Trump's (second) first year
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One year ago today, Donald Trump was sworn into office as the 47th president, having already served as the 45th. We look at some of what he has done in this first year back in the White House.
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast for Tuesday, January 20th, 2026. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. We're recording this at 12.20 p.m. Eastern time. And almost exactly one year ago from when we're taping this, |
| 0:22.9 | Donald Trump took office for a second time. Tam, Mara, our intrepid White House reporters |
| 0:27.8 | who have been following every minute of the past year. I want to talk about this first year back |
| 0:32.3 | in the White House. And I want to start by asking you both a simple question, which is, if you had to summarize this past year in one word, what would it be and why? |
| 0:42.8 | My word would be power, as in comma, unchecked executive. |
| 0:47.7 | He has transformed our system of government to instead of three co-equal branches and an executive that has checks and balances, |
| 0:57.9 | limiting their powers, he is well on his way to creating a system with a much, much more powerful |
| 1:05.6 | executive that is unfettered. How long that will last in the future when he's gone is unclear, how much |
| 1:14.2 | the Supreme Court might chip away at that is also unclear because they have a ton of big cases |
| 1:19.6 | that they haven't yet decided about executive power, but that's the word I'd use. |
| 1:24.6 | I was just listening back to an interview I did with a political scientist |
| 1:29.1 | recently who described this term as President Trump pushing on an open door. That is, you know, |
| 1:36.2 | as Mara talks about unchecked. But that's not one word. No, I know, no, I know. Here's my one word. |
| 1:43.5 | And I'm cheating on this too. |
| 1:45.4 | My one word is Yolo. |
| 1:47.7 | You only live once. |
| 1:49.4 | President Trump is governing like someone who just doesn't care about what other people think, who does not care about norms. |
| 1:59.6 | He and his team say that he has this almost unlimited Article 2 power. |
| 2:06.3 | And I would, you know, underneath this heading, talk about all kinds of things. Like his retribution |
| 2:12.0 | campaign, which is largely unchecked and very widespread. He is rewarding allies and punishing perceived enemies, |
| 2:22.7 | going back to the pardon of all of those January 6th defendants, his pardon of any number of |
| 2:28.1 | other people convicted of things that are sort of similar to what he faced prosecution for back when he was out of office. |
... |
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