.

​Christian Trumpism:

​For the Trump's personal history with religion, see Donald Trump and religion.Trump has strong support among white evangelical Christians, particularly among those who do not attend church regularly. 

Trump also maintains strong support with Christian nationalists, and his rallies take on the symbols, rhetoric and agenda of Christian nationalism. 

Trump described his 2024 presidential campaign as a "righteous crusade" against "atheists, globalists and the Marxists". 

Many Christian Trump supporters view him as divinely ordained and "chosen by God", and some compare him to Jesus, with opposition to him seen as spiritual warfare. Trump shared and played a video entitled "God Made Trump" at several of his rallies explicitly comparing him to a messianic figure in religious terms. 

Trump is frequently described among Christian supporters as an Old Testament hero, with Cyrus the Great or David frequently mentioned. The New York Times describes his supporters seeing him as one of several "morally flawed figures handpicked by God to lead profound missions aimed at achieving overdue justice or resisting existential evil". 

This framing has been described as "vessel theology" which allows for support of Trump and excuses his prior sexual misconduct and adultery. Trump has strong support with members of the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, and many Trump administration officials are aligned with the group.

According to 2016 election exit polls, 26% of voters self-identified as white evangelical Christians, of whom more than three-fourths in 2017 approved of Trump's performance, most of them approving "very strongly" as reported by a Pew Research Center study. 

In contrast, approximately two-thirds of non-white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, with 90% of black Protestants also voting for her even though their theological views are similar to evangelicals.

According to Yale researcher Philip Gorski, "the question is not so much why evangelicals voted for Trump then—many did not—but why so many white evangelicals did." Gorski's answer was simply "because they are also white Christian nationalists and Trumpism is inter alia a reactionary version of white Christian nationalism."

Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir sees the politics of purity in the white Christian nationalist rhetoric of evangelical supporters, such as the comparison of Nehemiah's wall around Jerusalem to Trump's wall keeping out the enemy, writing, "the notion of the enemy includes 'Mexican migrants', 'filthy' gays, and even Catholics 'led astray by Satan', and the real danger these enemies pose is degradation to a 'blessed—great— ... nation' whose God is the Lord."

Theologian Michael Horton believes Christian Trumpism represents the confluence of three trends that have come together, namely Christian American exceptionalism, end-times conspiracies, and the prosperity gospel, with Christian Americanism being the narrative that God specially called the United States into being as an extraordinary if not miraculous providence and end-times conspiracy referring to the world's annihilation (figurative or literal) due to some conspiracy of nefarious groups and globalist powers threatening American sovereignty.

Horton thinks that what he calls the "cult of Christian Trumpism" blends these three ingredients with "a generous dose of hucksterism" as well as self-promotion and personality cult.

Evangelical Christian and historian John Fea believes "the church has warned against the pursuit of political power for a long, long time", but that many modern-day evangelicals such as Trump advisor and televangelist Paula White ignore these admonitions. Televangelist Jim Bakker praises prosperity gospel preacher White's ability to "walk into the White House at any time she wants to" and have "full access to the King."

According to Fea, there are several other "court evangelicals" who have "devoted their careers to endorsing political candidates and Supreme Court justices who will restore what they believe to be the Judeo-Christian roots of the country" and who in turn are called on by Trump to "explain to their followers why Trump can be trusted in spite of his moral failings", including: 
​For prominent Christians who fail to support Trump, the cost is a loss of presidential access and a substantial risk of criticism, a lesson learned by Timothy Dalrymple, president of the flagship magazine of evangelicals Christianity Today, and former chief editor Mark Galli, who were condemned by more than two hundred evangelical leaders for co-authoring a letter arguing that Christians were obligated to support the impeachment of Trump.

Historian Stephen Jaeger traces the history of admonitions against becoming beholden religious courtiers back to the 11th century, with warnings of curses placed on holy men barred from heaven for taking too "keen an interest in the affairs of the state." 

Dangers to the court clergy were described by Peter of Blois, a 12th-century French cleric, theologian and courtier who "knew that court life is the death of the soul" and that despite believing that participation at court was "contrary to God and salvation," the clerical courtiers justified it with comparisons to Moses being sent by God to the Pharaoh. 

Pope Pius II opposed the clergy's presence at court, believing it was difficult for a Christian courtier to "rein in ambition, suppress avarice, tame envy, strife, wrath, and cut off vice, while standing in the midst of these [very] things."

The history of warnings of the corrupting influence of power on holy leaders is recounted by Fea who compares it to behavior of Trump's court evangelical leaders, warning that Christians risk "making idols out of political leaders."

Jeffress claims that evangelical leaders' support of Trump is moral regardless of behavior that Christianity Today's chief editor called "a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused." Jeffress argues that "the godly principle here is that governments have one responsibility, and that is Romans 13 [which] says to avenge evil doers." 

This same biblical chapter was used by Jeff Sessions to claim biblical justification for Trump's policy of separating children from immigrant families. Historian Lincoln Muller explains this is one of two types of interpretations of Romans 13 which has been used in American political debates since its founding and is on the side of "the thread of American history that justifies oppression and domination in the name of law and order."

From Jeffress's reading, government's purpose is as a "strongman to protect its citizens against evildoers", adding: "I don't care about that candidate's tone or vocabulary, I want the meanest toughest son of a you-know-what I can find, and I believe that is biblical."

Jeffress, who referred to Barack Obama as "paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist," Mitt Romney as a cult follower of a non-Christian religion and Roman Catholicism as a "Satanic" result of "Babylonian mystery religion" traces the Christian libertarian perspective on government's sole role to suppress evil back to Saint Augustine who argued in The City of God against the Pagans (426 CE) that government's role is to restrain evil so Christians can peacefully practice their beliefs. 

Martin Luther similarly believed that government should be limited to checking sin.

Like Jeffress, Richard Land refused to cut ties with Trump after his reaction to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, with the explanation that "Jesus did not turn away from those who may have seemed brash with their words or behavior," adding that "now is not the time to quit or retreat, but just the opposite—to lean in closer." 

Johnnie Moore's explanation for refusing to repudiate Trump after his Charlottesville response was that "you only make a difference if you have a seat at the table."

More combative, less ideological base:

Journalist Elaina Plott suggests ideology is not as important as other characteristics of Trumpism. Plott cites political analyst Jeff Roe, who observed Trump "understood" and acted on the trend among Republican voters to be "less ideological" but "more polarized".

Republicans are now more willing to accept policies like government mandated health care coverage for pre-existing conditions or trade tariffs, formerly disdained by conservatives as burdensome government regulations.

At the same time, strong avowals of support for Trump and aggressive partisanship have become part of Republican election campaigning—in at least some parts of America—reaching down even to non-partisan campaigns for local government which formerly were collegial and issue-driven. 

Research by political scientist Marc Hetherington and others has found Trump supporters tend to share a "worldview" transcending political ideology, agreeing with statements like "the best strategy is to play hardball, even if it means being unfair." In contrast, those who agree with statements like "cooperation is the key to success" tend to prefer Trump's adversary former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

On January 31, 2021, a detailed overview of the attempt by combative Trump supporters to subvert the election of the United States was published in The New York Times. Journalist Nicholas Lemann writes of the disconnect between some of Trump's campaign rhetoric and promises, and what he accomplished once in office—and the fact that the difference seemed to bother very few supporters.

The campaign themes being:
  • anti-free-trade nationalism,
  • defense of Social Security,
  • attacks on big business,
  • "building that big, beautiful wall and making Mexico pay for it",
  • repealing Obama's Affordable Care Act,
  • a trillion dollar infrastructure-building program.

The accomplishments being "conventional" Republican policies and legislation—substantial tax cuts, rollbacks of federal regulations, and increases in military spending. 

Many have noted that instead of the Republican National Convention issuing the customary "platform" of policies and promises for the 2020 campaign, it offered a "one-page resolution" stating that the party was not "going to have a new platform, but instead ... 'has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president's America-first agenda.'"

An alternate nonideological circular definition of Trumpism widely held among Trump activists was reported by right-populist commentator Saagar Enjeti, chief Washington correspondent for The Hill, who stated: "I was frequently told by people wholly within the MAGA camp that trumpism meant anything Trump does, ergo nothing that he did is a departure from trumpism."

Ideological themes:

Trumpism differs from classical Abraham Lincoln Republicanism in many ways regarding free trade, immigration, equality, checks and balances in federal government, and the separation of church and state. 

Peter J. Katzenstein of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center believes that Trumpism rests on three pillars, namely nationalism, religion and race. 

According to sociologist Jeff Goodwin, Trumpism is characterized by a “contradictory, unstable amalgam” of five key elements: 
  1. social conservatism, 
  2. neoliberal capitalism, 
  3. economic nationalism, 
  4. nativism,
  5. and white nationalism.

At the 2021 CPAC conference, Trump gave his own definition of what defines Trumpism: "What it means is great deals, ... . Like the USMCA replacement of the horrible NAFTA. ... It means low taxes and eliminated job killing regulations, ... . It means strong borders, but people coming into our country based on a system of merit. ... [I]t means no riots in the streets. It means law enforcement. It means very strong protection for the second amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. ... [I]t means a strong military and taking care of our vets ... ."


Methods of persuasion
Further information: 
​​Sociologist Arlie Hochschild writes that Trump's "speeches—evoking dominance, bravado, clarity, national pride, and personal uplift—inspire an emotional transformation" in followers, deeply resonating with their "emotional self-interest". Hochschild states that Trump is an "emotions candidate", appealing to the emotional self-interests of voters.

To Hochschild, this explains the paradox raised by Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas?, an anomaly which motivated her five-year immersive research into the emotional dynamics of the Tea Party movement which she believes has mutated into Trumpism.

Her book Strangers in Their Own Land was named one of the "6 books to understand Trump's Win" by The New York Times. 

Hochschild claims that voters were not persuaded by rhetoric to vote against their self-interest through appeals to the "bad angels" of their nature: "their greed, selfishness, racial intolerance, homophobia, and desire to get out of paying taxes that go to the unfortunate."

She grants that the appeal to bad angels is made by Trump, but states that it "obscures another—to the right wing's good angels—their patience in waiting in line in scary economic times, their capacity for loyalty, sacrifice, and endurance", qualities she describes as a part of a motivating narrative she calls their "deep story", a social contract narrative that appears to be widely shared in other countries as well.

She thinks Trump's approach towards his audience creates group cohesiveness by exploiting a crowd phenomenon Emile Durkheim called "collective effervescence", "a state of emotional excitation felt by those who join with others they take to be fellow members of a moral or biological tribe ... to affirm their unity and, united, they feel secure and respected."
​
Trumpian rhetoric employs absolutist framings and threat narratives rejecting the political establishment. The absolutist rhetoric emphasizes non-negotiable boundaries and moral outrage at their supposed violation.

Money-Kyrle pattern:

A particular pattern is common for authoritarian movements:
  • First, elicit a sense of depression, humiliation and victimhood.
  • Second, separate the world into two opposing groups: a demonized set of others versus those who have the power and will to overcome them. This involves identifying the enemy supposedly causing the current state of affairs and then promoting conspiracy theories and fearmongering to inflame fear and anger.
  • After cycling these first two patterns through the populace, the final message aims to produce a cathartic release of pent-up ochlocracy and mob energy, with a promise that salvation is at hand because the leader will deliver the nation back to its former glory. 

This three-part pattern was identified in 1932 by Roger Money-Kyrle who wrote Psychology of Propaganda. Reporting on Trumpist rallies has documented expressions of the Money-Kyrle pattern and associated stagecraft.

Trump rallies
​
Critical theory scholar Douglas Kellner compares the elaborate staging of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will with that used in Trump rallies using the example of the preparation of photo op sequences and aggressive hyping of huge attendance expected for Trump's 2015 primary event in Mobile, Alabama, when the media coverage repeatedly cuts between the Trump jet circling the stadium, the rising excitement of rapturous admirers below, the motorcade and the final triumphal entrance of the individual Kellner claims is being presented as the "political savior to help them out with their problems and address their grievances".

Connolly thinks the performance draws energy from the crowd's anger as it channels it, drawing it into a collage of anxieties, frustrations and resentments about malaise themes, such as: 
  • deindustrialization, 
  • offshoring,
  • racial tensions,
  • political correctness,
  • a more humble position for the United States in global security,
  • economics
  • and so on.

Connolly observes that animated gestures, pantomiming, facial expressions, strutting and finger pointing are incorporated as part of the theater, transforming the anxiety into anger directed at particular targets, concluding that "each element in a Trump performance flows and folds into the others until an aggressive resonance machine is formed that is more intense than its parts." 

Some compare the symbiotic dynamics of crowd pleasing to that of the professional wrestling style of events which Trump was involved with since the 1980s.

Some academics point out that the narrative common in the popular press describing the psychology of such crowds is a repetition of a 19th-century theory by Gustave Le Bon when organized crowds were seen by political elites as potential threats to the social order. In his book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895), Le Bon described a sort of collective contagion uniting a crowd into a near religious frenzy, reducing members to barbaric, if not subhuman levels of consciousness with mindless goals. 

Since such a description depersonalizes supporters, this type of Le Bon analysis is criticized because the would-be defenders of liberal democracy simultaneously are dodging responsibility for investigating grievances while also unwittingly accepting the same us vs. them framing of illiberalism. 

Connolly acknowledges the risks but considers it more risky to ignore that Trumpian persuasion is successful due to deliberate use of techniques evoking more mild forms of affective contagion.

Pictured below:
Trump relies on theatrical devices to market his messages, including animated gestures, pantomiming and facial expressions. Photo is from the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference.
​Rhetoric:

A constant barrage of rhetoric rivets media attention while obscuring actions such as neoliberal deregulation.

One study concluded that significant environmental deregulation occurred during the first year of the Trump administration but, due to its concurrent use of racist rhetoric, escaped much media attention.

According to the authors, the rhetoric served political objectives of dehumanizing its targets, eroding democratic norms, and consolidating power by emotionally connecting with and inflaming resentments among the base of followers and distracted media attention from deregulatory policymaking by igniting media coverage of the distractions.

​According to civil rights lawyer Burt Neuborne and political theorist William E. Connolly, Trumpist rhetoric employs tropes similar to those used by fascists in Germany to persuade citizens (at first a minority) to give up democracy, by using a barrage of:
​Neuborne found twenty parallel practices, such as:
  • creating what amounts to an "alternate reality" in adherents' minds, through direct communications, by nurturing a fawning mass media and by deriding scientists to erode the notion of objective truth;
  • organizing carefully orchestrated mass rallies;
  • attacking judges when legal cases are lost;
  • using lies, half-truths, insults, vituperation and innuendo to marginalize, demonize and destroy opponents;
  • making jingoistic appeals to ultranationalist fervor;
  • and promising to stop the flow of "undesirable" ethnic groups who are made scapegoats for the nation's ills.

Connolly presents a similar list in his book Aspirational Fascism (2017), adding comparisons of the integration of theatrics and crowd participation with rhetoric, involving grandiose bodily gestures, grimaces, hysterical charges, dramatic repetitions of alternate reality falsehoods, and totalistic assertions incorporated into signature phrases that audiences are encouraged to join in chanting. 

​Despite the similarities, Connolly stresses that Trump is no Nazi but is "an aspirational fascist who pursues crowd adulation, hyperaggressive nationalism, white triumphalism, and militarism, pursues a law-and-order regime giving unaccountable power to the police, and is a practitioner of a rhetorical style that regularly creates fake news and smears opponents to mobilize support for the Big Lies he advances."

In his 2024 book Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying, cultural theorist Henk de Berg points to a number of further parallels between Trump's and Hitler's rhetoric; namely,
  • the use of jokes and personal insults;
  • the deliberate creation of controversy;
  • interpretative openness, allowing different groups to recognize themselves in the argument;
  • and oratorical meandering in cases where a coherent narrative would draw attention to the argument's inconsistencies.

De Berg also points out that extremist language is by Trump's followers often perceived as authentic, because in real life we also tend to overstate things (e.g., "My new boss is worse than Stalin").

Branding:

Trump used personal branding to market himself as an extraordinary leader by using his celebrity status and name recognition.

As one of the communications director for the MAGA super PAC put it in 2016, "Like Hercules, Donald Trump is a work of fiction." 

Journalism professor Mark Danner explains that "week after week for a dozen years millions of Americans saw Donald J. Trump portraying the business magus [in The Apprentice], the grand vizier of capitalism, the wise man of the boardroom, a living confection whose every step and word bespoke gravitas and experience and power and authority and ... money. Endless amounts of money."

Political science scholar Andrea Schneiker regards the branding strategy of the Trump public persona as that of a superhero who "uses his superpowers to save others, that is, his country. ... a superhero is needed to solve the problems of ordinary Americans ... Hence, the superhero per definition is an anti-politician. Due to his celebrity status and his identity as entertainer, Donald Trump can thereby be considered to be allowed to take extraordinary measures and even to break rules."

Appeal to emotions:

​Historian Peter E. Gordon observes that "Trump, far from being a violation of the norm, actually signifies an emergent norm of the social order" where the categories of the psychological and political have dissolved.

In accounting for Trump's election and ability to sustain high approval ratings among voters, Erika Tucker writes in the book Trump and Political Philosophy that though all presidential campaigns have strong emotions associated with them, Trump was able to recognize, and then to gain the trust and loyalty of those who felt strong emotions about perceived changes in the United States.

Tucker notes, "Political psychologist Drew Westen has argued that Democrats are less successful at gauging and responding to affective politics—issues that arouse strong emotional states."

Examining the populist appeal of Trump, Hidalgo-Tenorio and Benítez-Castro draw on the theories of Ernesto Laclau, writing, "The emotional appeal of populist discourse is key to its polarising effects, this being so much so that populism 'would be unintelligible without the affective component.' (Laclau 2005, 11)"

Trump uses rhetoric that political scientists have deemed to be both dehumanizing and connected to physical violence by Trump's followers.

Emotion, trust and media:

Communications scholar Michael Carpini states that "Trumpism is a culmination of trends that have been occurring for several decades. What we are witnessing is nothing short of a fundamental shift in the relationships between journalism, politics, and democracy."

Among the shifts, Carpini identifies "the collapsing of the prior [media] regime's presumed and enforced distinctions between news and entertainment." 

Examining Trump's use of media for the book Language in the Trump Era, communication professor Marco Jacquemet writes that this approach "assumes (correctly, it appears) that his audiences care more about shock and entertainment value in their media consumption than almost anything else."

Plasser & Ulram (2003) describe a media logic which emphasizes "personalization ... a political star system ... [and] sports based dramatization." 

Olivier Jutel notes that "Donald Trump's celebrity status and reality-TV rhetoric of 'winning' and 'losing' corresponds perfectly to these values", asserting that "Fox News and conservative personalities from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones do not simply represent a new political and media voice but embody the convergence of politics and media in which affect and enjoyment are the central values of media production."

Studying paranoia in media, anthropologist Jessica Johnson writes, "Rather than finding accurate news meaningful, Facebook users find the affective pleasure of connectivity addictive, whether or not the information they share is factual, and that is how communicative capitalism captivates subjects as it holds them captive." 

Looking back at the world prior to social media, communications researcher Brian L. Ott writes: "I'm nostalgic for the world of television that [Neil] Postman (1985) argued, produced the 'least well-informed people in the Western world' by packaging news as entertainment. (pp. 106–107) 

Twitter is producing the most self-involved people in history by treating everything one does or thinks as newsworthy. Television may have assaulted journalism, but Twitter killed it. 

Commenting on Trump's support among Fox News viewers, Hofstra University Communication Dean Mark Lukasiewicz has a similar perspective, writing, "Tristan Harris famously said that social networks are about 'affirmation, not information'—and the same can be said about cable news, especially in prime time."
​
Arlie Russell Hochschild holds that Trump supporters trust their preferred sources of information due to the affective bond they have with them.

As media scholar Daniel Kreiss summarizes Hochschild, "Trump, along with Fox News, gave these strangers in their own land the hope that they would be restored to their rightful place at the center of the nation, and provided a very real emotional release from the fetters of political correctness that dictated they respect people of color, lesbians and gays, and those of other faiths ... that the network's personalities share the same 'deep story' of political and social life, and therefore they learn from them 'what to feel afraid, angry, and anxious about.'"

From Kreiss's 2018 account of conservative personalities and media, information became less important than providing a sense of familial bonding, where "family provides a sense of identity, place, and belonging; emotional, social, and cultural support and security; and gives rise to political and social affiliations and beliefs." 

Hochschild gives the example of a woman who states: 
Media scholar Olivier Jutel notes that, "Affect is central to the brand strategy of Fox which imagined its journalism not in terms of servicing the rational citizen in the public sphere but in 'craft[ing] intensive relationships with their viewers' (Jones, 2012: 180) in order to sustain audience share across platforms."

In this segmented market, Trump "offers himself as an ego-ideal to an individuated public of enjoyment that coalesce around his media brand as part of their own performance of identity."

Jutel states that news media companies benefit from offering spectacle and drama. "Trump is a definitive product of mediatized politics providing the spectacle that drives ratings and affective media consumption, either as part of his populist movement or as the liberal resistance."

Researchers give differing emphasis to which emotions are important to followers. Michael Richardson argues in the Journal of Media and Cultural Studies that "affirmation, amplification and circulation of disgust is one of the primary affective drivers of Trump's political success."

Richardson agrees with Ott about the "entanglement of Trumpian affect and social media crowds" who seek "affective affirmation, confirmation and amplification. Social media postings of crowd experiences accumulate as 'archives of feelings' that are both dynamic in nature and affirmative of social values (Pybus 2015, 239)."

Using Trump as an example, social trust expert Karen Jones follows philosopher Annette Baier in explaining that the masters of the art of creating trust and distrust are populist politicians and criminals, who "show a masterful appreciation of the ways in which certain emotional states drive out trust and replace it with distrust." 

Jones sees Trump as an exemplar of this class who recognize that fear and contempt are tools that can reorient networks of trust and distrust in social networks in order to alter how a potential supporter "interprets the words, deeds, and motives of the other." She holds that "A core strategy of Donald Trump, both as candidate and president, has been to manufacture fear and contempt towards some undocumented migrants (among other groups)", a strategy which "has gone global ... in Australia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Italy and the United Kingdom."

Falsehoods
See also: Stop the Steal and False or misleading statements by Donald Trump

Pictured below: ​Fact-checkers from The Washington Post compiled data on "false or misleading claims", and "false claims", respectively. The Post reported 30,573 false or misleading claims in four years, an average of more than 20.9 per day.
​​There are many falsehoods which Trump presents as facts. Drawing on Harry G. Frankfurt's book On Bullshit, political science professor Matthew McManus argues that Trump is a bullshitter whose sole interest is to persuade, and not a liar (e.g. Richard Nixon) who takes the power of truth seriously and so deceitfully attempts to conceal it.

Trump by contrast is indifferent to the truth or unaware of it. Unlike conventional lies of politicians exaggerating their accomplishments, Trump's lies are egregious, making lies about easily verifiable facts. At one rally Trump stated his father "came from Germany", even though Fred Trump was born in New York City.

​Leaders at the 2018 United Nations General Assembly burst into laughter at his boast that he had accomplished more in his first two years than any other United States president.

Visibly startled, Trump responded to the audience: "I didn't expect that reaction." Trump lies about the trivial, such as claiming that there was no rain on the day of his inauguration when in fact it did rain, as well as making grandiose "Big Lies", such as claiming that Obama founded ISIS, or promoting the birther movement, a conspiracy theory which claims that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii.

Connolly points to the similarities of such reality-bending gaslighting with fascist and post Soviet techniques of propaganda including Kompromat (scandalous material), stating that "Trumpian persuasion draws significantly upon the repetition of Big Lies."

​Robert Jay Lifton, a scholar of psychohistory and authority on the nature of cults, emphasizes the importance of understanding Trumpism "as an assault on reality".

A leader has more power if he is in any part successful at making truth irrelevant to his followers. Trump biographer Timothy L. O'Brien agrees, stating: "It is a core operating principle of Trumpism. If you constantly attack objective reality, you are left as the only trustworthy source of information, which is one of his goals for his relationship with his supporters—that they should believe no one else but him." 

​Lifton believes Trump is a purveyor of a solipsistic reality which is hostile to facts and is made collective by amplifying frustrations and fears held by his community of zealous believers.

Research published in the American Sociological Review found that Trump's lying helped boost his "authentic appeal". It argued that in systems viewed as flawed or with low political legitimacy, a "flagrant violator of established norms" is seen "as an authentic champion" by being perceived as "bravely speaking a deep and otherwise suppressed truth" against a political establishment that does not appear to be working on behalf of the people.

While a perceived establishment candidate "may be more likable or perceived to be more competent", voters question the candidates opposition to "the injustice that is said to have permeated the established political system". 

Andrew Gumbel, writing for The Guardian after the 2024 presidential election, wrote that many Trump voters in Youngstown, Ohio saw both parties as filled with crooks and liars, but that Trump "comes across as someone who doesn't pretend to be anything other than what he is, and that perceived authenticity counts for more with many Youngstown voters than his character flaws or even his policy positions". Gumbel aruged that voters preferred "gut instincts" to "carefully scripted messaging of a Democrat like Kamala Harris or even a mainstream Republican".


Social Psychology

Dominance Orientation:

Social psychology research into the Trump movement, such as that of Bob Altemeyer, Thomas F. Pettigrew, and Karen Stenner, views the Trump movement as primarily being driven by the psychological predispositions of its followers, although political and historical factors (reviewed elsewhere in this article) are also involved. An article in Social Psychological and Personality Science described a study concluding that

Trump followers prefer hierarchical and ethnocentric social orders that favor their in-group.
In the non-academic book, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers, Altemeyer and John Dean describe research which reaches the same conclusions.

Despite disparate and inconsistent beliefs and ideologies, a coalition of such followers can become cohesive and broad in part because each individual "compartmentalizes" their thoughts and they are free to define their sense of the threatened tribal in-group in their own terms, whether it is predominantly related to their cultural or religious views (e.g. the mystery of evangelical support for Trump), nationalism (e.g. the Make America Great Again slogan), or their race (maintaining a white majority).

​The following claim that instead of directly attempting to measure such ideological, racial or policy views, supporters of such movements can be reliably predicted by using two social psychology scales (singly or in combination), namely right-wing authoritarian (RWA) measures which were developed in the 1980s by Altemeyer and other authoritarian personality researchers and the social dominance orientation (SDO) scale developed in the 1990s by social dominance theorists:
  • Altemeyer,
  • MacWilliams,
  • Feldman,
  • Choma,
  • Hancock,
  • Van Assche
  • and Pettigrew

In May 2019, Monmouth University Polling Institute conducted a study in collaboration with Altemeyer in order to empirically test the hypothesis using the SDO and RWA measures. The finding was that social dominance orientation and affinity for authoritarian leadership are highly correlated with followers of Trumpism. This study further confirmed of the studies discussed in MacWilliams (2016), Feldman (2020), Choma and Hancock (2017), and Van Assche & Pettigrew (2016).

The research does not imply that the followers always behave in an authoritarian manner but that expression is contingent, which means there is reduced influence if it is not triggered by fear and what the subject perceives as threats. 

Similar social psychological techniques for analyzing Trumpism have been effective in identifying adherents of similar movements in Europe, including:
  • in Belgium and France
    • (Lubbers & Scheepers, 2002;
    • Swyngedouw & Giles, 2007;
    • Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002;
    • Van Hiel, 2012,
  • the Netherlands
    • (Cornelis & Van Hiel, 2014)
  • and Italy (Leone, Desimoni & Chirumbolo, 2014).

Quoting comments from participants in focus groups made up of people who had voted for Democrat Obama in 2012 but flipped to Trump in 2016, pollster Diane Feldman noted the anti-government, anti-coastal-elite anger:
  • 'They think they're better than us, they're P.C., they're virtue-signallers.' '[Trump] doesn't come across as one of those people who think they're better than us and are screwing us.' 'They lecture us.' 'They don't even go to church.' 'They're in charge, and they're ripping us off.'"

Comparisons to animal social behavior:

Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich explained the central role of dominance in his speech "Principles of Trumpism", comparing the needed leadership style to that of a violent bear. Psychology researcher Dan P. McAdams thinks a better comparison is to the dominance behavior of alpha male chimpanzees such as Yeroen, the subject of an extensive study of chimp social behavior conducted by renowned primatologist Frans de Waal.

Christopher Boehm, a professor of biology and anthropology agrees, writing, "his model of political posturing has echoes of what I saw in the wild in six years in Tanzania studying the Gombe chimpanzees," and "seems like a classic alpha display."

Using the example of Yeroen, McAdams describes the similarities: "On Twitter, Trump's incendiary tweets are like Yeroen's charging displays. In chimp colonies, the alpha male occasionally goes berserk and starts screaming, hooting, and gesticulating wildly as he charges toward other males nearby. Pandemonium ensues as rival males cower in fear ... Once the chaos ends, there is a period of peace and order, wherein rival males pay homage to the alpha, visiting him, grooming him, and expressing various forms of submission. In Trump's case, his tweets are designed to intimidate his foes and rally his submissive base ... These verbal outbursts reinforce the president's dominance by reminding everybody of his wrath and his force."

Primatologist Dame Jane Goodall explains that like the dominance performances of Trump, "In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays:
  • Stamping,
  • slapping the ground,
  • dragging branches,
  • throwing rocks.

​The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position." The comparison has been echoed by political observers sympathetic to Trump. Nigel Farage, an enthusiastic backer of Trump, stated that in the 2016 United States presidential debates where Trump loomed up on Clinton, he "looked like a big silverback gorilla", and added that "he is that big alpha male. The leader of the pack!"

McAdams points out the audience gets to vicariously share in the sense of dominance due to the parasocial bonding that his performance produces for his fans, as shown by Shira Gabriel's research studying the phenomenon in Trump's role in The Apprentice. McAdams writes that the "television audience vicariously experienced the world according to Donald Trump", a world where Trump says "Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat."

Collective narcissism
Further information:  ​
Cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller thinks Trump employed celebrity culture-glitz, illusion and fantasy to construct a shared alternate reality where lies become truth and reality's resistance to one's own dreams is overcome by the right attitude and bold self-confidence.

Trump's father indoctrinated his children from an early age into the positive thinking approach to reality advocated by the family's pastor Norman Vincent Peale. Trump said that Peale considered him the greatest student of his philosophy that regards facts as not important, because positive attitudes will instead cause what you "image" to materialize. Trump biographer Gwenda Blair thinks Trump "weaponized" Peale's self-help philosophy.

Collective narcissism measures have been shown to be a powerful predictor of membership in authoritarian movements including Trump's.
​
In his book Believe Me which details Trump's exploitation of white evangelical politics of fear, Messiah College history professor John Fea points out the narcissistic nature of the fanciful appeals to nostalgia, noting that "In the end, the practice of nostalgia is inherently selfish because it focuses entirely on our own experience of the past and not on the experience of others. For example, people nostalgic for the world of Leave It to Beaver may fail to recognize that other people, perhaps even some of the people living in the Cleaver's suburban "paradise" of the 1950s, were not experiencing the world in a way that they would describe as 'great.' Nostalgia can give us tunnel vision. Its selective use of the past fails to recognize the complexity and breadth of the human experience ... ."

According to Fea, the hopelessness of achieving an idealized past "causes us to imagine a future filled with horror" leading to conspiratorial narratives that easily mobilize white evangelicals. As a result, they are easily captivated by a strongman such as Trump who repeats and amplifies their fears while posing as the deliverer from them.

In his review of Fea's analysis of the impact of conspiracy theories on white evangelical Trump supporters, scholar of religious politics David Gutterman writes: "The greater the threat, the more powerful the deliverance." Gutterman's view is that "Donald J. Trump did not invent this formula; evangelicals have, in their lack of spiritual courage, demanded and gloried in this message for generations. Despite the literal biblical reassurance to 'fear not,' white evangelicals are primed for fear, their identity is stoked by fear, and the sources of fear are around every unfamiliar turn.

Social theory scholar John Cash notes that disaster narratives of impending horrors have a broad audience, pointing to a 2010 Pew study which found that 41 percent of those in the US think that the world will probably be destroyed by the middle of the century. Cash points out that certainties may be found in other narratives which also have the effect of uniting like minded individuals into shared "us versus them" narratives.
​
Cash thinks that psychoanalytic theorist Joel Whitebook is correct that "Trumpism as a social experience can be understood as a psychotic-like phenomenon, that "[Trumpism is] an intentional [...] attack on our relation to reality." Whitebook thinks Trump's playbook is like that of Putin's strategist Vladislav Surkov who employs "ceaseless shapeshifting, appealing to nationalist skinheads one moment and human rights groups the next."

Cash compares Alice in Wonderland to Trump's ability to seemingly embrace disparate fantasies in a series of contradictory tweets and pronouncements, for example appearing to encourage the "neo-Nazi protestors" after Charlottesville or for audiences with felt grievances about America's first black president, the claim that Obama wiretapped him.

Cash writes: "Unlike the resilient Alice, who ... insists on truth and accuracy when confronted by a world of reversals, contradictions, nonsense and irrationality, Trump reverses this process. ... Trump has dragged the uninhibited and distorted world of the other side of the looking-glass into our shared world."

Lifton sees important differences between Trumpism and typical cults, such as not advancing a totalist ideology and lack of isolation from the outside world. Lifton identifies similarities with cults that disparage the "fake world" created by the cult's titanic enemies.

Cultlike persuasion techniques are used, such as echoing of catch phrases. Examples include the use of call and response ("Clinton" triggers "lock her up"; "immigrants" triggers "build that wall"; "who will pay for it?" triggers "Mexico"), deepening the sense of unity between the leader and the community. Participants and observers at rallies have remarked on a liberating feeling which Lifton calls a "high state" that "can even be called experiences of transcendence".
​
Conspiracy theories
See also: List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump

Conservative culture commentator David Brooks observes that under Trump, this post-truth mindset, heavily reliant on conspiracy themes, came to dominate Republican identity, providing its believers a sense of superiority since such insiders possess important information most people do not have.

This results in an empowering sense of agency with the liberation, entitlement and group duty to reject "experts" and the influence of hidden cabals seeking to dominate them.

Prior to 2015, Trump already had established a bond with followers due to television and media appearances. For those sharing his political views, Trump's use of Twitter to share his views caused those bonds to intensify, causing his supporters to feel a deepened empathetic bond as with a friend—sharing his anger and outrage, taking pride in his successes, sharing in his denial of failures and his oftentimes conspiratorial views.

​Brooks thinks sharing of conspiracy theories has become the most powerful community bonding mechanism of the 21st century.

Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics describes the political efficacy of conspiracy theories. Some attribute Trump's political success to making such narratives a rhetorical staple. The conspiracy theory QAnon asserts that top Democrats run a child sex-trafficking ring and Trump is trying to dismantle it. An October 2020 Yahoo-YouGov poll showed that elements of the QAnon claims are said to be true by half of Trump supporters polled.

Some social psychologists see the predisposition of Trumpists towards interpreting social interactions in terms of dominance frameworks as extending to their relationship towards facts.

A study by Felix Sussenbach and Adam B. Moore found that the dominance motive strongly correlated with hostility towards disconfirming facts and affinity for conspiracies among 2016 Trump voters but not among Clinton voters.

Many critics note Trump's skill in exploiting narrative, emotion, and a whole host of rhetorical ploys to draw supporters into the group's common adventure as characters in a story much bigger than themselves.

It is a story that involves not just a community-building call to arms to defeat titanic threats, or of the leader's heroic deeds restoring American greatness, but of a restoration of each supporter's individual sense of liberty and control. Trump channels and amplifies these aspirations, explaining in one of his books that his bending of the truth is effective because it plays to people's greatest fantasies.

By contrast, Clinton was dismissive of such emotion-filled storytelling and ignored the emotional dynamics of the Trumpist narrative.

Cult of personality

Trump's support has been compared to a cult of personality. Trump's message and self-representation involved the creation of an identity as a non-politician, businessman, and great leader, distancing himself from traditional politicians and the Republican Party. His strategy involved the creation of an ethos of "saving America" through populist intentions and fighting imagined enemies with "I versus them" rhetoric that constituted the formation of a cult of personality.

Trump's embrace by a contingent of hard-core supporters allowed him to maintain a grip on his political party even after several actions and controversies would have discredited other politicians.

Trump was also widely described by news media and commentators as the recipient of a personality cult. His support was found to satisfy all parameters needed to determine a personality cult based on Max Weber's charismatic authority. Research found examples of asymmetric bias by his supporters in favor of Trump that did not exist among left-leaning individuals among alleged cases of "Trump derangement syndrome". 

Other research has argued that Trump's personality cult revolves around an "all-powerful, charismatic figure, contributing to a social milieu at risk for the erosion of democratic principles and the rise of fascism" based on the analysis of psycoanalists and sociopolitical historians.

Research has found positive correlations that his most loyal followers have a personality-based attraction to the president and that those with a positive correlation to conscienciousness among the Big Five personality traits among the self-dicipline facet were the most likely to be attracted to "personalistic, loyalty-demanding leaders" like Trump.

Several aspects of Trump's cult-like loyalty have been found to have religious-parallels among certain supporters, and that certain evangelicals have referred to him in religious terms by casting him as a divinely ordained savior and "chosen one".


Relationship with media:

Culture industry and pillarization
Further information: 
As Ross explains the concept, the culture industry replicates "fascist methods of mass hypnosis ... blurring the line between reality and fiction", explaining, "Trump is as much a pop-culture phenomenon as he is a political one."

Gordon observes that these purveyors of popular culture are not just leveraging outrage, but are turning politics into a more commercially lucrative product, a "polarized, standardized reflection of opinion into forms of humor and theatricalized outrage within narrow niche markets ... within which one swoons to one's preferred slogan and already knows what one knows.

Name just about any political position and what sociologists call 'pillarization'—or what the Frankfurt School called 'ticket' thinking—will predict, almost without fail, a full suite of opinions."
​
Trumpism is from Lebow's perspective, more of a result of this process than a cause. In the intervening years since Adorno's work, Lebow believes the culture industry has evolved into a politicizing culture market "based increasingly on the internet, constituting a self-referential hyperreality shorn from any reality of referants ... sensationalism and insulation intensify intolerance of dissonance and magnify hostility against alternative hyperrealities.

In a self-reinforcing logic of escalation, intolerance and hostility further encourage sensationalism and the retreat into insularity." From Gordon's view, "Trumpism itself, one could argue, is just another name for the culture industry, where the performance of undoing repression serves as a means for carrying on precisely as before."

From this viewpoint, the susceptibility to psychological manipulation of individuals with social dominance inclinations is not at the center of Trumpism, but is instead the "culture industry" which exploits these and other susceptibilities by using mechanisms that condition people to think in standardized ways. 

The burgeoning culture industry respects no political boundaries as it develops these markets with Gordon emphasizing "This is true on the left as well as the right, and it is especially noteworthy once we countenance what passes for political discourse today. Instead of a public sphere, we have what Jürgen Habermas long ago called the refeudalization of society"

What Kreiss calls an "identity-based account of media" is important for understanding Trump's success because "citizens understand politics and accept information through the lens of partisan identity. ... The failure to come to grips with a socially embedded public and an identity group–based democracy has placed significant limits on our ability to imagine a way forward for journalism and media in the Trump era. As Fox News and Breitbart have discovered, there is power in the claim of representing and working for particular publics, quite apart from any abstract claims to present the truth."

Profitability of spectacle and outrage
Further information: Outrage discourse

Examining Trumpism as an entertainment product, some media research focuses on outrage discourse, relating the entertainment value of Trump's rhetoric to the commercial interests of media companies. Outrage narratives on political blogs, talk radio and cable news shows were, in the decades prior, a new genre which grew due to its profitability.

Media critic David Denby writes, "Like a good standup comic, Trump invites the audience to join him in the adventure of delivering his act—in this case, the barbarously entertaining adventure of running a Presidential campaign that insults everybody."

Denby claims that Trump is good at delivering entertainment that consumers demand. He observes that "The movement's standard of allowable behavior has been formed by popular culture—by standup comedy and, recently, by reality TV and by the snarking, trolling habits of the Internet. ... it's exactly vulgar sensationalism and buffoonery that his audience is buying. Donald Trump has been produced by America."

Trump made false assertions, mean spirited attacks and dog whistle appeals to racial and religious intolerance. CBS's CEO Les Moonves remarked that "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS", demonstrating how Trump's messaging is compatible with the financial goals of media companies.Peter Wehner, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center considers Trump a political "shock jock" who "thrives on creating disorder, in violating rules, in provoking outrage."

The political profitability of incivility was demonstrated by the amount of airtime devoted to Trump's 2016 primary campaign—estimated at two billion to almost five billion dollars The advantage of incivility was as true in social media, where "a BuzzFeed analysis found that the top 20 fake election news stories emanating from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated more engagement on Facebook (as measured by shares, reactions, and comments) than the top 20 election stories produced by 19 major news outlets combined, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, and NBC News."

Social media:
Further information: 
​Surveying research of how Trumpist communication is well suited to social media, Brian Ott writes that, "commentators who have studied Trump's public discourse have observed speech patterns that correspond closely to what I identified as Twitter's three defining features [Simplicity, impulsivity, and incivility]."

Media critic Neal Gabler has a similar viewpoint writing that "What FDR was to radio and JFK to television, Trump is to Twitter." 

Outrage discourse expert Patrick O'Callaghan argues that social media is most effective when it utilizes the particular type of communication which Trump relies on. O'Callaghan notes that sociologist Sarah Sobieraj and political scientist Jeffrey M. Berry almost perfectly described in 2011 the social media communication style used by Trump long before his presidential campaign.

They explained that such discourse "[involves] efforts to provoke visceral responses (e.g., anger, righteousness, fear, moral indignation) from the audience through the use of overgeneralizations, sensationalism, misleading or patently inaccurate information, ad hominem attacks, and partial truths about opponents, who may be individuals, organizations, or entire communities of interest (e.g., progressives or conservatives) or circumstance (e.g., immigrants). Outrage sidesteps the messy nuances of complex political issues in favor of melodrama, misrepresentative exaggeration, mockery, and improbable forecasts of impending doom. Outrage talk is not so much discussion as it is verbal competition, political theater with a scorecard."

Due to Facebook's and Twitter's narrowcasting environment in which outrage discourse thrives. Trump's employment of such messaging at almost every opportunity was from O'Callaghan's account extremely effective because tweets and posts were repeated in viral fashion among like minded supporters, thereby rapidly building a substantial information echo chamber, a phenomenon Cass Sunstein identifies as group polarization, and other researchers refer to as a kind of self re-enforcing homophily. 

Within these information cocoons, it matters little to social media companies whether much of the information spread in such pillarized information silos is false, because as digital culture critic Olivia Solon points out, "the truth of a piece of content is less important than whether it is shared, liked, and monetized."

Citing Pew Research's survey that found 62% of US adults get their news from social media, Ott expresses alarm, "since the 'news' content on social media regularly features fake and misleading stories from sources devoid of editorial standards."

Media critic Alex Ross is similarly alarmed, observing, "Silicon Valley monopolies have taken a hands-off, ideologically vacant attitude toward the upswelling of ugliness on the Internet," and that "the failure of Facebook to halt the proliferation of fake news during the [Trump vs. Clinton] campaign season should have surprised no one. ... Traffic trumps ethics."

O'Callaghan's analysis of Trump's use of social media is that "outrage hits an emotional nerve and is therefore grist to the populist's or the social antagonist's mill.

Secondly, the greater and the more widespread the outrage discourse, the more it has a detrimental effect on social capital. This is because it leads to mistrust and misunderstanding amongst individuals and groups, to entrenched positions, to a feeling of 'us versus them'. So understood, outrage discourse not only produces extreme and polarising views but also ensures that a cycle of such views continues. (Consider also in this context Wade Robison (2020) on the 'contagion of passion' and Cass Sunstein (2001, pp. 98–136) on 'cybercascades'.)"

Ott agrees, stating that contagion is the best word to describe the viral nature of outrage discourse on social media, and writing that "Trump's simple, impulsive, and uncivil Tweets do more than merely reflect sexism, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia; they spread those ideologies like a social cancer."

Robison warns that emotional contagion should not be confused with the contagion of passions that James Madison and David Hume were concerned with. Robison states they underestimated the contagion of passions mechanism at work in movements, whose modern expressions include the surprising phenomena of rapidly mobilized social media supporters behind both the Arab Spring and the Trump presidential campaign writing,

​"It is not that we experience something and then, assessing it, become passionate about it, or not", and implying that "we have the possibility of a check on our passions."

Robison's view is that the contagion affects the way reality itself is experienced by supporters because it leverages how subjective certainty is triggered, so that those experiencing the contagiously shared alternate reality are unaware they have taken on a belief they should assess.


Similar movements, politicians and personalities
See also:  ​
Historical background in the United States
​
The roots of Trumpism in the United States can be traced to the Jacksonian era according to scholars Walter Russell Mead, Peter Katzenstein, and Edwin Kent Morris.

Andrew Jackson's followers felt he was one of them, enthusiastically supporting his defiance of politically correct norms of the nineteenth century and even constitutional law when they stood in the way of public policy popular among his followers. Jackson ignored the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia and initiated the forced Cherokee removal from their treaty protected lands to benefit white locals at the cost of between 2,000 and 6,000 dead Cherokee men, women, and children. Notwithstanding such cases of Jacksonian inhumanity,

​Mead's view is that Jacksonianism provides the historical precedent explaining the movement of followers of Trump, marrying grass-roots disdain for elites, deep suspicion of overseas entanglements, and obsession with American power and sovereignty, acknowledging that it has often been a xenophobic, "whites only" political movement.

Mead thinks this "hunger in America for a Jacksonian figure" drives followers towards Trump but cautions that historically "he is not the second coming of Andrew Jackson," stating that Trump's "proposals tended to be pretty vague and often contradictory," exhibiting the common weakness of newly elected populist leaders, commenting early in his presidency that "now he has the difficulty of, you know, 'How do you govern?'"

Morris agrees with Mead, locating Trumpism's roots in the Jacksonian era from 1828 to 1848 under the presidencies of Jackson, Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk.

On Morris's view, Trumpism also shares similarities with the post-World War I faction of the progressive movement which catered to a conservative populist recoil from the looser morality of the cosmopolitan cities and America's changing racial complexion. In his book The Age of Reform (1955), historian Richard Hofstadter identified this faction's emergence when "a large part of the Progressive-Populist tradition had turned sour, became illiberal and ill-tempered."

​Prior to World War II, conservative themes of Trumpism were expressed in the America First Committee movement in the early 20th century, and after World War II were attributed to a Republican Party faction known as the Old Right. By the 1990s, it became referred to as the paleoconservative movement, which according to Morris has now been rebranded as Trumpism.

Leo Löwenthal's book Prophets of Deceit (1949) summarized common narratives expressed in the post-World War II period of this populist fringe, specifically examining American demagogues of the period when modern mass media was married with the same destructive style of politics that historian Charles Clavey thinks Trumpism represents.

According to Clavey, Löwenthal's book best explains the enduring appeal of Trumpism and offers the most striking historical insights into the movement.

Writing in The New Yorker, journalist Nicholas Lemann states the post-war Republican Party ideology of fusionism, a fusion of pro-business party establishment with nativist, isolationist elements who gravitated towards the Republican and not the Democratic Party, later joined by Christian evangelicals "alarmed by the rise of secularism", was made possible by the Cold War and the "mutual fear and hatred of the spread of Communism".

An article in Politico has referred to Trumpism as "McCarthyism on steroids".

Championed by William F. Buckley Jr. and brought to fruition by Ronald Reagan in 1980, the fusion lost its glue with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which was followed by a growth of income inequality in the United States and globalization that "created major discontent among middle and low income whites" within and without the Republican Party.

​After the 2012 United States presidential election saw the defeat of Mitt Romney by Barack Obama, the party establishment embraced an "autopsy" report, titled the Growth and Opportunity Project, which "called on the Party to reaffirm its identity as pro-market, government-skeptical, and ethnically and culturally inclusive.
​
Ignoring the findings of the report and the party establishment in his campaign, Trump was "opposed by more officials in his own Party ... than any Presidential nominee in recent American history," but at the same time he won "more votes" in the Republican primaries than any previous presidential candidate. By 2016, "people wanted somebody to throw a brick through a plate-glass window", in the words of political analyst Karl Rove. His success in the party was such that an October 2020 poll found 58% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents surveyed considered themselves supporters of Trump rather than the Republican Party.

Parallels with fascism and trend towards illiberal democracy
Main article: Donald Trump and fascism
Further information: 
Trumpism has been likened to Machiavellianism and Benito Mussolini's Italian fascism, and significant academic debate exists over the prevalence of fascism and neo-fascism within Trumpism. 

Several scholars have rejected comparisons with fascism, instead viewing Trump as authoritarian and populist.

Some commentators have rejected the populist designation for Trumpism and view it instead as part of a trend towards a new form of fascism or neo-fascism, with some referring to it as explicitly fascist and others as authoritarian and illiberal.

​Others have more identified it as a form of mild fascism specific to the United States. Some historians, including many of those employing new fascism to describe Trumpism, write of the hazards of direct comparisons with European fascist regimes of the 1930s, stating that while there are parallels, there are also important dissimilarities.
​
American historian Robert Paxton changed his opinion about whether the democratic backsliding caused by Trumpism is in line with fascism.
In 2017, Paxton believed it bore greater resemblance to plutocracy. Paxton changed his opinion following the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, stating that it is "necessary" to understand Trumpism as a form of fascism. Drawing on Umberto Eco's 1995 essay Ur-Fascism, which outlines 14 characteristics of fascism, historian Bret Devereaux discusses how Trumpism satisfies each of the Sociology professor Dylan John Riley calls Trumpism "neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism" because it does not capture the same mass movement appeal of classical fascism.

Argentine historian Federico Finchelstein believes intersections exist between Peronism and Trumpism in terms of their disregard for the political system (in the areas of both domestic and foreign policy).

American historian Christopher Browning considers the long-term consequences of Trump's policies and the support which he receives for them from the Republican Party to be potentially dangerous for democracy. In the German-speaking debate, the term "fascism" initially appeared sporadically, mostly in connection with the crisis of confidence in politics and the media and described the strategy of mostly right-wing political actors who wish to stir up this crisis in order to profit from it. German literature has a more diverse range of analysis of Trumpism.

Others have argued that Trump is a totalitarian capitalist exploiting the "fascist impulses of his ordinary supporters that hide in plain sight." Michelle Goldberg, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, compares Trumpism to classical fascist themes.The "mobilizing vision" of fascism is of "the national community rising phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it", which "sounds a lot like MAGA" (Make America Great Again) according to Goldberg. Similarly, like the Trump movement, fascism sees a "need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny." They believe in "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason".

Conservative columnist George Will considers Trumpism similar to fascism, stating that Trumpism is "a mood masquerading as a doctrine". Will argues that national unity is based "on shared domestic dreads"—for fascists the "Jews", for Trump the media ("enemies of the people"), "elites" and "globalists". Solutions come not from tedious "incrementalism and conciliation", but from the leader (who claims "only I can fix it") unfettered by procedure.

The political base is kept entertained with mass rallies, but inevitably the strongman develops a contempt for those he leads. Will argues both are based on machismo, and in the case of Trumpism, "appeals to those in thrall to country-music manliness: 'We're truck-driving, beer-drinking, big-chested Americans too freedom-loving to let any itsy-bitsy [COVID-19] virus make us wear masks.'"

In How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, Turkish author Ece Temelkuran describes Trumpism as similar to rhetoric and actions of the Turkish politician Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during his rise to power. Some of these tactics and views are: 
Political scientist Mark Blyth and Jonathan Hopkin believe similarities exist between Trumpism and similar movements towards illiberal democracies worldwide, but that the Trumpist movement is not merely being driven by revulsion, loss, and racism. They argue that both on the right and on the left, the global economy is driving the growth of neo-nationalist coalitions which find followers who want to be free of the constraints which are being placed on them by establishment elites whose members advocate neoliberal economics and globalism.

Others emphasize the lack of interest in finding real solutions to the social malaise which have been identified, and they also believe those individuals and groups who are executing policy are actually following a pattern which has been identified by sociology researchers like Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman as originating in the post-World War II work of the Frankfurt School of social theory.

Based on this perspective, books such as Löwenthal and Guterman's Prophets of Deceit offer the best insights into how movements like Trumpism dupe their followers by perpetuating their misery and preparing them to move further towards an illiberal form of government.

Rush Limbaugh

​Trump is considered by some analysts to be following a blueprint of leveraging outrage, which was developed on partisan cable TV and talk radio shows such as the Rush Limbaugh radio show—a style that transformed talk radio and American conservative politics decades before Trump. 

Both shared "media fame" and "over-the-top showmanship", and built an enormous fan base with politics-as-entertainment, attacking political and cultural targets in ways that would have been considered indefensible and beyond the pale in the years before them. Both featured "the insults, the nicknames", and conspiracy theories. Both maintained global warming was a hoax, Barack Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen, and the danger of COVID-19 was vastly exaggerated by liberals. Both mocked people with disabilities.

Limbaugh, to whom Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020, preceded Trump :
  • in moving the Republican Party away from
    • "serious and substantive opinion leaders and politicians",
  • towards
    • political provocation,
    • entertainment,
    • and anti-intellectualism,
    • and popularizing and normalizing for "many Republican politicians and voters" what before his rise "they might have thought" but would have "felt uncomfortable saying".
  • His millions of fans were intensely loyal and "developed a capacity to excuse ... and deflect" his statements no matter how offensive and outrageous, "saying liberals were merely being hysterical or hateful. And many loved him even more for it."

Future impact:

Writing in The Atlantic, Yaseem Serhan states Trump's post-impeachment claim that "our historic, patriotic, and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun," should be taken seriously as Trumpism is a "personality-driven" populist movement, and other such movements—such as Berlusconism in Italy, Peronism in Argentina and Fujimorism in Peru, "rarely fade once their leaders have left office".

Joseph Lowndes, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon, argued that while current far-right Republicans support Trump, the faction rose before and will likely exist after Trump. 

Bobby Jindal and Alex Castellanos wrote in Newsweek that separating Trumpism from Donald Trump himself was key to the Republican Party's future following his loss in the 2020 United States presidential election. However, Trump went on to win the 2024 United States presidential election with victories in all seven crucial swing states.

In 2024, President Kevin Roberts of The Heritage Foundation stated that he sees the role of Heritage as "institutionalizing Trumpism."


Policies:

Economic policy
Further information: Economic policy of the first Donald Trump administration

Trumpism "promises new jobs and more domestic investment". Trump's hard line against export surpluses of American trading partners and protectionist trade policies led to a tense situation in 2018 with mutually imposed tariffs by the United States and the European Union versus China.

Trump secures the support of his political base emphasizing neo-nationalism and criticism of globalization. One book suggested that Trump "radicalized economics" for white working- to middle-class voters by implying that "undeserving [minority] groups are getting ahead while their group is being left behind."

Foreign policy
Further information: Foreign policy of the first Donald Trump administration

In terms of foreign policy in the sense of Trump's "America First", unilateralism and isolationism is preferred to a multilateral policy. National interests are particularly emphasized, especially in the context of economic treaties and alliance obligations. Trump has shown a disdain for traditional American allies such as Canada as well as transatlantic partners NATO and the European Union.

​Conversely, Trump has shown sympathy for autocratic rulers, such as Russian president Vladimir Putin, whom Trump often praised even before taking office, and during the 2018 Russia–United States summit. The "America First" foreign policy includes promises by Trump to end American involvement in foreign wars, notably in the Middle East, while also issuing tighter foreign policy through sanctions against Iran, among other countries. 

Trump's proposals during his second presidency to expand the United States by acquiring Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal were described by CNN as part of his nationalist "America First" agenda and having "modern echoes of the 19th century doctrine of Manifest Destiny".

Religious policyTrump wove Christian religious imagery into his 2024 presidential campaign, characterizing it as a "righteous crusade" against "atheists, globalists and the Marxists". He stated that his aims included restoring the United States "as one nation under God with liberty and justice for all".

​Trump has been critical of what he sees as a persecution of Christians. On February 6, following the National Prayer Breakfast, he signed an executive order to create a task force to "immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI — terrible — and other agencies". 

Donald Trump appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the task force and appointed Paula White to direct the White House Faith Office.

Click on any blue hyperlink below for Trumpism beyond the United States:
See Also: Organizations:







January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Attack
On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump in an attempted self-coup, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

They sought to keep him in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of the president-elect Joe Biden. The attack was unsuccessful in preventing the certification of the election results. According to the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election.

Within 36 hours, five people died: one was shot by the Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes, including a police officer who died of natural causes a day after being assaulted by rioters.

Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. For more details on the fake electors scheme, see Trump fake electors plot.

Encouraged by Trump, on January 5 and 6, thousands of his supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., to support his false claims that the 2020 election had been "stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats", and demand that then-vice president Mike Pence and Congress reject Biden's victory. 

Starting at noon on January 6 at a "Save America" rally on the Ellipse, Trump gave a speech in which he repeated false claims of election irregularities and said, "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore". As Congress began the electoral vote count, thousands of attendees, some armed, walked to the Capitol, and hundreds breached police perimeters. 

Among the rioters were leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia groups.

The FBI estimates 2,000–2,500 people entered the Capitol Building during the attack. Some participated in vandalism and looting, including in the offices of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Congress members. 

Rioters assaulted Capitol Police officers and journalists. With building security breached, Capitol Police evacuated and locked down both chambers of Congress and several buildings in the Complex. Rioters occupied the empty Senate chamber while federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor. 

Pipe bombs were found at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters, and Molotov cocktails were discovered in a vehicle near the Capitol. Trump resisted sending the National Guard to quell the mob. Later that afternoon in a Twitter video, he restated false claims about the election and told his supporters to "go home in peace". 

The Capitol was cleared of rioters by mid-evening, and the electoral vote count was resumed and completed by the early morning of January 7, concluding with Pence declaring the final electoral vote count in favor of President-elect Biden.

Pressured by his cabinet, the threat of removal, and many resignations, Trump later conceded to an orderly transition of power in a televised statement.

A week after the attack, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection, making him the only U.S. president to be impeached twice. After Trump had left office, the Senate voted 57–43 in favor of conviction, but fell short of the required two-thirds, resulting in his acquittal. 

Senate Republicans blocked a bill to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack, so the House instead approved a select investigation committee. They held televised public hearings on the attack, voted to subpoena Trump, and recommended that the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecute him.

Following a special counsel investigation, Trump was in August 2023 indicted on four charges, which were all dismissed in November 2024, following his reelection to the presidency. Trump and elected Republican officials have promoted a revisionist history of the event by downplaying the severity of the violence, spreading conspiracy theories, and portraying those charged with crimes as hostages and martyrs.

Of the 1,424 people then charged with federal crimes relating to the event 1,010 pled guilty, and 1,060 were sentenced, 64% of whom received a jail sentence. 

​Some participants in the attack were linked to far-right extremist groups or conspiratorial movements, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters, some of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy. 

Enrique Tarrio, then chairman of the Proud Boys, received the longest sentence, a 22-year prison term. 

On January 20, 2025, upon taking office, Trump granted clemency to all January 6 rioters, including those convicted of violent offenses.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the January 6, 2021 Attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump Supporters:







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