At the end of Friday's Washington Week with The Atlantic on PBS, moderator Jeffrey Goldberg brought up "something very strange happened at the White House this week, we had a little bit of a president on the roof situation." But something else very strange happened. Liberal reporters said Trump's second term is "way more effective" than the first.
The talk went from Trump on the roof to the new plans for a big White House ballroom. ABC's Jonathan Karl actually claimed Trump's first term wasn't consequential, which is weird coming from people who panicked over it in real time:
KARL: He's got big plans. And to me, it says something about the difference between the first presidency and the second Trump presidency. The first Trump presidency kind of came and went. It was rather ephemeral in its effects on the country despite what we all saw at the time. This one, he's making more radical changes to the country and to the White House that'll live well beyond his presidency.
TYLER PAGER, New York Times: And I think part of it is because he now knows how government works. I think one of the things that really is the key difference between the first term and the second term is that he had a whole host of characters in the government that were trying to stymie his efforts to radically change the country. He's now surrounded by people that are fully supportive of his agenda and helping him do it.
If Trump's first term wasn't effective, it sounds like the media congratulating themselves for using Trump sources against him, including the constant pounding about Russian collusion. But that ignores that before the pandemic, the economy was booming, among other not-so-ephemeral effects. This is how the show wrapped up:
THIS happened on PBS: liberal reporters admitted Trump is "way more effective" in the second term after being out of office for a term. pic.twitter.com/LyjriGQbRt
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) August 11, 2025
JEFFREY GOLDBERG, moderator: Right. I mean, one final question to you, Tyler, as the author of a book about the [2024] race. It seems very effective thing to do, to be president and then be off of four years and plan the next four years. It turns out in retrospect.
PAGER: Yes, he is way more effective at accomplishing his agenda with having that time out of office because those -- a lot of his aides, Russ Vought, those sorts of officials, spent their time out of government planning for this term. And so what they've done is an onslaught of executive orders in the first six months that accomplished a lot of their goals very quickly because he knew what they wanted to do.
This is as close as PBS will get to a hat tip, especially Goldberg, who has tried so many times to ruin Trump with sleazy anonymously-sourced hit pieces in The Atlantic.
