Trump’s speech carried a markedly different tone from comments he made last year about Nippon’s bid to acquire the Pittsburgh-based steel conglomerate. “As president, I will block this deal from happening,” he said in a statement in early December.
But on Friday, the president joked that U.S. Steel workers would have “a lot of money coming [their] way” once the deal is finalized.
“It’s a lot of money. You’re going to say, ‘Please, sir, we don’t want this kind of success. It’s too much, sir,’” Trump joked. “For generations, the name United States Steel was synonymous with greatness, and now it will again be synonymous with greatness. That’s what it’s going to be, the best and strongest steel on Earth.”
When it comes to policy, the president has changed his mind countless times since riding down the golden escalator at Trump Tower nearly a decade ago. But now, more than four months into his second term, Trump has taken a hard, 180-degree turn on three specific topics: TikTok, abortion, and the handling of Iran.
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Multiple senior Republican strategists with close ties to the Trump team discounted those shifts, suggesting to the Washington Examiner that the president has “evolved” since departing the White House in 2021.
“I’d disagree with the idea that President Trump has changed much, if at all, on the big stuff — trade, immigration, law and order,” one veteran Republican campaign operative said. “However, I think on the issues you mentioned, he has evolved to some degree. But that’s what all the best leaders do: take in new information and evolve. The world is a very different place compared to when he walked into the White House the first time, but Donald Trump has evolved along with it.”
The 2024 attempt on Trump’s life, which occurred just a one-hour drive north of Friday’s speech location, likely had a major influence on the president’s thinking, claimed three GOP strategists, all with past experience in the first Trump White House or on his presidential campaigns.
“President Trump has made it clear that the Butler assassination attempt had a profound impact on him. He’s repeatedly spoken about seeking to be a peacemaker this time around, and he’s making good on that promise in Ukraine, in Gaza,” one strategist said.
“When something like that happens, you start to think about legacy,” a second Trump alum told the Washington Examiner. “‘How will I be remembered? How do I want to be remembered?’ You see it in how he’s conducted himself with other world leaders.”
Still, two other former Trump administration officials who did not support him in the 2024 election knocked Trump’s shift in positions.
“That’s just Donald Trump. He’ll say or do whatever he thinks will help him the most politically,” one critic assessed flatly.
“Changing your mind on some issues isn’t out of the ordinary, but this is just lunacy. He can’t commit to anything or maybe just believes in nothing,” the second former Trump official added. “It would be almost comical, if the country and national security weren’t on the line.”
Here are the three examples of how Trump’s second-term positions have shifted dramatically compared to his first term.
Since entering office in January, Trump has twice extended the deadline for ByteDance to sell the wildly popular social media platform TikTok to an American buyer or be blocked from operating on U.S. soil. He has specifically tapped Vice President JD Vance to lead the effort to broker a deal between U.S. investors, ByteDance, and Beijing, and the president has even suggested that the federal government could walk away with a partial ownership stake.
Trump’s campaign leaned heavily into TikTok on the campaign trail, growing his @realdonaldtrump account to roughly 15 million followers after launching in 2024, and the president himself has suggested that his popularity on the app translated to support at the ballot box, especially among young voters.
But in 2020, Trump signed an executive order seeking to ban TikTok in the U.S. should ByteDance fail to divest within 45 days. The order set off a legal battle between ByteDance and the Trump administration, and it was eventually blocked by a U.S. district court in California in September of that year.
Trump would go on to announce his opposition to banning TikTok in 2024 after then-President Joe Biden signed a bill into law requiring ByteDance to divest or be forced to cease operating in the U.S.
Democrats believed that abortion would prove a critical wedge issue in the general election last year. The topic had helped sink Republican hopes of picking up both congressional majorities in the 2022 midterm elections, and Trump himself had taken credit for the Supreme Court’s unraveling of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision.
Furthermore, the president himself, in 2018, backed a Senate bill that would place a federal ban on performing abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
However, during the 2024 cycle, Trump distanced himself from calls from anti-abortion groups and other Republican lawmakers to codify a national abortion ban. The president argued that abortion was a state’s issue during his debate against former Vice President Kamala Harris and vowed on social media during the vice presidential debate to veto any national abortion ban legislation should it make it to his desk in a second term.
Though the president has signed a number of executive orders restricting federal funding for reproductive health clinics, he has not taken any action signaling additional steps to limit abortion nationwide.
A core promise of Trump’s 2016 campaign was that he would withdraw the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement negotiated by former President Barack Obama and Tehran.
Trump frequently referred to the JCPOA as “the worst deal ever negotiated” and eventually made good on his vow to withdraw from the deal in the spring of 2018. In its place, the president instituted a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at crippling Iran’s economy, destroying its nuclear refinement capacity, and undermining its ability to support terrorist cells throughout the Middle East.
In January, Trump escalated his previous sanctions on Iran, reiterating his promise to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear capabilities, but he has since called off the dogs.
However, just last month, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeking to de-escalate tensions and reopen negotiations on a new nuclear deal. Over the ensuing eight weeks, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East and other U.S. officials have met with their Iranian counterparts for five rounds of negotiations, while the president himself has cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally, against carrying out military action against Iran and risking derailing the talks.
Furthermore, Trump said on Thursday at the White House that this new deal won’t actually shut down Iran’s nuclear program and could come together in “the next couple of weeks.”
“We can go in with inspectors. We can take whatever we want. We can blow up whatever we want,” he stated. “But nobody’s getting killed.”
The White House disputed the idea that the president has shifted on any of the aforementioned issues.
On TikTok, a White House official told the Washington Examiner that the president has “commented plenty” regarding his views on TikTok and said that Vance’s push is an “ongoing investigation.”
When it comes to Trump’s recent peace overtures to Tehran, the official claimed that Trump has “always been tough on them not having nuclear weapons.”
“He has always been willing to look anyone in the eye to deliver peace in the area,” that person continued. “He’s always been about peace through strength, but he’s always been willing to pick up the phone and negotiate or visit these countries and negotiate.”
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And when it comes to abortion, the official said Trump has been consistent in his view that it is a state issue. “He has nominated judges and effectuated policies towards that end,” they concluded.
