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Power peaks when attention outpaces achievement. That’s the lens we bring to a brisk year-end audit of 2025, asking whether the “big beautiful bill,” tariff bursts, and a flurry of executive actions represented durable progress or a loud crest without foundation. We weigh health optics, the slowdown in rallies, and how those signals affected confidence among GOP insiders, donors, and primary challengers. When allies start testing distance and new contenders emerge, the coalition is telling you where it thinks tomorrow lies.

We track how courts became the real venue for policy, tempering the impact of immigration raids and headline actions that generate heat but little measurable change. On markets, we unpack why investors priced the noise as risk rather than reward, reviving the idea that spectacle often ends in softer outcomes. The conversation turns practical where it counts: missed chances in LNG export capacity, permitting reform, and rare earths that could have strengthened supply chains, allies, and jobs for a decade. Tariffs against secondary suppliers like Vietnam may score points, but they don’t compound. Infrastructure and long-term contracts do.

Succession is the quiet story underneath. Berkshire’s planned handoff shows how durable institutions de-risk the future. Trumpworld, by contrast, offers no clear successor who can carry the brand’s energy into 2026. If Democrats gain in the midterms, pressure to hand off rises, but a rushed transition looks like retreat, not renewal. Our conclusion is sharp but fair: 2025 felt like peak Trump—not collapse, but a plateau where attention ran ahead of lasting impact. If there’s a second act, it will require coalition-building, measurable policy, and investment in assets that compound over time.

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