In his own telling, President-elect Donald J. Trump wields magical powers to shape world events in ways others never could. The other day, during his first broadcast television network interview since his re-election, he even claimed to have prevented wars that no one knew were about to break out.
“I have stopped wars with tariffs by saying, ‘You guys want to fight, it’s great. But both of you are going to pay tariffs to the United States at 100 percent,’” Mr. Trump said on “Meet the Press” on NBC.
What wars, between which countries, and when? He did not say. Nor did his office identify any when asked afterward. Hyperbole, or perhaps fantasy, has long characterized Mr. Trump’s public career, of course. But as he prepares to move back into the White House, his penchant for extravagant ungrounded claims will challenge his ability to translate bravado into reality.
Mr. Trump has made some of the most expansive, some would say outlandish, campaign promises that any president has ever made, promises that policymakers across the spectrum take seriously in their intent but not in their specifics. While he may make substantial progress on his priorities, few other than committed Trump allies think he will be able to meet his maximalist goals on immigration, federal spending and foreign policy.
He has vowed to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and to do so before his inauguration next month, without giving any indication of how. He has said he would deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally, which would be about 12 times the number of people he deported in his first term. He has assigned his multibillionaire patron Elon Musk to cut $2 trillion a year out of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, though past budget cutters struggled to trim a fraction of that.
“The laws of gravity just don’t apply to Trump the way they would to any conventional pol,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist. “He has always been unburdened by the rituals and customs of the Beltway political and media culture. He’s always been rewarded when he confronts anything perceived to be establishment or status quo. So when the rule book says ‘manage expectations,’ he focuses on defying expectations.”
This goes to the old saying about taking Mr. Trump seriously but not literally. Ever since his debut on the national political stage nearly a decade ago, he has made sweeping claims that few held him to precisely, like promising that Mexico would pay for the border wall he wanted to build. (It never did.)
But even supporters of Mr. Trump’s stated aspirations fear that by overinflating what he can accomplish, he could undermine his position.
“I appreciate the gung-ho enthusiasm of Trump-Musk-Ramaswamy for spending cuts,” said Chris Edwards, a federal budget expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, referring to Vivek Ramaswamy, who will lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency with Mr. Musk. “But I worry about them making unrealistic promises about the extent of savings possible in the near term.”
Mr. Trump’s allies dismissed such concerns, saying that he has always been doubted by the establishments of both parties. “He was mocked when the Obama people said there was no way we could get more than 2 percent growth, that he’d wipe out ISIS, that he’d get the Abraham Accords, that he’d achieve his deregulatory goals,” said Joe Grogan, who served as his domestic policy adviser in the first term.
Setting ambitious targets, Mr. Grogan added, is healthier than simply giving in to inertia. “I don’t think Washington is cursed with too many optimistic goals for our country,” he said. “I think we’re cursed with small-minded bureaucrats and widget makers who spin outlandish claims about their central planning promises.”
It would be hard to imagine a more ambitious goal than ending a war in a day, but throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump insisted he could halt Russia’s assault on Ukraine in short order. “I’ll have that done in 24 hours,” he said during a CNN town hall last year, a line he repeated regularly.
As if that were not challenge enough, he said he would not wait to be sworn in. “I will get it settled before I even become president,” he said during his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September. “I will settle Russia-Ukraine while I’m president-elect,” he said again during a podcast in October.
But he has not said when the 24-hour clock would begin. If he plans to resolve the war before his inauguration on Jan. 20, then he has just over 40 days to do so. Mr. Trump has talked with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. But during the “Meet the Press” interview, he said — before hedging a bit — that he had not spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia since the election, despite a news report that he had.
Mr. Trump may be able to force a cease-fire by withholding U.S. aid critical to Ukraine’s defense, forcing Mr. Zelensky to make concessions to Mr. Putin that he otherwise would not. But Mr. Trump has offered no details about how he would accomplish this in 24 hours, and most veterans of the region anticipate that any negotiations could take months while both sides jockey for position on the battlefield.
“Trump’s claim that he could end the war in 24 hours suggests he does not understand the complexities of the war or how dug in Ukrainians and Putin are on their respective positions,” said Steven Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine who is now at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. “At some point, there will be a negotiation between Kyiv and Moscow, but it remains unclear when that will begin, and the negotiation will take time.”
Mr. Trump’s promised mass deportation is not tied to the clock, but it would prove difficult nonetheless. During his entire first term, Mr. Trump deported only 936,000 people — fewer, at an annual rate, than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush did.
To deport 11 million people in four years would require an extraordinary investment of resources toward immigration enforcement never before seen in the United States. Mr. Trump and Congress would have to come up with $88 billion a year over roughly 10 years and hire at least 31,000 immigration agents, according to estimates by the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit advocacy group for immigrants.
Mr. Trump acknowledged during his “Meet the Press” interview that the logistics would be daunting. “Sure they are,” he said. “But everything’s complicated.”
He repeated that he would first go after immigrants with criminal backgrounds. But he answered affirmatively when asked if he still planned to deport all immigrants who were in the country illegally, even if they had committed no crimes other than crossing the border. “You have no choice,” he said. “First of all, they’re costing us a fortune.”
The extra resources required by Mr. Trump’s deportations would only make his goal of drastically shrinking the federal budget that much harder. Mr. Trump has never been a budget cutter. During his first campaign for president, he boasted that he could eliminate the entire national debt — not just the annual deficit, but all the debt accumulated over the history of the country — in just eight years.
Not only did he make no serious effort to reduce the debt, much less wipe it out, he added $8.4 trillion in new borrowing over 10 years, even more than President Biden has since, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan advocacy group.
After a spending spree by both parties in the White House and Congress over the past quarter-century, interrupted only briefly by fitful efforts to pump the brakes, the national debt has grown to $36 trillion, representing the highest share of the economy since shortly after World War II. It is projected to balloon to $56 trillion in 10 years.
Mr. Musk’s goal of slashing $2 trillion in annual spending seemed to come essentially out of thin air. During a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden shortly before the election, he engaged in a colloquy onstage with his fellow billionaire Howard Lutnick.
“How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?” Mr. Lutnick asked.
“Well,” Mr. Musk replied, “I think we can do at least two trillion.”
“Yeah!” Mr. Lutnick shouted as the crowd roared. “Two trillion!”
While Mr. Musk and Mr. Lutnick have been successful business tycoons, neither has managed the federal government, and they may not have realized the enormity of that rally-inspired pledge.
Two-thirds of the federal budget is made up of Social Security and Medicare, military spending and interest on the debt. Mr. Trump has vowed not to touch Social Security or Medicare, a promise he repeated on “Meet the Press,” and has boasted of bolstering rather than cutting the military.
If all nondefense discretionary spending were eliminated — that is, everything like law enforcement, transportation, housing, international affairs, agriculture, energy, education, environmental protection, veterans benefits and even NASA, which provides Mr. Musk’s SpaceX firm with billions of dollars in contracts — it still would not equal half of the $2 trillion goal.
“Last time he was in office with a Republican Congress, they passed trillions in new spending increases rather than spending cuts, so this would be quite a departure from past experience,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “A desirable one, but a big one.”
She and Mr. Edwards suggested that Mr. Trump could seek long-term measures that might eventually yield significant savings. For instance, Mr. Edwards said he could phase down aid to the states, a highly contentious idea, and after a decade cut the budget by $500 billion a year — still short of Mr. Musk’s $2 trillion, but a major reduction.
Any other president might worry about laying out goals that cannot be met. But Mr. Trump bulls ahead, confident that his supporters will see that at least he is trying, and that they will find someone else to blame if he does not meet his targets.
“For most Trump supporters, he’s always going to be faultless,” said Brendan Buck, a former adviser to two Republican House speakers. “It’s not that Trump has failed. It’s how did those around Trump fail him. There’s always the scapegoat who didn’t fight hard enough or led him astray.”
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