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Welcome to Talking Fed's, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests

for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day.

I'm Harry Lidman.

Ever since the country first encountered Donald Trump as a presidential candidate,

the prevailing question has been,

how bad can he get?

And the answer, time and time again, has been worse than we could have imagined.

With each new campaign, including his most recent one, Trump has been ever more, well, Trumpian,

reaching higher and higher levels of dishonesty and viciousness that we thought no United States

President could ever approach.

We are about two weeks in now from the fateful 24 election, nine weeks until the

inauguration of Donald Trump, and a mere 217 weeks until the end of his second term. The hope

against Hope View would be something like this, having achieved a decisive victory and vanquished

his political opponents, and with his

focus typically fixed on himself rather than his campaign promises, Trump could lean toward a

half-crazy second term. Perhaps he might even aim to secure a place in history that distances him

somewhat from his current standing

as the most authoritarian and feckless figure in American presidential history.

...