Taking Stock of President Trump’s First Six Months

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the first six months of his second term, President Trump has done a lot of what he said he would do, from proposing sweeping tariffs to gutting federal agencies and their workers to deporting thousands of immigrants. And Americans now await the effects of Republicans’ massive bill cutting taxes and expanding immigration enforcement while slashing popular programs. We check in on Trump’s ambitions and the ways Congress and the courts are expanding, or checking, his presidential power. Guests: Philip Bump, national columnist, Washington Post; author of "The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America" Claudia Grisales, congressional correspondent, NPR David Graham, staff writer, The Atlantic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, commemorating 40 years of educating people who learn differently, with programs on campus and online for both students and professionals.
0:11.6	Learn more at landmark.edu.
0:14.8	Support for KQED podcasts comes from the San Jose Museum of Art.
0:19.2	Photographer Paw Hoare explores homeland and family among her Hmong American Community.
0:25.4	See the imaginative landscape.
0:27.7	Learn more at S-JM-U-S-A-R-T.org.
0:32.5	From K-Q-E-D.
0:34.1	Music KQED. From KQED, I'm Alexis Madrigal, and we're just about 600 years into the second
0:52.9	Trump presidency.
0:53.9	No, that's six months, actually, and so much has happened.
0:58.0	We've got a trio of national political journalists with us, and we're going to ask collectively what the Trump administration has accomplished,
1:07.0	how the Republican-controlled Congress has worked with the president,
1:16.3	and how the major news events of the last few weeks are affecting the MAGA coalition.
2:01.1	That's all coming up next, right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Well, here we are. The president has gotten his signature legislation through Congress, including massive new funding for ICE and major tax cuts for the very rich, while also cutting Medicaid. The Department of Education is being eviscerated. And the tariffs. The tariffs are back. We're going to try to make sense of some of these last few weeks in terms of Trump's power, his base, democratic opposition, and the other branches of government.
2:06.1	Here to help us connect the dots, we've got Philip Bump, who's a national columnist at the
2:10.1	Washington Post, also the author of the book, The Aftermath, The Last Days of the Baby
2:15.1	Boom and the Future of Power in America. Welcome, Philip.
2:18.3	Thank you, sir. Good to be here. We have Claudia Grisalis, who is congressional correspondent with MPR. Welcome.
2:26.1	Thanks for having me. And we have David Graham, staff writer at the Atlantic and also author of The Project,
2:32.5	how Project 2025 is reshaping America. Welcome back, David. Good to be here.
2:38.7	So, Dave, let's talk about Project 2025 and the bill that made it through Congress. If you were just
2:44.4	looking at the coverage of Project 2025 or reading through it yourself, was that a good preview of this legislation or not?
	...

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