Trump Isn't a Gracious Winner, Which Feels Like a Loss for America

on Jan 21, 2025

SAN DIEGO -- My wife and I have tried to teach our kids to be good losers but also -- and just as importantly -- gracious winners.

Apparently, President Donald Trump never learned either lesson. His brattish reaction to his defeat in 2020 showed us that he's a terrible loser. And now that he has reclaimed the White House, we see that he's also a dreadful winner.

Having been given the honor to deliver a second inaugural address after vanquishing his enemies, I hoped Trump would be secure enough in his victory to be magnanimous.

I wanted him to be the bigger man. But he just can't pull it off. He is too busy being a bitter man.

There is history there. This is the same guy who grew up in Queens and spent most of his life resenting that he was never accepted into the snobbish club of Manhattan elites.

On Monday morning, just a few hours before the speech, I was offering analysis on a Los Angeles television station. I suggested that this time, Trump might finally leave the grievances behind and promise to be president for the entire country. His victory was so overwhelming, his takeover of the Republican Party so compete and his placement in American politics so dominant, I argued, he could afford to show a little humility and a splash of grace. Delivering a speech that was positive and uplifting would go a long way toward generating the kind of goodwill that would get things done in a second term, I said.

Apparently, no one was listening. Judging by the remarks he delivered in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol to an intimate crowd of about 600 people -- including a quartet of former presidents, incoming members of his Cabinet, lawmakers from both parties and assorted tech billionaires -- the president intends to use his mulligan to get even with everyone who he feels wronged him.

"As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust," Trump told the crowd. "For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair."

Read the room, pal. Incredibly, Trump said these things in a room filled with people who he considers some of the ringleaders of the aforementioned "radical and corrupt establishment."

No matter. Trump has come to save the day.

"My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and, indeed, their freedom," he said. "From this moment on, America's decline is over."

Maybe so. Or is the decline just beginning?

Every administration needs a theme. The Obama administration had "Hope and Change." The Biden administration went with "Build Back Better." The theme of the second Trump administration can double as a warning: "Things Can Always Get Worse."

There's no question that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party failed themselves and the party. Biden lingered too long in the presidential race. Harris was a terrible candidate. And Democrats bet the house -- specifically, the White House -- on a strategy that argued that you don't have to inspire voters to support your party, if you can simply scare them away from the opposing party.

It was definitely time for a change. Still, I can't shake the feeling that the United States of America has, by putting Trump back in the Oval Office, slid off the frying pan and landed in the fire.

You really have to feel bad for our country. So many things are broken and in urgent need of repair: inflation, the border, the health care system... to name just a few items. But it turns out the repairman that we sent in is also broken. Trump is insecure, divisive, robotic and bent on revenge for how unfairly he was treated during his first term.

The president is not wrong. The truth is that Trump was not treated fairly during his first administration -- not by the media, the Justice Department, the political establishment or elements of the Republican and Democratic parties. When he got to Washington, there were plenty of people who weren't just secretly rooting for him to fail but actively trying to help make that happen.

Yet Trump isn't the solution to what ails America. He'll only create more problems.

Trump is back, but he's still broken.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.