A year ago Tuesday, Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time as president. It’s been a year of rapid movement, controversy and upheaval. It’s also been utterly mystifying.
Why does the president keep doing things that are against his political self-interest? Why has he ignored the reality that the midterms will be decided not only by how much his base is energized but by whether Republicans carry independents and soft partisans? Mr. Trump is missing chances to draw critical swing voters the GOP’s way. He could be driving some to vote Democratic.
On the lost-opportunity front, look no further than the president’s extraordinary achievement in securing the Southern border. He stopped the flood of illegal migrants. He was right. We didn’t need a new law, only a different president.
Yet Mr. Trump didn’t take a victory lap to publicize the success. If he had gone to the border, Hispanic and Democratic local officials would have thanked him for removing the tremendous burden on their hospitals, food pantries, social services and public safety. That image would have been powerful and lingered.
Instead, the White House has turned a major win into a major drag on the president’s approval: 58% of Americans and 66% of independents disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of immigration in a Jan. 12 CNN/SRRS survey. The administration’s pledge to focus on expelling violent criminal aliens—“the worst of the worst”—was widely popular. But Team Trump misplayed its hand by going a good deal further. Dispatching Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Home Depots to grab day laborers, or to other places where otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens congregate, is unpopular. These expanded ICE sweeps are turning voters against Mr. Trump. In a Jan. 12 Quinnipiac University poll, 57% of all voters and 64% of independents disapproved of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws.
The Trump administration made the situation worse by describing Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent earlier this month, as a “domestic terrorist” and fomenting further chaos in Minneapolis. In a Jan. 12 CNN/SRRS survey, 51% of Americans said ICE was making cities “less safe.”
As puzzling as his mishandling of immigration is Mr. Trump’s insistence that for national security, Denmark must surrender Greenland. For weeks he made it sound as though he might even invade—clarifying only on Wednesday morning that he won’t go to war with a NATO ally. That he threatened so long to use force hasn’t endeared him to voters. Eighty-six percent of Americans oppose taking Greenland by force—including 68% of Republicans and 94% of independents, according to a Jan. 12 Quinnipiac poll. And they’re right to. An invasion would destroy NATO and gravely damage American trade and political ties. Only China and Russia would have profited.
What makes this still more confounding is that the U.S. already has a treaty allowing it to establish military bases in Greenland. Yet Mr. Trump has insisted America must own the land outright, which even without the possibility of war is a political loser. Quinnipiac found 55% of Americans oppose “trying to buy Greenland” while 37% support it.
That isn’t even the most unhinged moment from the first year of Trump 2.0. Remember “Liberation Day” last April? He levied tariffs willy-nilly, even on places with which we have trade surpluses or no trade. For months the president has attacked the Federal Reserve’s independence to set interest rates, roiling markets. He pardoned all the criminals who assaulted Capitol police on Jan. 6, 2021. He called voters' affordability concerns a “hoax,” then moments later claimed he’d address them.
