This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the first month of the Trump presidency from Tangle founder Isaac Saul. Part 2 is here.
If you are not a paid Tangle subscribers and you want to read the full version of this article, and Part 2, you can go here to subscribe.
The day Donald Trump was inaugurated, my son was born.
In retrospect, the timing feels inevitable ("Founder of politics newsletter has baby on inauguration day"), but it created an interesting dynamic for me.
Most notably, I got to step back from the day-to-day ruckus of what it's like when Trump is flooding the zone with news and could take in each story with a bit more thoughtfulness. And as I return from paternity leave, it means that I now have the chance to share a month’s worth of distilled thoughts with you about the start of the Trump administration.
I've decided to sort Trump’s first month into four buckets: the good, the bad, the unclear, and the abhorrent. The good, bad, and unclear are all positions I hold with a pretty tenuous posture — it's early yet, and I accept (and expect) that my view of these issues will change as the administration’s actions play out. I offer them only as initial reflections on what he's doing, not as definitive takes on where the administration is heading. Some of these are already changing; up until Tuesday, I had Trump's handling of Ukraine in the "good" section. Then he came out of a meeting with the Russians making comments that I simply couldn't stand behind, so I moved what I thought was one of the most notable positives from his first month in office into the "unclear" section.
The "abhorrent" section is different. I decided to add that section as I was writing the "bad" because, to be as candid with you as possible, I do not think my views on those topics are subject to change. Some of Trump’s initial actions feel so obviously terrible to me that I had to differentiate them from the rest of the "bad" section.
Many of you know me, are familiar with my writing and views, and understand that my politics are all over the place. To get ahead of some criticisms I expect: Yes, there are more things in the "bad" and "abhorrent" sections than the "good" section. This shouldn't be surprising. Most presidents make their most aggressive, partisan, and base-oriented actions early on in their presidencies. This is especially true when they have control of both the House and Senate, and is even more true of a president who campaigned on a revenge tour against his "enemies." As a political moderate, I am not a member of Trump's base, so I already expected to have, at minimum, mixed feelings about his first month in office. And while I didn’t review Biden's first month in 2021, I also had strong (and mixed) feelings about his initial executive orders, push to eliminate the filibuster, and terrible cabinet nominees.
Since there has been so much news in the last four weeks, I've decided to highlight the topics I'm talking about in bold so you can hop around through the sections if you'd like.
As always, I'm trying my best to offer my transparent, honest opinions; and if you want to push back on anything I've written, feel free to leave a comment or write in with some thoughts — I'm (mostly) open to having my mind changed.
I’ve missed you all, and it’s good to be back in the saddle — so here are 10,000 words about Trump’s first month.
The good.
These are actions from the first month of the Trump presidency that I am supportive of and that I expect to have long-term positive impacts on the country. These are also actions I am open-minded about, meaning I am willing to change my assessment of them as I watch them unfold, discover new evidence, or hear fresh arguments.
Arrests of dangerous unauthorized migrants. The definition of a presidential “mandate” is up for debate, but if Trump actually has a mandate on anything, carrying out deportations is probably it. Even so, as the stories of the initial immigration arrests began rolling in, I was left a bit gobsmacked. How is it possible that a person like Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco was walking freely in New York City? A suspected regional leader of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, Zambrano-Pacheco was caught on camera in a now-infamous break-in in Aurora, Colorado, but he wasn't arrested until Trump's ICE found him in New York and took him in. The administration also focused on and brought in dozens of other members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
I had the same reaction when I learned about Wilquin Melo Marte, a Dominican Republic national who was wanted for a double homicide in his home country, and Fernando Vasquez-Mendoza, a cartel hitman. The list goes on. In just 18 days, the Trump administration said it arrested 11,000 people here without authorization, ahead of the pace set by the Biden administration in 2024.
How? How does it take the election of Trump for people like this to be arrested? Is it a lack of willpower? Bad luck? Poor organization? Politics? I genuinely don't know the answer, but it boggles the mind.
I am a person who wants more legal immigration to the U.S. I know it's not trendy to say this anymore (especially on the right), but I still believe diversity is one of our country’s strengths. When you bring different cultures, worldviews, experiences and people together, it can cause tension. But it can also create high levels of tolerance and, in our case, a unique society full of opportunity. On top of all that, I believe pluralism (a system in which multiple states, groups, principles, and sources of authority can coexist) is a fundamentally good and American value.
I say all that to make the point that an orderly immigration system producing positive results and maintaining the value of pluralism is not possible if we allow people to brazenly violate our immigration laws and then violate our most basic laws without punishment. As I've said a million times, the best way to solve our immigration crisis is to increase our capacity to process the people who come here outside the legal system while also expanding the legal opportunities to come here to work or become a citizen.
Are some stories about Trump's mass round-ups concerning? Of course. Stories of migrants with no criminal history working here while they work their way through the immigration system being deported are genuinely heartbreaking. And unauthorized migrants who have been here for decades, are productive members of society, and know little of their home country should not be shipped out without opportunities to get permanent legal status. By the letter of the law, simply being in the country as an unauthorized immigrant is actually not a crime, and our courts are dedicated to determining if their entry was unlawful or have overstayed a legal entry. Yet some migrants are being sent to Guantanamo Bay before being convicted of any crime.
Is the way Trump is advertising the deportations sometimes gross and inhumane? Yes. “ASMR videos” of people being shackled and put on airplanes are obscene; it’s the kind of thing that makes many Americans recoil from this administration.
Yet Trump, somehow, is unique for unapologetically arresting and deporting the people with criminal records we've seen him target in his first few months, and it predictably makes him incredibly popular (because it's common sense and good politics). He’s not conducting the mass deportations he promised (yet), but he is targeting violent criminals who are here illegally. Along the way, arrests at the southern border have plummeted, adding a degree of order to the system that should have long-term benefits.
Permitting-reform orders. I brought this point up in my brief pop-up during paternity leave, but on Trump's first day in office, he issued several orders to expedite federal permits that will help accelerate the timeline for building critical energy infrastructure. The directive was a response to longstanding bipartisan complaints about lengthy environmental reviews and the red tape of federal authorization for infrastructure projects big and small. These orders are an initial step that is limited in scope, but it was an unsung positive from his first few days in office (and something Biden should have done himself). Even left-of-center writers like Noah Smith have championed these orders.
Trump and Republicans shouldn't stop there. Just as Los Angeles is cutting red tape to rebuild after the wildfires, Trump should push to extend expedited permitting and construction of housing across the country, too.
De minimis shipping. Tangle Editor Will Kaback mentioned this in his take on Trump's tariffs, but closing the de minimis loophole in shipping from China now feels like a no-brainer. That carveout has allowed shipments below $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free and with minimal inspection, which has enabled Chinese companies to undercut the U.S. market and has very likely been a gateway for fentanyl to enter the country. It’s a loophole Biden should have closed (another one of those things that makes you wonder: Why didn't he do this?), and Trump’s action here will undoubtedly save lives.
Tariff threats. The operative word here is "threats," as I support Trump using economic pressure to negotiate for broader purposes. For instance, I don't mind Trump's exchange of threats with Canada and Mexico, which ended in commitments from both countries to do more on border security. Was Canada headed that way already, with a border security plan from December? Yes. Did Mexico also send troops to the border during the Biden administration? Yes.
But for all the hubbub, Trump basically caused 48 hours of public relations chaos before coming to seemingly amicable terms with leaders of Canada and Mexico, and then got them to commit to helping us tackle two of our biggest issues (illegal immigration and illegal drug trafficking) in the most public way possible — without actually levying any tariffs. I get why many people don't think it’s prudent to negotiate with allies in this manner, but I certainly approve of the outcome — doubly so because Canada and Mexico know that the threat of tariffs remains. My only real gripe is that Trump is applying this kind of pressure to our allies while seemingly applying less pressure to many of our adversaries.
Taiwan. A lot of pundits predicted that Trump was going to abandon Taiwan when he came into office. However, the administration’s Taiwan stance is looking positive so far. Last week, China accused the Trump administration of a "serious regression" in its position on Taiwan after the State Department removed a line from its website stating that the U.S. does not support Taiwanese independence.
This may seem small, but it's not; America’s dance with China on Taiwan is mostly one of public statements and posturing. The State Department dropping that phrase is a major departure from longstanding U.S. policy to try to claim neutrality — and it's a good one. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung rightly welcomed the removal, saying its revised content reflected “support and positive stance on U.S.-Taiwan relations.”
This is a consistent ethic the U.S. should hold. Ukraine gets self-determination. Taiwan gets self-determination. Palestinians get self-determination. If you are going to support the principle of independent democratic nations, you need to do it consistently and even when it's inconvenient. It is very inconvenient to support this ethic as it relates to Taiwan — but the Trump administration is right to lean in.
Some signaling on military spending. Trump says and does a lot of stuff. He throws things at the wall incessantly, and I'd estimate roughly 15% of it ever really sticks. It's hard to know what to take seriously and what not to.
That being said, last Thursday, he made one of the most remarkable comments I've heard from a sitting president in a long time: a proposal for a trilateral agreement with China and Russia to mutually draw down military budgets by 50%.
The outcome here may not be realistic and the details so far are sparse, but I absolutely love that a U.S. president is suggesting a major reduction in military spending among the global powers.
Anyone serious about reducing our debt and deficit should support this. Anyone serious about a grand vision for world peace should support this. Anyone afraid of what would happen if those three world powers end up clashing globally — in earnest — should support this.
I have no idea what prompted Trump to make these comments, but I hope to hear more.
And, of course, lots of small stuff. Lifting bans on plastic straws. Abandoning the production of pennies. Banning junk food purchases with food stamps. Floating the idea of a sovereign wealth fund. Moving the Greenland issue into the mainstream (no, we shouldn't "take" Greenland; but, yes, we really should increase our presence there). For all the attention Trump gets for throwing red meat to the base, he is remarkably good at taking action on exceedingly popular, simple-to-implement ideas for the masses. He is also good at just suggesting things — entering them into the lexicon — that other people don't. I cover politics for a living; I was woefully unaware of the wastefulness of manufacturing pennies, and I agree there is nearly zero use case for them anymore. Why is Trump the first one to get it done? I have no idea. But it makes sense to me.
The bad.
These are things from the first month of the Trump presidency I am worried about. That means I personally expect these stories to have long-term negative impacts on the country. I’m also open to changing my mind about these things as events unfold.
Elon Musk's involvement, broadly. I'm going to use a lot of space here because I think Musk's involvement may be the most consequential thing happening in the administration right now. I'm not even sure where to begin, honestly, but let's start here: I was listening to The Fifth Column last week, one of my favorite podcasts. It's three roughly libertarian, right-of-center political thinkers drinking, shmoozing, and typically acting as a check on the mainstream media while also covering current events. Michael Moynihan, one of the show's hosts, was actually a guest at our live event in New York City last year (and, for what it's worth, stole the show).
Anyway, Moynihan was talking about Musk, and he had an insight I'm going to steal here: Musk is like a college kid who is first learning about politics and thinks everything he is discovering is brand new and incredible and eye-opening and simple. And, like most college-aged Americans who read Howard Zinn or Ayn Rand or Noam Chomsky for the first time, he is being radicalized. His radicalization doesn’t make him special — it makes him just like every single person who learns about U.S. politics in closed bubbles of thought before they expand the kinds of things they are reading or consuming (or they moderate when their ideas are tested in the real world). What makes this remarkable is that he’s doing it while exerting tremendous influence over the government.
Unfortunately for all of us, Musk’s maturation process is a roller coaster we are all strapped in for. And even worse, he isn't reading Zinn or Rand or Chomsky; he's smoking the cesspool that is "news" on his platform, X, which is replete with half-baked ideas, conspiracies, and outright lies.
Most people defend Musk’s involvement in a blanket nature, arguing that he is a “genius” and that his unfathomable riches prove everything he touches turns to gold. Until recently, I was a "Musk stan" myself — one of the people who thought he was a brilliant entrepreneur capable of winning favor across political lines and would advance humanity with accessible internet, sustainable electric cars, and interplanetary travel. In a take that has aged like milk, I even cheered his initial involvement with Twitter, predicting it would "be a good move for political discourse." I was hopeful he would turn the 21st-century public square away from its censorious, liberal bent toward the long-sought balanced marketplace of ideas.
In the two years since, my criticism of Musk has been soft and indirect. I’ve held out hope and often assumed the best of him. But now he’s beyond the pale. Instead of saving Twitter, he's turned it into a conservative mirror of what it used to be: a cesspool of shitposting where he censors and nukes accounts that are a personal affront, applies zero consistency to his own moderation decisions, and has generally helped bots, engagement farmers, and conspiratorial nonsense run wild. Now he’s promising to change community notes because it is producing answers he doesn’t like. Even Musk’s own products, like his AI software Grok, will now tell you that he pumps out a firehose of false or misleading claims on a daily basis.
The truth is that people like Musk can be brilliant in some disciplines and exceedingly bad in others — even related ones. Michael Jordan might be the greatest basketball player ever, but I’ve seen videos of him playing table tennis and suspect I would smoke him.
I don't know Musk personally, so I don’t know what happened to him or if this is always who he’s been in private, but I mean this sincerely: I'm worried about him. For over a year, there has been good reason to believe he is on some kind of manic rampage to try to run as much of the world as possible. He has changed in meaningfully bad ways, becoming more troll-ish, mean-spirited, ignorant, and unhinged.
Some of what Musk is doing is simply annoying. He has popularized a bunch of know-nothing tech bros like David Sacks or Jason Calacanis who speak confidently about how the government works and what we need to do to fix it while simultaneously proving they do not understand most of what they are talking about. Sacks, for instance, recently claimed we have "no idea" where our federal dollars go and you "can't ask" about it. But we know exactly where the money goes (to the military and the elderly, mostly) and we aren't only allowed to ask, we usually get answers when we do.
Calacanis, a multi-millionaire who recently begged for a government handout to save Silicon Valley banks, suggested we should "randomly" cut 10–35% of the federal government, which is the kind of thing you say when you are a rich tech bro who has no connection to people that rely on federal assistance to eat, grow crops, be housed, get an education, receive military benefits, or go to the doctor.
More consequential than making so many politically ignorant smart people famous, Musk appears totally oblivious to the real-world repercussions his team's actions inside the federal government are having. Examples of this are endless (here, here, here, and here, to show just a few). His team either cannot read the datasets they are accessing or are intentionally misrepresenting them to the public (like the ludicrous claim that we are sending enormous sums of money to 150-year-old dead people on Social Security).
At the same time, he's degrading the entire administration. He rallied Vice President JD Vance and the blob of technocrats who worship him to support the overtly racist programmer he hired and then fired and then rehired on the grounds that he was just a kid who deserved a chance to change after some bad social media posts from when he was younger.
In actuality, the programmer was 25 years old when he made the posts — only weeks before he was hired — and they were unapologetically racist. Musk, naturally, showed pity for this programmer while suggesting the Wall Street Journal reporter who did her job by truthfully reporting on the posts was a "disgusting and cruel person" who "should be fired immediately." I’m a card-carrying member of the anti-cancel culture crew, but when groups like DOGE don’t appropriately police themselves, it actually justifies and encourages the mob.
Who could blame Musk for all the madness? He's trying to run some of the most important companies in the world and make sweeping cuts to the federal government all at once. It would all be impressive if it weren't so unbelievably terrifying given his vast power, influence, and cult-like celebrity status with nearly half the country, all either oblivious to or incapable of seeing how regularly he proves himself ill-equipped for this moment.
Frankly, so much of the "bad" from Trump's first four weeks has to do with his decision to empower Musk and look away. I think the conservative writer Sohrab Ahmari is right that Musk is a threat to Trumpism and actually represents so much of what Trump claims to be fighting (plutocratic self-dealing). I'll have more on DOGE in my "unclear" section, because I have a lot of open questions about it, but it’s produced a lot of nonsense already. Contrary to Musk and Trump's claims, they have uncovered precisely zero fraud — only federal spending he opposes on ideological grounds. Waste? Sure, we all know there is lots of it — that’s been publicly available information for years.
In fact, federal spending has actually gone up in the first 30 days of the Trump administration because of spending deals Republicans and Democrats have already made; and the big Republican spending bill that we covered yesterday would cut taxes for the wealthy, increase military spending, and shave Medicaid. It would also increase the debt and deficit — the exact thing Musk's DOGE program is supposed to be addressing. It is all backwards, and explaining this over and over on Musk's platform has left conservatives accusing me of being some kind of liberal hack because, apparently, wanting actual spending reforms and actual balanced budgets is now less important than blind loyalty to Emperor Elon.
The worst part? The really achingly awful and frustrating thing? It could have been different. This all had so much potential. To quote Andrew Sullivan:
"Imagine what they might have done. Trump could have announced that Musk and his minions were going in to audit the federal government. Within a few months, they’d bring a report, outlining every insane piece of waste or DEI excess or fraud they could find. Trump would then urge Congress to vote on these reforms. Win, win, win. It’s a great idea to shake up the joint with an outsider! But nah. They are busy ensuring that any cuts they make are brutal, dumb, and destined to expire."
Perhaps most notably, nothing I've said so far even touches on the most likely reason we are all suffering through this incompetence and chaos: Musk profits in obvious ways from this entire arrangement. Almost every company he is involved with stands to benefit from his current position as pseudo-vice president and "spend cutter" extraordinaire, and several of his companies are already reaping the rewards.
Musk "deletes" the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or defangs the National Labor Relations Board, which happen to have a dozen open investigations into his companies. Musk fires FAA employees and promises to rebuild it with... private sector workers from his company, SpaceX. Musk cuts hundreds of government contracts in his first month at DOGE, but doesn't touch any of the 100 contracts with 17 federal agencies worth $13 billion that are associated with his companies. It’s happening in less obvious ways, too, like Musk reportedly pressuring advertisers to come back to X or face repercussions from the federal government. Can we really be this blind?
Of course, plenty of people have grasped this reality. Kudos to reporter Jonathan Swan, who asked Trump a direct question about these conflicts of interest — and Trump's promise to make sure they weren’t an issue. Here is Trump's response, verbatim, which I transcribed:
“Well, I mean, I'm just hearing about it, and if there is — he told me before I told him — but, obviously, I will not let there be any conflict of interest. He's done an amazing job. [Trump glances at his notes.] They've revealed, in fact, that he's going to be on tonight — a big show called Sean Hannity, at 9 o'clock — and, uh, he's on and I'm on. And we talk about a lot of different things. And any conflicts, I told Elon, 'any conflicts you can't have anything to do with that.' So anything to do with possibly even space, we won't let Elon partake in that.”
This, quite obviously, is not a reassuring answer. It isn't just a jumbled non-defense, it ignores the reality that the conflicts of interest are very real and already happening.
