PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - Trump’s first year: a nonpartisan scorecard.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
12 months ago, we laid the groundwork to evaluate President Donald Trump’s second term as objectively as possible.
Our goal was to take a few objective metrics to judge a president’s success: Things like economic data, promises kept, and the sentiment of American citizens. Given how much analysis and opinion we engage with every day, we thought we could refer back to these benchmarks periodically as a nearly unimpeachable way to judge the president’s performance.
When I think back to this time 12 months ago, one big detail stands out: I wasn’t here. In fact, with the timing of a true troll, my son was born on the day of Trump’s inauguration. Just days before, we had published the set of metrics we’d use to evaluate the president. It was the last major piece we published before I stepped away from Tanglefor a month.
Now, here we are. Trump’s second term is now one year old (just like my son), and I’m back in the driver’s seat, ready to use the metrics we developed last year to evaluate the Trump administration. Before we get started, I want to give a quick note about our process. The benchmarks we chose to track are mostly hard metrics, but with a few qualitative assessments. We wanted to include things that are easy to measure (like gas prices) as well as some things that take a little more effort to evaluate (like whether the administration has kept a promise or not).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:08.4 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. |
| 0:27.6 | I'm your host, Isaac Saul. Today is Friday, January 23rd. I'm here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, bracing for what's supposed to be a historic winter storm all across the United States or across |
| 0:40.0 | a vast swath of the United States. But today, we're here with a different agenda. |
| 0:47.3 | Twelve months ago, we laid the groundwork to evaluate President Donald Trump's second term as |
| 0:53.4 | objectively as possible. |
| 0:55.7 | Our goal was to take a few objective metrics to judge a president's success, things like economic |
| 1:02.6 | data promises kept and the sentiment of American citizens. Given how much analysis and opinion |
| 1:08.0 | we engage with every day, we thought we could refer back to these benchmarks periodically as a nearly unimpeachable way to judge the president's performance. |
| 1:16.5 | When I think back to this time, 12 months ago, one big detail stands out. I wasn't here. In fact, |
| 1:22.8 | with the timing of a true troll, my son was born on the day of Trump's inauguration. Just days before, |
| 1:29.4 | we had published the set of metrics we'd used to evaluate the president. It was the last |
| 1:34.3 | major piece we published before I stepped away from Tangle for a month. Now, here we are. Trump's second |
| 1:40.8 | term is now one year old, just like my son, and I'm back in the driver's seat, |
| 1:45.0 | ready to use the metrics we developed last year to evaluate the Trump administration. |
| 1:50.8 | Before we get started, I want to give you a quick note about our process. |
| 1:54.9 | The benchmarks that we chose to track are mostly hard metrics, but with a few qualitative assessments. |
| 2:01.1 | We wanted to include things that are easy to measure, like gas prices, as well as some things that take a little more effort to evaluate, |
| 2:08.3 | like whether the administration has kept a promise or not. |
| 2:11.5 | We put these benchmarks into four groups for today's episode. |
| 2:14.6 | One, traditional economic metrics that presidents are judged by, like |
| 2:19.0 | the price of gasoline and unemployment rates and economic metrics we think their administration |
... |
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