We are in the midst of a series of transformations—political, financial, economic, international, and cultural. At the center of our public affairs for the past decade—for better or worse or a bit of both depending on your point of view—is President Donald Trump.
In this episode of the Serve to Lead Podcast, presidential historian Luke Nichter offers his highly informed, judicious perspective.
At the six-month point of Trump’s second term—like Grover Cleveland’s, discontinuous from his first—how do we evaluate Trump and his administration?
New York Times reporter Peter Baker said in 2025, “Trump is the most powerful president of our lifetime.”
Going forward, what criteria should we apply? What markers should we look for?
Donald Trump came to the presidency with a unique background—a developer, marketer, and popular entertainer bereft of governmental or military experience. Yet he had observed political operations throughout his career, emerging as a preternaturally gifted politician in his own right.
He entered his second term with the invaluable experience of a former president. He also had the benefit of learning from the four intervening years.
At the same time, he’s now a “lame duck,” unable to seek reelection. Will his hold on power wane as the midterms approach, the fate of other second term commanders-in-chief?
Thus far, Trump’s most consequential actions appear to be his ongoing deconstruction of institutional structures and established understandings.
Does Trump represent the end of an era—exposing and bringing the post-Cold-War domestic and international orders to an abrupt end?
That would be consistent with the observation of the late Henry Kissinger, who told Financial Times in 2018:
Trump may be one of those figures from history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its pretenses. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.
Or will he pivot to becoming an architect and builder of successor institutions?
Does Trump herald a new “Golden Age of America” as he declares and his supporters maintain?
About Luke Nichter
Luke A. Nichter is a Professor of History and James H. Cavanaugh Endowed Chair in Presidential Studies at Chapman University. His area of specialty is the Cold War, the modern presidency, and U.S. political and diplomatic history, with a focus on the "long 1960s" from John F. Kennedy through Watergate.
He is a New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books, including The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968 (Yale University Press, 2023). It is the first rigorously researched historical account of the most controversial election in modern U.S. history to have cooperation from all four major sides – Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace. Luke interviewed approximately 85 family members and former staffers, in addition to extensive archival research and access to new evidence that dramatically changes our understanding of the election—and served as a guide to the 2024 presidential election. This work was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year (Politics) by the Wall Street Journal.
This followed The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the Making of the Cold War (Yale University Press, 2020). It was the first full biography of Lodge—whose public career spanned from the 1930s to the 1970s—based on extensive multilingual archival research. This work was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Grant. He is also the author of Richard Nixon and Europe: The Reshaping of the Postwar Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which was based on multilingual archival research in six countries, and is now at work on a book tentatively titled LBJ: The White House Years of Lyndon Johnson.
Luke earned his Ph.D. in History from Bowling Green State University, and lives in Orange, California and Bowling Green, Ohio.
Image Credits | Luke Nichter, Chapman University.
