Seven months ago, presidential candidate Donald Trump narrowly escaped a would-be assassin’s bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The bullet grazed Trump’s ear and forced him to duck for cover, but the former — and ultimately future — president was back on his feet moments later with a defiant, fist-pumping message for thousands of his supporters: “Fight, fight, fight.”

The attempt on his life that summer evening was part of a wild 2024 campaign season that saw a declining President Joe Biden replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris atop the Democratic ticket. Despite Harris’ initial momentum, she ultimately lost to Trump after failing to distance herself from Biden’s perceived weaknesses on the economy, immigration and foreign policy.

In an environment where his only options were a return to power or almost certain imprisonment for much of his twilight years, Trump’s political comeback gives him the power to pursue the revenge and “retribution” he so eagerly ran on.

But will he even need to? If anything has been certain in the days leading up to Trump’s second term, it’s that 2025 is not 2017 — both in the context of politics and broader society.

When Trump replaced Barack Obama as president, Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” topped the charts, Tom Brady had only four Super Bowl rings, and no one knew what COVID or TikTok were. The oldest members of Generation Z were then coming of age, but they are now closer to their 30s than their teens.

Politically, the mood of the country is much different than eight years ago. Trump’s most recent election performance is the closest he’s come to earning a mandate, as he swept the swing states and won the popular vote for the first time in three tries by making huge gains in solidly blue states.

Just as importantly, Trump seems to have won over — or at least softened his image with — other powerbrokers who staunchly opposed him in the past. Besides Elon Musk’s clear role in the 2024 election as a major Trump donor and the owner of X, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced his platform would no longer use fact-checkers following Trump’s victory. Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey awarded Trump the first “Presidential Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke” bottle, signaling himself as another business bigwig eager to turn over a new leaf.

And ahead of the 2024 election, major newspapers like The Washington Post broke longtime tradition by not endorsing a candidate for president — a move many saw as billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’ own attempt to curry favor with Trump.

“I think it’s as much about money as it is about power,” said Mike Ricci, a Republican strategist who worked for Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and two previous GOP House speakers. “If you think about AI, quantum computing, obviously all the space ventures these guys have, they have a lot at stake in how they interact with the government.”

The weakened state of Trump resistance is also evident by Senate Democrats’ willingness to support the Laken Riley Act, which cleared a major hurdle Friday to pass in the chamber. Named for the Georgia nursing student murdered by a Venezuelan national last year, the bill would require undocumented people charged with theft or burglary to be federally detained.

The incoming president also finds himself in unfamiliar territory in being on the same side of an issue as Maryland Democrats. Trump wants to pause a potential TikTok ban, as Sen. Chris Van Hollen has been urging Biden to extend a TikTok ban deadline.

Van Hollen’s push is because “170 million Americans and 7 million businesses use TikTok. We shouldn’t shutter this social media platform. It’s time to press pause until a plan is in place.”

However, there are still plenty of areas where Van Hollen and Trump don’t see eye to eye, including on how natural disasters and immigration are handled.

Trump will have to decide how much he wants to push executive action on long-promised deportations of illegal immigrants, as well as return-to-office mandates for government workers in accordance with his pledges to reshape the federal workforce.

“Trump thrives on (uncertainty) because it creates confusion and chaos around what he will and won’t do,” Ricci said, noting that Trump could collaborate with Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on the return-to-office issue.

Of course, none of this means Trump’s second term will be without challenges — particularly with regard to foreign policy.

During Trump’s first term, his approach toward the Middle East largely focused on eliminating ISIS and, later, brokering peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Building on this progress, Biden was thought to be close to brokering peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia before the October 2023 Hamas terror attacks led to the war in Gaza.

Now, Trump and his longtime political ally Benjamin Netanyahu will have to navigate the aftermath and implementation of last week’s ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. They could try to revive the historic peace negotiations from Trump’s first term,

“I think (Trump) sees (the Abraham Accords) as a signature piece of his legacy,” Ricci said. “… It was something that even in these years where he wasn’t president, he and his people talked a lot about.”

Finally, Trump must contend with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which is nearing the end of its third year. He has expressed willingness to meet with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to work toward resolving the conflict. It is uncertain if congressional Republicans would go along with further military aid for Ukraine, as Trump’s rhetoric around the war has been limited to ending the fighting rather than support for any particular outcome.

Something that hasn’t changed in eight years is the sharpest pushback from U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, who has noted the fight won’t be easy this time for the minority party on Capitol Hill.

“Even in the face of all the MAGA chaos and dysfunction, Democrats will work hard to advance the common good and justice for all,” he said in a statement. “We will keep fighting to advance pragmatic solutions to the serious problems facing our nation — from the staggering gun violence epidemic to the violation of women’s health care and reproductive rights in half the country to the crisis of climate change.”

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