Nearly eight years ago, I remember walking into the lobby of Trump Tower to cover President-elect Donald Trump’s first news conference after the 2016 election. On Monday, as I watched him turn Mar-a-Lago into the backdrop of his first news conference since he became president-elect for the second time, I couldn’t help but reflect on how much has changed.
And how much hasn’t.
As it turned out, Trump himself seemed to be in a similarly contemplative mood.
“The first term, everybody was fighting me,” he said on Monday. “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don’t know — my personality changed or something.”
Trump’s personality has not, in fact, changed. But plenty of world leaders, American politicians and corporate chieftains have caught on to the simplest and most direct way to Trump’s heart: flattery, preferably in public.
Back in 2016, much of the Republican Party was still openly leery of Trump. Paul Ryan was the House speaker. Mitch McConnell was the Senate leader. Both were Trump skeptics, to say the least, and their own centers of political gravity in the party.
Now, everything in the G.O.P. revolves around Trump.
The way top Republican congressional leaders all piled into the same luxury suite as the president-elect at the weekend Army-Navy game was symbolic of their relationship. Speaker Mike Johnson all but owes Trump his gavel. And while Senator John Thune has previously been no MAGA mouthpiece, he has had only positive words for Trump since his ascent to becoming his chamber’s majority leader.
“We have a big head start — last time we didn’t,” Trump said. “And last time we didn’t know the people, we didn’t know a lot of things.”
Trump seemed to exert his new authority over the party by flashing some magnanimity on Monday.
He suggested that he wouldn’t necessarily seek to encourage primary challengers against Republican senators who oppose his nominees — at least if he deems their objections “reasonable” and not “stupid.” (Notably, he continued to throw his support behind Pete Hegseth, saying that if he is not confirmed as defense secretary it would be a “tragedy.”)
Trump also opted against publicly strong-arming Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to appoint Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump to the United States Senate, calling it the governor’s “choice” and even saying he didn’t expect DeSantis to give her the nod.
“No, I don’t — I probably don’t,” Trump said. “But I don’t know.”
Trump is now an insider
Trump’s management of all these Republican relationships, whether he wants to acknowledge it or not, is the surest sign of how much a political insider he is this time around.
Back in his first post-2016 news conference, Trump had attacked the pharmaceutical industry for having “a lot of lobbies and a lot of lobbyists.” On Monday, he bragged about having just had dinner with top executives at Eli Lilly, Pfizer and other industry representatives along with his pick as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and others.
“The dinner was fascinating,” Trump said on Monday, before repeating the pharma industry’s talking points attacking the “middlemen” in the drug industry as the real villains driving up costs. It’s a line the pharmaceutical lobby has pushed in advertising.
“We’re going to knock out the middleman,” Trump said on Monday, adding, “I don’t know who these middlemen are but they’re rich as hell.”
It was a reminder that those whispering in Trump’s ear in private often have their positions echoed in public. It’s one of the reasons a parade of tech titans have been making the Mar-a-Lago pilgrimage — much to Trump’s delight. Sundar Pichai. Sergey Brin. Tim Cook. And soon Jeff Bezos. Elon Musk, meanwhile, has become a constant companion.
“The biggest difference is that people want to get along with me this time,” Trump declared, before adding, “Getting along is a great thing.”
Some executives learned that lesson the first time.
The ostensible reason for Monday’s news conference — a $100 billion investment from SoftBank in American projects — was a throwback to 2016. The firm’s chief executive, Masayoshi Son, had made an eerily similar pledge eight years ago (then it was $50 billion) after a private meeting with Trump.
Son appeared with Trump on Monday, who prodded him to double the investment to $200 billion on the spot.
“He’s a great negotiator,” Son said.
One thing that hasn’t changed in the last eight years is that anytime Trump is in front of a bank of television cameras taking questions for an hour, he is likely to unleash a news tsunami.
And so it was on Monday.
He left open the possibility of pardoning New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, who was indicted on federal corruption charges. He spoke fondly of TikTok, when lawmakers voted to force a sale of it earlier this year (“I have a warm spot in my heart”). And he said the government knew the full story of what is happening with the recent “drone sightings” but “for some reason, they don’t want to comment.”
One through line with Trump is his frustration with the free press. In his post-2016 news conference, he assailed CNN as “fake news” and expressed frustration with the publication at the time of an unproven dossier of allegations of ties to Russia.
“With freedom comes responsibility,” he said back then.
Now he was targeting The Des Moines Register over its publication of a poll that showed him trailing in Iowa before the election — when he won the state easily. He promised more libel lawsuits just after he settled a defamation suit with ABC News for $15 million.
“We have to straighten out the press,” he said now.
Another Trump constant is his obsession over trade and tariffs.
“We don’t make good deals anymore,” he said eight years ago. On Monday, he had only the slightest revision.
“Let’s just say this,” he said, “we’re going to make great deals.”
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