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Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on how Trump changed Washington
Clip: 1/20/2025 | 6m 2sVideo has Closed Captions
Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on how Trump and Washington have changed since his first term
NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Amna Nawaz to discuss the latest political news, including how the perception of President Trump has changed over four years, who Trump has surrounded himself with for his second term in office and how much Congress has changed since 2016.
Major corporate funding for the PBS News Hour is provided by BDO, BNSF, Consumer Cellular, American Cruise Lines, and Raymond James. Funding for the PBS NewsHour Weekend is provided by...
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Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on how Trump changed Washington
Clip: 1/20/2025 | 6m 2sVideo has Closed Captions
NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Amna Nawaz to discuss the latest political news, including how the perception of President Trump has changed over four years, who Trump has surrounded himself with for his second term in office and how much Congress has changed since 2016.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipAMNA NAWAZ: For more inauguration analysis, we turn now to our Politics Monday duo.
That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.
Great to see you both.
Amy, we were speaking earlier about how the idea that certainly American politics is different now, the party is different, the Republican Party.
Perceptions of Mr. Trump himself have changed over time.
Tell us about that.
AMY WALTER, The Cook Political Report: Well, it is quite remarkable looking at what has now been almost a 10-year political career of Donald Trump, where he started when he came down that escalator to where he is today, but where he was at this point four years ago, sitting at about 36 percent favorable rating, one of the lowest for a one-term president in modern history.
Certainly, most folks would have thought, well, that was the end of Donald Trump's political career.
Today, he comes into office with, for the first time really in the history of his time as president, with a higher favorable than unfavorable rating, slightly, somewhere around 47, 48 percent.
So it's not that he's now jumped up into, say, the stratosphere in terms of opinions about him.
I think what people -- how people view him now is with really clear-eyed -- they're clear-eyed about who he is.
Even though they may not like him personally, they do expect him to deliver on the promises that he put forward, especially on immigration and on the economy.
But, as I said, it's not a deep well of goodwill, but it's a bigger well of goodwill than he had either in 2017, certainly than at this point in 2021.
AMNA NAWAZ: And, Tam, to that point, the entire Trump team is coming in better prepared than they did back in 2017.
He's surrounding himself with none of the sort of establishment members that he had before.
So tell us about the folks around him now.
Who's helping to call the shots?
TAMARA KEITH, National Public Radio: Right.
So.
He has surrounded himself with people who are loyal to him and loyal to the MAGA way.
Susie Wiles is the chief of staff, and she is coming in, running things in -- she also helped run his campaign.
And the idea, at least, and we will see if it holds, is that she is running it in a more structured fashion.
There aren't the feuding factions within the White House, the feuding power centers that there were before.
There isn't a Steve Bannon walking around.
However, there are people like Stephen Miller, who will be a deputy chief of staff, but also leading national security and really immigration-focused.
He spent four years out of office focused on coming up with ways to enact his agenda and Trump's agenda on immigration and came in ready with all of these executive actions that we're expecting from President Trump.
Now, many of them could face legal challenges too, but they came in ready with a focus on that.
Also, Russ Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, he was there before.
He has done it before.
And he has spent four years thinking about how to enact policy through this very powerful office that nobody actually thinks about very often, the Office of Management and Budget.
AMNA NAWAZ: And, Tam, we have already seen on day one, one team member leave.
That is Vivek Ramaswamy.
He was originally paired with Elon Musk to help run this Department of Government Efficiency, commission.
They just announced literally hours after President Trump was sworn in he's no longer going to have that role.
What should we know about that change?
TAMARA KEITH: He is apparently planning to run for office in Ohio.
He -- it depends on how you count.
Is it a Scaramucci or like 1/11th of a Scaramucci?
He didn't last a whole day.
However, the Department of Government Efficiency was announced a couple of months ago.
And there are really big questions about it.
It is not actually a department of the government.
It is an outside advisory group that has -- within moments of Trump being sworn in, faces a lawsuit from a number of groups, labor unions and others, arguing that it is operating outside of the rules for government advisory groups.
It's -- certainly, having one less leader at the top does increase the efficiency of the Department of Government Efficiency, even though it's not a department.
AMY WALTER: Yes.
I mean, the one thing I would also add is, Washington has changed a lot since 2017 in terms of the -- as Tam pointed out, the kinds of people that he has around him.
The Congress, 68 percent of members of the House have been elected since 2016.
When we talk about norm-busting for so many of these folks... AMNA NAWAZ: Right.
AMY WALTER: ... this is their normal.
There is nothing odd about the way that Donald Trump's behaving.
So, so much about Washington and the way that people consume information has changed.
The way that people are getting their information from social media or from other news sources that aren't traditional media is even more profound than it was back then.
What hasn't changed is Donald Trump.
I think he is still the same person.
We should expect the same kind of behavior, the disruption, the chaos, the speaking off the cuff, the not staying really focused on the things that his staff may want him to be focused on.
And what -- the real question is going to be whether or not Americans and those around him decide that those same behaviors are something that they can live with or whether they want something different.
TAMARA KEITH: Yes, during the first Trump term, there was a fair bit of self-sabotage that happened... AMY WALTER: Yes.
TAMARA KEITH: ... that wasn't just staff work.
And so there's only so much that an experienced chief of staff can manage when the principal is the one who sometimes goes -- veers very far off message, changes policy, announces policy before it's ready to go.
AMNA NAWAZ: If day one is any indication, we will see.
Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, always great to see you both.
Thank you.
TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.
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