How Trump is 'burying' 20th century norms and institutions

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., March 1, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential race, many Republicans hoped he would evolve into more of a traditional conservative. But Trump only doubled down on his MAGA agenda during his first presidency, often clashing with non-MAGA conservatives in his administration. And after returning to the White House following the 2024 election, Trump made a point of surrounding himself with ultra-MAGA loyalists.

In an article published on March 2, Politico's Alexander Burns emphasizes that Trump is "burying" 20th Century norms during his second presidency — from foreign policy to legal precedents.

"With a roar of rockets and bombs, a gasp of international outcry and the death of Iran's supreme leader, President Donald Trump's legacy became clearer than ever," Burns observes. "He is burying the 20th Century: Its villains, its alliances, its political norms and ceasefires. And he is unleashing a future of uncertainty and disruption with no new equilibrium in sight. Across both his terms as president, and in so many different areas of policy and governance and culture, his signal achievements have been acts of demolition."

Burns continues, "His Supreme Court appointees struck down Roe v. Wade, ending the seething political and legal stalemate on abortion rights that governed America since the 1970s. His military interventions in Latin America have brought the Cuban government, one of the last surviving Cold War regimes, to the brink of collapse. His tariffs and trade threats have blown apart the Reagan-Clinton policy consensus on free trade, upending half a century of global commercial arrangements and diplomatic relations. His America First worldview and contempt for Europe's political establishment have increasingly relegated NATO's charter — the 1949 accord forging the globe's most powerful military alliance — to antique status. His acts of corporate favoritism and personal enrichment, and his use of the justice system as a weapon of vengeance, have erased the post-Watergate regime of legal and ethical norms for the presidency."

Former President Joe Biden, according to Burns, tried to "build a bridge to the 20th Century" but was unsuccessful. And in 2026, he writes, Trump is "tearing down old structures and systems without a vision for replacing them." A

"At age 79," Burns writes, "Trump is himself a creation of the age he is now unwinding… The next time the country chooses a replacement for Trump, resurrecting the past won’t even be an option…. For American policymakers and voters, there’s no longer any prospect of mimicking détente with regimes in Iran and Cuba that are unraveling at this very hour…. America's credibility as a trade negotiator and commercial partner is already changed forever; the next president will be unable to restore Bush-era trade relations even if he or she wants to. NATO’s place in the world won’t return to where it was in 1998 just because the next president says the right words about Washington's commitment to its allies."

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