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Democrats are worried America elected former President Donald Trump at his worst. Republicans are celebrating that Trump is at his best.

Eight years after the Manhattan real estate mogul and reality television star shocked the world with a triumphant victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump will reclaim the White House as a veteran politician with a full term behind him.

“Figures who once hoped to act as stabilizing forces — including a string of chiefs of staff, defense secretaries, a national security adviser, a national intelligence adviser and an attorney general — have abandoned Trump, leaving behind recriminations about his character and abilities,” CNN reported. “They’ve been replaced by a cohort of advisers and officials uninterested in keeping Trump in check. Instead of acting as bulwarks against him, those working for Trump this time around share his views and are intent on upholding the extreme pledges he made as a candidate without concern for norms, traditions or law that past aides sought to maintain.”

In other words, to CNN, a second Trump term will feature a brash president without the guardrails of closet Democrats to protect them from his impulses that offend the left. But to Trump’s supporters, the president-elect’s past experience with opposition personnel is the guardrail to insulate the duly elected commander-in-chief from deep state interference. Not only will Trump be governing without “The Resistance” undermining him from within, but he’ll be governing with the right people carefully picked in the four years since he left office.

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said Wednesday morning. “I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept.”

He knows he can’t accomplish all he wants in his final term if things go anything like his first. Trump was hamstrung for half his previous Oval Office tenure with high staff turnover and fake scandals fabricated by the Democrats alongside a hostile media. Trump’s opposition was so desperate to destroy the president they exploited a new virus to rig election rules in 2020 and launched a cascade of lawfare afterward. His triumphant comeback re-election Tuesday, won in spite of impeachment, bankruptcy campaigns, criminal convictions, and even two attempted assassinations, now has those who initiated such efforts worried about accountability branded as “retribution.” Democrats might not have worried about a potential plot for revenge had they not weaponized the federal and state governments to punish Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 election.

“If you are a commie liberal and think Trump was ‘bad’ pre-2020, take a moment and consider what a post-landslide Trump will look like after you tried to murder him on live television,” wrote Federalist CEO Sean Davis on X. “You’re going to spend the next four years regretting every thing you’ve been up to for the last five.”

Trump was voted back into the White House Tuesday in an electoral landslide, giving him a public mandate to tackle the burgeoning leviathan of the administrative state. This time, the incoming president knows better than to allow the deep state to undermine his agenda supported by the voters. The lessons from his first nine years as a politician fighting criminal and civil lawfare campaigns have, as Chuck Schumer might put it, “unleashed the whirlwind,” and delivered America a commander-in-chief who will be wiser in his second term and better able to avoid the pitfalls of his first.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.