With all the attention deservedly on President Trump and what he intends to do with his defiant return to the White House, there’s a more than good chance we’ll spend the next four years consumed once again by all things Trump.
There’s already been a dizzying amount: a giant raft of executive orders; attacks on a constitutional amendment; his threats to invade sovereign nations; a seeming Nazi salute from one of his biggest surrogates; his sweeping Jan. 6 pardons; his beef with a bishop; his TikTok flip-flop; his billion-dollar meme coin controversy; scathing new allegations against one of his Cabinet picks; unilaterally renaming a body of water; a federal crackdown on DEI; promises of immigration raids across major cities. All this in just the first three days of Trump’s second term.
And this may be his greatest trick — getting not only his own fans and supporters to obsess over him, but his critics and opponents, too.
He does that by flooding the zone — he is never not talking, posting, pointing fingers, ranting, raving, and keeping us all in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.
The problem with that is that so much gets missed. For Republicans, that often inures to their advantage, as they get to slip significant policy changes past an unsuspecting public, or bury bad news under the pile of Trump’s ever-mounting detritus.
But for Democrats, four more years of Trump distractions could mean they miss yet another opportunity to fix their own house, and mount a serious and convincing challenger to end what could be 12 more years of Republican rule in Washington.
They need to find their Ronald Reagan.
Trump’s first term was marked by unprecedented chaos, and Dems admittedly got lured into Trump’s expanding web of distractions. While they busied themselves with investigations and hearings in order to make Trump as weak a president and candidate in 2020 as possible, they weren’t as focused on identifying and cultivating a Democratic candidate, a Democratic message, and Democratic policies that could deliver a fatal blow to the Trump era once and for all.
Over the course of Trump’s first term, his approval rating was never above water, fluctuating between a low of 35% and a high of 49%. After a term marked by civil unrest, incompetence, moral and ethical failures, conspiracy theories, extremism, mismanaging COVID-19, and overseeing Republican losses in the House and the Senate, America was decidedly tired of Trump’s ineptitude and self-destructiveness.
Joe Biden emerged from a crowded 2020 Democratic primary and a general election not with a political mandate but with a collective sigh of relief — he was elected to turn the page on Trump, and then (hopefully) pass on the torch to a younger, fresher, forward-looking Dem.
That, as we know, did not happen. Not only didn’t Biden want to pass the torch, but Democrats didn’t seem to want to architect a winning platform of dynamic messages and successful policies to keep their existing coalition and attract new voters.
Instead, they stuck with old messages that largely centered around Trump: he’s anti-democratic, he’s a convicted felon, and he’s going to end access to abortion.
They also boasted of demonstrably failing policies, insisting the economy was strong as hell, the border wasn’t a crisis, and crime was down.
Without a candidate, messages, or policies that transcended Trump, Democrats were once again playing Trump’s whack-a-mole game.
Instead of finding their own Ronald Reagan, an enormously popular president who not only transformed the conservative movement and the Republican Party, but America and in fact the world, Dems found a Jimmy Carter — a well-intentioned man whose messages and policies nevertheless inspired little confidence in the party.
Instead of setting off 12 years of party control like Reagan did, Dems eked out just four, and now risk finding themselves in the political wilderness.
Democrats must find their Reagan now — a candidate whose utility isn’t just to temporarily sideline Trump but vanquish him and his would-be successors for good.
Who that might be is both an open question and a problem. Democrats’ abject failures in places like California, New York and Chicago shine an ugly spotlight on some of the party’s biggest faces and worst policies. Other boldface names are either too old or too extreme. Identity politics, egos, and intraparty disagreements could easily get in the way.
Democrats must rebuild their party with new faces and new ideas, winning policies and inspiring messages.
For many of us, the next four years under Trump feel like an eternity. But for Democrats, they’ll come and go in the blink of an eye. What they do with that time will change history — possibly forever.
S.E. Cupp: Where is the Democratic Party’s Ronald Reagan? was originally published by the Tribune Content Agency and is shared with permission. S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.