Eggs, Gas, and Global Peace

On Inauguration Day, what do Trump's supporters think he will accomplish, and do his early executive orders align with those hopes?

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On Monday, the second-ever inauguration of a president to a second non-consecutive term took place in the Capitol Rotunda. Following Grover Cleveland in this rarified position, Donald Trump is our nation’s 45th and 47th president. The Georgetown Review went to downtown DC and the Capitol building in order to speak with Trump supporters, and understand why so many of them had made the trip.

Trump’s supporters see him as an anti-establishment alternative. He is the foil to Joe Biden’s long career in politics, an “outsider” in spite of his long standing political connections through his father, and a “model businessman” in spite of his series of financial failures in the 1990s. He has a charisma that seems to draw support from demographics heretofore uninterested in governance.

He has promised to lower gas and grocery prices, protect American interests abroad, and promote international peace and order, and his supporters wholeheartedly believe him- and why wouldn’t they want to? In the post-pandemic years, Americans have paid significantly more for basic goods, and in spite of efforts from the Biden administration to cut inflation rates, the actual inflation level has not dropped significantly enough for Americans to feel it in their wallets. We have seen wars erupt in the Middle East and Ukraine, seemingly without a possibility for easy resolution, with the situation edging ever closer to direct American involvement.

Thousands of Trump supporters streamed to Washington, DC to witness his inauguration on Monday, Jan. 20, although the event was moved indoors because of the freezing temperatures.

Outside Capital One Arena, where the inauguration watch party was held, we spoke to Keith, a merchandise vendor, who told us that he had sold merchandise at every inauguration since 2009 (Barack Obama’s first inauguration). He said that the crowd outside Capital One felt different than the crowds at previous inaugurations. This was because, although as many as a quarter of a million people had tickets to the inauguration events on the Capitol lawn, only around 20,000 were able to fit inside Capital One for the watch party held there. The crowds who would otherwise have lined the mall and parade route, and bought Keith’s wares, were there in much smaller numbers.

However, many of Trump’s supporters believe that he will improve their daily lives strongly enough to brave the frigid temperatures of Monday morning, ticket or no ticket.

Brittney, a Trump voter from Florida, who had a ticket to the inauguration events on the lawn of the Capitol, said that although she was disappointed not to see the inauguration from the lawn, she made the trip to DC, because of what an exciting moment in history it was. She said that she was “hopeful” about Trump’s administration- hoping that gas and grocery prices drop. According to Pew, 93% of Trump supporters ranked the economy as “very important” to their vote choice.

Brittney also feels that RFK Jr.‘s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services will lead to a healthier American people. Again, she isn’t alone- according to the Associated Press, Republicans overwhelmingly support RFK Jr. as Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

We also encountered supporters who felt strongly about Trump’s foreign policy. We met a group of young men living in Britain and the Netherlands, who had traveled to DC just for the inauguration. Ata and Emre had emigrated to Britain from Turkey, and said that they felt that Trump was a “positive international power,” and approved of his immigration policies, and his rapprochement with Turkey’s autocratic leader, Recep Tayyib Erdogan. Although they are immigrants, they felt that Trump’s policies positively promote assimilation. They also said that they feel Trump makes a positive impact in the world by promoting American interests and avoiding war through deterrence.

Ziyang lives in Amsterdam and has supported Trump since 2016. He said that Trump appealed to him because of what he saw happening in Europe at the time- an immigration influx, and repression of free speech. He said he likes how Trump is anti-establishment, and “didn’t start any new wars.”

A Georgetown student who voted for Trump and preferred to remain anonymous said that he felt Trump’s greatest promise was to avoid sending our military overseas in unnecessary wars. “Why should Americans go to Europe to fight in a war that has nothing to do with us? Why should we fund it? ” he asked.

It was clear from our conversations on Monday morning that Trump’s supporters believe in him and his mission strongly enough to brave the cold and travel great distances to support him. However, in holding the office of President, Trump retains the responsibility to manage that short distance between the “peril and possibility” of the American experiment.

Can he and his nascent administration maintain the opportunities of the American dream without attacking the rights and liberties of Americans and undermining the principle of free governance across the globe? Can they lower our prices at the grocery store and the gas pump, and do they want to?

His very early executive orders seem to imply that they don’t want to.The new administration has already begun to take action, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, pardoning 1,600 people charged for offenses on January 6, 2021, and withdrawing from the World Health Organization, among other orders.

Of the 74 executive actions signed by the Trump White House so far (as of Jan. 30), only one, “Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis,” claims any direct connection to the cost-of-living crisis. In that action, President Trump orders the heads of executive departments to “lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply,” eliminate regulatory protections that, he says, artificially decrease supply levels, and “eliminate harmful, coercive “climate” policies that increase the costs of food and fuel.” These are vague directives, which most first-year economics students could confirm won’t immediately or even effectively save the country from economic crisis. No concrete details are yet forthcoming about which specific agencies will be asked to make changes, and which climate and regulatory policies will be gutted.

The 73 other actions fall into several broad categories. In the biggest category, 10 of the executive actions thus far prioritize military readiness, with 3 of these referring to immigration, and protecting the United States from immigrant incursion, which may come as a surprise to those Trump supporters who feel that Trump would prevent America from being drawn into wars abroad, or starting any new conflicts.

The next most populous category is those orders repealing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility initiatives, removing gender inclusive language from federal communications, ending what one of the orders called “radical indoctrination” in America’s schools. There were 9 of these, claiming to support merit based hiring practices, and protecting women from “radical gender ideology.”

Eight of the executive actions were related to American corporations, repealing consumer and environmental protections, in the interest of AI, oil, and fishery companies, further indicating his administration’s focus after billionaires and tech titans sat at the front seats of his inauguration.

A final common category of order were the orders in which President Trump named his appointees to cabinet and sub-cabinet positions.

Notably, President Trump also passed executive actions changing the names of Mount Denali (now Mount McKinley) and the Gulf of Mexico (now the Gulf of America), preventing American federal funding to go towards funding medically necessary abortions in the United States or abroad, and responding to the LA wildfires. He halted foreign aid, and tried to halt all federal grants within the United States. He also declassified the files relating to the assassination in 1963 of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, a political correspondent for Vogue, has called it a political prop. President Trump has also allowed for appointees to his office to obtain security clearances without background checks.

Among his most controversial executive actions was the order to pardon more than 1,500 people convicted of rioting and attacking police officers at the Capitol, in protest of the certification 2020 election results, which they believed to be falsified, at the request of then-former president Trump.

While only one of these relates to the cost of living, the issue which many voters named as their top concern, many of the other actions will incur great costs, to the detriment of the American economy. Not only are they unrelated to the price of eggs, an increase in the cost of living may be an unintended result.

In spite of this seeming backtrack on his campaign promise, Trump has an opportunity, even an obligation, to try in good faith to uphold those promises which he made to his supporters during the campaign. He must keep his promises to the American people, and they must hold him responsible for those commitments, because, ultimately, this is the promise of American democracy. American democracy was built to withstand times of deep division and existential debate, and is resilient enough to withstand the period of upheaval with which we have grappled since 2016. The American people have the power to elect presidents, but we must also demand accountability from them, on Inauguration Day, and every day.