May 23, 2026• 5:33 pm• Atlantic Conversations

Sam Tanenhaus: “No one has come closer than Trump to overturning the New Deal”

In this second part of his conversation with Jacob Heilbrunn, Sam Tanenhaus argues that Donald Trump is, in several ways, an heir to William F. Buckley’s conservative project.
For Tanenhaus, Trump has come closer than any other president to challenging the New Deal legacy Buckley wanted to overturn — while mastering social media as Roosevelt mastered radio and JFK mastered television.