Clodagh Harrington is Lecturer in History at University College Cork. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor of American Politics at De Montfort University, Leicester where she worked since 2006. Her monograph, co-authored with Alex Waddan (University of Leicester) entitled Obama V Trump: the Politics of Presidential Legacy and Rollback was published in 2021 by Edinburgh University Press. The follow-up, Trump V Biden is due for publication by EUP in 2026. Dr Alex Waddan is Associate Professor in American Politics and American Foreign Policy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He is the co-author of Obamacare Wars: Federalism, State Politics, and the Affordable Care Act (with Daniel Beland and Philip Rocco, University Press of Kansas, 2016) and he has published in journals including Political Studies, Social Policy and Administration and Political Quarterly. He previously contributed to Assessing The George W. Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two Terms (Wroe & Herbert (eds), EUP, 2009).

Donald Trump’s legacy is of course still being written – but this book provides a crucial early guide to understanding its trajectory. Harrington and Waddan have done an eloquent and rather heroic job in synthesising the political and cultural developments of Trump’s first term and how they became embedded in American politics: why Trump v Biden turned out not to be a fair fight.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Understanding the Trump YearsChapter 1: Presidents, Power and Legacy MakingChapter 2: A Legacy ArrayChapter 3: Foreign Policy: From ‘America First’ to ‘America’s Back’Chapter 4: The Use of Presidential Power: Supreme Court appointments and Deep State dismantlingChapter 5: (Abuse of) Presidential Power: Testing the BoundariesChapter 6: Public Communication and VisionEpilogue: Trump 2.0: Polarization, Populism and the PresidencySelect Bibliography

Clodagh Harrington is Lecturer in History at University College Cork. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor of American Politics at De Montfort University, Leicester where she worked since 2006. Her monograph, co-authored with Alex Waddan (University of Leicester) entitled Obama V Trump: the Politics of Presidential Legacy and Rollback was published in 2021 by Edinburgh University Press. The follow-up, Trump V Biden is due for publication by EUP in 2026. Dr Alex Waddan is Associate Professor in American Politics and American Foreign Policy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He is the co-author of Obamacare Wars: Federalism, State Politics, and the Affordable Care Act (with Daniel Beland and Philip Rocco, University Press of Kansas, 2016) and he has published in journals including Political Studies, Social Policy and Administration and Political Quarterly. He previously contributed to Assessing The George W. Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two Terms (Wroe & Herbert (eds), EUP, 2009).

Donald Trump’s legacy is of course still being written – but this book provides a crucial early guide to understanding its trajectory. Harrington and Waddan have done an eloquent and rather heroic job in synthesising the political and cultural developments of Trump’s first term and how they became embedded in American politics: why Trump v Biden turned out not to be a fair fight.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Understanding the Trump YearsChapter 1: Presidents, Power and Legacy MakingChapter 2: A Legacy ArrayChapter 3: Foreign Policy: From ‘America First’ to ‘America’s Back’Chapter 4: The Use of Presidential Power: Supreme Court appointments and Deep State dismantlingChapter 5: (Abuse of) Presidential Power: Testing the BoundariesChapter 6: Public Communication and VisionEpilogue: Trump 2.0: Polarization, Populism and the PresidencySelect Bibliography

Clodagh Harrington is Lecturer in History at University College Cork. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor of American Politics at De Montfort University, Leicester where she worked since 2006. Her monograph, co-authored with Alex Waddan (University of Leicester) entitled Obama V Trump: the Politics of Presidential Legacy and Rollback was published in 2021 by Edinburgh University Press. The follow-up, Trump V Biden is due for publication by EUP in 2026. Dr Alex Waddan is Associate Professor in American Politics and American Foreign Policy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He is the co-author of Obamacare Wars: Federalism, State Politics, and the Affordable Care Act (with Daniel Beland and Philip Rocco, University Press of Kansas, 2016) and he has published in journals including Political Studies, Social Policy and Administration and Political Quarterly. He previously contributed to Assessing The George W. Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two Terms (Wroe & Herbert (eds), EUP, 2009).

Donald Trump’s legacy is of course still being written – but this book provides a crucial early guide to understanding its trajectory. Harrington and Waddan have done an eloquent and rather heroic job in synthesising the political and cultural developments of Trump’s first term and how they became embedded in American politics: why Trump v Biden turned out not to be a fair fight.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Understanding the Trump YearsChapter 1: Presidents, Power and Legacy MakingChapter 2: A Legacy ArrayChapter 3: Foreign Policy: From ‘America First’ to ‘America’s Back’Chapter 4: The Use of Presidential Power: Supreme Court appointments and Deep State dismantlingChapter 5: (Abuse of) Presidential Power: Testing the BoundariesChapter 6: Public Communication and VisionEpilogue: Trump 2.0: Polarization, Populism and the PresidencySelect Bibliography