Teddy Friesz ’29 is a history and philosophy double major. He enjoys reading, arguing about politics and going down Wikipedia rabbit holes. Besides The Flat Hat, he is involved in Ethics Club and Catholic Campus Ministry.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
A couple weeks ago, President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that “it’s pretty clear” he can’t run for a third term. This came after, just days prior, he refused to rule out the possibility and cited his poll numbers, which he claimed are his “best numbers ever.” Ignoring for a moment the fact that Trump’s net approval rating of minus 18 is actually his worst ever, the fact that it took Trump months to finally admit to something that is very explicitly laid out in the Constitution demonstrates that the Trump era is truly unprecedented. America has had some truly terrible presidents throughout its history, but none have shown such a blatant disregard for the country’s institutions as Trump. We have a president who denies the results of a presidential election, who has engaged in corruption and committed crimes while in office and who demonstrates with every executive order he signs that he does not care about the Constitution and is only interested in strengthening his own power. In times like these, it is only natural for people to long for the day when the Trump era is finally over and America is once again governed by laws and norms.
But as much as I sympathize with these sentiments, I also think they are overly naive. Trump has broken some of America’s most sacred precedents. He has actively fostered hate and division, and he has demonstrated that a sufficiently bold and unscrupulous leader can flagrantly violate the law and receive no consequences. These changes are truly enormous, and it will not be easy to put the toothpaste back in the tube. So while Trump may have ruled out running for a third term, this era of political polarization and unraveling institutions is likely to continue long after he is gone. Below are just a few of the many ways Trump has damaged this country irreparably.
A 2023 study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 32% of Americans say the 2020 presidential election was stolen. In other words, around one in three Americans think that the democratic process in 2020 failed to deliver and that the man who became president in 2021 was never rightfully elected. I think it goes without saying that such a large amount of distrust in America’s democratic institutions does not bode well for the system’s longevity. What is perhaps even more concerning is the effect party affiliation has on people’s view of the 2020 election. According to that same survey, a whopping 66% of Republicans believe that the 2020 election was stolen, compared to 27% of independents and only 4% of Democrats. Equally concerning is how Republicans’ views of the 2024 election, which Trump won, differ from their views of the 2020 election. A recent poll by the Associated Press found that about six in 10 Republicans have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that the votes in the 2024 election were counted fairly. I think the pattern here is quite clear. We now have a party for which the majority of its members only trust elections when their candidate wins and believe the election was stolen if their candidate loses. Such a profound distrust of American elections is now firmly ingrained in the Republican Party zeitgeist and is unlikely to simply go away once Trump is out of office.
Throughout his political career, Trump has committed numerous crimes, including mishandling classified documents, attempting to use slates of fake electors to overturn election results, and openly inciting an insurrection to march on the U.S. Capitol. While these crimes are shocking enough, it is Trump’s complete lack of consequences for his actions that is most damaging. Through a combination of prosecutors’ poor handling of the cases and the intervention of a blatantly partisan Supreme Court, Trump managed to evade justice for every crime he committed. He was convicted on only minor fraud charges in New York, and even then, he was given no sentence, not even a fine. His remaining charges were all dismissed either before or shortly following his victory in the 2024 presidential election. Most importantly, Trump’s crimes did not even end his political career. He was able to bounce back and become president again, despite everything he had done. Trump’s ability to evade justice sends a clear message to other politicians that, as long as their crimes are committed in office, they are effectively above the law. This sets a dangerous and lasting precedent. As such, there is no reason to think that the corruption and lawbreaking that characterizes the Trump presidency will go away any time soon.
One of the biggest changes Trump has made during his second term has been his attitude towards the federal bureaucracy. While the bureaucracy is formally under Congressional oversight and was designed to be apolitical, Trump has been rapidly transforming it into a presidential instrument. One of Trump’s first actions when he began his second term was to fire any federal employee associated with investigations or prosecutions of him or his allies. He has also fired thousands of other employees, in many cases for their political views, and is replacing them with sycophants who are loyal to him. Trump has turned the once-independent civil service into the president’s puppet. We now have a more powerful executive with fewer checks and balances. Congress has essentially ceded its power over the bureaucracy to the president, and it is difficult to see how Congress could ever reclaim this power. Even if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, they will no doubt take advantage of their newfound power over the civil service. We should expect to see the next Democratic president fire all of the conservative bureaucrats and replace them with liberals, only to have the reverse happen when a Republican becomes president. Effectively, the bureaucracy will now become a game of partisan ping-pong, with all of its decisions reflecting the will of the party in power. The civil service, once a beacon of neutrality in a sea of partisanship, has been irreversibly transformed into just another partisan institution.
Finally, and perhaps most tragically, Americans have completely lost the ability to have civil disagreements. People on both sides of the political spectrum have come to view support for the other side as not a mere disagreement but a personal moral failing. In the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, many conservatives used the incident as a pulpit to characterize people on the left as dangerous radicals who are prone to violence. There is no doubt that Trump’s divisive speeches, in which he has threatened to use the military against the so-called “enemy within,” have contributed greatly to this phenomenon. But unfortunately, the problem of political intolerance is not exclusive to the right. After Trump’s victory in 2024, countless people on the left expressed bewilderment that anyone could have voted for him and concluded that Trump’s 77 million voters must all be racists and sexists who just wanted to see marginalized people suffer. This phenomenon, in which people are completely unable to empathize with those from the opposing party, has now become so ingrained and so widespread that it will take decades of collective effort to reverse.
While there are no doubt countless other ways Trump’s effects on this country will be permanent, I hope the four I gave were enough to illustrate the point. While Trump’s presidency may end in 2029, the Trump era — one of hatred, lawlessness and crumbling institutions — has only just begun.
