One Year Later: When Trust Meets Reality
Americans are right to demand more, but many are learning they trusted the wrong person to deliver
It’s been a year.
Twelve months ago today, Donald Trump took the Oath of Office for the second time. Standing indoors at the Capitol Rotunda, with extreme cold forcing him inside, he was surrounded by oligarchs and tech billionaires who had each donated a million dollars or more to be there.
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook. America’s elite, front and center. Trump promised a new “Golden Age” ahead as he became President again.
That same day, he signed a flurry of executive orders he said would catalyze this new era. He would repeal DEI. End “gender ideology” in federal spaces. Pause foreign assistance. Boost domestic oil production. Promise tariffs that would make Americans rich again.
A year later, I’m seeing a lot of people — many of them personally surprising to me — who are rightly skeptical of whether Trump is keeping his promise. Among his most ardent supporters there’s real doubts and discussions about his priorities. And then there’s a question of just who is getting rich.
The Disappointment I’m Seeing
As my regular readers know, I’m from Galesburg, Illinois. It’s a factory town in a swing district (one of the increasingly few left in our country). I’ve stayed Facebook friends with many people from my high school who have different political views than me.
What I’m reading lately on facebook isn’t the usual partisan cheerleading.
One friend — clearly a Trump voter — posted after the capture of Venezuela’s Maduro: “We got Madurai [sic] before the Epstein files...that’s crazy work...your [sic] welcome again Israel SMFH.”
A pro-Trump commenter jumped in: “You think it’s bad now imagine in an alternate universe where Kamala won the election.”
His response was something I’ve heard from a lot of Trump supporters lately: “Most definitely not the trump from the first term. I just didn’t expect this from him. I was die hard Trump just disappointing ya know.”
This kind of skepticism isn’t new to me. I saw it with supporters who expected more from President Obama. Some were more prominent than others.
At President Obama’s first UN General Assembly, Matt Damon stopped by our White House staff office to introduce himself. He was filming at the hotel hosting the President and wanted to say thank you. He talked to all of us, even chatted with my husband who happened to be visiting. He was gracious, genuine, full of praise.
A few years later, Matt Damon announced he wouldn’t support President Obama’s reelection. Climate change. Obama hadn’t gone far enough.
What I’m seeing now feels different, though.
Matt Damon is a millionaire movie star who’ll be fine, he felt Obama hadn’t gone far enough, he had a voice and used it. Disaffected supporters, particularly wealth ones, are pretty common in national politics.
What felt different is that my friend’s disappointment is existential. He bet on Trump because he’s watching his community hollow out, jobs disappear, his kids’ futures narrow. He didn’t need Trump to go further. He needed Trump to show up for him at all. And he’s not seeing it.
And I understand why people from places like Galesburg voted for Trump. I never shared it, but I get it. Biden was a product of government. He was in Washington their entire lives as things got worse. (His age did not help, either.) Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t get a full chance to introduce herself, and to many she represented judgment from someone whose life was impossibly distant from theirs. The Malibu house purchase recently probably doesn’t help.
So the trust was with Trump, the millionaire from New York who would somehow stand against the elites because the thought was he was self-funded, because of a perception he couldn’t be bought.
What That Trust Bought
One year later, let’s look at the record.
Trump signed 225 executive orders in 2025, the most in a first year since FDR. Congress passed one major bill: the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a massive tax cut the Congressional Budget Office says will add $3.4 trillion to the deficit over a decade. Let’s look at the things he promised:
Jobs? America added just 584,000 in 2025, the worst year since 2020, second worst since the 2009 financial crisis. Healthcare added 713,000 jobs. Manufacturing lost 68,000. Blue-collar work, the backbone of Galesburg, took the hit.
Inflation? Still eating paychecks. Food prices jumped 3.1% by December. That “Golden Age” Trump promised? He now says affordability is “a hoax.” Most of the time he’s defending his economy, he sounds a lot like Biden, but this time both the data and sentiment isn’t on his side.
Tariffs? They materialized in April and, aside from some jokes about taxing penguins on remote islands, they also crashed the stock market. Then Trump backed off. They’re collecting revenue but slowing exports.
The trade deficit he vowed to eliminate? Likely to the tariffs’ credit, it went down. But there’s a waiting game for US companies, questions about how he enacted the tariffs and a pending Supreme Court decision.
And then there are the pardons. On his first day back, Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 defendants. At least 33 reportedly have been rearrested or charged with other crimes. Child sex crimes, illegal weapons, drunk driving that killed people.
There are other less heralded pardons of fraudsters and financial criminals, too, like one woman, Andriana Camberos, who he has pardoned twice, in each of his terms, for two separate multi-million dollar bilking schemes.
In the President’s wide ranging pardons he wiped out approximately $1.3 billion in court-ordered restitution. Money owed to police officers beaten defending the Capitol. Money owed to fraud victims, union workers, investors, employees whose paychecks were stolen. When January 6 defendants were ordered to pay for Capitol repairs, only 15% had paid before Trump erased the rest. American taxpayers are covering the bill.
Previous presidents required people to accept responsibility, make restitution, show remorse. Trump pardoned people who hadn’t paid a dime, then his Justice Department started arguing they should get refunds for what little they had paid. That’s not mercy. That’s a wealth transfer from victims to the guilty.
So what’s Trump been focused on besides pardons (and certainly not releasing the Epstein files in full)? Greenland. Foreign wars. Last week he went on some long riff in Detroit about how he’s misunderstood. In a press conference today he took yet another 2 hours to try to make his case. He’s had plenty of time to make his case.
The border? Yes, crossings dropped dramatically. From 137,000 apprehensions in March 2024 to 7,000 in March 2025. That’s real. Still, ICE is now detaining 65,000 people, three-quarters with no criminal record, while claiming to target “dangerous criminals.” Even Joe Rogan is shaking his head.
The Opening Ahead
My friend from Galesburg isn’t wrong to be disappointed. Trump picked different battles than promised. He’s surrounding himself with the very elites he claimed to fight.
One year in, my assessment is that many Americans are ready to move on. The question is: move on to whom? It’s very unclear who will fill the trust vacuum.
Let’s be clear, though: There’s an opening here. Trust is low everywhere. Americans are frustrated with elites making decisions for forgotten communities. They’re tired of being told the economy is great when their paychecks don’t stretch.
Someone could step into this moment with a real plan. Not promises of Golden Ages, but practical solutions that make life more affordable, jobs more secure, communities more stable. Someone who understands these communities’ fears aren’t bigotry but economic anxiety.
Trump had everything one year ago. Both chambers of Congress. A Supreme Court. A mandate. The trust of millions who’d been ignored for decades.
One year later, he squandered a lot of that personal grievances, elite gatherings, and pardons for people who owed money to cops they beat.
The Golden Age hasn’t come, but the hunger for one is real. Americans are still waiting for someone to get it right.