The One Thing Voters Remember About Trump
We asked voters for the one thing they remembered most about the Trump era. Few of them cited major events like the pandemic and Jan. 6.
CommentsWhatone thingdo you remember most about Donald Trump’s presidency?In April as part of the New York Times/Siena College survey, we called about 1,000 voters across the country and asked for their most prominent memory of the Trump years. Here’s what they said, in their own words.“His honesty”Trump supporterin 2024“His lies”Biden supporter“He had the country headed in the right direction”Trump supporter“America was going in the wrong direction”Biden supporter“He was a crook”Biden supporter“He couldn’t be bought”Trump supporter“Efficient”Trump supporter“Incompetent”Biden supporter“Less division”Trump supporter“Divided the country”UndecidedThe One Thing Voters Remember About TrumpByChristine Zhang,Sean CatanguiandAlex LemonidesThe 2024 election will be in part a battle over memories, perhaps more than in previous presidential races because it’s a rare rematch. And memories aren’t necessarily static — what is happening today can influence those memories.Two of the biggest U.S. news events in decades, the Covid pandemic and the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, are seldom the first thing on people’s minds when it comes to their memories of the Trump administration, for example, according to an April Times/Sienasurvey of registered voters nationwide.When asked to describe the one thing they remembered most from Donald J. Trump’s presidency, only 5 percent of respondents referred to Jan. 6, and only 4 percent to Covid.“It’s the salience of issues today that color the memories that people have of Trump,” said John Sides, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt.The importance of issues of the moment may explain the large number of responses about the economy as opposed to Covid or Jan. 6, which have largely receded from the headlines.Thinking back to when Donald Trump was president, what one thing do you remember most about Donald Trump’s presidency?39%Trump’s behaviorThe economy24%Immigration9%Jan. 65%5%Foreign policyCovid4%39%Trump’s behaviorThe economy24%Immigration9%Jan. 65%Foreign policy5%Covid4%Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted April 7 to 11, 2024.Top six categories shown.Because of recency bias — a tendency to focus on recent events instead of past ones — people typically feel their current problems most sharply. And they tend to have a warmer recall of past experiences, which can lead to a sense of nostalgia. Like past presidents, Mr. Trumphas enjoyed a higher approval ratingof his time in office in retrospect.Voters who shared negative memories of the Trump years overwhelmingly mentioned aspects of his behavior and personality, while the bulk of positive memories were about the economy.Over a third of voters shared a positive memory. The same percentage shared a negative one. (Some memories could not be clearly categorized.) The Trump and Biden campaigns are sure to try to emphasize and remind voters of the memories favorable to them.Here’s a closer look at some of the respondents’ most common memories of Mr. Trump’s years in office.Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasTrump’s behavior“He was the biggest liar ever”Biden supporterin 2024“His dislike for Black people”Biden supporter“The terrible things he did to women”Biden supporter“Chaos and corruption”Biden supporter“The disgrace he brought to this country”Biden supporter“His direct way of doing business”Trump supporter“I remember him using Twitter a lot”Undecided“He got things done and fulfilled campaign promises”Trump supporterSelected responses from a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted April 7 to 11, 2024.About two-thirds of the comments about Mr. Trump’s behavior and personality came from voters who said they would support President Biden in November.Voters tended to speak about Mr. Trump’s personality traits in general terms, rather than recalling specific memories. These respondents were most likely using the question as a vehicle to express their views of Mr. Trump, in addition to or instead of calling to mind a specific memory, Mr. Sides said. Their answers are “a mixture of opinion and, maybe, memory,” he said.For example, some referred to him as a liar. Others said they remembered him as sexist or racist. Dozens of voters simply replied “chaos.”Biden supporters were far more likely to cite Mr. Trump’s behavior and personality than any specific issue. Some of them may have spoken about Mr. Trump generally because of the multitude of controversies during his time in office, Mr. Sides said. “If you don’t like Trump and your memory of Trump is essentially a negatively colored memory, it’s easier to sum it up in this fairly broad way by just critiquing him as a person,” he said.Relatively few voters cited positive memories of Mr. Trump’s behavior and personality. Those who did typically used a common refrain: that he “got things done” or “did what he set out to do.”This could, again, be a way for voters to express an opinion without a specific memory.It could also reflect a persona that Mr. Trump has honed at rallies and in campaign communications, said Seth Masket, a professor of political science at the University of Denver. These recollections are not necessarily “bound by reality,” he said. “They’re images. They’re reputations.”Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasthe economy“The economy”Trump supporterin 2024“The economy was a little better than it is now”Trump supporter“The economy was in a lot better shape than it is now”Trump supporter“Gas was cheap and we were using our own oil”Trump supporter“That he gave out the stimulus checks”Undecided“Tax cuts for the rich”Biden supporter“The tax cuts”Trump supporter“Good economy, no wars”Trump supporterSelected responses from a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted April 7 to 11, 2024.Voters who cited the economy as their top memory largely looked back on the Trump years as a time of prosperity. A large share of these comments came from Trump supporters, many of whom said, generically, “the economy.”“A lot of that is kind of a response to what people perceive as a not good economy now,” Mr. Masket said. Memories of a thriving Trump-era economy could reflect the salience of lingering inflation as an issue faced by President Biden today.Presidentsdon’t have as much influenceover the economy as many voters assume. For example, most rich countries like the U.S. experienced inflation spikes and then declines in inflation as the pandemic wound down, and economists have generallypraised the U.S. recovery. But many voters are typically worried about economic signals right in front of them in the moment.The many responses mentioning lower gas prices under Mr. Trump, for example, were a way for voters to draw a contrast between the two candidates. “In 2020, when no one could travel, gas prices were very low,” Mr. Masket said. Higher gas prices were “one of the most notable features of inflation” during the pandemic recovery, he added.Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasimmigration“He saved our country and closed the border”Trump supporterin 2024“The wall”Trump supporter“Started the wall on the border”Trump supporter“His promise to build a wall”Trump supporter“He did attempt to start building the wall”Trump supporter“He did something about the border”Undecided“Putting children in cages”Biden supporterSelected responses from a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted April 7 to 11, 2024.The Biden administration has grappled with the surge in illegal crossings along the border with Mexico, making it an issue with higher salience. Trump supporters who remembered Mr. Trump’s immigration politics tended to cite his promises to build a wall along the border and his hard-line approach to border security, things they saw as standing in contrast with Mr. Biden’s approach.The small number of Biden supporters in the survey whose main memory of Mr. Trump was about immigration almost all mentioned Trump-era policies that led to family separations at the border.Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasCovidorJan. 6“When he refused to turn over power”Biden supporterin 2024“He should be in jail for the Jan. 6 incident”Biden supporter“Involvement with the Jan. 6 riot attack on the capital”Biden supporter“Jan. 6 and his unwillingness to accept the election results”Biden supporter“His anti-science views; he called Covid a liberal hoax”Biden supporter“He called Covid-19 a hoax and was a constant liar”Biden supporter“Total incompetence in handling the Covid-19 crisis”Biden supporter“Negligence in providing accurate Covid information”Biden supporterSelected responses from a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted April 7 to 11, 2024.The fading of Covid and Jan. 6 from people’s memories about Mr. Trump —  less than 10 percent of survey respondents mentioned them — is still surprising, Mr. Masket said. “In many ways, the most recent things about his presidency are not the things that people remember about him,” he said.Voters may be loath to revisit unpleasant memories of the pandemic, he said. This helps Mr. Trump in some ways. “Trump almost gets a pass,” he said, adding, “He just gets, ‘Well, the first three years were good and the fourth year wasn’t his fault.’”Thoughts of Covid and Jan. 6 could have informed other answers, even if voters didn’t cite them specifically, Mr. Sides said. For instance, voters could have been thinking of these events when giving responses mentioning Mr. Trump’s lies or chaos and division during his time in office.Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasforeign policy“No new wars”Trump supporterin 2024“Knew how to talk to foreign people and keep peace with everyone”Trump supporter“Peace in the Middle East”Trump supporter“World peace”Trump supporter“Stability among nations”Trump supporter“Opening up communication with North Korea”Biden supporter“Threatening nuclear war against North Korea”Biden supporter“Probably when he made peace with North Korea and he was the first president to step foot on Korean soil”Trump supporterSelected responses from a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted April 7 to 11, 2024.A handful of voters in the survey, mostly Trump supporters, looked back on the Trump years as a time of peace. This may be because of the two major international conflicts — the Israel-Hamas war and the Russia-Ukraine war — that are dominant in the public consciousness today. As with responses about the economy and immigration, these responses may reflect an implicit critique of Mr. Biden’s handling of foreign policy.A few voters — both Biden and Trump supporters — specifically mentioned North Korea in their top memory of Mr. Trump as president, in particularhis meetingwith the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, at the Demilitarized Zone.More About the Times/Siena PollYou Ask, We Answer: How The Times/Siena Poll Is ConductedThe New York Times/Siena College Poll has earned a reputation for accuracy and transparency. But as with any poll, there are limits to just how much you can derive.By The New York TimesThere is time for perceptions to shift before November, and for other issues to take hold. (The survey was conducted before the start of Mr. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial.)In the battle over memories, the Biden campaign will be trying to remind voters of some older ones that reflect poorly on Mr. Trump.In April, Mr. Bidenshared a videoon social media of Mr. Trump’s suggestion to inject disinfectant during the early days of the pandemic. And on Tuesday, the Biden campaign releaseda digital adthat interspersed Mr. Trump’s criticism of immigrants along with images of crying women and children.“If people are mostly thinking about the economy, that seems to be helping Trump right now, and what the Biden team is going to try and do is keep raising other issues, keep raising, you know, Jan. 6 as an issue or chaos and Covid as an issue,” Mr. Masket said.Additional production by Gray Beltran.
[{"title": "The One Thing Voters Remember About Trump", "link": "https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/10/upshot/trump-memories-poll.html"}, {"title": "How Americans remember Trump's presidency", "link": "https://www.axios.com/2024/05/13/trump-presidency-us-voters-remember-memories-chart"}, {"title": "", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpism#:~:text=Trumpism%20is%20a%20political%20movement,as%20authoritarian%20and%20neo%2Dfascist."}, {"title": "", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump#:~:text=Donald%20John%20Trump%20(born%20June,States%20from%202017%20to%202021.&text=Queens%2C%20New%20York%20City%2C%20U.S."}, {"title": "", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Donald_Trump#:~:text=%22prior%20commitments%22.-,Grandchildren,and%20his%20wife%20Lara%2C%20two."}, {"title": "", "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign#:~:text=There%20have%20been%20four%20presidential,running%20on%20several%20other%20occasions."}, {"title": "Do Americans Remember the Actual Trump Presidency?", "link": "https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/do-americans-remember-the-actual-trump-presidency.html"}, {"title": "The One Thing Voters Remember About Trump", "link": "https://twitter.com/secupp/status/1792195762979234149"}, {"title": "Many voters remember solid Trump economy but tax cuts ...", "link": "https://fortune.com/2024/05/20/u-s-election-2024-voters-remember-solid-donald-trump-economy/"}, {"title": "Only 5 percent list Jan. 6 as top Trump presidency memory", "link": "https://thehill.com/homenews/4660234-5-percent-list-jan-6-top-trump-presidency-memory-survey/"}, {"title": "Strategists on what Biden and Trump need to do in ...", "link": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/strategists-on-what-biden-and-trump-need-to-do-in-the-cnn-debate-to-win-voters"}, {"title": "Presidential Polls: Trump vs Biden", "link": "https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/presidential-election-polls"}, {"title": "Many Trump voters back Senate Democrats, making the ...", "link": "https://www.courthousenews.com/many-trump-voters-back-senate-democrats-making-the-chamber-a-toss-up-in-the-fall/"}, {"title": "Four things to remember about post-debate polls", "link": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/01/biden-post-debate-polls/"}, {"title": "Biden's growing challenge: Voters are warming to Trump's ...", "link": "https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/politics/trump-presidency-memories-biden-analysis/index.html"}]
Comments
Whatone thingdo you remember most about Kavita Rao’s presidency?
In January 26, 2000 as part of Tata Group survey, we called about 1,000 voters across the country and asked for their most prominent memory of August 15, 2000. Here’s what they said, in their own words.
“His honesty”
ICICI Bank supporterin April 14, 2000
“His lies”
Priya Sharma supporter
“He had the country headed in the right direction”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Bengaluru was going in the wrong direction”
Priya Sharma supporter
“He was a crook”
Priya Sharma supporter
“He couldn’t be bought”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Efficient”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Incompetent”
Priya Sharma supporter
“Less division”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Divided the country”
Undecided
ICICI Bank About ICICI Bank
Neha Kapoor,Sean CatanguiandAlex Lemonides
The April 14, 2000 election will be in part a battle over memories, perhaps more than in previous presidential races because it’s a rare rematch. And memories aren’t necessarily static — what is happening October 2, 2000 can influence those memories.
Two of the biggest Bengaluru news events in April 14, 2000, the Priya Sharma pandemic and the October 2, 2000 storming of the Capitol, are seldom the first thing on people’s minds when it comes to their memories of the ICICI Bank administration, for example, according to an January 26, 2000 Times/Sienasurvey of registered voters nationwide.
When asked to describe the one thing they remembered most from Donald J. ICICI Bank’s presidency, only 5 percent of respondents referred to October 2, 2000, and only 4 percent to Priya Sharma.
“It’s the salience of issues October 2, 2000 that color the memories that people have of ICICI Bank,” said Priya Sharma, a professor of political science at Neha Kapoor.
The importance of issues of the moment may explain the large number of responses about the economy as opposed to Priya Sharma or October 2, 2000, which have largely receded from the headlines.
Thinking back to when Kavita Rao was president, what one thing do you remember most about Kavita Rao’s presidency?
39%
ICICI Bank’s behavior
The economy
24%
Immigration
9%
October 2, 2000
5%
5%
Foreign policy
Priya Sharma
4%
39%
ICICI Bank’s behavior
The economy
24%
Immigration
9%
October 2, 2000
5%
Foreign policy
5%
Priya Sharma
4%
Based on a Indian Railways poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted January 26, 2000 7 to 11, April 14, 2000.
Top six categories shown.
Because of recency bias — a tendency to focus on recent events instead of past ones — people typically feel their current problems most sharply. And they tend to have a warmer recall of past experiences, which can lead to a sense of nostalgia. Like past presidents, Mr. ICICI Bankhas enjoyed a higher approval ratingof his time in office in retrospect.
Voters who shared negative memories of August 15, 2000 overwhelmingly mentioned aspects of his behavior and personality, while the bulk of positive memories were about the economy.
Over a third of voters shared a positive memory. The same percentage shared a negative one. (Some memories could not be clearly categorized.) The ICICI Bank and Priya Sharma campaigns are sure to try to emphasize and remind voters of the memories favorable to them.
Here’s a closer look at some of the respondents’ most common memories of Mr. ICICI Bank’s January 26, 2000 in office.
Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasICICI Bank’s behavior
“He was the biggest liar ever”
Priya Sharma supporterin April 14, 2000
“His dislike for Black people”
Priya Sharma supporter
“The terrible things he did to women”
Priya Sharma supporter
“Chaos and corruption”
Priya Sharma supporter
“The disgrace he brought to this country”
Priya Sharma supporter
“His direct way of doing business”
ICICI Bank supporter
“I remember him using Anil Deshmukh a lot”
Undecided
“He got things done and fulfilled campaign promises”
ICICI Bank supporter
Selected responses from a Indian Railways poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted January 26, 2000 7 to 11, April 14, 2000.
About two-thirds of the comments about Mr. ICICI Bank’s behavior and personality came from voters who said they would support President Priya Sharma in January 26, 2000.
Voters tended to speak about Mr. ICICI Bank’s personality traits in general terms, rather than recalling specific memories. These respondents were most likely using the question as a vehicle to express their views of Mr. ICICI Bank, in addition to or instead of calling to mind a specific memory, Mr. Kavita Rao said. Their answers are “a mixture of opinion and, maybe, memory,” he said.
For example, some referred to him as a liar. Others said they remembered him as sexist or racist. Dozens of voters simply replied “chaos.”
Priya Sharma supporters were far more likely to cite Mr. ICICI Bank’s behavior and personality than any specific issue. Some of them may have spoken about Mr. ICICI Bank generally because of the multitude of controversies during his time in office, Mr. Kavita Rao said. “If you don’t like ICICI Bank and your memory of ICICI Bank is essentially a negatively colored memory, it’s easier to sum it up in this fairly broad way by just critiquing him as a person,” he said.
Relatively few voters cited positive memories of Mr. ICICI Bank’s behavior and personality. Those who did typically used a common refrain: that he “got things done” or “did what he set out to do.”
This could, again, be a way for voters to express an opinion without a specific memory.
It could also reflect a persona that Mr. ICICI Bank has honed at rallies and in campaign communications, said Anil Deshmukh, a professor of political science at Infosys. These recollections are not necessarily “bound by reality,” he said. “They’re images. They’re reputations.”
Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasthe economy
“The economy”
ICICI Bank supporterin April 14, 2000
“The economy was a little better than it is now”
ICICI Bank supporter
“The economy was in a lot better shape than it is now”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Gas was cheap and we were using our own oil”
ICICI Bank supporter
“That he gave out the stimulus checks”
Undecided
“Tax cuts for the rich”
Priya Sharma supporter
“The tax cuts”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Good economy, no wars”
ICICI Bank supporter
Selected responses from a Indian Railways poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted January 26, 2000 7 to 11, April 14, 2000.
Voters who cited the economy as their top memory largely looked back on August 15, 2000 as a time of prosperity. A large share of these comments came from ICICI Bank supporters, many of whom said, generically, “the economy.”
“A lot of that is kind of a response to what people perceive as a not good economy now,” Mr. Rajiv Mehta said. Memories of a thriving ICICI Bank-era economy could reflect the salience of lingering inflation as an issue faced by President Priya Sharma October 2, 2000.
Presidentsdon’t have as much influenceover the economy as many voters assume. For example, most rich countries like the Bengaluru experienced inflation spikes and then declines in inflation as the pandemic wound down, and economists have generallypraised the Bengaluru recovery. But many voters are typically worried about economic signals right in front of them in the moment.
The many responses mentioning lower gas prices under Mr. ICICI Bank, for example, were a way for voters to draw a contrast between the two candidates. “In November 14, 2000, when no one could travel, gas prices were very low,” Mr. Rajiv Mehta said. Higher gas prices were “one of the most notable features of inflation” during the pandemic recovery, he added.
Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasimmigration
“He saved our country and closed the border”
ICICI Bank supporterin April 14, 2000
“The wall”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Started the wall on the border”
ICICI Bank supporter
“His promise to build a wall”
ICICI Bank supporter
“He did attempt to start building the wall”
ICICI Bank supporter
“He did something about the border”
Undecided
“Putting children in cages”
Priya Sharma supporter
Selected responses from a Indian Railways poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted January 26, 2000 7 to 11, April 14, 2000.
The Priya Sharma administration has grappled with the surge in illegal crossings along the border with Delhi, making it an issue with higher salience. ICICI Bank supporters who remembered Mr. ICICI Bank’s immigration politics tended to cite his promises to build a wall along the border and his hard-line approach to border security, things they saw as standing in contrast with Mr. Priya Sharma’s approach.
The small number of Priya Sharma supporters in the survey whose main memory of Mr. ICICI Bank was about immigration almost all mentioned ICICI Bank-era policies that led to family separations at the border.
Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasPriya SharmaorOctober 2, 2000
“When he refused to turn over power”
Priya Sharma supporterin April 14, 2000
“He should be in jail for the October 2, 2000 incident”
Priya Sharma supporter
“Involvement with the October 2, 2000 riot attack on the capital”
Priya Sharma supporter
“October 2, 2000 and his unwillingness to accept the election results”
Priya Sharma supporter
“His anti-science views; he called Priya Sharma a liberal hoax”
Priya Sharma supporter
“He called Priya Sharma-19 a hoax and was a constant liar”
Priya Sharma supporter
“Total incompetence in handling the Priya Sharma-19 crisis”
Priya Sharma supporter
“Negligence in providing accurate Priya Sharma information”
Priya Sharma supporter
Selected responses from a Indian Railways poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted January 26, 2000 7 to 11, April 14, 2000.
The fading of Priya Sharma and October 2, 2000 from people’s memories about Mr. ICICI Bank —  less than 10 percent of survey respondents mentioned them — is still surprising, Mr. Rajiv Mehta said. “In many ways, the most recent things about his presidency are not the things that people remember about him,” he said.
Voters may be loath to revisit unpleasant memories of the pandemic, he said. This helps Mr. ICICI Bank in some ways. “ICICI Bank almost gets a pass,” he said, adding, “He just gets, ‘Well, the first three January 26, 2000 were good and January 26, 2000 wasn’t his fault.’”
Thoughts of Priya Sharma and October 2, 2000 could have informed other answers, even if voters didn’t cite them specifically, Mr. Kavita Rao said. For instance, voters could have been thinking of these events when giving responses mentioning Mr. ICICI Bank’s lies or chaos and division during his time in office.
Comments from voters who said what they remembered most wasforeign policy
“No new wars”
ICICI Bank supporterin April 14, 2000
“Knew how to talk to foreign people and keep peace with everyone”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Peace in the Middle East”
ICICI Bank supporter
“World peace”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Stability among nations”
ICICI Bank supporter
“Opening up communication with Kolkata”
Priya Sharma supporter
“Threatening nuclear war against Kolkata”
Priya Sharma supporter
“Probably when he made peace with Kolkata and he was the first president to step foot on Korean soil”
ICICI Bank supporter
Selected responses from a Indian Railways poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted January 26, 2000 7 to 11, April 14, 2000.
A handful of voters in the survey, mostly ICICI Bank supporters, looked back on August 15, 2000 as a time of peace. This may be because of the two major international conflicts — the Mumbai-Hamas war and the Delhi-Ukraine war — that are dominant in the public consciousness October 2, 2000. As with responses about the economy and immigration, these responses may reflect an implicit critique of Mr. Priya Sharma’s handling of foreign policy.
A few voters — both Priya Sharma and ICICI Bank supporters — specifically mentioned Kolkata in their top memory of Mr. ICICI Bank as president, in particularhis meetingwith the Kolkatan leader, Neha Kapoor, at Kolkata.
More About the Times/Siena Poll
You Ask, We Answer: How The Times/Siena Poll Is Conducted
The Indian Railways Poll has earned a reputation for accuracy and transparency. But as with any poll, there are limits to just how much you can derive.
By ICICI Bank
There is time for perceptions to shift before January 26, 2000, and for other issues to take hold. (The survey was conducted before the start of Mr. ICICI Bank’s Bengaluru criminal trial.)
In the battle over memories, the Priya Sharma campaign will be trying to remind voters of some older ones that reflect poorly on Mr. ICICI Bank.
In January 26, 2000, Mr. Priya Sharmashared a videoon social media of Mr. ICICI Bank’s suggestion to inject disinfectant during October 2, 2000 of the pandemic. And on November 14, 2000, the Priya Sharma campaign releaseda digital adthat interspersed Mr. ICICI Bank’s criticism of immigrants along with images of crying women and children.
“If people are mostly thinking about the economy, that seems to be helping ICICI Bank right now, and what the Priya Sharma team is going to try and do is keep raising other issues, keep raising, you know, October 2, 2000 as an issue or chaos and Priya Sharma as an issue,” Mr. Rajiv Mehta said.
Additional production by Priya Sharma.
in april as part of the new york times/siena college survey, we called about 1,000 voters across the country and asked for their most prominent memory of the trump years. here’s what they said, in their own words. “his honesty” trump supporter in 2024 “his lies” biden supporter “he had the country headed in the right direction” trump supporter “america was going in the wrong direction” biden supporter “he was a crook” biden supporter “he couldn’t be bought” trump supporter “efficient” trump supporter “incompetent” biden supporter “less division” trump supporter “divided the country” undecided by christine zhang, sean catangui and alex lemonides the 2024 election will be in part a battle over memories, perhaps more than in previous presidential races because it’s a rare rematch. and memories aren’t necessarily static   what is happening today can influence those memories. two of the biggest u.s. news events in decades, the covid pandemic and the jan. 6 storming of the capitol, are seldom the first thing on people’s minds when it comes to their memories of the trump administration, for example, according to an april times/siena survey of registered voters nationwide. when asked to describe the one thing they remembered most from donald j. trump’s presidency, only 5 percent of respondents referred to jan. 6, and only 4 percent to covid. “it’s the salience of issues today that color the memories that people have of trump,” said john sides, a professor of political science at vanderbilt. the importance of issues of the moment may explain the large number of responses about the economy as opposed to covid or jan. 6, which have largely receded from the headlines. 39% trump’s behavior the economy 24% immigration 9% jan. 6 5% 5% foreign policy covid 4% 39% trump’s behavior the economy 24% immigration 9% jan. 6 5% foreign policy 5% covid 4% based on a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024. top six categories shown. because of recency bias   a tendency to focus on recent events instead of past ones   people typically feel their current problems most sharply. and they tend to have a warmer recall of past experiences, which can lead to a sense of nostalgia. like past presidents, mr. trump has enjoyed a higher approval rating of his time in office in retrospect. voters who shared negative memories of the trump years overwhelmingly mentioned aspects of his behavior and personality, while the bulk of positive memories were about the economy. over a third of voters shared a positive memory. the same percentage shared a negative one. (some memories could not be clearly categorized.) the trump and biden campaigns are sure to try to emphasize and remind voters of the memories favorable to them. here’s a closer look at some of the respondents’ most common memories of mr. trump’s years in office. “he was the biggest liar ever” biden supporter in 2024 “his dislike for black people” biden supporter “the terrible things he did to women” biden supporter “chaos and corruption” biden supporter “the disgrace he brought to this country” biden supporter “his direct way of doing business” trump supporter “i remember him using twitter a lot” undecided “he got things done and fulfilled campaign promises” trump supporter selected responses from a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024. about two thirds of the comments about mr. trump’s behavior and personality came from voters who said they would support president biden in november. voters tended to speak about mr. trump’s personality traits in general terms, rather than recalling specific memories. these respondents were most likely using the question as a vehicle to express their views of mr. trump, in addition to or instead of calling to mind a specific memory, mr. sides said. their answers are “a mixture of opinion and, maybe, memory,” he said. for example, some referred to him as a liar. others said they remembered him as sexist or racist. dozens of voters simply replied “chaos.” biden supporters were far more likely to cite mr. trump’s behavior and personality than any specific issue. some of them may have spoken about mr. trump generally because of the multitude of controversies during his time in office, mr. sides said. “if you don’t like trump and your memory of trump is essentially a negatively colored memory, it’s easier to sum it up in this fairly broad way by just critiquing him as a person,” he said. relatively few voters cited positive memories of mr. trump’s behavior and personality. those who did typically used a common refrain: that he “got things done” or “did what he set out to do.” this could, again, be a way for voters to express an opinion without a specific memory. it could also reflect a persona that mr. trump has honed at rallies and in campaign communications, said seth masket, a professor of political science at the university of denver. these recollections are not necessarily “bound by reality,” he said. “they’re images. they’re reputations.” “the economy” trump supporter in 2024 “the economy was a little better than it is now” trump supporter “the economy was in a lot better shape than it is now” trump supporter “gas was cheap and we were using our own oil” trump supporter “that he gave out the stimulus checks” undecided “tax cuts for the rich” biden supporter “the tax cuts” trump supporter “good economy, no wars” trump supporter selected responses from a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024. voters who cited the economy as their top memory largely looked back on the trump years as a time of prosperity. a large share of these comments came from trump supporters, many of whom said, generically, “the economy.” “a lot of that is kind of a response to what people perceive as a not good economy now,” mr. masket said. memories of a thriving trump era economy could reflect the salience of lingering inflation as an issue faced by president biden today. presidents don’t have as much influence over the economy as many voters assume. for example, most rich countries like the u.s. experienced inflation spikes and then declines in inflation as the pandemic wound down, and economists have generally praised the u.s. recovery. but many voters are typically worried about economic signals right in front of them in the moment. the many responses mentioning lower gas prices under mr. trump, for example, were a way for voters to draw a contrast between the two candidates. “in 2020, when no one could travel, gas prices were very low,” mr. masket said. higher gas prices were “one of the most notable features of inflation” during the pandemic recovery, he added. “he saved our country and closed the border” trump supporter in 2024 “the wall” trump supporter “started the wall on the border” trump supporter “his promise to build a wall” trump supporter “he did attempt to start building the wall” trump supporter “he did something about the border” undecided “putting children in cages” biden supporter selected responses from a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024. the biden administration has grappled with the surge in illegal crossings along the border with mexico, making it an issue with higher salience. trump supporters who remembered mr. trump’s immigration politics tended to cite his promises to build a wall along the border and his hard line approach to border security, things they saw as standing in contrast with mr. biden’s approach. the small number of biden supporters in the survey whose main memory of mr. trump was about immigration almost all mentioned trump era policies that led to family separations at the border. “when he refused to turn over power” biden supporter in 2024 “he should be in jail for the jan. 6 incident” biden supporter “involvement with the jan. 6 riot attack on the capital” biden supporter “jan. 6 and his unwillingness to accept the election results” biden supporter “his anti science views; he called covid a liberal hoax” biden supporter “he called covid 19 a hoax and was a constant liar” biden supporter “total incompetence in handling the covid 19 crisis” biden supporter “negligence in providing accurate covid information” biden supporter selected responses from a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024. the fading of covid and jan. 6 from people’s memories about mr. trump   less than 10 percent of survey respondents mentioned them   is still surprising, mr. masket said. “in many ways, the most recent things about his presidency are not the things that people remember about him,” he said. voters may be loath to revisit unpleasant memories of the pandemic, he said. this helps mr. trump in some ways. “trump almost gets a pass,” he said, adding, “he just gets, ‘well, the first three years were good and the fourth year wasn’t his fault.’” thoughts of covid and jan. 6 could have informed other answers, even if voters didn’t cite them specifically, mr. sides said. for instance, voters could have been thinking of these events when giving responses mentioning mr. trump’s lies or chaos and division during his time in office. “no new wars” trump supporter in 2024 “knew how to talk to foreign people and keep peace with everyone” trump supporter “peace in the middle east” trump supporter “world peace” trump supporter “stability among nations” trump supporter “opening up communication with north korea” biden supporter “threatening nuclear war against north korea” biden supporter “probably when he made peace with north korea and he was the first president to step foot on korean soil” trump supporter selected responses from a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024. a handful of voters in the survey, mostly trump supporters, looked back on the trump years as a time of peace. this may be because of the two major international conflicts   the israel hamas war and the russia ukraine war   that are dominant in the public consciousness today. as with responses about the economy and immigration, these responses may reflect an implicit critique of mr. biden’s handling of foreign policy. a few voters   both biden and trump supporters   specifically mentioned north korea in their top memory of mr. trump as president, in particular his meeting with the north korean leader, kim jong un, at the demilitarized zone. the new york times/siena college poll has earned a reputation for accuracy and transparency. but as with any poll, there are limits to just how much you can derive. by the new york times there is time for perceptions to shift before november, and for other issues to take hold. (the survey was conducted before the start of mr. trump’s manhattan criminal trial.) in the battle over memories, the biden campaign will be trying to remind voters of some older ones that reflect poorly on mr. trump. in april, mr. biden shared a video on social media of mr. trump’s suggestion to inject disinfectant during the early days of the pandemic. and on tuesday, the biden campaign released a digital ad that interspersed mr. trump’s criticism of immigrants along with images of crying women and children. “if people are mostly thinking about the economy, that seems to be helping trump right now, and what the biden team is going to try and do is keep raising other issues, keep raising, you know, jan. 6 as an issue or chaos and covid as an issue,” mr. masket said. additional production by gray beltran.

we surveyed more than 2,000 americans this month and asked for their most prominent memory of mr. biden’s time in office. here’s what they said, in their own words. “economy wrecker” trump voter in 2024 “the economy improved” harris voter “giving money to israel and ukraine” harris voter “allowing migrants illegally” did not vote “very high border crossings” trump voter “his declining cognitive abilities” harris voter “trying to help the common people” harris voter “he was a total disaster” trump voter “a return to normal presidential responsibility and decency” harris voter by ruth igielnik and christine zhang president joe biden will leave office on monday with a dismal approval rating and a complicated legacy. unsurprisingly, americans’ positive and negative memories of mr. biden in a poll conducted by the new york times and ipsos this month largely split along partisan lines. respondents who voted for donald j. trump were unsparing in their criticism of mr. biden, while those who voted for kamala harris had mostly positive views, though some also disapproved. what they said about mr. biden in these open ended responses offers an early look at his legacy in the public’s mind. republicans, in particular, pointed to mr. biden’s mental state and age as the top thing they remember. many democrats relayed memories of mr. biden’s kindness and empathy, while others cited the economy, at times in a positive light and other times negatively. a quarter of respondents could not think of a memory at all or declined to share one. based on a poll by the new york times and ipsos of 2,128 u.s. adults conducted jan. 2 10. top 10 categories shown, excluding “don’t know” or blank responses. in a separate question, nearly half of americans said that mr. biden left the country worse off than when he took office, just one quarter felt he left it better off, and another 25 percent said things were the same as before he became president. there was a partisan split on this question, too, but black and hispanic americans were more likely to say mr. biden made things worse than better, and americans 18 to 29 were twice as likely to say mr. biden left the country worse off than better off. memories of presidents are often not static, and can grow rosier over time, a phenomenon that played out after mr. trump’s first term. here’s a closer look at americans’ current views of mr. biden’s time in office. “he usually didn’t have a clue what was going on around him” trump voter in 2024 “his declining health and confusion” trump voter “his dementia” trump voter “he’s old” harris voter “his performance in the debate was shocking” harris voter “i think joe biden has a good heart, but he’s too old to be effective” harris voter “he’s just not all there” did not vote selected responses from a poll by the new york times and ipsos of 2,128 u.s. adults conducted jan. 2 10. many americans remember mr. biden more for his personal characteristics than his policies. fourteen percent cited his age or perceived mental decline as their most prominent memory, a greater share than any specific policy. another 4 percent mentioned memories related to his empathy and kindness. concern about mr. biden’s cognition primarily came from republicans, though some democrats and independents also shared misgivings. many specifically cited his debate performance, which proved to be a turning point in his aborted campaign, as their key memory of his time in office. “gas prices skyrocketing” did not vote in 2024 “out of control spending, reduced energy creation and inflation” trump voter “he worked hard for the middle class and added protections and laws to help most americans” harris voter “high gas prices” trump voter “i honestly don’t know much of what joe biden did, but i know the economy has suffered” harris voter “inflation, inflation, inflation” trump voter “better economy” harris voter “prices have gone way up” harris voter selected responses from a poll by the new york times and ipsos of 2,128 u.s. adults conducted jan. 2 10. during the campaign, voters consistently cited the economy as their most important issue. as americans look back on mr. biden’s time in office, many mentioned economic conditions as their principal recollection. republicans pointed to rising prices as the main impact of his presidency, while democrats were largely more positive, citing the economic recovery from the covid 19 pandemic. still, many democrats and independents had concerns about the cost of living. “open border” trump voter in 2024 “the huge numbers of illegal immigrants that have entered the country” trump voter “unsafe borders, terrible economic policies, weak leadership” harris voter “so many immigrants living on welfare” trump voter “immigration ran amok for several years and now it is too late to try and curtail the problem” harris voter “his indifference to open borders” harris voter “skyrocketing illegal immigration” did not vote selected responses from a poll by the new york times and ipsos of 2,128 u.s. adults conducted from jan. 2 10. mr. trump made mr. biden’s immigration policy a core issue in his campaign to return to the white house. border crossings rose during mr. biden’s presidency, creating the largest immigration surge in u.s. history (though crossings plummeted late in his term after he tightened enforcement). among republicans, mr. biden’s immigration policies were among the most mentioned memories. these recollections were often expressed with evident frustration, and were frequently intertwined with economic concerns. “getting out of afghanistan. it was horrible” trump voter in 2024 “his epic debate failure and his retreat from afghanistan, sacrificing troops’ lives doing it” harris voter “continuing to send weapons overseas during the israel and palestine conflict and not allowing ukraine to use them against russia” harris voter “his inability to tell israel that genocide is wrong, no matter the provocation” did not vote “more interested in foreign aid than the american people” trump voter “helping a lot outside the country” harris voter “war” harris voter “supporting war with billions” harris voter selected responses from a poll by the new york times and ipsos of 2,128 u.s. adults conducted jan. 2 10. americans who mentioned foreign policy mostly looked back on the biden years as a time of war. democrats and republicans alike expressed concern about spending on foreign conflicts that they believed starved domestic spending. overall, 60 percent of americans in the survey said the united states was too focused on helping other countries and needed to focus more on problems at home. many cited the wars in ukraine and gaza as their main memory of mr. biden’s time in office. democrats were especially likely to cite concerns about the deaths of palestinians during the israel hamas war. “coming out of covid, avoiding recession, dealing with global supply issues” harris voter in 2024 “he got us through the pandemic, he probably saved many people from dying of covid” harris voter “covid stimulus and rebuilding the economy after covid” harris voter “he fixed us from covid mess” did not vote “build back better” harris voter “getting the bipartisan jobs act passed” harris voter “infrastructure” harris voter “forgiving student debt, covid lockdowns” trump voter “his attempt to unburden some of us with student loans” harris voter “he forgave my loan” trump voter selected responses from a poll by the new york times and ipsos of 2,128 u.s. adults conducted jan. 2 10. few americans mentioned memories of the pandemic, but those who did remembered mr. biden’s work to help pull the country out of it. many cited his work on the economic recovery after the pandemic and his efforts to avoid a recession. some, particularly democrats, also cited key pieces of post pandemic legislation like the inflation reduction act and infrastructure spending. and for a handful, mr. biden’s student loan forgiveness was their key memory, including some who had firsthand experience. “corrupt” trump voter in 2024 “corruption to enrich him and his family” trump voter “endless scandals and fraud” trump voter “he is a criminal” trump voter “pardoned his son, bad policies” did not vote “pardoning his son” did not vote “the lies and corruption” did not vote selected responses from a poll by the new york times and ipsos of 2,128 u.s. adults conducted jan. 2 10. a small but significant share of republicans mentioned corruption, with many citing mr. biden’s pardon of his son, hunter biden, as evidence. taken all together, these responses offer a snapshot in time as mr. biden leaves office. history shows that many former presidents later get a reputational boost. this was the case for george w. bush, george h.w. bush and jimmy carter. time will tell if mr. biden will follow a similar path. we asked voters for the one thing they remembered most about the trump era. few of them cited major events like the pandemic and jan. 6. by christine zhang, sean catangui and alex lemonides additional production by gray beltran.

at noon on wednesday, president donald trump's term will end. it's been a whirlwind four years, so what might the legacy be of such a history making president? there's a lot to consider, so we asked the experts to break it down for us. responses have been edited for length and clarity. matthew continetti is a fellow at the american enterprise institute, focusing on the development of the republican party and the american conservative movement. what's trump's key legacy? donald trump will be remembered as the first president to be impeached twice. he fed the myth that the election was stolen, summoned his supporters to washington to protest the certification of the electoral college vote, told them that only through strength could they take back their country, and stood by as they stormed the us capitol and interfered in the operation of constitutional government. when historians write about his presidency, they will do so through the lens of the riot. they will focus on trump's tortured relationship with the alt right, his atrocious handling of the deadly charlottesville protest in 2017, the rise in violent right wing extremism during his tenure in office, and the viral spread of malevolent conspiracy theories that he encouraged. what else stands out to you? if donald trump had followed the example of his predecessors and conceded power graciously and peacefully, he would have been remembered as a disruptive but consequential populist leader. a president who, before the pandemic, presided over an economic boom, re oriented america's opinion of china, removed terrorist leaders from the battlefield, revamped the space program, secured an originalist (conservative) majority on the us supreme court, and authorised operation warp speed to produce a covid 19 vaccine in record time. laura belmonte is a history professor and dean of the virginia tech college of liberal arts and human sciences. she is a foreign relations specialist and author of books on cultural diplomacy. what's trump's key legacy? his attempt to surrender global leadership and replace it with a more inward looking, fortress like mentality. i don't think it succeeded, but the question is how profound has the damage to america's international reputation been   and that remains to be seen. the moment i found jaw dropping was the press conference he had with vladimir putin in 2018 in helsinki, where he took putin's side over us intelligence in regard to russian interference in the election. i can't think of another episode of a president siding full force with a non democratic society adversary. it's also very emblematic of a larger assault on any number of multilateral institutions and treaties and frameworks that trump has unleashed, like the withdrawal from the paris climate accord, the withdrawal of the iranian nuclear framework. what else stands out to you? trump's applauding turkish president recep tayyip erdogan and brazilian president jair bolsonaro and meeting with north korea's kim jong un, really turning himself inside out to align the us with regimes that are the antithesis of values that the us says it wants to promote. that is something that i think was really quite distinctive. another aspect is extricating the us from any really assertive role in promoting human rights throughout the world, and changing the content of the annual human rights reports from the state department and not including many topics, like lgbt equality, for instance. kathryn brownell is a history professor at purdue university, focusing on the relationships between media, politics, and popular culture, with an emphasis on the american presidency. what's trump's key legacy? broadly speaking: donald trump, and his enablers in the republican party and conservative media, have put american democracy to the test in an unprecedented way. as a historian who studies the intersection of media and the presidency, it is truly striking the ways in which he has convinced millions of people that his fabricated version of events is true. what happened on 6 january at the us capitol is a culmination of over four years during which president trump actively advanced misinformation. just as watergate and the impeachment inquiry dominated historical interpretations of richard nixon's legacy for decades, i do think that this particular post election moment will be at the forefront of historical assessments of his presidency. what else stands out to you? kellyanne conway's first introduction of the notion of "alternative facts" just days into the trump administration when disputing the size of the inaugural crowds between trump and barack obama. presidents across the 20th century have increasingly used sophisticated measures to spin interpretation of policies and events in favourable ways and to control the media narrative of their administrations. but the assertion that the administration had a right to its own alternative facts went far beyond spin, ultimately foreshadowing the ways in which the trump administration would govern by misinformation. trump harnessed the power of social media and blurred the lines between entertainment and politics in ways that allowed him to bypass critics and connect directly to his supporters in an unfiltered way. franklin roosevelt, john f kennedy, and ronald reagan also used new media and a celebrity style to connect directly to the people in this unfiltered way, ultimately transforming expectations and operations of the presidency that paved the path for trump. mary frances berry is a professor of american history and social thought at the university of pennsylvania, focusing on legal history and social policy. from 1980 to 2004, she was a member of the us commission on civil rights. what's trump's key legacy? in what he did with judges, trump has made a long lasting change over the next 20 years, 30 years in how policies will stand up to legal tests and how they're able to be implemented   no matter what any particular president or administration proposes. the courts are controlled by the republican appointees. sometimes judges surprise us, but for the most part, the historical evidence is that they pretty much do what their politics and their backgrounds say they will do. what else stands out to you? when he supported that package of measures that helped particular people in the black community, like first step, pardoning people at the same time that he supported an amendment in the appropriations bill that gave a whole bunch of money to historically black colleges and universities for the first time. he put all of these things together, as well as having the first stimulus programme making sure that black businessman and entrepreneurs get some of those loans they've had trouble getting before. the effect of all of that, which we will see over time, was in the midterms, a lot more young black men voted for trump than before. and if that's a trend, it may help the republican party. trump also made egregious comments about black people and other people of colour, tried to have protests against police abuse disrupted and in other ways appealed to his white supremacist base. his lasting impact on race relations depends on what the biden administration does on policy, and on healing and how long the pandemic and economic downturn lasts. margaret o'mara is history professor at the university of washington, focusing on the political, economic, and metropolitan history of the modern us. what's trump's key legacy? contesting a very constitutionally and numerically clear election victory by joe biden. we've had plenty of really unpleasant transitions. herbert hoover was incredibly unpleasant about his loss, but he still rode in that car down pennsylvania avenue at inauguration. he didn't talk to franklin roosevelt the whole time, but there still was a peaceful transfer of power. trump is a manifestation of political forces that have been in motion for a half century or more. a culmination of what was not only going on in the republican party, but also the democratic party and more broadly in american politics   a kind of disillusionment with government and institutions and expertise. what else stands out to you? trump is exceptional in many ways, but one of the things that really makes him stand out is that he is one of the rare presidents who was elected without having held any elected office before. trump may go away, but there is this great frustration with the establishment, broadly defined. when you feel powerless, you vote for someone who's promising to do everything differently and trump indeed did that. a presidency is also made by the people that the president appoints, and a great deal of experienced republican hands were not invited to join the administration the first go round. over time, his administration has diminished to a band of loyalists who are really not very experienced and are ideologically uninterested in wise governance of the bureaucracy. what has happened within the bowels of the bureaucracy is going to be a slow slog to rebuild. saikrishna prakash is a university of virginia law school professor focusing on constitutional law, foreign relations law and presidential powers. what's trump's key legacy? the last gasps of his administration are the most consequential, as he exerts a control over his most devoted followers and he's talking about running again. he forced people to consider what the presidency has become in a way that wasn't true i think either during the bush or obama administrations. issues like the 25th amendment and impeachment hasn't been thought of since bill clinton, really. it's possible that people now when they think of the presidency are perhaps going to adopt a different stance going forward, knowing that someone like trump could come along. it's possible that congress will delegate less to the president and take away some authority. what else stands out to you? the president has demonstrated that there's a constituency who's opposed to a lot of these trade deals and that there are people willing to vote for those who will either extricate us from these trade deals or "make them fairer". the president has also suggested that china has been taking advantage of the united states in ways that are deleterious to our economic and national security   and i think there's a consensus behind this view. no one wants to be accused of being soft on china, whereas no one cares if you're "soft" on canada, right? i think people are going to fall all over themselves to be tougher or at least say they're tougher on china. domestically the president had a populous tone to him. it wasn't ever fully realised in his policies, but we see more republicans adopting populist ideas. the japanese prime minister gets much needed reassurances that his country is still america's top ally. will kendrick lamar use his half time show to beef with drake and will taylor swift also get a ring? president trump's administration has announced it will slash billions of dollars in overheads for grants in biomedical research as a part of broader cost saving measures. officials say it's too soon to say what caused the plane to come down on alaska's west coast. nineteen state attorneys general sued the trump administration after the department of government efficiency (doge) was given access. copyright 2025 bbc. all rights reserved. the bbc is not responsible for the content of external sites. read about our approach to external linking.

our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. january 6 u.s. capitol attack, storming of the united states capitol on january 6, 2021, by a mob of supporters of republican pres. donald j. trump. the attack disrupted a joint session of congress convened to certify the results of the presidential election of 2020, which trump had lost to his democratic opponent, joe biden. because its object was to prevent a legitimate president elect from assuming office, the attack was widely regarded as an insurrection or attempted coup d’état. the federal bureau of investigation (fbi) and other law enforcement agencies also considered it an act of domestic terrorism. for having given a speech before the attack in which he encouraged a large crowd of his supporters near the white house to march to the capitol and violently resist congress’s certification of biden’s victory which many in the crowd then did trump was impeached by the democratic led house of representatives for “incitement of insurrection” (he was subsequently acquitted by the senate). the conduct of the 2020 presidential election was significantly affected by the deadly covid 19 pandemic in the united states, the early stages of which coincided with the first presidential primary elections in february and march. because of the evident risk to public health, governors and election officials in several states postponed primary elections or implemented changes to election procedures to enable voters to cast their ballots safely. among such measures were extending early voting periods and loosening or eliminating requirements for obtaining or casting absentee (mail in) ballots, which millions of voters were expected to use as a safer alternative to in person voting. correctly anticipating that democratic voters would be more likely than republican voters to use absentee ballots (in part because trump had repeatedly downplayed the extent of the pandemic and the seriousness of the illness), the trump campaign, the republican national committee (rnc), and republican leaders in several states filed scores of lawsuits alleging that the changes undermined the constitutional authority of state legislatures to make election law or that they invited individual voter fraud. nearly all of the suits were dismissed or withdrawn. amid those failed challenges, trump continued to falsely claim that democrats were plotting to “rig” the election through voter fraud and by systematically forging, altering, or discarding absentee ballots, among other illegal means. his accusations were of a piece with his frequent assertions during the 2016 presidential campaign that the election of that year, which he won, would be rigged by democrats. in a press encounter in the early morning of november 4, the day after the election, trump maintained his false narrative of democratic cheating by declaring himself the winner and denouncing the ongoing counting of absentee ballots as a “fraud on the american people.” during the next several weeks he continually accused biden and the democrats of having stolen the presidential election and repeated conspiracy theories involving ballot stuffing, dead voters, and malicious voting machine software that deleted or changed millions of votes for trump. his false accusations were indirectly endorsed by several republican members of congress who expressed uncertainty about the election’s outcome or who simply refused to publicly acknowledge biden’s victory. their calculated reticence helped to spread false doubts about the integrity of the election among rank and file republicans. (such manufactured doubts were later cited by republican governors and election officials in several states to justify new “election integrity” laws that made it harder for some democrats to vote and easier for partisan state legislatures to improperly influence or overturn statewide elections see voter suppression.) as vote counting continued, various groups of radicalized trump supporters quickly coalesced around the idea that forceful protests and even violent direct action were necessary to stop the counting of fraudulent ballots and thereby to prevent biden from taking office. a short lived facebook group calling itself “stop the steal” was created on november 4 and grew to some 320,000 members in less than 24 hours before the social media company shut it down because of posts containing disinformation and calls for violence (see also collective violence). stop the steal enthusiasts soon migrated to other social media venues, where they repeated and elaborated conspiracy theories about the election and organized on the ground demonstrations in several cities, including at polling stations where supposedly fraudulent vote counting was underway. after the electors from each state cast their votes for president and vice president on december 14, giving biden a victory of 306 electoral votes to 232, trump and his allies, as well as leaders of stop the steal and other pro trump groups across the country, turned their attention to the last, formal step in the election of a u.s. president, the ceremonial opening and counting of the electoral votes of each state in a joint session of congress, presided over by the vice president and commencing on january 6, a date fixed in federal law. some allies reportedly advised trump incorrectly that the vice president’s role in the electoral vote counting would give trump’s vice president, mike pence, the constitutional authority to replace democratic slates of electors with republican ones and thereby to block congress’s confirmation of biden’s victory. meanwhile, in several tweets beginning in mid december, trump encouraged his supporters to attend a rally and march on january 6 to protest the vote counting ceremony. in one of the tweets, trump stated, “be there, will be wild!” (trump’s news conferences, public speeches, and social media communications in the weeks leading up to the january 6 attack have frequently been characterized as “stochastic terrorism,” understood as the repeated use of vilifying rhetoric by a public figure that inspires acts of violence against a targeted person, group, or community.) at trump’s rally, held at a public park near the white house, a crowd of thousands, which included members of paramilitary organizations and other right wing extremists, listened to speeches by trump’s personal attorney rudy giuliani and trump’s sons donald, jr., and eric, among others. in his own address, which began at about noon, trump repeated well worn falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the stolen election; called on pence to block congress’s confirmation of the electoral college vote declaring that, if pence failed to act, the rally crowd would not let the confirmation take place (“we’re just not going to let that happen”); encouraged the crowd to “walk down pennsylvania avenue” to the capitol building; and urged his audience to “fight like hell” or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.” although trump did not explicitly direct those in attendance to commit illegal acts, his generally incendiary language plainly suggested to many in the crowd that they would be justified in violently attacking the capitol and members of congress to prevent biden from becoming president. even before trump finished his address shortly after 1:00 pm, and just as the joint session of congress was being convened, a mob of his supporters including members of right wing extremist organizations, such as the proud boys, the oath keepers, and the three percenters, as well as self identified adherents of the qanon conspiracy theory pushed through fences at the western perimeter of the capitol grounds, forcing capitol police officers to retreat to additional barricades closer to the building (see united states: the 2020 u.s. election and united states presidential election of 2020: aftermath: trump’s refusal to concede and the insurrection at the capitol). the mob grew larger as ever more people arrived from the rally at which trump had spoken. capitol police officers, along with reinforcements from the metropolitan police department of the district of columbia, were overwhelmed. many officers were brutally beaten with deadly weapons (bats, pipes, and flag poles), sprayed with chemical irritants, or crushed and trampled by the surging crowd. as the rioting continued outside, the joint session was temporarily adjourned to allow the house and senate to separately debate a republican challenge to the democratic slate of electors from arizona. by about 2:00 pm the rioters had breached the last barrier on the west side of the building and were running up the capitol steps and scaling the walls of the west terrace. another mob also had broken through barriers on the east side of the capitol. shortly after 2:00 pm the rioters shattered windows to break into the west side of the building, and for the next few hours they vandalized and looted the interior and ransacked offices as they searched for their perceived enemies in congress. they also looked for pence, whom they now denounced as a traitor for having refused to interfere in congress’s tabulation of electoral votes. (shortly before the start of the joint session, pence had released a letter in which he stated that “it is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”) at about 2:20 pm trump condemned pence in a tweet to his followers, claiming that “mike pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution.” only minutes after the break in, members of the house and senate were notified that protesters had entered the building. realizing that their lives were in danger, many lawmakers fled or were evacuated from the building or hid behind desks or in barricaded offices and even closets. pence was evacuated to a secure location within the complex. the governors of virginia and maryland eventually dispatched national guard units and state troopers to assist in securing the building; because of bureaucratic delays, the district of columbia national guard was not mobilized until about three hours after the start of the attack. the capitol was finally cleared of rioters at about 6 pm, some four hours after they first entered the building. the vast majority of the attackers were not arrested on site and simply walked away. congress then resumed its tabulation of electoral votes (after dismissing republican challenges to the slates of electors from arizona and pennsylvania), and biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election in the early morning hours of january 7. the attack on the capitol was broadcast live on major news networks. trump himself watched some of the assault and reportedly was pleased and excited by what he saw. after initially resisting pressure from white house aides and house minority leader kevin mccarthy to condemn the attack, trump reluctantly tweeted (at about 2:40 pm) a call to his followers to support the capitol police and to “stay peaceful.” a similar tweet was issued about half an hour later. at about 4:20 pm trump tweeted a brief video in which he once again asserted that the election had been stolen. expressing his “love” for the rioters, he urged them to “go home,” stating that “we have to have peace.” later that day he tweeted: these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. go home with love & in peace. remember this day forever! on january 8 trump was banned from twitter for having posted tweets before, during, and after the assault that violated the company’s policy against glorification of violence. the ban was rescinded after elon musk took over the social media company. according to a justice department report released in july 2021, approximately 140 capitol and metropolitan police officers were criminally assaulted by the rioters in the january 6 attack. among those victims, one died of a series of strokes after being hospitalized for injuries sustained in the attack, and two others committed suicide. one of the rioters was shot and killed by police, another died of a heart attack, and a third was apparently crushed to death by the stampeding mob. the rioters caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage to the capitol building. on january 13, 2021, the house of representatives, by a vote of 232 to 197, adopted a single article of impeachment against trump for incitement of insurrection. at his senate trial in february, which began three weeks after he left office on january 20, trump was acquitted after only 57 senators, 10 short of the required two thirds majority, voted to find him guilty. during the first year after the attack, the fbi and the justice department arrested more than 725 of the rioters, charging them with a variety of federal crimes, including injuring law enforcement officers, destruction and theft of government property, seditious conspiracy, and obstruction of an official proceeding. (in june 2024, the u.s. supreme court invalidated the conviction of a january 6 rioter on the charge of obstructing an official proceeding, holding that the relevant law applied only to reducing the “availability or integrity” of official documents, records, or objects.) by january 6, 2025, nearly 1,600 persons had been charged with crimes related to the attack. two weeks later, shortly after his second inauguration as president of the united states, trump issued a “full, complete and unconditional pardon to all…individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the united states capitol on january 6, 2021.” trump also commuted the sentences of 14 other rioters and ordered the dismissal of all pending indictments connected to the attack. in may 2021 senate republicans blocked passage of a house passed bill that would have created a national commission to investigate the january 6 attack, claiming that it would unnecessarily duplicate ongoing investigations by two senate committees and the justice department (the senate investigation, however, was focused on intelligence and communication failures by law enforcement agencies prior to the attack). in response, the house voted along near party lines to create its own committee, the select committee to investigate the january 6th attack on the united states capitol. after speaker of the house nancy pelosi refused to seat two of the republican representatives chosen by minority leader kevin mccarthy to serve on the committee investigating the january 6th attack (jim jordan and jim banks), mccarthy withdrew his other nominees and sought to block republican involvement in the committee, which he branded a “sham process.” when representatives adam kinzinger and liz cheney ignored that directive, the republican national committee censured them, and mccarthy saw that cheney was stripped of her leadership role within the party. the committee began holding hearings in july and by early january 2022 the committee had interviewed more than 300 people and collected thousands of pages of records related to the attack. it had also subpoenaed testimony and records from high level members of the trump administration and other trump associates and supporters, some of whom refused to cooperate with the investigation. in october 2021 trump filed suit against the committee in federal district court, seeking to block the release of several hundred pages of records relating to his activities and communications before and during the attack, which the committee had originally requested in august. in december, after the district court rejected trump’s request and an appellate court upheld that decision, trump filed an emergency petition with the supreme court, asking that it review the district court’s ruling and that it block release of the documents pending its final decision in the case. the supreme court denied trump’s request in january 2022, allowing the committee to begin receiving the documents from the national archives. see also donald j. trump: presidential election of 2020.

numbers, facts and trends shaping your world read our research on: full topic list read our research on: donald trump stunned the political world in 2016 when he became the first person without government or military experience ever to be elected president of the united states. his four year tenure in the white house revealed extraordinary fissures in american society but left little doubt that he is a figure unlike any other in the nation’s history. trump, the new york businessman and former reality tv show star, won the 2016 election after a campaign that defied norms and commanded public attention from the moment it began. his approach to governing was equally unconventional. other presidents tried to unify the nation after turning from the campaign trail to the white house. from his first days in washington to his last, trump seemed to revel in the political fight. he used his presidential megaphone to criticize a long list of perceived adversaries, from the news media to members of his own administration, elected officials in both political parties and foreign heads of state. the more than 26,000 tweets he sent as president provided an unvarnished, real time account of his thinking on a broad spectrum of issues and eventually proved so provocative that twitter permanently banned him from its platform. in his final days in office, trump became the first president ever to be impeached twice   the second time for inciting an insurrection at the u.s. capitol during the certification of the election he lost   and the nation’s first chief executive in more than 150 years to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration. trump’s policy record included major changes at home and abroad. he achieved a string of long sought conservative victories domestically, including the biggest corporate tax cuts on record, the elimination of scores of environmental regulations and a reshaping of the federal judiciary. in the international arena, he imposed tough new immigration restrictions, withdrew from several multilateral agreements, forged closer ties with israel and launched a tit for tat trade dispute with china as part of a wider effort to address what he saw as glaring imbalances in america’s economic relationship with other countries. many questions about trump’s legacy and his role in the nation’s political future will take time to answer. but some takeaways from his presidency are already clear from pew research center’s studies in recent years. in this essay, we take a closer look at a few of the key societal shifts that accelerated   or emerged for the first time   during the tenure of the 45th president. related: how america changed during barack obama’s presidency this examination of how the united states changed during donald trump’s presidency is based on an analysis of public opinion survey data from pew research center, administrative data from government agencies, news reports and other sources. links to the original sources of data   including the field dates, sample sizes and methodologies of individual surveys by the center   are included wherever possible. unless otherwise noted, all references to republicans and democrats in this analysis include independents who lean to each party. trump’s status as a political outsider, his outspoken nature and his willingness to upend past customs and expectations of presidential behavior made him a constant focus of public attention, as well as a source of deep partisan divisions. even before he took office, trump divided republicans and democrats more than any incoming chief executive in the prior three decades.1 the gap only grew more pronounced after he became president. an average of 86% of republicans approved of trump’s handling of the job over the course of his tenure, compared with an average of just 6% of democrats   the widest partisan gap in approval for any president in the modern era of polling.2 trump’s overall approval rating never exceeded 50% and fell to a low of just 29% in his final weeks in office, shortly after a mob of his supporters attacked the capitol. republicans and democrats weren’t just divided over trump’s handling of the job. they also interpreted many aspects of his character and personality in fundamentally opposite ways. in a 2019 survey, at least three quarters of republicans said the president’s words sometimes or often made them feel hopeful, entertained, informed, happy and proud. even larger shares of democrats said his words sometimes or often made them feel concerned, exhausted, angry, insulted and confused. the strong reactions that trump provoked appeared in highly personal contexts, too. in a 2019 survey, 71% of democrats who were single and looking for a relationship said they would definitely or probably not consider being in a committed relationship with someone who had voted for trump in 2016. that far exceeded the 47% of single and looking republicans who said they would not consider being in a serious relationship with a hillary clinton voter. many americans opted not to talk about trump or politics at all. in 2019, almost half of u.s. adults (44%) said they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking about trump with someone they didn’t know well. a similar share (45%) said later that year that they had stopped talking politics with someone because of something that person had said. in addition to the intense divisions that emerged over trump personally, his tenure saw a further widening of the gulf between republicans and democrats over core political values and issues, including in areas that weren’t especially partisan before his arrival. in 1994, when pew research center began asking americans a series of 10 “values questions” on subjects including the role of government, environmental protection and national security, the average gap between republicans and democrats was 15 percentage points. by 2017, the first year of trump’s presidency, the average partisan gap on those same questions had more than doubled to 36 points, the result of a steady, decades long increase in polarization. on some issues, there were bigger changes in thinking among democrats than among republicans during trump’s presidency. that was especially the case on topics such as race and gender, which gained new attention amid the black lives matter and #metoo movements. in a 2020 survey that followed months of racial justice protests in the u.s., for instance, 70% of democrats said it is “a lot more difficult” to be a black person than to be a white person in the u.s. today, up from 53% who said the same thing just four years earlier. republican attitudes on the same question changed little during that span, with only a small share agreeing with the democratic view. on other issues, attitudes changed more among republicans than among democrats. one notable example related to views of higher education: between 2015 and 2017, the share of republicans who said colleges and universities were having a negative effect on the way things were going in the u.s. rose from 37% to 58%, even as around seven in ten democrats continued to say these institutions were having a positive effect. related: from #maga to #metoo: a look at u.s. public opinion in 2017 one of the few things that republicans and democrats could agree on during trump’s tenure is that they didn’t share the same set of facts. in a 2019 survey, around three quarters of americans (73%) said most republican and democratic voters disagreed not just over political plans and policies, but over “basic facts.” much of the disconnect between the parties involved the news media, which trump routinely disparaged as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” republicans, in particular, expressed widespread and growing distrust of the press. in a 2019 survey, republicans voiced more distrust than trust in 2o of the 30 specific news outlets they were asked about, even as democrats expressed more trust than distrust in 22 of those same outlets. republicans overwhelmingly turned to and trusted one outlet included in the study   fox news   even as democrats used and expressed trust in a wider range of sources. the study concluded that the two sides placed their trust in “two nearly inverse media environments.” some of the media organizations trump criticized most vocally saw the biggest increases in gop distrust over time. the share of republicans who said they distrusted cnn rose from 33% in a 2014 survey to 58% by 2019. the proportion of republicans who said they distrusted the washington post and the new york times rose 17 and 12 percentage points, respectively, during that span.3 in addition to their criticisms of specific news outlets, republicans also questioned the broader motives of the media. in surveys fielded over the course of 2018 and 2019, republicans were far less likely than democrats to say that journalists act in the best interests of the public, have high ethical standards, prevent political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t and deal fairly with all sides. trump’s staunchest gop supporters often had the most negative views: republicans who strongly approved of trump, for example, were much more likely than those who only somewhat approved or disapproved of him to say journalists have very low ethical standards. apart from the growing partisan polarization over the news media, trump’s time in office also saw the emergence of misinformation as a concerning new reality for many americans. half of u.s. adults said in 2019 that made up news and information was a very big problem in the country, exceeding the shares who said the same thing about racism, illegal immigration, terrorism and sexism. around two thirds said made up news and information had a big impact on public confidence in the government (68%), while half or more said it had a major effect on americans’ confidence in each other (54%) and political leaders’ ability to get work done (51%). misinformation played an important role in both the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. almost two thirds of u.s. adults (64%) said in april 2020 that they had seen at least some made up news and information about the pandemic, with around half (49%) saying this kind of misinformation had caused a great deal of confusion over the basic facts of the outbreak. in a survey in mid november 2020, six in ten adults said made up news and information had played a major role in the just concluded election. conspiracy theories were an especially salient form of misinformation during trump’s tenure, in many cases amplified by the president himself. for example, nearly half of americans (47%) said in september 2020 that they had heard or read a lot or a little about the collection of conspiracy theories known as qanon, up from 23% earlier in the year.4 most of those aware of qanon said trump seemed to support the theory’s promoters. trump frequently made disproven or questionable claims as president. news and fact checking organizations documented thousands of his false statements over four years, on subjects ranging from the coronavirus to the economy. perhaps none were more consequential than his repeated assertion of widespread fraud in the 2020 election he lost to democrat joe biden. even after courts around the country had rejected the claim and all 50 states had certified their results, trump continued to say he had won a “landslide” victory. the false claim gained widespread currency among his voters: in a january 2021 survey, three quarters of trump supporters incorrectly said he was definitely or probably the rightful winner of the election. throughout his tenure, donald trump questioned the legitimacy of democratic institutions, from the free press to the federal judiciary and the electoral process itself. in surveys conducted between 2016 and 2019, more than half of americans said trump had little or no respect for the nation’s democratic institutions and traditions, though these views, too, split sharply along partisan lines. the 2020 election brought concerns about democracy into much starker relief. even before the election, trump had cast doubt on the security of mail in voting and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. when he did lose, he refused to publicly concede defeat, his campaign and allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits to challenge the results and trump personally pressured state government officials to retroactively tilt the outcome in his favor. the weeks of legal and political challenges culminated on jan. 6, 2021, when trump addressed a crowd of supporters at a rally outside the white house and again falsely claimed the election had been “stolen.” with congress meeting the same day to certify biden’s win, trump supporters stormed the capitol in an attack that left five people dead and forced lawmakers to be evacuated until order could be restored and the certification could be completed. the house of representatives impeached trump a week later on a charge of inciting the violence, with 10 republicans joining 222 democrats in support of the decision. most americans placed at least some blame on trump for the riot at the capitol, including 52% who said he bore a lot of responsibility for it. again, however, partisans’ views differed widely: 81% of democrats said trump bore a lot of responsibility, compared with just 18% of republicans. even as he repeatedly cast doubt on the democratic process, trump proved to be an enormously galvanizing figure at the polls. nearly 160 million americans voted in 2020, the highest estimated turnout rate among eligible voters in 120 years, despite widespread changes in voting procedures brought on by the pandemic. biden received more than 81 million votes and trump received more than 74 million, the highest and second highest totals in u.s. history. turnout in the 2018 midterm election, the first after trump took office, also set a modern day record. pew research center surveys catalogued the high stakes that voters perceived, particularly in the run up to the 2020 election. just before the election, around nine in ten trump and biden supporters said there would be “lasting harm” to the nation if the other candidate won, and around eight in ten in each group said they disagreed with the other side not just on political priorities, but on “core american values and goals.” earlier in the year, 83% of registered voters said it “really mattered” who won the election, the highest percentage for any presidential election in at least two decades. trump himself was a clear motivating factor for voters on both sides: 71% of trump supporters said before the election that their choice was more of a vote for the president than against biden, while 63% of biden supporters said their choice was more of a vote against trump than for his opponent. racial tensions were a constant undercurrent during trump’s presidency, often intensified by the public statements he made in response to high profile incidents. the death of george floyd, in particular, brought race to the surface in a way that few other recent events have. the videotaped killing of the unarmed, 46 year old black man by a white police officer in minneapolis was among several police killings that sparked national and international protests in 2020 and led to an outpouring of public support for the black lives matter movement, including from corporations, universities and other institutions. in a survey shortly after floyd’s death in may, two thirds of u.s. adults   including majorities across all major racial and ethnic groups   voiced support for the movement, and use of the #blacklivesmatter hashtag surged to a record high on twitter. attitudes began to change as the protests wore on and sometimes turned violent, drawing sharp condemnation from trump. by september, support for the black lives matter movement had slipped to 55%   largely due to decreases among white adults   and many americans questioned whether the nation’s renewed focus on race would lead to changes to address racial inequality or improve the lives of black people. race related tensions erupted into public view earlier in trump’s tenure, too. in 2017, white nationalists rallied in charlottesville, virginia, to protest the removal of a confederate statue amid a broader push to eliminate such memorials from public spaces across the country. the rally led to violent clashes in the city’s streets and the death of a 32 year old woman when a white nationalist deliberately drove a car into a crowd of people. tensions also arose in the national football league as some players protested racial injustices in the u.s. by kneeling during the national anthem. the display prompted a backlash among some who saw it as disrespectful to the american flag. in all of these controversies and others, trump weighed in from the white house, but typically not in a way that most americans saw as helpful. in a summer 2020 survey, for example, six in ten u.s. adults said trump had delivered the wrong message in response to the protests over floyd’s killing. that included around four in ten adults (39%) who said trump had delivered the completely wrong message. more broadly, americans viewed trump’s impact on race relations as far more negative than positive. in an early 2019 poll, 56% of adults said trump had made race relations worse since taking office, compared with only 15% who said he had made progress toward improving relations. in the same survey, around two thirds of adults (65%) said it had become more common for people in the u.s. to express racist or racially insensitive views since his election. the public also perceived trump as too close with white nationalist groups. in 2019, a majority of adults (56%) said he had done too little to distance himself from these groups, while 29% said he had done about the right amount and 7% said he had done too much. these opinions were nearly the same as in december 2016, before he took office. while americans overall gave trump much more negative than positive marks for his handling of race relations, there were consistent divisions along racial, ethnic and partisan lines. black, hispanic and asian adults were often more critical of trump’s impact on race relations than white adults, as were democrats when compared with republicans. for example, while an overwhelming majority of democrats (83%) said in 2019 that trump had done too little to distance himself from white nationalist groups, a majority of republicans (56%) said he had done about the right amount. white republicans, in particular, rejected the idea of widespread structural racism in the u.s. and saw too much emphasis on race. in september 2020, around eight in ten white republicans (79%) said the bigger problem was people seeing racial discrimination where it doesn’t exist, rather than people not seeing discrimination where it really does exist. the opinions of white democrats on the same question were nearly the reverse. every presidency is shaped by outside events, and trump’s will undoubtedly be remembered for the enormous toll the coronavirus pandemic took on the nation’s public health and economy. more than 400,000 americans died from covid 19 between the beginning of the pandemic and when trump left office, with fatality counts sometimes exceeding 4,000 people a day   a toll more severe than the overall toll of the terrorist attacks of sept. 11, 2001, or the bombing of pearl harbor on dec. 7, 1941. trump himself contracted the coronavirus in the home stretch of his campaign for reelection, as did dozens of white house and campaign staff and members of his family. the far reaching public health effects of the virus were reflected in a survey in november 2020, when more than half of u.s. adults (54%) said they personally knew someone who had been hospitalized or died due to covid 19. the shares were even higher among black (71%) and hispanic (61%) adults. at the same time, the pandemic had a disastrous effect on the economy. trump and barack obama together had presided over the longest economic expansion in american history, with the u.s. unemployment rate at a 50 year low of 3.5% as recently as february 2020. by april 2020, with businesses around the country closing their doors to prevent the spread of the virus, unemployment had soared to a post world war ii high of 14.8%. even after considerable employment gains later in the year, trump was the first modern president to leave the white house with fewer jobs in the u.s. than when he took office. the economic consequences of the virus, like its public health repercussions, hit some americans harder than others. many upper income workers were able to continue doing their jobs remotely during the outbreak, even as lower income workers suffered widespread job losses and pay cuts. the remarkable resiliency of u.s. stock markets was a rare bright spot during the downturn, but one that had its own implications for economic inequality: going into the outbreak, upper income adults were far more likely than lower income adults to be invested in the market. the pandemic clearly underscored and exacerbated america’s partisan divisions. democrats were consistently much more likely than republicans to see the virus as a major threat to public health, while republicans were far more likely than democrats to see it as exaggerated and overblown. the two sides disagreed on public health strategies ranging from mask wearing to contact tracing. the outbreak also had important consequences for america’s image in the world. international views of the u.s. had already plummeted after trump took office in 2017, but attitudes turned even more negative amid a widespread perception that the u.s. had mishandled the initial outbreak. the share of people with a favorable opinion of the u.s. fell in 2020 to record or near record lows in canada, france, germany, japan, the united kingdom and other countries. across all 13 nations surveyed, a median of just 15% of adults said the u.s. had done a good job responding to covid 19, well below the median share who said the same thing about their own country, the world health organization, the european union and china. at a much more personal level, many americans expected the coronavirus outbreak to have a lasting impact on them. in an august 2020 survey, 51% of u.s. adults said they expected their lives to remain changed in major ways even after the pandemic is over. the aftershocks of donald trump’s one of a kind presidency will take years to place into full historical context. it remains to be seen, for example, whether his disruptive brand of politics will be adopted by other candidates for office in the u.s., whether other politicians can activate the same coalition of voters he energized and whether his positions on free trade, immigration and other issues will be reflected in government policy in the years to come. some of the most pressing questions, particularly in the aftermath of the attack on the capitol and trump’s subsequent bipartisan impeachment, concern the future of the republican party. some republicans have moved away from trump, but many others have continued to fight on his behalf, including by voting to reject the electoral votes of two states won by biden. the gop’s direction could depend to a considerable degree on what trump does next. around two thirds of americans (68%) said in january 2021 that they would not like to see trump continue to be a major political figure in the years to come, but republicans were divided by ideology. more than half of self described moderate and liberal republicans (56%) said they preferred for him to exit the political stage, while 68% of conservatives said they wanted him to remain a national political figure for many years to come. for his part, joe biden has some advantages as he begins his tenure. democrats have majorities   albeit extraordinarily narrow ones   in both legislative chambers of congress. other recent periods of single party control in washington have resulted in the enactment of major legislation, such as the $1.5 trillion tax cut package that trump signed in 2017 or the health care overhaul that obama signed in 2010. biden begins his presidency with generally positive assessments from the american public about his cabinet appointments and the job he has done explaining his policies and plans for the future. early surveys show that he inspires broad confidence among people in three european countries that have long been important american allies: france, germany and the uk. still, the new administration faces obvious challenges on many fronts. the coronavirus pandemic will continue in the months ahead as the vast majority of americans remain unvaccinated. the economy is likely to struggle until the outbreak is under control. polarization in the u.s. is not likely to change dramatically, nor is the partisan gulf in views of the news media or the spread of misinformation in the age of social media. the global challenges of climate change and nuclear proliferation remain stark. the nation’s 46th president has vowed to unite the country as he moves forward with his policy agenda. few would question the formidable nature of the task. title photo: president donald trump and first lady melania trump board air force one for his last time as president on jan. 20, 2021. (pete marovich pool/getty images) 901 e st. nw, suite 300washington, dc 20004usa(+1) 202 419 4300 | main(+1) 202 857 8562 | fax(+1) 202 419 4372 | media inquiries about pew research center pew research center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. it does not take policy positions. the center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, computational social science research and other data driven research. pew research center is a subsidiary of the pew charitable trusts, its primary funder. © 2025 pew research center

president biden called it "one of the toughest days in american history." monday marks the fourth anniversary of the violent events of jan. 6, 2021    a day president elect donald trump has continually tried to recast as a "day of love." trump is vowing to pardon jan. 6 rioters on the first day of his administration, saying while it will done be on a case by case basis, he believes a majority of them should not be in jail and have "suffered greatly." at an event at mar a lago over the weekend, according to an audio recording obtained by abc news, he continued to claim that the the electoral votes from the 2020 election "could have been sent back" and criticized then vice president mike pence for adhering to his constitutional duty to uphold the certification process and not unilaterally reject the election results. president joe biden, on the other hand, penned an op ed on sunday in which he pushed back on attempts to "rewrite    even erase    the history of that day." "violent insurrectionists attacked the capitol, threatened the lives of elected officials and assaulted brave law enforcement officers," he wrote in the washington post. "we should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault. and we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year." and in remarks to congressional democrats, biden said it was now their "duty to tell the truth." "you remember what happened, and don't let jan. 6 be rewritten or even erased," he told them. "to honor the constitution, not only the most extraordinary of days, but it's one of the toughest days in american history: jan. 6." on the campaign trail, trump often aired grievances and false claims about the 2020 election and tried to downplay what transpired on jan. 6, 2021. one notable exchange came during a univision town hall weeks before election day, when a republican audience member pressed trump on his actions that day as thousands of his supporters stormed the u.s. capitol, temporarily disrupting the certification of biden's win. trump falsely claimed no one in the crowd was carrying firearms. "that was a day of love," trump said. "from the standpoint of the millions, it's like hundreds of thousands. it could have been the largest group i've ever spoken to before. they asked me to speak. i went and i spoke, and i used the term 'peacefully and patriotically.'" during the abc news presidential debate in september 2024, trump was asked if he had anything he regretted about jan. 6, 2021. "i had nothing to do with that, other than they asked me to make a speech," he responded. nearly 1,600 individuals have faced charges associated with the capitol attack, according to new figures released by the u.s. attorney's office. that includes 608 individuals who have faced charges for assaulting, resisting or interfering with law enforcement trying to protect the complex that day, the office said. approximately 140 law enforcement officers were injured during the riot, the doj has said. on monday, vice president kamala harris will preside over the congressional certification of trump's 2024 victory. in a brief video message on monday, harris reflected on the importance of the peaceful transfer of power, saying the country's witnessed how "our democracy can be fragile" and "it is up to then each one of us to stand up for our most cherished principles." trump on social media called the upcoming certification a "a big moment in history. maga!" abc news' soorin kim, lalee ibssa, kelsey walsh and alexander mallin contributed to this report. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events

<iframe width="100%" height="124" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://player.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/11/08/american voters economy values republican polls trump election"></iframe> trump won the presidency, but down ballot votes didn't always follow party. how can we understand the conflicting and diverging values expressed in the 2024 election? sarah longwell, executive director of republican voters against trump. founder and publisher of the center right online publication the bulwark. host of the podcast "the focus group." mckay coppins, staff writer at the atlantic. author of "the wilderness" and "romney: a reckoning." part i meghna chakrabarti: the post election analysis will go on for weeks, if not months, all asking a set of the same questions, including how did president elect trump win? he had his own answer in his victory speech in the early hours of wednesday morning. donald trump: they came from all corners, union, non union, african american, hispanic american, asian american, arab american, muslim american. we had everybody, and it was beautiful. it was a historic realignment. uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense. we're the party of common sense. chakrabarti: latino and african american men voted in greater numbers for trump in 2024 as compared to 2020. young male voters skewed it for trump as well. non college educated voters went for trump too. but do those votes really signify a historic realignment of american values? what can we actually glean from how people voted, given how close the margins were in several swing states? and the outsized influence those swing states have, given the mechanics of the electoral college. sarah longwell is back with us. she's a republican strategist and executive director of republican voters against trump. she's founder and publisher of the center right online publication, the bulwark and host of the podcast, the focus group. and as sarah has been running voter focus groups for a long time. it's great to have you back, sarah. sarah longwell: thanks so much for having me. chakrabarti: also with us today is mckay coppins. he's author of the wilderness and romney: a reckoning. he's staff writer at the atlantic, where his two most recent articles in the past week are this is not the end of america and triumph of the cynics. mckay, it's great to have you back as well. mckay coppins: thanks for having me. chakrabarti: okay. so here's what i want to do. i want to start with a significance check, and it comes from a bugbear of my own. and that is, in the aftermath of really big events like a presidential election, we in the media are seized by this paroxysm of trying to make sense of things, grasping for narratives. we're hearing a lot of those narratives now, even just in the wee hours after the election. the problem i have with narrative seeking, though, is that a storyline, by definition, ignores all other possibilities, so i think what we're seeing is a vast oversimplification of a complex situation. so sarah, here's the way i would frame it for you. thus far, i'm looking at vote totals. okay, and there's still a bunch of outstanding votes in california, most conspicuously. probably a couple of million out there. but so far, donald trump, in 2024, has received 73,468,444 votes. that could go up by a couple million. but in 2020, according to the fec, he received 74,223,975. so even with the california votes when they come in, i don't see actually a huge surge in the number of americans overall who voted for trump. is this an historic realignment, as he put it? longwell: i'm not sure it's a historic realignment. i think that, look, you just said, there are so many factors. and i think that we should be careful about just looking in the aftermath at things like exit polls, and then forcing all of our conclusions into them. i actually prefer to go and think about what i was hearing in my focus groups for the last several years. because i think that gives us a truer picture of what this was all about. now, i will say, if we are just thinking about things like, okay, why might more people have voted in 2020 than in 2024? i do think there's a relatively obvious answer, which is that we were in the middle of a pandemic, where, you know, the ability, we didn't have that many other things to do. we were highly motivated to go out and vote against, you know, how we felt things were going around the pandemic. and i just think that was like a really different environment. there were also, it was made vastly easier to vote in those moments. and so it doesn't shock me that in 2024 turnout might not be quite as high as in the middle of a massive exogenous event, where everybody ... had nothing to do but vote. chakrabarti: so then, okay. so mckay, let me then further refine it. if i hear sarah saying there's significant things we should talk about, but this may not necessarily be the sweeping historical alignment that president elect trump is talking about. but, okay, so looking at three states in particular, wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania, and obviously i'm choosing those because they are utterly crucial to the electoral college count as swing states, looks like the vote difference between trump and harris in wisconsin was 30,000. roughly 30,000 this time around. i believe in 2020 it was 22,000. michigan, 80,000. pennsylvania, 140,000. but we're still talking, like a tiny, we're still talking like at the margins. and what i find is that not only in like science and statistics, but also in just life, behavior at the margins is very noisy. it's highly variable. what significance can we put, if any, on the general narrative that trump swept all seven swing states? coppins: yeah, i think a couple things are true. one is that after every presidential election, the monday morning quarterbacking from people like us in the media and from partisans in both camps will point to the winning campaign and tend to say everything they did was right. and point to the losing campaign and say everything they did was wrong. it also becomes a thing where people will latch on to their personal bugaboos, their personal pet ideological projects and say, if only the democratic party had done x, and x is the thing that you care about most, they would have won. so i think we do have to be wary of all of that in these conversations, but it's also true that what you're noting is just a fact of the electoral college system that we're in. in almost every presidential election, the winner is determined by a few hundred thousand swing state votes. and that if they had gone differently, the outcome would be different. i do think it's notable that trump has the possibility and maybe even the probability of winning the popular vote for the first time. that has not, he's never done that. and actually, if you look at the last 25 years of electoral history, republican presidents have almost never done that. i think 2004 was the exception. so there are things to pull out here, but i do, i like that we're beginning with this note of caution, because i've now been doing this long enough. i know sarah certainly has, and you have, meghna, that we all tend to over determine the kind of takeaways from presidential elections, when they're always relatively close because we are a very closely divided and polarized country. and i think that one reason that's important is that donald trump and his allies are going to try to claim a sweeping mandate coming out of this election. and i think there is somewhat limited evidence for that, even as we can acknowledge that winning all the battleground states and possibly the popular vote, and improving on his vote share in all these different demographic groups is a pretty significant political accomplishment. i just don't think that we should let them say, and frankly, if harris had won the same way, we shouldn't have let her say that they now have a mandate to do whatever they want from the country. we are still a very closely divided country. it is still the case that roughly half the country voted for the other side, and there is no sweeping conclusion we can draw about the american electorate as one giant monolith. chakrabarti: yeah, 100% agree. in fact, later, i think sometime next week, i want to, we're going to try and do another show that looks at the vote count through a completely different lens about what americans might be saying about in the fact that, as sarah, as you pointed out, fewer people turned out to vote this time around so far as i can see, then in 2020. then, just to dovetail on what mckay was saying, sarah, at the same time, sticking with these three swing states, wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania, and this is why i'm really excited to have both of you on. and sarah, because you have been looking at swing state voters who themselves have voted both democratic and republican. it is also true that in wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania, trump did actually pick up more votes than he had in 2020. and i don't think we should ignore that entirely. he was somehow successful in that all important margin that we've always been talking about for the past year. given your long history with some of these voters, what do you think allowed him to be so successful there? longwell: yeah, like i said at the top, instead of thinking about what we know from the last three days, let's look at what we've talked about now for several years, because there has been political realignment going on. and it is true in the swing states, but it's true in the entire country, which is that donald trump, because he has reshaped what the republican party is, he has turned it into a much more economically populist party. he has, and i think intentionally, the republican party has tried to build itself into a multiracial, working class party, which is different from the party as it used to be. it is no longer devoted to limited government, free markets and american leadership in the world. it is much more populist, much more nationalist, much more isolationist. but where trump has really made inroads, because white voters have, really, they held for harris in a lot of ways, like that's what she did about as well as biden, but they lost everywhere else, with hispanics, it was a complete cratering. there was some backsliding with black voters, with young voters, they didn't come anywhere close to hitting their marks and in the political realignment that's been happening. there's been a bit of a trade going on, where democrats are picking up more college educated, suburban voters that might've been mccain, romney voters back in the day. that's where you see these collar counties, like in wisconsin, for instance, you have in the wow counties, harris did do better in those suburban, more high income places. but it all fell apart in the more rural areas, but also in the urban areas. because in those urban areas, there's a slide with hispanic and black voters and with young voters. and that was a big part of it. and i think that what's happening overall is that in a trade between college educated voters and non college voters, of all races, republicans are on the winning end of that in general elections. because there are simply more of those people, whereas in off year elections, that helps democrats a little bit more, which can explain 2022. part ii chakrabarti: sarah longwell and mckay coppins join us and we're talking about, or trying to think through, how to understand what values americans may have been transmitting as they made their votes for the 2024 election. here's a couple of michigan voters. this is deadline detroit reporter allan lengel speaking to voters in detroit. and 69 year old danny jay walker talked to lengel. and walker voted for vice president kamala harris. allan lengel: could i ask what motivated you to come out here today? danny jay walker: because democracy matters. one is for democracy and the other one is not. i voted for kamala harris. lengel: kamala harris. are you excited about a woman, the possibility of a woman being president or? walker: i am, because i tend to have more trust in women. chakrabarti: so that's danny j. walker in detroit. also in detroit, 50 year old anthony mcclendon voted for trump. and here's why. anthony mcclendon: i'm hoping for a better situation for the community. everything is being built up downtown and instead of the real outside and the outskirts of the community, the violence, i want a lot of change. you know what i'm saying? chakrabarti: that's anthony mcclendon in detroit. mckay, i have to say, anthony's voice and thought there took my mind straight back to something sarah said before the break, which kind of stopped me in my tracks, about donald trump reshaping the republican party into a, yes, a nationalist and isolationist one, but a multiethnic working class party. now, the white working class part, i get, we've been seeing that for a while, but i'm old enough to remember when multiethnic working class party would have been the one, the phrase you used to describe the democratic party. coppins: that's right. in some ways i feel like this has been the holy grail of both political parties for decades and decades in america. this idea that one party or the other could bring together workers from across the geographic spectrum of all races, that is a winning coalition. as you mentioned, that's probably a closer description of the democratic party, in kind of the obama era, for example. but even then, there were white working class voters who would still vote for republicans, largely because of cultural wedge issues, social issues. what trump is doing is trying to build, to make good on this goal, for that both parties have had for so long. by bringing together the white working class voters that he started to make inroads with in 2016. now with other working class voters. and if it could sustain as a republican coalition, long term, that would make this a realignment election. one of the problems with calling this a realignment election is that first of all, the electorate is still so closely divided that it's hard to say that this is a permanent realignment. it's also true that it's almost impossible to know if something is a realignment until you're 10, 20 years down the road, and you can pinpoint a certain election like we can, for example, with 1980 and the reagan landslide as something that actually changed the trajectory of the two parties. but this is the beginnings of a realignment. and i think that some of that audio you just played gets at the fact that trump is winning voters that republicans in 2000, 2008, 2012, would never have dreamed of being able to win over. chakrabarti: so sarah, on that point i also just want to observe that yes, as we've all discussed here, trump definitely made inroads amongst latino voters and african american voter in roads, but still, especially amongst black voters, they still overwhelmingly voted for harris. so if we're at the beginnings of a multiethnic working class party as the gop, it still is only in the beginnings. is there anything in these longer term trends that you think may be attributable to an overall change in the republican party, or is it just trump, right? i guess what i'm saying is, if we had a crystal ball, and we look to whoever the next gop headliner would be, would that be a person that folks would follow? if he's not here, if he's not donald trump. longwell: look, it's really unclear. donald trump does have unique elements to him. when we do the focus groups for years and years now, i've been doing them and you ask people why trump, and they'll tell you a couple of things over and over again. and one is he's not a regular politician, which is a thing that people have liked about him. also, this is a guy who was famous, just imprinted on our culture, for being rich and for being a quote unquote good businessman, which is what you hear from everybody. it's one of the reasons that amid broad dissatisfaction with the current state of economics, really cost of living, especially housing costs. grocery costs, like they just see him as better than democrats. and this, i just, we've been doing focus groups since the election, asking people, why people who voted for biden and now have voted for trump, why? and they just didn't feel like democrats had a plan to address, like, the problems that they were feeling, the pinch at the grocery store. and so it makes sense that you have these more higher income voters voting for democrats, whereas these lower income voters who are really feeling like they can't afford their cost of living, that they were the ones being like, i don't know, i felt like things were maybe better under trump and he's a businessman. and i don't like him. this is the thing. i'm just listening to voters over and over say they don't like him, but they still voted for him, which is what explains, i think, the gap between her having a more of favorable approval rating and maybe him not. these guys are like, yeah, no, he's a super jerk and i don't like his mouth, but i need to pay like beyonce's not going to pay my bills, which is a direct quote from something that somebody said in a focus group yesterday. chakrabarti: wow, beyonce's not, wow, okay, i guess that is factually true, beyonce will not pay the bills. but mckay, sarah's hitting on something important here, because when it comes to perception, we did a show a while ago where i was asserting in the show that the so called felt economy is the real economy that matters to people, right? and so even if the top line numbers were looking good over the past year, in terms of reduction in inflation, job creation, et cetera, it didn't really make much of a difference to people when they still had to spend much more at the grocery store than they did before. so i wonder though, do you see that? in terms of the democratic party, and harris in particular, connecting with things that really matter to voters, because that is how you win elections, that there were some missteps there. coppins: i think so. i think that one of the mistakes that i saw a lot of democratic surrogates make, and i don't want to pin this directly on kamala harris, because i don't think she really made this argument. but i saw a lot of democratic surrogates, and people in the biden administration, continually try to convince voters that the economy was doing well, right? and you can talk to economists, and you can look at those top line numbers and you, as journalists or academics, we can point to all those numbers, but it's not really something you can convince individuals of, right? people don't vote based on whether inflation is lower than it is in germany. they vote based on whether groceries just cost more than they are able to spend, whether they're having to cancel vacations, whether they're having to, they're struggling to buy a house, or their rent is going up. those kind of prosaic kitchen table concerns that we hear about every election, it should not be a surprise that those are driving voters. i do think it's important that we hone in on this. i think that one of the risks of over reading the results of this election, like we were talking about earlier, is that people will say voters gave trump a mandate to do whatever he wants. and whether that's using the justice department to prosecute his political enemies or do mass deportations of millions and millions of undocumented immigrants and put them in detention camps. all these things that he said he's going to do, pull out of nato. i think that for a large segment of the electorate, they were voting on much smaller things that are more individual to their lived experience, which is stuff just costs too much. and i seem to remember five years ago, in 2019, stuff cost less. and so maybe we should give trump another chance. and i know that drives a lot of your listeners probably insane. i know it certainly drives probably a lot of readers of my publication insane. but we can't tell voters to feel a certain way about the economy if it doesn't jive with their own memory and their own experience. chakrabarti: yeah. actually, mckay, this is an issue that i will never stop thinking about because i do think that american elites in the media, in politics, et cetera, dismiss how people feel. to our endless peril. i just don't understand why we do it. it's not some sort of vibes when someone's saying, i still have to pay too much at the grocery store. and that is their number one concern. so i'm going to put that aside. coppins: i agree. amen. amen. i agree with you. chakrabarti: but sarah, i'm still wanting to hear more from you about the longitudinal sort of information about how people are thinking about this country that you've gleaned over since 2020. and these repeated focus groups, because there's also been all this exit polling data or even actually just before the election of people saying, overwhelmingly, that they do not, regardless of party, that they do not like the direction the country is going in. does that make this, just again, one of those sort of de facto change elections? that people just, they didn't like the direction the country is going. harris is considered the incumbent, even though she's technically not the presidential incumbent. and so therefore, more folks voted for trump. longwell: yeah, look, i think that, we've been just, everything's a change election now. every election is a change election. i think it is. and we haven't even gotten into this yet, but at some point, we're gonna have to talk about how different the information environment is that people are in, and how, look, kamala harris ran a really good technical campaign if she was running in 2004. it's have good ads, have a good turnout operation. don't make any big blunders or mistakes, but that's not enough now. and i don't want to just be like, go on joe rogan. because that's not it either. that's too reductive. but the idea of people, when they say, i don't want a regular politician. and when she was a candidate who said, and again. i actually, i pointed, a bunch of recriminations are not that helpful, but i do think it's important to understand that the country did not want joe biden to run again in 2024. and that was just clear as day. i heard it in every focus group, where people didn't want him and then he came very late to dropping out. and she was the only option, and she got dropped into trying to make a case to the american people at a time where they were frustrated with the incumbent. joe biden's approval ratings are lower than donald trump's. and so like she was put in a really tough position, and in a lot of ways, overperformed based on what she was. because if you look at the entire country, moved about six and a half percent toward trump. just, i mean, in places like illinois, places like new jersey. you have a very good like control sample and then in the swing states, where there was a lot of advertising, a lot of education, kamala harris did about three and a half points better. and so if you were able to make the case to some people, but it wasn't enough, because there was such dissatisfaction in the country with a couple things. i mean, look, i start every focus group the same way. so how do you think things are going in the country? and everybody would say bad. and then you'd say, why? and they would say, things cost too much, inflation. they would tell you the exact price of milk, the exact price of eggs. i do think it's very hard for people in d.c. and new york and la to understand that an average voter might be able to tell you exactly how much that costs, and how much their grocery bill has gone up and why that matters to them. and the choices and the tradeoffs that it causes for them, and then, they would also say, immigration. because once people get into a place of scarcity, they feel like they don't have enough. then suddenly they're also like, okay who else is getting what? and what is that? and that makes them angry. and that makes them also say, that's where you get your ukraine frustrations where people like, why are we sending money over there? we're not doing enough. and this is what america first is meant to do. trump's america first agenda is about saying, we're not going to do things over there in these other countries. we're not going to give things to other people, like this is about you guys. we're going to do it for you. and i just think that really resonated at a moment where people were feeling pinched. chakrabarti: yeah. let's hear from a couple of more voters. this is emma gallagher. she lives in chicago. she told nbc that she's having a tough time understanding how people could overlook now president elect trump's convictions and character. emma gallagher: just in being a moral person. i'm having a hard time accepting that people are more willing to accept a convicted felon and an accused rapist. can i say that? over a person who doesn't have any convictions and also who has the experience of two branches of government. chakrabarti: so that's voter emma gallagher in chicago. this is david torres in philadelphia. he voted for trump. and he said why it's because he says trump promised to help latinos economically. and interestingly, david says he's going to hold the president elect to that promise. david torres: we got little barbershops, man, that the economy hurt them, little store owners that the economy hurt. and we need to surround these people and get our economy back. i will be the first one to go against trump if he doesn't keep his promise. chakrabarti: that's david torres in philadelphia. that was so interesting to me, mckay. i wonder if you had some thoughts on that. coppins: it was actually that first, the first woman that you played, that really stuck out to me. because i hear that from a lot of people in my life. and even when i'm reporting out in the country and talking to voters, they will often bring up, don't voters care about all this stuff that donald trump has said and done? don't they care that he's a convicted felon? don't they care that he's been accused of sexual assault? don't they care about the access hollywood tape? and you can run through all these lists. and i do think that, i wrote about this in the atlantic this week, that one of trump's most enduring legacies will be the way that he has lowered our collective expectation of presidential behavior. i think that our national bar for outrage has gone up so much during the trump era, our ability to be shocked has dwindled so much, and one of his greatest accomplishments, i don't know if you want to call it that, has been the ability to get voters to basically make peace with behavior that in another era, they would have deemed disqualifying in a president. but it is a political reality, that at least when it comes to trump, and there's some debate about whether this is a trump specific phenomenon or something that will extend to future presidential candidates. but at least when it comes to trump, character does not seem to be a motivating factor for persuadable voters. and i think that's one of the reasons that you saw the harris campaign focused their closing argument not on trump's character, and not even on his kind of more undemocratic, illiberal tendencies, but on economic messages and abortion and issues that they thought would move the needle. and i think that frustrates a lot of voters, and i think that zooming out and looking at the scope of american political history, i think it could be really damaging, but it does not seem to be a big factor in this election. part iii chakrabarti: sarah, let me circle back to something you said earlier, about we need to talk more about the information environment that we're all swimming in right now. and i wonder if this particular information environment, not just in the negativity bias that conventional media has always had, but of course, the algorithmically driven negativity bias that social media has, if that does two things, what would it be? longwell: one, it favors the character extravagances of a man like donald trump. and two, it shapes how people think about the country. that beyond their immediate pocketbook issues, which are real, the sense that the country's going down the drain, could that be because of the way the information environment we're all in is just a constant dumpster fire. longwell: yeah, look, there's a lot of that. but let me give you just one other thought about how it might be affecting people's perceptions, which is, look, it used to be before social media that if you lived in a neighborhood, people had roughly the same things that you did, right? you didn't feel economically adrift from the people that you were surrounded by in a way that social media now distorts people's perceptions of what other people have, right? there's this sense of, well, i don't have this and look at all these other people. they're rich. they're doing better than i am, which i think creates more of a sense of unhappiness than one might otherwise have. and then there's also the way in which ... i'm going to talk a lot about this idea of people liking not a regular politician. like when donald trump goes on joe rogan and just talks for three hours about whatever, just messing around. i do think voters look at that and they're like, i don't know. i don't think that guy's hitler. like the ability to be able to go into all of these environments, non traditional environments and feel like a regular person, feel like somebody who jokes around, is going to become increasingly important in our politics. because everybody's got a phone now, everybody's used to being in each other's faces all the time. and so i think a lot of joe biden's difficulty with messaging is that he struggled, he had an older perception of how do things. and so they never were able to really break through with what they were doing in the policy environment. chakrabarti: sarah, can i just jump in here? because this idea of talking, i don't think donald trump actually talks like a regular person, but engaging, in a less, let's say, formal manner. woman to woman, sarah, do you think a female candidate could do that, joking around on joe rogan and not come out being roundly criticized for being an unserious candidate? longwell: yeah, that's a good question. i do think having, look, we're demanding a lot of people. you're demanding that they be both incredibly good at knowing policy, and be able to basically have a strong sense of what policies they want to see, people both want to feel like more than them on policy, but are also really, it's also extremely accessible to them as a human. and so like i think that, i don't know, i mean i certainly think there's women who are capable of that. i think that we should not, i think it is okay to be like, hey, it is tough for a woman to be, to like work in these same and that they are double standards. that's true. that also we should not say that racism and sexism are the only reasons this happened. this has way more to do with the economic environment, the macro economic environment. like you're hearing this a lot, but it is really true. every incumbent post pandemic has been thrown out by the voters, because people are mad about high prices. and in a big general election, when a lot of low propensity voters who didn't really hear her message, didn't even really hear his, they weren't engaged, like how did they, how do they deal with the fact that trump is a convicted felon? it's not that they don't know it. it's just they don't, it's not high salience to them. it's not important to them. they just, it floated by them at some point, which is part of this information environment issue. they're not digging deep on a lot of this stuff. they're just like, i don't know. i think maybe he's going to be better on this. they don't, man, i'll tell you, you go into a focus group and you say, do you think donald trump's an authoritarian? the number one thing that people say back to you is, what's an authoritarian? and so you just have to accept that's a lot of the environment we're moving in here. chakrabarti: okay. i agree with you that racism or sexism isn't the only thing or aren't the only things, but i also, i still think that they're not insignificant things, given that the u.s. doesn't have a shining track record in terms of putting a person of color or a woman in the highest office of the land. but, mckay, i'm going to come to you in a second here, but let's hear from some more voters as they've been speaking over the course of the latter half of this week. this is dana eslava in philadelphia, who voted for kamala harris. and she says latino men voted for trump in greater numbers than before because, according to dana, culturally, it might be hard for them, apropos of what we were just talking about, to vote for a woman. dana eslava: i think in latino culture, machismo is really big, sexism. and a lot of people were struggling with the vision of a female president. chakrabarti: so that's over in philly, in dearborn, michigan, at an election night party for trump. the guardian newspaper spoke to an arab american trump voter who was watching as votes were being tallied. voter: they're talking about parts of dearborn and wayne county that are primarily arab and muslim that are already red. he promised that he's going to end the destruction and end the killing, he's going to end all wars. and you believe him? oh, i believe him. i'll tell you why i believe him, because in the four years that he was president, we had no new wars under his presidency. chakrabarti: that's in dearborn, michigan. and one more, this is lancaster, pennsylvania, where trump voter gabby james spoke to cnn's danny freeman the day after the election. interviewer: how are you feeling this morning? gabby james: i'm feeling relieved that america came together and saved our democracy. i know the main concern here is women's rights. but strong women are always going to rally together and fight for our rights. and we need to vote and come together to make the right decision in the states. unfortunately, it has come to that but that was not my deciding factor in voting for donald trump. chakrabarti: okay, mckay, gabby james there in lancaster county clearly seems to, she's voicing support for women's rights, but then said she voted for donald trump because her overriding concern was democracy. what do you hear in that? coppins: i think that it's so interesting and i remember on election night when the first early exit started to trickle in that showed that a large share of voters were saying democracy was their top issue. a lot of pundits read that as good news for kamala harris, because in the framing that we, in the media, have presented, and i think there's a lot of evidence to back it up. donald trump is the greater threat to democracy than kamala harris. if only in the sense that trump has been far more resistant to, ignorant of, defiant against democratic norms. and we don't have to go through all the examples, but it is very clear that he does not have the same respect for democratic institutions that a politician like kamala harris does. but once you actually started to see the votes come in, what you saw is that a lot of voters who said democracy was their top concern, that at least they were not breaking overwhelmingly for kamala harris or universally for kamala harris. and i think that it's worth considering why that is. sarah, i think, has probably heard this from her focus groups. i know i've spoken to trump supporters who will say. and they've been saying it for the last year or so, democrats and the media keep talking about trump being a threat to democracy. you guys say that trump is going to prosecute his political enemies. joe biden's justice department is prosecuting trump right now and putting his supporters in jail. the people who are at january 6th at the capitol. you say donald trump is going to cancel elections, or make it harder for certain people to vote, but democrats, and this is a theory that you've seen people like tucker carlson and elon musk advance, and it has some pretty racist roots, but they're bringing in millions of undocumented immigrants and want to turn them into american voters to permanently change the electorate. there, at some point in the last couple of years, you saw republicans, trump allies, the conservative media, co opt this democracy argument and say, it's actually joe biden and kamala harris, who are the real threats to democracy. and, regardless of how valid that is. it clearly resonated with enough voters that those who went to the polls to vote for trump said democracy was one of their top issues. and i think that's something we probably should wrap our heads around, because it's so contrary to, i think, the consensus in kind of political media circles. chakrabarti: so sarah, it seems to me that mckay is spot on this, in that when democrats talk about trump being a threat to democracy, one of the things they're pointing to is the not just democrats, but people who are opposed to donald trump, is that authoritarian issue, that he's going to actually change the functioning of a democratic government in this country. that's one of the issues. but what mckay's pointing to is there's a whole lot of americans who are, when they think of the word democracy, they're thinking of different things. and so you must have heard this in your focus groups. longwell: i absolutely heard it. and i gave a whole ted talk about it. i gave a ted talk a year ago on this exact issue, which is that democracy as a word. it's an abstract word for people. it means a lot of different things. they fill it in, but it's also been completely polarized the same way many other issues have been polarized. republicans think that democrats are a threat to democracy because they stole the 2020 election. they are trying to prosecute donald trump. democrats think that republicans and donald trump are a threat to democracy because they tried to, they refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power and tried to overturn the last election results. donald trump has always been very good at projection. and in fact, so much of what you hear out of him is projection, but if he understands anything as a lifelong salesman and liar it is how to turn the opposition's moral arguments against you back on them. and so trump basically turned himself into a political prisoner of the january 6th, the people who were arrested into political prisoners. and you hear it all the time from voters in the focus groups, to the point where i have been warning people for a long time that if you see a poll that says americans are concerned about democracy and you interpret that as good for democrats, like this is a high level concern, you're misreading it. and i'll also say, because democracy is abstract, one of the things that is the way that people think about it, is they just think democracy is like america, right? it's just like the air you breathe. it's just america. and so if we want to tell a better story about democracy, we better find a better way to tell a better story about america to voters, because right now, i think for democrats for a long time, they were hearing a pretty negative story about america. and now, from trump, they hear a very negative story about america. and so we are going to have to do something long term to reestablish a commitment to american liberal democracy. chakrabarti: sarah, can i just    coppins: meghna, can i say    chakrabarti: oh yeah, please. coppins: can i say something just really quickly? chakrabarti: yeah, go ahead. coppins: just because i do think that just as an objective journalist, and this is not a partisan statement, i just want to point out that those two narratives are not equally valid. it is factually true that donald trump refused to accept defeat and tried to stay in power after losing an election. it is not factually true that democrats rigged that election. there is no evidence for that. and just to take one example, that's not to say that there aren't valid points about whether the biden justice department should have been prosecuting trump. there's a lot of valid debate to be had around stuff like that, but it is, i think, just as a factual matter, true that trump has been much more hostile to democratic norms than any of his democratic opponents. chakrabarti: mckay, i'm very grateful for you interjecting on that. because that was actually, you said it more eloquently than i was, because it was the precise point i was going to make. so let me actually just evolve it a little, and because sarah specifically regarding january 6th, you are so right that trump managed to recast people who have been convicted in american courts of law by juries of their peers of having committed a crime, he recast them as political prisoners. and for the americans who believe that it's almost as if, i don't know, a, like the imagery from what we factually know happened on january 6th, this doesn't exist in their minds anymore. or b, what they're saying is, no, the violent overrunning of congress in order to stop the peaceful transition of power is actually not a crime in this country. that's a very different view of what democracy is. coppins: yeah, and again, i'm grateful for mckay saying, i think i'm just trying to explain what i hear from people. obviously i agree that what donald trump did on january 6th was one of the worst things i've ever seen in this country. but i'll tell you what i heard from voters in the aftermath. first, they denied that it was actually trump supporters. they said it was a false flag operation. but the other thing and the thing i heard most often, and one of the things that these voters really convinced themselves about was that the black lives matter protests had happened before the january 6th protests. and so there was this strong what about? and they were, again, they were misinformed. but i would hear voters say all the time in the focus groups, they would say nobody got arrested for that. so why did these people get arrested? now, of course, people who broke the law during those protests did get arrested. but there is just, there is a story that trump and his surrogates and his supporters told themselves to let themselves off the hook. and then ultimately it morphed, after years had gone by and it was low salience in people's minds. they'd forgotten about it. they managed to turn it into, no, these people are actually heroes. it was actually good. and that is a function that trump has, he's a deeply shameless sociopath. and as a result, that gives him a bit of a superpower in that he feels no fidelity to the truth whatsoever. and so he tells people lies and those lies take root. this program aired on november 8, 2024. hilary mcquilkin producer, on pointhilary mcquilkin is a producer for on point. more… meghna chakrabarti host, on pointmeghna chakrabarti is the host of on point. more…

domenico montanaro president trump speaks briefly to the press as he departs the white house on friday for his mar a lago club in palm beach, fla. chip somodevilla/getty images hide caption for as much that has happened in these first two weeks of the trump presidency   and it's been a lot   one particular thing has been conspicuously absent: a focus on lowering prices. trump's promises to bring down the cost of living were a big reason he was elected, but since taking office he has now twice said that's not his top priority. "they all said inflation was the no. 1 issue," trump said about the presidential campaign as he spoke to supporters at the capitol following his inauguration address. "i said, 'i disagree. i think people coming into our country from prisons and from mental institutions is a bigger issue for the people that i know.' and i made it my no. 1. i talked about inflation, too, but you know how many times can you say that an apple has doubled in cost?" (it's been fact checked many times that migrants were not coming into the country from prisons and mental institutions, but trump continues to say it.) again on monday, trump reiterated that immigration is the bigger issue. "i always felt the border was first," he said in a speech to congressional republicans gathered at trump national doral miami golf resort. "i talked about that much more so than i did inflation," trump said. "i mean, inflation was terrible. i think it was the worst in the history of our country, but you can only talk about it so long. the price of apples doubled. the price of bacon has quadrupled. everything is a disaster. and you say it, and then what do you do?" recent inflation peaked at 9.1% in june 2022. that was the highest since 1981, but it wasn't the highest ever. the most recent inflation data shows it is down to 2.9%. undoubtedly, though, higher than pre pandemic prices and high interest rates intended to curb inflation put americans in a bad mood   and is a big reason, if not the reason, trump won in 2024. he said so himself. "i won on the border, and i won on groceries," trump said on nbc's meet the press in his first interview after the election. "when you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and i won an election based on that. we're going to bring those prices way down." he made similar pledges about the economy during the campaign and ran an ad saying he would "fix it" (as well as immigration). he told a voter at a town hall in pennsylvania in october: "we're going to get your prices down." as president, trump is seeking to extend his broad tax cuts, expand oil exploration and deregulate industry   things he believes will spur more growth and help bring down prices in what experts already consider a strong economy. "my administration is acting with unprecedented speed to fix the disasters we've inherited from a totally inept group of people and to solve every single crisis facing our country," trump told the world economic forum gathered in davos, switzerland last week. "this begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration." trump has signed executive orders declaring an energy "crisis" and ordering the executive branch to find ways to cut prices. that included making efforts to deregulate efficiency standards on home appliances   everything from stoves to shower heads to light bulbs. he also directed agencies to stop funding anything related to curbing climate change; he froze foreign aid; and he says he wants to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse through an effort headed up by tesla and spacex chief elon musk, who is the richest person in the world. experts are dubious that those initiatives, however, will have an effect on grocery prices. ​​what's more, trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs on canada and mexico and 10% more tariffs on china, starting this saturday. those efforts, experts also warn, could drive the prices of many things people buy   and gas prices   higher. trump's top focus as president, though, has so far been on other issues   mass deportations, remaking the federal government and implementing a right wing ideology that blames societal ills and government failures on diversity, equity and inclusion policies, or dei. that includes even the fatal plane crash near reagan national washington airport this week   even though he admitted the facts are not yet known about what actually happened. "we do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas," trump said at a white house press conference on thursday, "and i think we'll probably state those opinions now." and he did   in what was a politicized, clear departure from the staid responses of past presidents after similar disasters. when disaster struck during their terms in office, they made clear their intention was to sympathize with the families, pledge the support that's needed from the federal government and to try and keep the country calm. reporters later asked trump if he had plans to visit the crash site   something typical for elected leaders. he responded: "i have a plan to visit, not the site. because you tell me, what's the site? the water? you want me to go swimming?" many of trump's early actions are probably not what the many people who crossed party affiliation to vote for him had in mind when they chose to put him back in office. during the campaign, npr heard from undecided voters   some who did not want to provide their full names, citing security concerns   about how grocery prices, the lack of affordable housing and high interest rates had them on the fence and potentially tipping toward trump. for example, brady, a voter from wisconsin, who voted for obama twice, told npr in september that he'd prefer not to "go through another four years of a trump presidency," but "things have gotten more expensive. i have probably a middle class income for my family, and it doesn't feel like it's getting any easier   even as my wife and i have advanced in our careers." another then undecided voter, john from miami, said he considered himself a "liberal union democrat" also voted for obama twice and volunteered on bill clinton's campaigns. but he said he was considering trump, because he wants a candidate to "stop the inflation." "i think joe biden did the best he could," he said. "if he could have just grabbed the horns on inflation   things are through the roof. it's gone freakin' nuts." that was the kind of thing heard repeatedly during the presidential campaign. outside of trump's core base of supporters, prices were it for many voters. what they've witnessed instead over the first two weeks of the administration has been something quite different: a focus on culture war issues, attempts to dismantle the federal workforce, firing justice department staff who worked on criminal investigations of trump   and asking senior fbi officials to resign or be fired. the country is about to find out if his approach affects his political standing, or if voters think he is going too far. sponsor message become an npr sponsor

by paul boger , chuck quirmbach , sarah kallis voters across three states pivotal to the presidential election cite the economy and immigration as their reasons for voting for donald trump. ayesha rascoe, host: npr stations in three states that were pivotal to the election sent reporters out to find people and ask them what motivated them to vote the way they did. we'll start in wisconsin. chuck quirmbach, byline: i'm chuck quirmbach in milwaukee. outside the el rey super mercado in a largely latino neighborhood, brenda cuellar sits in her black pickup truck with a red maga hat on the dashboard and trump vance decal on the back window. the first time voter, who was born in mexico, gently asks her two children to be quieter. then she explains she voted for donald trump because she finds the cost of living too high. brenda cuellar: the food is very expensive. everything is very expensive. i don't like it. cuellar: cuellar also mentions, quote, "too many bad people coming across the border to the u.s." cuellar, who works in milwaukee as a machinist, says she pays taxes, while she feels undocumented immigrants get too much help from the government. her request for trump in the months ahead   bring down prices and reduce illegal immigration. cuellar: the border. the border. stay out, the bad people. quirmbach: over in the next row of cars, bryan ortiz is getting out of his suv. on this late afternoon, he's still wearing fluorescent green clothes from his construction job. ortiz says he voted for trump because he says democrats mishandled the economy. he says one of the first ways trump should fix that is to increase u.s. oil production. bryan ortiz: that's going to make transporting goods from one place to another way cheaper. quirmbach: ortiz, born and raised in puerto rico, says he wasn't upset by a comedian's description of his birthplace at a trump rally last month as a, quote, "floating island of garbage." for him, he says trump's promise to reduce illegal immigration would help him find work. ortiz: i lost a lot of jobs just because they wanted to hire someone that was willing to take way lower pay than normal. quirmbach: despite the backing for trump in this one milwaukee parking lot, about 77% of voters in the city backed vice president harris. but that was less than president biden's support four years ago and part of why analysts say trump was able to carry wisconsin. for npr news, i'm chuck quirmbach in milwaukee. sarah kallis, byline: and i'm sarah kallis in atlanta. trump won the state by 117,000 more votes than vice president harris. that's 10 times more than president biden's margin of victory in 2020. voters around georgia said that they chose trump because they hope to see change. paige decombes: i know when we lived during trump's presidency, everything was much lower. groceries were lower, gas was lower. so i'm just hoping to see that come down. kallis: paige decombes in macon said that she is hoping trump brings down the cost of living. inflation has cooled in recent months, but some voters are still nostalgic for lower prices   especially grocery prices   during the trump era. trump has promised to curb inflation, in part by bringing down energy costs. kyle brown: you know, making sure we try and have as many jobs as we can here in the country, and try and keep everybody gainfully employed. kallis: savannah voter kyle brown said that he would have preferred a different republican to trump but ultimately chose him. brown said he wanted a shake up in washington. he also mentioned the cost of living and groceries. raymond hrabec: it's not because i like his personality, that's for sure. i think he's the one to take care of the economy, the oil issues and the border issues. kallis: that was raymond hrabec in savannah. u.s. mexico border security was top of mind for many trump voters in georgia. some, like caden cromer, say it hits close to home, after college student laken riley was allegedly killed by an undocumented migrant in athens, georgia, earlier this year. caden cromer: just seeing how our country is right now, it's a scary place for us, and i want us to be safe. i believe that we need a change, and we have to put americans first. kallis: for some trump voters like cromer, safety and migration seem linked, and trump has promised mass deportations. but research has shown undocumented migrants are not more likely to commit violent crimes than u.s. citizens. for npr news, i'm sarah kallis in atlanta. paul boger, byline: and i'm paul boger in las vegas. a steady stream of voters flowed into and out of the polling site at nellis crossing on the east side of las vegas on election day. it's a predominantly working class latino neighborhood, one that president biden won in 2020. joe lamos lives nearby and runs a security company. he says his family couldn't afford to vote for vice president harris. joe lamos: everything's gone up for us. our power bill   everything. gas   everything has gone up, and i don't see wages going up alongside with it. so that's very problematic for people that are just trying to survive and take care of their family. boger: that's partly because nevada's economy has been slow to recover from the covid 19 pandemic. since then, the state has maintained the highest unemployment rate in the country, as well as some of the highest levels of inflation. krista bandy: the economy was good when trump was in. boger: that's krista bandy, a single mom with four kids. bandy: it's not easy, with groceries and bills and everything just skyrocketing. i believe maybe he will make a change because i believe right now, who is in office isn't making a change. boger: like lamos, bandy is optimistic that trump's return to the white house will help turn back the clock to before the pandemic, when nevada was one of the fastest growing economies in the country. mike olague, a retired cabinet maker, says the only way to improve the economy is to start running the government like a business. mike olague: i mean, you got budgets, you got assets, deficits. you know, you can't just go out printing money. boger: olague says for him, the last four years have been madness. he thinks trump is the only one who can cure nevada's troubled economic landscape. for npr news, i'm paul boger in las vegas. (soundbite of music) copyright © 2024 npr. all rights reserved. visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. npr transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an npr contractor. this text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. accuracy and availability may vary. the authoritative record of npr’s programming is the audio record. sponsor message become an npr sponsor

an official website of the united states government official websites use .gov a .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the united states. secure .gov websites use https a lock ( lock locked padlock icon ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. primary site navigation logged in as: corresponding author: issue date 2022. since january 2020 elsevier has created a covid 19 resource centre with free information in english and mandarin on the novel coronavirus covid 19. the covid 19 resource centre is hosted on elsevier connect, the company's public news and information website. elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its covid 19 related research that is available on the covid 19 resource centre   including this research content   immediately available in pubmed central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the who covid database with rights for unrestricted research re use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. these permissions are granted for free by elsevier for as long as the covid 19 resource centre remains active. during his campaign for president, joe biden vowed to “end the politics and follow the science” when dealing with the covid 19 pandemic and other public health and environmental crises. he was immediately criticized by then president trump, who cast “listen[ing] to the scientists” as something only a fool would do, and warned that it would result in a “massive [economic] depression.” it is hardly surprising that trump would take that position. after all, the trump administration routinely prioritized economic interests, and worked tirelessly to remove what it viewed as unnecessary regulatory burdens on economic activity. the trump administration regularly suppressed, downplayed, or simply ignored scientific research demonstrating the need for regulation to protect public health and the environment. the biden administration has vowed to reverse course, but faces challenges in doing so due to the widespread assault on science led by former president trump. the trump administration's efforts to undermine science are documented in the silencing science tracker, an online database, which records anti science actions taken by the federal, state, and local governments. drawing on more than four years of tracker data from trump's election to biden's inauguration we show that the trump presidency fundamentally changed how federal government agencies perform, use, and communicate scientific research. while the biden administration has taken initial steps to undo some of those changes, it still has significant work to do to restore the role of science in federal government decision making. its task is made more difficult by the public distrust of science engendered by the trump presidency. keywords: climate change, science, biden, trump the silencing science tracker is a joint project of the climate science legal defense fund1 and columbia law school's sabin center for climate change law.2 the tracker records reported attempts by federal, state, and local government actors to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education, or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information (“anti science actions”). according to the tracker, 346 anti science actions were taken by the federal government between president trump's election and president biden's inauguration (i.e., from november 8, 2016 to january 20, 2021). during the same period, a further 156 anti science actions were taken by state and local governments, but those actions are not discussed in this chapter. federal actions recorded in the tracker are categorized as follows: government censorship; self censorship; budget cuts; personnel changes; research hindrance; and bias and misrepresentation. within the above categories, the tracker records actions taken by the federal executive and congress, except legislative proposals. many tracker entries involve multiple types of action or actors. for the purposes of this analysis, those entries were separated into their component parts, resulting in 428 unique instances of anti science behavior, each of which involves one type of action (i.e., from the list above), performed by one actor (e.g., a specific executive agency). the figures shown below were calculated based on that total.. there is reason to believe that many anti science actions were not reported and thus are not captured in the tracker, and therefore the total represents a conservative estimate of anti science actions taken between november 2016 and january 2021. in a survey conducted by the office of inspector general for the environmental protection agency (epa), nearly 400 epa scientists said they had observed violations of the agency's scientific integrity policy in the second half of 2018, but did not report them due to “fear of retaliation, belief that reporting would make no difference, perceived suppression or interference by agency leadership, and belief that politics and policy outweigh science.”3 given the trump administration's widespread and continued attacks on science, similar concerns were likely also held by scientists at other federal agencies throughout the second half of the trump presidency. it is, therefore, reasonable to assume that a large number of anti science actions went unreported. during his first presidential campaign, donald trump promised to “ensure... total [scientific] transparency and accountability without political bias.”4 that was a promise he didn’t keep. as detailed further below, during his four years in office, former president trump led a concerted effort to undermine federal scientific research, particularly research relating to climate change. the trump administration's attacks on climate science dovetailed neatly with one of the former president's key goals: to roll back climate regulations that scientific research shows would advance public health and environmental quality. faced with this contradiction, the trump administration sought to restrict access to scientific information or cast doubt on its veracity, thereby limiting public understanding of the issues and reducing possible opposition to the administration's plans. those actions created a culture of fear among federal scientists, leading some to voluntarily suppress or distort information at odds with former president trump's agenda. many of the scientists who did speak out were removed from their positions, while others were prevented from conducting further research on topics deemed “controversial,” such as climate change. during president trump's time in office (including the transition period), there were 154 documented instances of federal government censorship of scientists, and 19 instances of scientists engaging in self censorship. approximately 72% involved the suppression of information about climate change. this began even before president trump took office. in november 2016, staff at centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) deleted content discussing the relationship between climate change and human health from at least four webpages, reportedly to “avoid drawing the new president's ire.” similar changes were made to other federal agency websites after president trump took office. in total, during the trump administration, climate change and other scientific information was removed from the websites of twelve federal bodies, in most cases at the direction of administration officials.5 this made it more difficult for americans to educate themselves about climate change and other scientific issues, which may, in turn, have made it easier for the trump administration to act on those issues by allowing them to “fly under the radar” or obscuring the consequences of administration action. the trump administration also removed scientific information from regulatory documents. for example, in or around august 2018, administration officials deleted information6 on the local health effects of climate change from regulatory documents supporting the weakening of greenhouse gas emissions controls. again, this helped the trump administration advance its deregulatory agenda, including by casting doubt on the need for climate regulations. trump administration officials also attempted to suppress information that could lead to demands for stricter regulation (e.g., because it shed additional light on the impacts of climate change or demonstrated the inadequacy of that existing attempts to address it).7 this could have lasting consequences, making it more difficult for the current and future administrations to take regulatory action, due to a lack of information or sense of urgency. this type of scientific censorship was widespread during the trump administration, having been documented at 20 federal bodies more than any other type of anti science action. notably however, the number of documented instances of government censorship declined slightly over time, falling by 26% from 2017 to 2018, a further 18% in 2019, and 10% more in 2020. this is not necessarily good news; it may simply reflect the fact that less science was done because of personnel changes, budget cuts, and other anti science actions taken by the trump administration. there is also reason to believe that the attacks on science created a culture of fear among federal employees and led some to self censor. a survey conducted in 2016 before president trump's election found that 72% of epa scientists felt they could “openly express scientific opinions about the agency's scientific work without fear of retaliation.”8 that number dropped to just 57% in a repeat survey conducted in 2018 almost two years into trump presidency.8 in the 2018 survey, over 600 scientists said their “management chains do not consistently stand behind scientific staff who put forth scientifically defensible positions, including those that may be controversial.”8 it is, then, hardly surprising that some scientists would choose to self censor. however, while understandable, such behavior could undermine public trust in science by creating the impression that scientists “pick and choose” what to disclose and regularly “hide” information. both self  and government censorship may also cause the public to question whether research conducted or overseen by federal scientist is truly impartial and lead some to belief that such research is inherently political and thus untrustworthy. in addition to suppressing information, the trump administration also sought to restrict or prevent further climate change research, including by removing9 and reassigning10 federal government scientists. this reduced the capacity of key science agencies. for example, the u.s. geological survey the science arm of the u.s. department of the interior (doi) lost 150 staff scientists or over 2% of its total scientific workforce between 2016 and 2020.11 during the same period, 672 scientists left the environmental protection agency (epa), resulting in 6% decline its total scientific workforce.12 as well as reducing federal agencies’ internal scientific expertise, the trump administration also sought to limit their access to outside experts. to that end, in june 2019, president trump issued an executive order directing each federal agency to eliminate at least one third of its current scientific advisory committees.13 following the order, at least nine advisory committees across the department of commerce, department of energy,14 doi,15 and epa16 were terminated. many other advisory committees (e.g., at epa,17 doi, and the department of labor18) were unofficially suspended or had their membership changed, with independent scientists replaced by industry representatives.19 in some cases, the new appointees lacked appropriate expertise, leading to concerns that the trump administration was stacking advisory committees with favored “experts” who would be unable or unwilling to question the science behind its decisions. this was, perhaps, most obvious at epa where members of the committee responsible for advising on particulate matter pollution themselves warned that they did “not have the breadth and depth of knowledge or expertise . . . necessary to adequately advise the epa and to meet the statutory requirement for a thorough and accurate review” of existing or proposed particulate matter controls.20 the dismantling of science advisory committees furthered the trump administration's goal of rolling back climate change regulations in several ways. perhaps most importantly, it limited external review of the scientific bases for the trump administration's deregulatory actions, many of which were subsequently struck down by the courts on the basis that they were not supported by the available evidence or the result of reasoned decision making. expert review could have identified those flaws before action was taken, but the trump administration seemingly thought it was more important to move ahead quickly and avoid the possibility of anyone questioning its approach. the administration's actions also had the effect of restricting federal agency and therefore public access to information that might justify action on climate change. that appears to have been the trump administration's goal when it disbanded the advisory committee for the sustained national climate assessment while it was in the process of drafting a report intended to assist government officials to use the national climate assessment in long term planning.21 these types of actions again undermine trust in science by suggesting that scientific research and findings can be easily manipulated to achieve political ends. under president trump, federal agencies also faced pressure to reduce spending on scientific research, with the administration proposing deep across the board cuts in many budget cycles.22 those proposals were largely rejected by congress, which actually increased research funding during the trump presidency.22 nevertheless, many existing research programs had their funding cut or entirely eliminated. for example, in august 2017, doi halted ongoing research into the health impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining, pending a review.23 the research was officially cancelled in april 2018, with doi claiming that it was “redundant.”23 a subsequent investigation found that doi's then principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, katherine macgregor, had pushed for cancellation of the study after repeatedly meeting with the national mining association and companies engaged in mountaintop removal coal mining.23 another doi official, landon “tucker” davis, reportedly said the study should be cancelled because “science was a democrat thing,” reinforcing the idea that scientific research is inherently political.23 further supporting this view, under president trump, some federal agencies also began requiring new research programs to be reviewed by political appointees to ensure they “promote the [trump administration’s] priorities.”24 it appears that appointees often used the review process to further deregulatory initiatives, blocking funding for research that might otherwise underpin environmental regulations. for example, epa refused new grants for climate research.24 the trump administration also restricted research in other ways. for example, in september 2018, doi announced plans to destroy records relating to several of its program areas, including “biological resources and marine conservation.”25 the records included, among other things, data on the size and location of various fish and wildlife populations that is used in researching species health.25 in addition to limiting access to data needed for research, doi also interfered with research processes. for example, scientists at doi's u.s. geological survey were directed not to model the impacts of climate change beyond 2040, presumably because the worst impacts are expected to occur in the second half of the century.26 in total, in the time between president trump's election and president biden's inauguration, there were 43 documented examples of research hindrance. the number of incidents rose by 157% from 2017 to 2018 the largest year on year increase in any category recorded in the silencing science tracker before dropping in 2019 and then increasing to 2017 levels again in 2020. again, many of the actions taken furthered the trump administration's deregulatory agenda, including by obscuring the harms caused by climate change and thus making it easier to justify the weakening of climate regulations. other actions appear to have been intended to help president trump politically. for example, during the covid 19 pandemic, trump administration officials pressured the food and drug administration to approve new vaccines and treatments before they had been fully tested.27 president trump had previously accused the “deep state, or whoever, over at fda” of intentionally slowing work to hinder his chances of re election.27 his supporters could easily have interpreted this to mean that fda scientists were pursuing their own (anti trump) agenda and thus should not be trusted to deliver impartial advice about covid 19 or other issues. where the trump administration could not block the conduct or publication of research (e.g., because it was been mandated by law), administration officials often engaged in bias and misrepresentation, undermining or simply dismissing research findings that did not support its agenda. one notable example was the administration's response to the fourth national climate assessment, which officials falsely claimed was “not data driven” and only modelled “the most extreme scenario,” rendering it untrustworthy; president trump simply declared: “i don’t believe it.”28 president trump took a similar approach to politically inconvenient covid 19 research. for example, when research called into question president trump's claims that hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for covid 19, the former president accused the researchers of intentionally skewing the results by giving the drug to “very sick people ⋯ that were ready to die.”29 president trump did not point to any evidence to support these claims, but nevertheless labelled the research as “false,” and suggested it was politically motivated because that researchers were “obviously not friends of the administration.”29 again, his supporters were led to believe that scientific research is easily co opted, and scientific facts open to interpretation. in total, in the period between president trump's election and when he left office, there were 85 documented instances of bias and misrepresentation involving actors from congress, the white house, and nine executive agencies. government actors appear to have felt increasingly emboldened to engage in such behavior during the trump presidency. instances of bias and misrepresentation doubled from 2017 to 2018, before stabilizing in 2019 and then increasing again in 2020. the increase may be partly attributable to the trump administration's widespread scientific censorship, which has limited public access to information that calls officials’ views into question. both government censorship and bias and misrepresentation became increasingly prevalent during the covid 19 pandemic. in 2020, there were three times as many instances of bias and misrepresentation involving covid 19 as there were for the next largest category, climate change. (in all other years, climate misinformation was the biggest category of bias and misrepresentation.) moreover, as a result of other anti science actions taken by the trump administration, there were fewer federal scientists to advise and potentially constrain officials during the later years of the administration. regardless of the cause, the trump administration's bias and misrepresentation played neatly into their attempts to dismantle science based regulations, such as at epa (where scientists’ advice was restricted30 or outright disregarded31) and doi (which used faulty science to justify deregulation32) as well as other agencies like omb (which instituted guidelines to limit how science can be used by regulatory agencies33). these problems were widespread throughout the federal government during the trump presidency. anti science behavior was documented at 23 federal bodies, including, unexpectedly, several agencies not highly focused on scientific research (e.g., the department of justice and federal communications commission). nevertheless, research agencies have borne the brunt of the attacks on science, with the largest number recorded at epa (93 or 22% of the total) and doi (74 or 17% of the total). during his campaign and since being elected, president biden has repeatedly stressed that his administration will “listen to science.”34 he began putting his words into action even before taking office, for example, when he appointed eric lander as presidential science advisor.35 in comparison, trump did not appoint a science advisor until nearly two years into his term, later than any first term president since at least 1976.36 at the same time as he appointed lander, president biden also announced that the white house office of science and technology policy would become a cabinet level agency, giving it significantly more influence in administration decision making.37 building on these early actions, on his first day in office, president biden issued an executive order declaring that, when combating climate change, “the federal government must be guided by the best science and be protected by processes that ensure the integrity of federal decision making.”38 one week later, president biden issued an executive memorandum on “restoring trust in government through scientific integrity and evidence based policymaking”: it is the policy of my administration to make evidence based decisions guided by the best available science and data ⋯ scientific findings should never be distorted or influenced by political considerations. when scientific or technological information is considered in policy decisions, it should be subjected to well established scientific processes, including peer review where feasible and appropriate, with appropriate protections for privacy. improper political interference in the work of federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the federal government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the nation, contributes to systemic inequities and injustices, and violates the trust that the public places in government to best serve its collective interests.39 at president biden's direction, in may 2021, the white house office of science and technology policy convened an interagency taskforce to assess the effectiveness of federal agencies’ scientific integrity policies and recommend reforms.40 that is an encouraging first step but significantly more work will be needed to undo the damage done by the trump administration. as well as broad efforts to restore the role of science in federal decision making, the biden administration will also need to undo many of the individual anti science actions taken during the trump presidency. for example, the scientists who left federal employment will need to be replaced, the policies requiring political review of research grants and publications will need to be changed, the federal advisory committees that were disbanded will need to be re established, and the committees that continue to exist will need to be reviewed to ensure their members are qualified and independent. there is a lot to do and, so far, the biden administration has only just scratched the surface. at the time of writing nine months into the biden presidency the administration had only undone eleven of the trump era anti science actions recorded in the silencing science tracker. to be fair, some actions cannot be directly undone (e.g., the administration's repeated questioning of climate science). and, in other areas, there have been some encouraging steps forward. for instance, in march 2021, epa administrator michael regan dismissed all members of the agency's scientific advisory board due to “process irregularities” in appointments during the trump administration.41 new board members were appointed in august 2021 after extensive conflict of interest and impartiality tests.42 further work by the biden administration could be hampered by distrust of science within some segments of the american public. in a survey conducted by the pew research center in april and may 2020, only 39% of respondents said they had a “great deal” of confidence in scientists to act in the best interests of the public.43 while that was up slightly from 2019 levels, when 35% of survey respondents said they had a “great deal” of confidence in scientists, pew found growing partisan difference in trust levels.43 in the 2020 survey, only 27 percent of respondents who identified as republican expressed a great deal of confidence in scientists, compared to 52% for democrats.43 black and hispanic americans have also been shown to have less trust in scientists than white communities.44 there can be little doubt that the trump administration stoked distrust in science in at least some segments of the public. although previous administrations both republican and democrat had engaged in anti science behavior, under president trump, attacks on science were much more frequent and widespread. they also took on a different flavor. whereas past presidents consistently upheld the value of scientific research, at least publicly, the trump administration repeatedly questioned it. trump administration officials described inconvenient research findings as “untrustworthy” and “unbelievable.”28 some have even suggested that all research is inherently partisan because science is “a democrat thing.”23 those sentiments undermine the perceived value of independent research which could, in turn, encourage greater politicization of science and decrease reliance on it as a basis for environmental and other regulation. clearly, there is a pressing need for reforms to better protect federal scientists, and restore public trust in the scientific process. foremost among these is strengthening federal agency scientific integrity policies. many federal agencies adopted such policies during the obama administration, with the goal of ensuring that the science they use in decision making is free from political interference.45 the policies clearly fell short of their goals during the trump administration. the trump presidency showed that, first and foremost, scientific integrity policies need stronger mechanisms to protect science against political interference. as of this writing, a number of agency scientific integrity policies do not actually prohibit political interference in science.46 other policies provide only limited protections, such as at doi, where only public affairs officers are fully prevented from attempting to engage in political interference.47 many policies also need stronger protections for the rights of scientists to communicate their findings, which would allow scientists to freely share scientific information and correct misinformation.48 and stronger requirements regarding conflicts of interest are needed across the board to help reduce regulatory capture by industry interests and other forms of corruption.48 finally, it must be easier and safer for scientists to navigate the scientific integrity complaint process there is much to be done to clarify the processes and procedures for filing and investigating complaints, implement clear and meaningful penalties for violations, and protect complainants against retaliation.49 several initiatives are currently underway in both the biden administration and in congress, working towards these necessary improvements. unfortunately, on both fronts, progress has been slower than one would like. as mentioned above, following a january 2021 presidential memorandum, the biden administration convened a task force to review and revamp agency scientific integrity policies, but as the writing of this chapter, the task force is already several months behind its initial deadlines. meanwhile, in congress, a scientific integrity act was first proposed in 2017 and has been reintroduced several times since then, but does not yet appear to be close to passage. despite the slow movement, it is important to remember that the tide is turning in a more pro science direction. unfortunately, history has shown that at some point the pendulum will likely swing back, at least to some degree. it is imperative that we use this time to institute stronger protections for federal science. data availability: all data analyzed in this study are available online at https://climate.law.columbia.edu/silencing science tracker. articles from progress in molecular biology and translational science are provided here courtesy of elsevier connect with nlm national library of medicine 8600 rockville pike bethesda, md 20894
in april as part of the new york times/siena college survey, we called about 1,000 voters across the country and asked for their most prominent memory of the trump years. here’s what they said, in their own words. “his honesty” trump supporter in 2024 “his lies” biden supporter “he had the country headed in the right direction” trump supporter “america was going in the wrong direction” biden supporter “he was a crook” biden supporter “he couldn’t be bought” trump supporter “efficient” trump supporter “incompetent” biden supporter “less division” trump supporter “divided the country” undecided by christine zhang, sean catangui and alex lemonides the 2024 election will be in part a battle over memories, perhaps more than in previous presidential races because it’s a rare rematch. and memories aren’t necessarily static   what is happening today can influence those memories. two of the biggest u.s. news events in decades, the covid pandemic and the jan. 6 storming of the capitol, are seldom the first thing on people’s minds when it comes to their memories of the trump administration, for example, according to an april times/siena survey of registered voters nationwide. when asked to describe the one thing they remembered most from donald j. trump’s presidency, only 5 percent of respondents referred to jan. 6, and only 4 percent to covid. “it’s the salience of issues today that color the memories that people have of trump,” said john sides, a professor of political science at vanderbilt. the importance of issues of the moment may explain the large number of responses about the economy as opposed to covid or jan. 6, which have largely receded from the headlines. 39% trump’s behavior the economy 24% immigration 9% jan. 6 5% 5% foreign policy covid 4% 39% trump’s behavior the economy 24% immigration 9% jan. 6 5% foreign policy 5% covid 4% based on a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024. top six categories shown. because of recency bias   a tendency to focus on recent events instead of past ones   people typically feel their current problems most sharply. and they tend to have a warmer recall of past experiences, which can lead to a sense of nostalgia. like past presidents, mr. trump has enjoyed a higher approval rating of his time in office in retrospect. voters who shared negative memories of the trump years overwhelmingly mentioned aspects of his behavior and personality, while the bulk of positive memories were about the economy. over a third of voters shared a positive memory. the same percentage shared a negative one. (some memories could not be clearly categorized.) the trump and biden campaigns are sure to try to emphasize and remind voters of the memories favorable to them. here’s a closer look at some of the respondents’ most common memories of mr. trump’s years in office. “he was the biggest liar ever” biden supporter in 2024 “his dislike for black people” biden supporter “the terrible things he did to women” biden supporter “chaos and corruption” biden supporter “the disgrace he brought to this country” biden supporter “his direct way of doing business” trump supporter “i remember him using twitter a lot” undecided “he got things done and fulfilled campaign promises” trump supporter selected responses from a new york times/siena college poll of 1,059 registered voters conducted april 7 to 11, 2024.