From executive orders, to foreign policy wins, to bureaucratic bloodletting, the second Trump administration has begun with a flash, a bang, and a series of giant ka-booms. The pace is so frenetic, the policies so comprehensive, and the solutions so commonsensical that it makes one wonder where this was in Trump’s first term.

Don’t get me wrong, Trump’s first term in office boasted many fine accomplishments: a secure southern border, tax and regulation cuts, the destruction of ISIS, and energy independence. The Trump administration also restricted the use of taxpayer funds for abortion, secured religious freedom both at home and abroad, and appointed a solid bench of federal justices and judges. But the pace was unarguably slower, and some of the Trump administration’s best accomplishments barely took effect before Biden reversed them.

Natural Reasons

There are natural reasons for the slower pace of the first Trump administration. Donald Trump had never held elected office before the 2016 election, and this inexperience meant he had to scale a gargantuan learning on-the-job, instead of walk into office in full command on Day One.

Nor could Trump draw upon a deep bench of experienced lieutenants to implement his conservative/populist agenda, since Republicans had not held power in the executive branch for eight years.

As a result of this inexperience, some early members of Trump’s team clashed with his agenda (Secretary of State Rex Tillerson), were too self-absorbed (White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci), or got themselves into trouble (Senior Advisor Steve Bannon).

Trump also now enjoys a more commanding position as the leader of the Republican Party, whereas four years ago he had only recently executed a semi-hostile takeover, and his relationships with Republican congressional leaders were as yet untested.

Even with the public, Trump holds a more advantageous position. He scored points with voters as the target of politicized investigations, the survivor of two assassination attempts, and the author of several genius campaign stunts, such as working a McDonald’s shift and showing up to a rally in a garbage truck. This, combined with an unpopular and unresponsive Democratic administration, translated into a convincing electoral victory.

Eight years after his first term began, Trump roared back into office, ready and even rearing to go. Not only was the president more experienced and confident, he brought with him a whole team that was energized, organized, and — despite all claims to the contrary — still carries vestiges of the Project 2025 blueprint (such as its co-author Russ Vought, now confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget) that Democrats so scandalously maligned.

Nefarious Reason

But, in addition to these natural reasons why the second Trump administration has enjoyed more initial momentum, there is a more nefarious reason: a fraudulent investigation crippled the first Trump administration.

I need not delve into the sordid details of the Russia collusion hoax and subsequent investigation. Essentially, the Hillary Clinton campaign manufactured evidence to make it appear that Trump had improperly colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to win the 2016 election. The FBI launched an investigation and obtained warrants on the basis of this evidence, which they knew to be fraudulent at the time. The media spun the story up into a wall-to-wall scandal that shamed Republicans into appointing a special counsel to investigate the allegations. Despite the lack of substantive wrongdoing by Trump, Special Counsel Robert Mueller kept the investigation running until March 2019 — more than two years into Trump’s four-year term, and after Republicans had lost control of Congress.

It can be easy to forget, amid the “interesting times” in which we live, that Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “The Story” for a full two years. In a recent interview on “Washington Watch,” former FBI senior advisor Hedieh Mirahmadi Falco, a Christian convert from Islam, described how the culture changed inside the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

“We were building terrorism prevention programs … developing all kinds of [tools], whether it’s countering radicalization, social cohesion, integration programs, how do we understand radicalization,” she explained. “Fast forward to 2016. President Trump gets elected. He gets into the White House, and the building shuts down. I mean, our program was shut down. All of the efforts that we were focused on were shut down.”

Why did the FBI suddenly stop focusing on countering Islamist terrorism in 2017? Falco answered, “because — I didn’t know at the time — but the mission shift to Russia and that investigation.” The whole FBI reoriented its focus around the fraudulent investigation.

It’s hard to overstate how much the Russia collusion investigation crippled the effectiveness of Trump’s first term. It caused Trump to sour on his first pick for U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, and when Sessions departed so did any chance of reforming the DOJ and restoring its proper priorities. A compromised Justice Department also limited the Trump administration’s abilities to conduct meaningful investigations and reform in other areas of the federal government.

Meanwhile, the constant media attention kept the taint of scandal hanging over Trump for two full years, depressing his popularity and therefore his moral authority. It reduced his political capital with Congress and his stature in the eyes of foreign leaders. This taint of suspected impropriety likely intimidated the Trump administration from taking bolder reform measures — like the type DOGE is pursuing now — that could have fed into the narrative.

With so much work going on behind closed doors, it was difficult for outside observers to piece together the extent of the Russia investigation, or to measure its impact on the first Trump administration. Now, with a second Trump administration, we have an opportunity to measure the impact by comparison. The circumstances aren’t equal; a variety of other factors also create momentum for the second Trump administration.

But comparing this administration — barely three weeks old — with Trump’s previous term helps us to imagine the faintest outlines of how the fraudulent Russia investigation sapped the strength of the Trump “45” administration that could have been.