President Donald Trump speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone, Monday, August 18, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
President Donald Trump is taking a much more direct, hands-on approach to governing in his second term compared to his first four years in the White House, according to a new report.
In a Wednesday article, the Wall Street Journal's Josh Dawsey and Annie Linskey reported that the second Trump administration is moving with a decidedly faster tempo given that there are far fewer people in the Trump White House today who are willing to rein in his most impulsive decision-making. This has led to Trump making numerous unprecedented moves, including his attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors and teeing up a showdown with the Supreme Court — something that has never been done in the Fed's 112-year history.
Despite his status as a term-limited commander-in-chief constrained by the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution from running for another four years, Trump nonetheless keeps "Trump 2028" campaign hats on display in the Oval Office and shows them off to visitors. Earlier this week, he toyed with the idea of being a "dictator," saying that while some unnamed "people" had told him that they might "like" to have a dictator, he didn't like dictators and refused to describe himself as such (Trump said during his 2024 campaign that he would be a dictator, "but only on Day One.")
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The Journal reported that Trump is more "in the weeds" in the day-to-day operations of federal agencies, ordering his Cabinet secretaries to make certain hiring and firing decisions and floating various ideas. He also reportedly spends much more time at the White House, "blaring music with doors of the Oval Office open, working later into the evening and telling his advisers that he is having fun."
This is a sharp contrast to his first term, where he was dogged by multiple investigations like former DOJ Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump also lamented about his treatment at the hands of the Federal Reserve and the Kennedy Center after his first election. Trump has since commandeered the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chairman, with little to no pushback from his inner circle. Even his chief of staff, Susie Wiles (who managed his 2024 campaign), has taken a more lenient approach to her boss, insisting that her role is to manage the staff rather than the president.
According to Douglas Brinkley, who is a presidential historian at Rice University, Trump's ultimate goal is "having control over all American institutions, adding: "He seems to want to grab everyone by the neck and say ‘I’m in charge.’”
"I think he’s learned there is not much that can really stop him from what he wants," Marc Short, who was Trump's first-term director of legislative affairs, told the Journal.
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Click here to read the Journal's full article in its entirety (subscription required).