HURTLING ONWARD THROUGH THE FOG ON TRUMP'S TRAIN WRECK

In “From Farce to Tragedy,” the author traces the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as a turning point in American political life. What once carried elements of chaos and dark comedy has hardened into something more deliberate and consequential. Trump’s return to power, framed by him as total vindication, has brought an unprecedented expansion of executive authority, the systematic weakening of institutions, and the normalization of personal loyalty over law. Drawing on sharp observations from leading journalists and scholars, the piece shows how emergency powers, executive orders, and transactional politics have reshaped governance at home and abroad. The result is not renewed greatness, but a spectacle of democratic erosion—an American tragedy unfolding without the comfort of a happy ending.

By Cemal Tunçdemir*

“What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending,” the American critic William Dean Howells, who was a central figure in Gilded Age American literature, once said. 

The second coming of Donald J. Trump to the US Presidency was not an accident of fate, nor even absurdity of democracy. It was a sequel demanded by majority of American voters that having once liked the “first season” and asked upon longer run. 

The real tragedy was not that Trump was Trump, that was obvious from the start, but that so many Americans mistook his loudness for conviction and saw his challenge to the rules as bravery.

“The first time around, there was something almost thrilling about Donald Trump as president,” explains American historian and journalist Thomas Frank, “The respectable world came together against him with a gratifying unanimity: the legacy media, the nonprofits, the universities, the think tanks, the tech sector, the intelligence community. Insulting this imbecile became the most rewarding pastime on earth.” 

By contrast, according to Frank, for much of 2025, the feeling was darker. “Absolute despair” if you will.

The difference in the second term wasn’t just the lack of the thrilling or accidental comedic elements of the first term. Donald Trump viewed his return to the White House as a profound vindication. In his telling, his four years of exile had proven that he was right about everything. 

About economy, about “stolen” election, about press, about elites, about universities, about institutions. This absolute conviction liberated him from all doubt, and all rules.

Trump’s unrestrained mind is on full display in a recent letter he sent to the Prime Minister of Norway as he wrote, “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”

“Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality,” observes Anne Applebaum, “one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him.”

“Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 in some ways but on steroids,” compares Peter Baker, New York Times’s chief White House correspondent who have covered six US presidents, including Trump in his first term, “A lot of the things that he talked about doing or exploring in the first term -or tried but failed to do or was dissuaded from doing-he’s now doing and in spades.”

Unlike the first term, in the beginning of his second term, there was less confusion, more intent. And more so preparation. Trump has rolled out many of the Project 2025, 900-page Heritage Foundation-led blueprint, he once claimed he has nothing to do with. 

Many of Trump’s executive orders reshaping the government were outlined in this right-wing policy plan. From the early days of his tenure, Donald Trump began advancing Project 2025’s primary objective: the "deconstruction of the administrative state," a term coined by his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. He has expanded the scope of executive power in ways unparalleled in modern history.

By the end of 2025, some 317,000 federal employees were out of the government, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This was the largest reduction of the federal workforce in American history. He even fired members and officials from various independent and bipartisan boards, agencies, and commissions, including dozens of inspectors general, key watchdogs for waste, fraud, and abuse across all government.

(*) Cemal Tunçdemir is a New York–based veteran journalist with extensive experience covering US politics and international affairs. 

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