With just over a week to go before the inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump has already expanded his power substantially since the November election. Here’s what we know so far about his growing influence.
Let’s start with his connections to big business, specifically technology.
A report from Axios noted that major tech CEOs have been traveling to meet with the president elect and have cut $1 million in checks for his inauguration.
It said that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has even shifted top personnel and policies to match Trump’s interests and that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has “cozied” up to Trump. Amazon Prime Video even made a $40 million deal for streaming and theatrical rights for a documentary about Trump’s wife, incoming First Lady Melania Trump.
Two billionaire CEOs also announced big U.S. investments to kick off Trump press conferences at Mar-a-Lago. SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son announced plans to invest $100 billion in U.S. projects over the next four years and this week, Hussain Sajwani of the United Arab Emirates, a close business partner of the Trump family, made a $20 billion commitment to build data centers in the U.S.
“It’s rare, if not unprecedented, for a newly elected leader to have so many world leaders and CEOs shift their policies or posture so blatantly during the transition to curry favor with a new president,” said Axios.
Additionally, Trump and Elon Musk – owner of X as well as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – became close over the last year. Trump appointed Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk’s political influence via his posts on X has already brought criticism from some politicians and even some of Trump’s MAGA base.
“Trump-aligned nationalist movements are disrupting long-liberal foreign allies – from Canada to Britain to Germany – in part because of aggressive information wars waged by Elon Musk and his supporters,” Axios added. Trump is also the most popular politician in Israel, said the outlet, which gives him leverage in the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. Axios also said it appears that Iran is aiming to keep a low profile following Trump’s election win.
Both Musk and Trump often deride traditional media outlets and Musk has told his followers that they should consider themselves the media.
Axios’ report said that news media is indeed more fractured and less trusted than ever.
“Outlets that once covered Trump with skepticism – and even disdain – have made surprise overtures to the president-elect,” said the report.
TIME magazine chose Trump as its person of the year. Hosts of “Morning Joe” – a favorite of President Joe Biden – met with the president-elect for more than an hour.
“This is raw, transactional power – based in many cases on efforts to curry favor, as opposed to clear-cut inspiration or ideological embrace,” said Axios of Trump’s recent expansion of power. An example of this is the approximately $170 million he’s raised for his inauguration.
As president he is, of course, set to have even more power.
This year, the Brennan Center for Justice said that presidential power has actually been on the rise for a century and especially so since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. It said that: “This increase in power, coupled with diminished oversight by Congress and the courts, has enabled a range of abuses. And it has gravely undermined our system of checks and balances.”
Professor Noah Feldman of Harvard said in 2020 that, while Trump isn’t the only president who has sought to expand their power, he stood out for trying to do so non-incrementally the last time he was in office.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the first Trump administration was “marked by gross abuses of executive power, including efforts to trample protest and dissent – key freedoms at the heart of our participatory democracy.”
“A president’s ability to control the levers of power can be augmented – or constrained – by the historical moment,” Harvard Law Today explained.
When he’s back in the White House, Trump will be bolstered by Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, though the latter is slim. Democratic opposition, on the other hand, is “weak and largely powerless,” said Axios, and the post 2016 election “resistance” movement isn’t as strong as it once was.
The conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court, including three justices appointed by Trump himself, delivered the president elect a win over the summer when it decided that: “A former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his ‘conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” Some have argued that this gives the president power of a king.
Since the election, the public’s opinion of Trump has also warmed, according to polling data collected by FiveThirtyEight. On Nov. 2, his unfavorable rating was over 52%, this Wednesday it was down to 47.6%. However, it is still slightly higher than his favorable rating of 47.3%.