Friday, Jan. 20 marked a year since President Donald Trump regained office. Plenty of things were promised and not kept, but there are also some that were surprisingly followed through.
One of the first things Trump promised was to pardon many of the convicted felons that stormed the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. To no surprise, Trump did indeed do this. On his first day in office, he granted blanket clemency to all of the people convicted or awaiting trial for their part in the Jan. 6 (2021). Most sentences were fully pardoned, with some only being commuted. The Jan. 6, 2021 attack happened in an attempt to perform a coup on the U.S. government two months after Trump lost his 2020 re-election to President Joe Biden. The official White House website describes the event as a peaceful protest that has been misconstrued and twisted by the media when it was just in fact an attempt at insurrection.
Secondly, President Trump promised to release the Epstein files. Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier, sex offender and serial rapist who died by suicide in 2019, shortly after being arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
The belief is that Epstein was running a human trafficking ring that only he and the world's elite knew about. Epstein had already been convicted by a Florida court in 2008 for procuring a child prostitute, but the only justice he faced was 13 months in a county jail and having to register as a sex offender.
President Trump's opinions on Epstein seem to change depending on what kind of mood he’s in. He is quoted in an article from New York Magazine in 2002 calling Epstein ‘terrific’ to 2019 where Trump is quoted saying that he was ‘not a fan’ of him. In June of 2024, Trump was asked if he would declassify the Epstein files (of which many believe Trump is implicated) and he replied “Yeah, yeah I would”.
In 2025, President Trump said that the files do not exist, then he said it was boring stuff. Trump
Claimed that the push to release the Epstein files is because of the democrats. Then on Friday, Dec. 19, the first batch of heavily redacted Epstein files were released.
The biggest thing that Trump has promised though is still yet to be fulfilled. His promise to the American people was to make housing affordable, lower inflation and create more jobs. Trump’s promise on housing seems in vain now, when just two weeks ago he said in a cabinet meeting, “I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive them up for people who own their homes.”
That seems like a pretty far cry from wanting to make living affordable, to now only cater to 65% of the population. Most of those homeowners are over the age of 50. Non-homeowners and young people apparently do not matter in this issue, even though we all have to live somewhere.
Inflation rose 2.7% from December of 2024 to December of 2025, while President Trump promised to lower it. Unemployment also rose 4.3% last year and that's not even counting the month that was lost to the government shutdown.
It seems that President Trump will have to be begged to follow through on promises that do not benefit him. A year from now, I hope to see this country thriving with him and his abhorrent cabinet out of office. Sadly, I don’t think that will be reality.