Like many people, I made a lot of predictions before Trump was elected in 2016 about how a Trump presidency would go.

With the administration over, I thought I might reflect on whether my predictions were accurate.

For the 3 or 4 people interested, a navel-gazing thread.

First, I think I was right on my basic take of Trump. Here was my first post on Trump, in December 2015, "Yes, Donald Trump Scares Me, Too": https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/12/07/yes-donald-trump-scares-me-too/

I had a few posts like that in the summer of 2016, and then, when the race tightened in the days before the election, I put out this post making the point more directly about how Trump was outside the U.S. constitutional tradition. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/11/04/im-with-her/

So far, I think that has stood up pretty well.

But I was also wrong about some things, too. My biggest predictive mistake was in assuming that Trump would approach judges like he approached everything else. Here's what I thought of "the list":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/18/the-meaningless-donald-trump-supreme-court-list/

I was wrong about that, as I didn't realize how Trump would defer to the conservative establishment on judges to shore up the base. (There was no rocket science in that, obviously, but it did mean he didn't pick his nephew for the Supreme Court.)

Second, I'm not sure if this counts as a mistake, but in 2016 I was seriously worried that Trump would succeed in coopting federal law enforcement to act out all of his authoritarian impulses. Below is from my post, "Imagining a Trump Justice Department." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/07/22/imagining-a-trump-justice-department/

Trump had these instincts and would raise them internally, we learned. But his success was more muted than my worst fears, both because of internal resistance (as I hoped would help, see my 2016 post below) and Trump turning out to be surprisingly lazy and unable to focus.

Overall, though, the surprise was how predictable Trump became. He really just had one or two moves, and you could see them coming years ahead. Like this, on what led to impeachment #1. https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/998438327085817857

Anyway, so much for looking back. Very glad that craziness is over and we don't have to waste so much time thinking about that man. /end