News Analysis: Trump offers murky worldview ahead of second term, mixing dire warnings with rosy promises

Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised national prosperity and global peace, saying he would quickly drive down the cost of groceries in local supermarkets and bring deadly overseas wars to an abrupt end. Nothing will stop me from keeping my word to you, the people.” During a more recent interview with Time magazine, Trump cast fresh doubt on his ability to bring down grocery prices — a key campaign promise — by saying, “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up.” After a campaign that spent millions on ads about the alleged threat posed by the nation’s small population of transgender people, he also suggested the issue has been overblown, saying “it gets massive coverage, and it’s not a lot of people.” During his Monday news conference, Trump said he’d recently had a “very good conversation” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is leading a brutal campaign against Hamas in Gaza and beyond, and that he believes “the Middle East will be in a good place” soon. However, he also said that if hostages taken from Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that precipitated the war aren’t returned by his inauguration on Jan. 20, “all hell’s going to break out.” Asked to clarify, he simply said: “It won’t be pleasant.” Trump also said that Russia’s war on Ukraine — which he promised to end in a day during the campaign, saying “I’ll have that done in 24 hours” — will be “actually more difficult” than addressing the Middle East tensions. But as long as his “appeal to his base remains firm,” Brands said, “he will continue to be largely immune from ordinary expectations of political leaders.” One limit, Brands said, is that “the longer he is in government himself, the less persuasive his efforts to blame government for what his base doesn’t like.” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of “Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words,” which considers how presidents have defined the office through their speech, said Trump “lives in an all-or-nothing world,” and it is reflected in his stark pronouncements about the direction of the country and the world. “Unless mainstream economists are wrong,” Jamieson said, “that’s impossible.” One of the first major opportunities for Trump to describe his view of the world heading into his second term will be his inauguration.