To anyone who doesn’t live under a rock, things seem chaotic right now. Just in the last month, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. forces, Iran has been riven by civic unrest, mass protests and violence have combusted in Minneapolis over federal immigration enforcement, and a snowstorm has laid bare the shambolic state of the D.C. area’s social services. Certainly, it seems hard to believe that we’re not even one full month into 2026.
Why, then, did President Donald Trump seem so calm on Thursday? It’s not as though he didn’t have serious business to attend to. He began the day by hosting the 10th cabinet meeting of his second term. He held a wide-ranging discussion with his secretaries about, among other topics, Venezuela, the potential government shutdown, tariffs, healthcare, the Ukraine-Russia war, housing, energy, and Iran. In short, weighty stuff.
Yet perplexingly, in the opinion of The American Spectator’s White House correspondent, the president did not seem overly stressed. In a conversation about drug prices, he joked that an overweight “friend” of his who was famous and notably successful in business was not getting the promised results from Ozempic — he denied that this individual was Vice President JD Vance. Trump also said that he appeared to close his eyes in a previous cabinet meeting because it was “boring” and that he “wanted to get the hell out of [there].”
It was later, when the president unveiled a new executive order on combatting addiction, that I realised the reason for his demeanor: he’s comfortable. Despite all of the sound and fury, Donald Trump’s presence in the Oval Office felt as normal as my presence there felt abnormal.
It’s not just that one of the executive orders under discussion was the sort of unobjectionable, feel-good policy that didn’t feel stereotypically Trumpian. It seems that after over a decade either serving in or running for the presidency, Trump finally felt secure in his team and his administration. In his first term, Trump was required to endure an uncomfortable cohabitation with a Republican establishment that, at best, tolerated him. His cabinet, such as it was, faced constant turnover and division.
Not so in 2026. Trump owns the GOP “lock, stock, and barrel,” to borrow a phrase that he used. While some vestigial intraparty critics remain, it’s nothing like the sort of resistance he faced from the GOP majorities that were elected alongside him a decade ago. One got the sense that this cabinet was the sort of team that he had always wanted. Well, mostly, anyway. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who was seated directly in front of me, was never invited to speak by the president, a fact that was widely interpreted as a slight. But despite warnings of falling approval ratings and a bleak political environment facing the GOP in the midterms later this year, this Trump administration still feels very different from the last one.
Later in the evening, the president visited the newly-rechristened Trump-Kennedy Center to watch the premiere of the aptly-named Melania, the film about his wife produced by Amazon. While the first lady stuck to discussing the movie, the president continued fielding questions about politics from the press. Despite the best efforts of yours truly, he didn’t call on me, but did have engaging conversations with nearby reporters about the Federal Reserve and Iran policy.
It was the sort of informal and impromptu interaction that sets Trump apart from many other politicians. But it was striking how normal it felt. It’s been a long time coming, but perhaps the consummate outsider has finally become the elder statesman.
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