“Welcome to the Golden Years!” This is what immediately pops up when you access the White House Priorities website. This, evidently, is President Donald Trump’s characterization of his second term in office. But are these years really golden? Or are we living in the rusted, tarnished years of the United States of America where we aren’t even united, but rather divided on issues that define us?
The first year of this second Trump Administration was a long one. Ever since his inauguration on January 21, 2025, President Trump has made massive changes to our government, our rights, and our country. In his first 100 days, he signed over 100 executive orders. In the following months, we went through crazy swings in the stock market, tariff wars with multiple countries, a government shutdown, bombing Iran, abducting the President of Venezuela, ICE agents invading American cities, and strife not so far from civil war. All the while, Trump added gold to White House decorations. This is not what I think of as golden.
There are reasons to believe I’m not alone in that opinion. According to many recent polls, Trump’s approval rating has been sinking, even among a significant portion of people who voted for him. According to the Pew Research Center, 50 percent of Americans say that the administration’s actions have been worse than they expected rather than the 21 percent that believe the actions have been better. It isn’t just those who burned their MAGA hats in frustration over the Trump Administration’s failure to release all the Epstein files. Young voters especially, according to a poll done by Yale University in the fall of 2025, have turned on Trump and disapprove of him.
Back in November of 2024, I went canvassing for Kamala Harris, and I knocked on many doors in the swing state of Pennsylvania. There were a surprising number of households where the person who answered the knock was whispering instead of talking – they stated how they wanted to vote for Harris, but the rest of their family were Trump supporters. Maybe the whisperers are finally finding their voice.
Trump might have painted the Oval Office gold, but that gold will fade away to see his and the United States of America’s true colors soon enough.