Tim Donner: Trump Scorecard - Hits and Misses of 2025

This year has made the president's first four years look like a mere dress rehearsal.

After spending the year implementing his audacious agenda at a frenetic pace, we might have thought Donald Trump would at least take a break on Christmas Day. Perhaps he would sit back for a moment and reflect on his extraordinary volume of executive and legislative initiatives and limit his engagement to missives wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. But of course, that would be totally out of character for a president who barely sleeps and treats each day in office as if it were his last. So Trump took to Truth Social and posted more than 100 times, in between dropping bombs on ISIS in Nigeria.

This proved afresh that you can hardly take your eyes off the 47th president, no matter the day or hour. This has to be the greatest source of frustration for his many enemies, who can hardly keep pace and find the words to reflexively object to every one of Trump’s statements and actions. And that is also what makes it particularly difficult to summarize and evaluate everything he has done in the 11+ months since taking his second oath of office. But let’s give it the old college try.

Cleaning up Biden’s Messes

Presidents always hope to assume office with the country in good shape. But given a string of domestic and international failures by his predecessor, Donald Trump did not have that luxury. In the midst of a record number of executive orders early on, job one was to clean up the southern border, and that is where the president has found his greatest success. A steady flow of illegal immigrants during the Joe Biden era – eight million is a conservative estimate – quickly turned into a trickle. Biden famously said he had done all he could on the issue and that only a “comprehensive immigration” bill passed by Congress could fix the problem. But most observers figured that opening the floodgates was actually an unstated but entirely deliberate policy for the 46th president. It cost Democrats the election, and Trump has since proved that the only thing needed to stanch the flow of illegals was exactly what he stated during the campaign: a new president fully committed to border control.

Trump’s major, or only, serious legislative achievement was a whopper. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) will enact sweeping changes across tax policy, healthcare, energy, immigration, and defense spending. The law permanently extends many of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and includes the elimination of taxes on tips, overtime, and social security.

Despite Democrats’ efforts to downplay its significance, Trump’s hollowing out of Iran’s nuclear program with devastating, bunker-busting bombs must be considered an overwhelming success. It destroyed the most present nuclear threat to the Western world, led to the end of the 12-day war between Israel and Hamas, and ultimately helped produce a historic peace deal that brought together Israel and an array of its Arab and Muslim neighbors.

With the progressive era having all but ended with his election, Trump has orchestrated a major cultural shift with his full-court press against DEI. He ordered the removal of all remnants of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from the federal government, and incentivized much of the private sector to follow suit.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, a remarkable 60% of voters, shell-shocked by the surge of illegal aliens, and particularly the criminals among them, said they favored the deportation of all illegal immigrants, with emphasis on the word all. Trump promised to deport the worst first. And he is doing just that, with criminals constituting 70% of the tens of thousands who have been rounded up, despite sometimes violent resistance from those who have proven they will resort to nothing short of assassination to upend this president.

Remember DOGE? It has fallen below the radar since Elon Musk departed, but it remains intact. And while specific cuts to progressive boondoggles funded by USAID and other flaccid agencies have amounted to little more than a rounding error in the $8 trillion federal budget, DOGE has undoubtedly changed the way Americans view wasteful, fraudulent, and ideology-driven, taxpayer-funded programs they viewed with suspicion but about which they previously knew little.

Trump Off Target

It would be hard to argue that the president’s far-reaching efforts to broker peace between all manner of long-standing enemies have been anything but a striking success. However, the conflict he discussed repeatedly on the campaign trail and promised to fix “on day one” is not among them. Russia continues its unrelenting offensive in Ukraine despite constant shuttle diplomacy to end the now four-year-old war.

Trump has yet to deliver lower consumer prices across the board as promised. Some costs have increased and others have decreased. His focus on affordability is on target, but only if his program succeeds. His far-reaching tariff regime is still a work in progress, its ultimate impact as yet unknown. Polls indicate general public dissatisfaction with the economy, but this is one area where patience will be required, for the voluminous provisions of the OBBB will not take effect until the new year, with the president promising it will kick his “golden age of America” into high gear. Republicans’ fate in the 2026 midterm elections will likely rest on whether that promise is fulfilled.

The president has made many typically bold decisions that are particularly contentious. He issued a blanket pardon to 1,500 people charged or convicted after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Like his deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles and elsewhere, it was largely welcomed by his supporters and bitterly opposed by his enemies. The same polarized reaction came with his decision to blow up multiple boats carrying illicit drugs and form a blockade of Venezuela, or replace the East Wing of the White House with a big, beautiful ballroom.

It would take a piece far longer than this to catalogue everything Donald Trump has achieved or undertaken in this 11-month thrill ride. But a mistake that many commonly make is to judge this two-time president only by his appearance and by what he says, which is far more than any president anyone can remember. He speaks freely, to say the least, day after day. Given that a president’s job is to make life better for Americans, it is far more crucial to watch what he does, not what he says – for both today and the future. Trump is betting big on a robust 2026, so judgment is best withheld until we reach the next elections. He delivered a roaring economy his first time around until COVID-19 wrecked everything. And that is true whether you love or hate him, embrace his outspokenness or have trouble tolerating it, or whether you find adding his name to national institutions to be amusing or distasteful. He is, as they say, one-of-one, an overwhelmingly consequential historic figure, the likes of which, for better or worse, we will never see again.

Tim Donner is a radio talk show host, former candidate for the US Senate, and longtime entrepreneur, conservative policy advocate, and broadcast journalist. This article was first published HERE