U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during the White House Faith Office Luncheon at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 14, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump is increasingly focused on "cashing in" on his presidency as his second term increasingly "runs out of road," according to a new analysis from an associate editor at The Independent.
Writing for a piece published Monday, Sean O'Grady characterized Trump, the oldest person ever elected president, as "an old man in a hurry" seeking to eke as much acclaim and material gain out of the office as he can, before either his second term or his life comes to an end, and also as his influence over politics wanes in his "lame duck" era.
"This is... a president who knows he is running out of time," O'Grady wrote. "Whatever the truth behind reports that his health is failing, he’s nearly 80, his second term will come to an end, and he knows his domestic power is crumbling. He is an old man in a hurry."
Many aspects of Trump's second term can be viewed through this lens, O'Grady argues, from his desire to make Greenland a US territory, to his controversial remodeling of the White House to include a massive ballroom, to his plan to try and convert Gaza into a luxury beachfront resort region. All these plans and impulses, the editor suggests, stem from the fact that Trump is "a real estate guy who enjoys wealth, almost for its own sake," and is driven considerably by "materialism."
"In other words, this is a transactional president who has his eye on commercial opportunities, national and personal," O'Grady wrote. "It may not be a coincidence that his personal envoys in this peace process are another property developer, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, both at least as influential in this as Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who increasingly resembles a hostage. They will know that Trump would like to know what’s in all this for America and for Trump himself."
Trump's stated interest in rebuilding economic opportunities and "strategic stability with Russia" also plays into this, with O'Grady suggesting that the president is willing to pay Vladimir Putin's price for such developments, namely treating Ukraine "more like a US-Russia condominium than a sovereign European state in its own right."
"That may sound like an extreme verdict, but as it’s based on current trends and public remarks, it is a balanced, and frankly terrifying, one," the editor concluded."