President-elect Donald Trump is poised to return to the Oval Office with more political power than he possessed entering his first term, according to allies and even some Democrats — despite some of his controversial handpicked nominees and immediate lame-duck status.
Trump’s transition operation leading up to Inauguration Day in January 2017 was disorganized and unprepared. Cabinet and senior White House staff selections were slow. But this time, Trump has been naming people to serve in his second administration at a faster clip.
Republican lawmakers and strategists say they see a more professional transition entity and a more prepared president-elect. They also have said Trump learned a few things from his first four years in Washington and realizes the next two years will be critical — particularly since he learned what most presidents do: Midterm elections can be brutal for an incumbent.
A number of House Republican lawmakers last week emerged from a Wednesday morning address by Trump to say he is eager to get to work immediately on Jan. 20. Several members said GOP leadership should do whatever the 47th president wants in pursuit of his populist agenda.
“I think it will be a little bit different this Congress, simply because we’ve got a little bit of discipline,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., told NewsNation on Sunday. “You know, President Trump is not shy about expressing his opinions.”
If any members get out of line and call for leadership to break with Trump, Cole said he would have a straightforward message.
“You have your majority because of President Trump,” said Cole, an affable lawmaker who has been dispatched to work with members from his often-fractious conference. “Look, he’s won the popular vote … for the first time in 20 years any Republican’s been able to do that, and so we ought to be working with him to try and achieve his objectives.”
The incoming administration will be operating against a clock as soon as he is sworn in at the Capitol. The 2026 midterm elections will be less than two years away, meaning Republicans, who will control both chambers in the new Congress, will need to quickly begin crafting partisan bills to pass under reconciliation, the fast-track budget measure that gets around the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for legislation.
Even with majorities, GOP lawmakers and Trump will inevitably face challenges. One big hurdle that has hamstrung them in the past: the challenge of crafting complex legislation to the satisfaction of conservative House members from deep-red districts and the handful of remaining Senate moderates. Another complication in recent years has been assuaging House GOP members from competitive districts.
Trump himself appears to sense he could be at the zenith of his political power, saying Monday he has “the upper hand, at this moment.”
“And while many others are calling for meetings, I am not looking for retribution, grandstanding or to destroy people who treated me very unfairly, or even badly beyond comprehension,” he told Fox News Digital. “I am always looking to give a second and even third chance, but never willing to give a fourth chance — that is where I hold the line.”
Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, a Democratic senator who could become a swing vote with the coming retirement of West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin III, said during his own Sunday television appearance that the incoming president “is the strongest that he’s been in the three cycles” he has run.
Private sector analysts and financial markets also are paying close attention. Oxford Analytica, owned by CQ Roll Call’s parent company FiscalNote, wrote in a briefing last week that Trump’s win “means the global economy and markets are set for a period of volatility and uncertainty.”
“With a stronger popular mandate than he received in 2016, Trump will try to push ahead with his ‘America First’ agenda of more tariffs, curbs on immigration, deregulation and tax cuts,” Oxford noted. “Optimism that his tax-cutting and deregulatory agenda will boost U.S. [gross domestic product] growth is, for the time being, outweighing concerns about his protectionist policies and approach to the rule of law.
‘Mandate/Not a mandate’
As Republican lawmakers and Trump aides begin working on reconciliation, the Senate will be tasked with vetting and voting on his Cabinet and department-level nominees. Some GOP senators have expressed some concern with a few of Trump’s picks, including former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general.
Others, however, appear eager to confirm just about whoever Trump wants.
“My bias would be to vote for the people that President Trump wants to serve [in his] administration,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told NewsNation, saying he has grown annoyed with the Senate’s constitutional role of confirming a president’s executive and judicial nominees: “I don’t particularly like being the human resource department of [the] administration.”
A number of Trump allies and his campaign organization since Election Day have argued voters handed him a mandate to enact his agenda, especially because he, for the first time, won the popular vote.
“We have an incredible opportunity in front of us. The American people have spoken, and they have given President Trump and our House Republicans a mandate,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in a Sunday fundraising email.
Many Democratic lawmakers and former officials, however, simply disagree.
“Trump has fallen below 50 [percent] in the popular vote. His margin of victory (pop vote + electoral college) is the third smallest since 1888. (Only JFK in ’60 and Nixon in ’68 were smaller.),” Richard Stengel, a former State Department official in the Obama administration, wrote on X. “If 238k votes in the blue wall states had been different, he would have lost. Not a mandate.”
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