How about Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act?

On June 30, 2025, the title of a White House news release claimed “The One Big Beautiful Bill Slashes Deficits, National Debt While Unleashing Economic Growth.”

The reality:

Just before Trump took office, the nation’s debt was $36.2 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. The debt is now more than $39.5 trillion, an increase of $3.3 trillion.

I asked political and presidential scholars how they think Trump’s mind works. Most pointed to his seemingly exclusive reliance on his own judgment while rejecting expert advice.

“Many presidents have made mistakes, but none have made mistakes so cavalierly as President Trump,” Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown University, wrote by email in response to my query:

He makes rash, reckless decisions; at best, they are based on bar-stool theories of how the world works, and at worst, they are driven by corrupt motives. Since he “just knows” he is right about how tariffs work, no evidence will sway him.

In the short term, the country has been in many ways resilient, but he is corroding state capacity, democratic norms and the very sense of a unified nation.

How did he pull this off?

Trump is, however, quite skilled as a political leader, combining a hold on the Republican primary electorate with a willingness to relentlessly demand total obedience to his personal goals.

Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, took a different tack, placing Trump’s misjudgments in separate categories:

There are three categories of Trump failures: disasters of mismanagement, disasters by design and disasters of greed.

What are the achievements of the second Trump presidency thus far? Persistent inflation, sluggish economic growth, an unpopular war, aggressive immigration enforcement that has outraged many and the shredding of the safety net to fund a large tax cut.

In his second term, Moynihan argued,

Trump no longer feels the need to be bound by precedent, norms or good advice. We can see this at the superficial level (the Reflecting Pool) or for issues where there are extraordinary stakes, such as the Iran war.

Trump has lost any inhibitions he had while creating a bubble where he is surrounded by yes men.

Some of the adverse effects of Trump’s policies are not results of bad judgment but are purposeful, Moynihan contended, and he’s not wrong:

Some of the failings of the second administration are by design. More people will lose access to SNAP as One Big Beautiful Bill policies are being implemented. Medicaid restrictions will kick in by next year, similarly excluding millions of eligible citizens. The buildup of an immigration police state was also a feature of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Many of Trump’s most punitive actions are not the result of miscalculation but the faithful implementation of his vision.

When Trump’s favorability ratings are profoundly negative, how does he continue to get away with what he is doing, including personally amassing at least $2.2 billion largely through cryptocurrency companies designed to allow profiteering from foreign sources and domestic figures seeking special favors, including criminal pardons?

Dallek, again:

Several factors account for Trump’s political durability. The U.S. economy has avoided a recession. The stock market is breaking records. Consumer spending and A.I. have helped power the job market.

But more important, Dallek continued,

Trump benefits politically from an anti-establishment sensibility that has become perhaps the single most explosive structural force in American politics.

Millions of Americans believe that a rigged government needs to be eviscerated, and Trump, the ultimate outsider, wins support from some voters as the one man brazen enough to do the job.

Equally important, Dallek argued:

Many voters also continue to like Trump because he has done more than any politician since the 1960s to unwind liberal cultural norms and a rights-based legal order. Trump has delivered for his Christian conservative base. Roe is gone. Civil rights and voting rights have been eroded. The L.G.B.T.Q.+ movement is on defense. And D.E.I. initiatives across private and public institutions have been rolled back.

Trump’s record on social conservatism reads, at least to his base, like a list of long-denied priorities finally fulfilled. They are major achievements in the eyes of his base.

Other scholars make similar arguments.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, wrote by email:

What’s different about Trump is that many of his supporters evaluate him less by traditional policy outcomes and more by whether he’s fighting the political and cultural battles they care about. In today’s polarized environment, political identity often outweighs measurable policy success or failure.

While presidents frequently overpromise and underdeliver, “what distinguishes Trump,” Rottinghaus said, “is his willingness to pursue high-risk, high-visibility policies with relatively little concern for expert consensus or institutional caution. That increases both the potential payoff and the potential for costly failures.”