Has Trump Achieved a Lot Less Than It Seems? - The Ezra Klein Show

[In It to Win It]

We are one year into Trump’s second term. And it feels like so much has happened – more than the human mind, or the country, can absorb. But how much has Trump really accomplished? What policies have changed the country in a way that will last?

My guest Yuval Levin is one of the smartest thinkers on the right, and his verdict is: not that much. “There’s an important story to tell about the absence of action in the past year, too,” he tells me.

Levin is the director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, the founder and editor of National Affairs and the author of several books on policy and political theory, including “American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again.”

2:14 Yuval Levin’s impression of Trump’s first year
8:13 Trump governs retail rather than wholesale
12:13 The reality of Trump’s assault on universities
19:10 Using the power of the presidency to drive behavioral change
22:44 How to understand the impact of Trump’s tariff and immigration policy
26:17 The management structure of Trump’s White House
32:27 Democratic metrics versus autocratic metrics
46:19 Criminal investigation of Jerome Powell
53:09 How is the young conservative right changing?

Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com
/2026/01/16/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-yuval-levin.html