PREVIEW - The Friday Edition: Trump’s first month: The good, bad, unclear, and abhorrent.

The day Donald Trump was inaugurated, my son was born. In retrospect, the timing feels inevitable ("Founder of politics newsletter has baby on inauguration day"), but it created an interesting dynamic for me. Most notably, I got to step back from the day-to-day ruckus of what it's like when Trump is flooding the zone with news and could take in each story with a bit more thoughtfulness. And as I return from paternity leave, it means that I now have the chance to share a month’s worth of distilled thoughts with you about the start of the Trump administration. I've decided to sort Trump’s first month into four buckets: the good, the bad, the unclear, and the abhorrent. Many of you know me, are familiar with my writing and views, and understand that my politics are all over the place. To get ahead of some criticisms I expect: Yes, there are more things in the "bad" and "abhorrent" sections than the "good" section. This shouldn't be surprising. Most presidents make their most aggressive, partisan, and base-oriented actions early on in their presidencies . This is especially true when they have control of both the House and Senate, and is even more true of a president who campaigned on a revenge tour against his "enemies." As a political moderate, I am not a member of Trump's base, so I already expected to have, at minimum, mixed feelings about his first month in office. And while I didn’t review Biden's first month in 2021, I also had strong (and mixed) feelings about his initial executive orders , push to eliminate the filibuster , and terrible cabinet nominees . This is a preview of today's special edition that is available in full and ad-free for our premium podcast subscribers. If you'd like to complete this episode and receive Sunday editions, exclusive interviews, bonus content, and more, head over to ReadTangle.com and sign up for a membership. Ad-free podcasts are here! Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it . You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up! You can also give the gift of a Tangle podcast subscription by clicking here . You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall. This podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Our logo was created by Magdalena Bokowa, Head of Partnerships and Socials. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.