Trump just 'changed forever' who can become president after him: 'Won't be an option'

Acts carried out by Donald Trump during his second term in the Oval Office will be impossible to walk back from, a political analyst has claimed.

The president has made it his mission to assert US dominance everywhere, from Venezuela and Greenland to recent strikes on Iran, as well as botched trade agreements with NATO members. This, Politico columnist Alexander Burns says, is what previous president Joe Biden, and later Kamala Harris, had warned of during the 2024 election campaign.

Whether the president to succeed Trump can course correct is yet to be seen, but it is not looking likely, according to Burns. He wrote, "This philistinism and historical ignorance was at the heart of Joe Biden’s case against Trump.

"Biden deplored Trump as an insult to the American political tradition and promised to make Washington work, repair broken norms and turn over power to the next generation. His slow-moving, self-admiring, politically dysfunctional administration achieved none of these things.

"If there was a chance then to build a bridge to the 20th Century, Biden lost it. The next time the country chooses a replacement for Trump, resurrecting the past won’t even be an option."

That past, Burns suggests, is removed from the options of a future president thanks to the lack of nuance found in the current administration.

He explained, "For American policymakers and voters, there’s no longer any prospect of mimicking détente with regimes in Iran and Cuba that are unraveling at this very hour. Barack Obama pursued that aim as part of his own 21st Century agenda; that path is now closed for good.

"America’s credibility as a trade negotiator and commercial partner is already changed forever; the next president will be unable to restore Bush-era trade relations even if he or she wants to. NATO’s place in the world won’t return to where it was in 1998 just because the next president says the right words about Washington’s commitment to its allies."