The New Republic

01/31/2026

We are now one year into Donald Trump’s second term, and something strange is happening in political media. A lot of people who spent years insisting that the so-called “alarmists” were being hysterical have started, tentatively, to admit that maybe they got it wrong.

Last April, David Brooks published a long essay in The Atlantic titled “I Should Have Seen This Coming,” in which he acknowledged that he’d underestimated how much conservatism had become pure anti-liberal reaction. Jon Stewart, who spent the early weeks of the second Trump administration chiding liberals for being too quick to use the word “fascism,” eventually conceded on air: “I did not think we would get this authoritarian this fast. I really didn’t. I’m sorry. Who could’ve known? Maybe if somebody out there had yelled at me on Bluesky about this, I would have known. But no one did. Except every day. In all caps.”

Political scientist Corey Robin, who had spent years dismissing those who called MAGA fascist, admitted on an October podcast: “I was skeptical coming into this second administration that they would be able to wield the kind of power that people feared they would wield. I have since turned out to be wrong.”

And then there are the journalists who covered the 2024 campaign, who are now looking back at their own work with what might charitably be called discomfort. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after listening to a recent podcast that crystallized something for me.

On the one-year anniversary of Trump’s return to power, Reuters dropped the latest episode of its On Assignment podcast. The guest was Sally Buzbee, the outlet’s North American editor, who joined Reuters in December 2024 after leaving The Washington Post. Host Jonah Green asked her about covering the first year of Trump’s second term, and Buzbee offered this reflection:

I think it is actually, many presidents are very, very active in their first year in office. But I think, it is fair to say that this is sort of historically ambitious, energetic, and just a real agenda. I don’t think in those first few days, we understood what an organized agenda they had for his second term, but now we understand that.

We didn’t understand.

Now we understand.

I found myself rewinding that part of the episode a few times because I wasn’t sure I’d heard it correctly. Buzbee, who spent years running one of the country’s most important newspapers and now oversees political coverage for one of the world’s largest news agencies, was saying that the press didn’t grasp how organized Trump’s second-term agenda would be. That it took watching the administration in action for journalists to finally get it.

And now, a year in, with more than two-thirds of Trump’s week one executive orders tracking closely with Project 2025’s proposals, with the man who directed Project 2025 now running the Office of Management and Budget, with Trump himself publicly referencing Russell Vought as being “of Project 2025 fame,” after months of denying any connection, the press is offering us its surprised Pikachu face.

We didn’t understand, they say.

But understanding was always possible. The information was right there. The question is why so many journalists chose not to use it.