On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 9, 2017, I was in the West Wing when a significant development occurred. Donald J. Trump, not yet four months into his presidency, had dismissed Jim Comey, the FBI Director whom he viewed as a showboating nuisance and personal adversary.
The news quickly spread among the press corps and political figures. Before I could finish a phone call to report the event, I received another message: the president wanted to see me. Soon, I found myself in the Oval Office, where Trump, surrounded by his top advisers, reveled in the unfolding drama while also exhibiting a trace of anxiety.
How will this play?, he eagerly asked, clearly nervous, as he observed the faces around him. He was curious about whether the media would criticize him, if there would be defiance from Capitol Hill, and how the opinionated circles would react.
The atmosphere was telling. The aides were anxious and unsure about their decision. They feared the move might backfire, harming not Comey but the president. How would the likes of The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman or the editors at Condé Nast report on this? The concern was palpable. Back then, Trump still cared about such opinions.
That was Trump 1.0.
The subsequent years—the Mueller investigation, two impeachments, numerous indictments, losing the presidency to Biden in 2020, assassination attempts, and continuous controversies—transformed Trump, removing the version concerned with public perception like a fire clearing a forest. The Trump who returned to the White House in 2025 is not the same leader who once worried about the Georgetown cocktail circuit or morning newspaper critiques.
In 2017, Trump’s closest allies—his chiefs of staff, Jared and Ivanka, Cabinet members—constantly stressed over the reactions from Congress, the media, and wealthy backers. Every move was scrutinized for Washington’s so-called adults’ opinions. The Comey dismissal was shocking because it shattered the club’s unspoken rules. It was decidedly not the Done Thing.
Today, for Trump 2.0, there is no such concern.
Donald J Trump, less than four months into his presidency, fired Jim Comey, the FBI Director he had long considered a grandstanding nuisance and personal adversary (Pictured: Trump and Comey in January 2017)
The news flash flooded through the press corps and political class. Before I could even finish a phone call to report the story, word came: the president wanted to see me (Pictured: Trump and Halperin in 2015)
In the West Wing, Comey’s indictment by Trump’s Justice Department after the president publicly pleaded for it, all but demanded it, has largely been met with glee. There has been righteous celebration, not handwringing. Texts and conversations with various Trump advisers Thursday evening and Friday morning produced not a speck or smidge of disquiet, no second thoughts or second guessing.
The change is not subtle. In the first term, the president’s staff often acted like new parents tiptoeing around a sleeping, tetchy infant, or like nervous homeowners trying to prevent a grease fire in the kitchen from spreading to the rest of the house. Now, they warm their hands as Trump the arsonist, lights the match and smiles as the blaze roars. Donald Trump is unshackled, undeterred, and utterly unfiltered.
It is not the case that no adviser ever tells the president to think again before acting. It is instead that Trump is surrounded by like-minded warriors who share his worldview, who experienced the last decade as he did, with him, by his side. It is not that they are afraid to tell Trump to restrain his instincts; they share his instincts.
History offers plenty of analogies. Richard Nixon, after his triumphant 1972 re-election, convinced himself that rules no longer applied and that his enemies would never catch him. Lyndon Johnson, post-1964 landslide, dismissed critics as gnats while escalating the war in Vietnam. But Trump’s second incarnation is different: he isn’t acting out of false confidence in elite approval. He simply no longer seeks it.
In literature, one thinks of Shakespeare’s Richard III, who, having seized power, feels free to reveal his ruthlessness. Trump sees himself as having endured hellfire and emerged purified—immune to the establishment’s condemnation. In fact, now criticism only reinforces Team Trump’s conviction that they did the right thing.
Inside Trump’s world at this point, Comey is not a cautionary tale but a symbol. Firing him in 2017 once seemed risky, even reckless, because it antagonized Washington’s sacred cows. Today, Trump and his loyalists look back and ask: why did we ever care what they thought? Why didn’t we double down sooner?
That’s the defining mindset of Trump 2.0: do anything, say anything, regardless of how the establishment reacts. If Comey symbolized elite respectability, Trump’s dismissal of him is now viewed in Trump World as the prototype of the new approach. When the elites cry foul, Team Trump hears applause. When the press squawks, the White House sees evidence of strength.
It is not the case that no adviser ever tells the president to think again before acting. It is instead that Trump is surrounded by like-minded warriors who share his worldview
This shift explains almost everything about Trump’s political style in his second presidential term. He no longer bothers with fig leaves. The insults are harsher. The defiance is more brazen. The decisions are made with little regard for how they will be spun on Morning Joe or in the pages of The Atlantic. His squad, no longer stacked with cautious Jared-and-Ivanka types, reflects this posture: lean, loyal, combative.
There is no mistaking the risks. Unfiltered leaders often flame out spectacularly. Nixon’s paranoia destroyed him. Johnson’s hubris cost him a second full term. But Trump has long thrived on risk, turning conventional wisdom inside out. The very things that horrify the elite establishment now both thrill and reassure his base.
And so, more than eight years after that tense May afternoon in the Oval Office, Trump’s perspective on Jim Comey tells us everything about his transformation. What once kept his advisers awake at night is now a badge of honor. The lesson, in their narrative: if the ruling class protests, you’re probably doing something right.
The establishment sees potential democratic ruin. Trump sees liberation.
That is the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. And for better or worse, Americans are finding out what that really means, beyond the Oval Office, for the country, as a whole.
