Reality bites Trump
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Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios
Some of President-elect Trump's most audacious promises — lobbed from the comfort of the campaign trail — will be on a collision course with reality beginning Jan. 20.
Why it matters: Trump is at the peak of his influence and popularity, a status he achieved by vowing to detonate the status quo. But he and his allies know — and are starting to acknowledge — that their power will not be absolute.
1. Elon Musk last night scaled back his radically ambitious pledge to slash "at least $2 trillion" from the federal budget, suggesting in a new interview that achieving just half of that would be an "epic outcome."
- "I do think that you kind of have to have some overage," Musk, co-head of the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), told former Clinton pollster Mark Penn on X.
- "I think if we try for $2 trillion, we've got a good shot at getting $1 trillion," he added, a tacit acknowledgment that his original goal — as many experts already warned — is highly implausible.
2. Trump's team has told European officials that the true deadline for ending the war in Ukraine is "several months," despite Trump long claiming he would do so within 24 hours of taking office, the Financial Times reported today.
- The president-elect himself suggested at a press conference this week that he hopes to broker a peace deal within six months, while his Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg has set a goal of 100 days.
3. Weeks after winning an election dominated by inflation concerns, Trump rejected the notion that his presidency would be a "failure" if he were unable to bring down grocery prices.
- "I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard," Trump told TIME. "But I think that they will," he added.
- Federal Reserve officials, meanwhile, expressed concern last month that Trump's tariffs and immigration crackdown could stoke inflation — potentially leading to higher interest rates.
What they're saying: "This is fake news. President Trump and his team are working hard before even taking office to deliver on his promises and make life better for the American people," Trump-Vance spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Axios in a statement.
- "President Trump has every intention of delivering, and he will. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they're talking about."
Between the lines: Hyperbole is part and parcel of the Trump experience, and his supporters often advise the public and the media to "take him seriously, not literally."
- Still, there are clear examples from Trump's first term of him failing to fulfill lofty promises: Mexico did not, for example, ever pay for the border wall.
The big picture: This isn't to say Trump cannot, or will not, succeed in his ambitious plans to secure the border, downsize government and fundamentally reorder the global economy.
- He and his advisers previewed plans to unleash 100 executive orders — many on Day One — during a meeting with Senate Republicans on Wednesday night, as Axios scooped.
- And if Trump and GOP leadership can keep Republican lawmakers in line, the country could soon bear witness to a historic legislative agenda that implements exactly the mega-MAGA vision he has promised.
