Trump Is the Anti-Fdr, Roosevelt Heirs Say in New Deal Warning
James Roosevelt Jr. and Henry Scott Wallace say fdr built a federal government that served ordinary Americans, while Donald Trump is dismantling that model with executive power and cuts to social programs. The opinion piece, titled "It’s official: Trump is the anti-FDR," ties that argument to the Roosevelt and Wallace family legacies and casts the dispute as a fight over Congress, the presidency, and the purpose of government.
Roosevelt, a grandson of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Wallace, a grandson of Henry A. Wallace, say Franklin D. Roosevelt inherited a do-nothing federal government in 1932 and expanded it to create jobs, protect workers, rescue family farms, and rein in corporations and banks. They contrast that with Trump, who they say inherited an active, pro-people government and took "a chain saw to it," while calling Medicare and Medicaid "little scams."
Congress and Article One
The writers place the clash inside the Constitution. They say Congress is established in Article One, while the presidency is subordinated in Article Two and tasked primarily with faithfully executing laws passed by Congress. In their telling, FDR worked through that structure and convinced Congress to legislatively create his reimagined government, while Trump dismantles government by executive fiat.
That distinction runs through the rest of the argument. FDR won a landslide electoral victory in 1932 during the Great Depression, then pushed programs aimed at people who were suffering extraordinary pain and unemployment. Trump narrowly won a second term on a promise of reducing inflation and putting Americans first, but the piece says he instead gave huge tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest among us and stripped healthcare and food stamps from tens of millions of Americans.
Pearl Harbor and Iran
The article also draws a sharp line on war powers. It says Congress has the sole power to declare war, and that FDR asked Congress for a declaration of war immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack. Trump, the piece says, started a war on Iran with neither imminent provocation nor authorization by Congress.
On foreign policy, Roosevelt and Wallace say FDR embraced foreign allies to fight authoritarians, while Trump embraces authoritarians and ridicules allies. They point to Hungary as a 16-year-old autocracy that has been overwhelmingly unseated by popular vote, using that example to argue that democratic pushback can still work even after years of concentrated power.
The Oval Office and the 1%
Their closing charge is economic and political at once: the Oval Office today, they write, is focused almost exclusively on serving the 1%. That argument leaves readers with a concrete fault line in U.S. politics — whether the federal government should be rebuilt around broad public relief or narrowed to the interests of corporations and the wealthy.
The piece does not offer a legislative roadmap, but it does give a clear test for what comes next: whether Congress reasserts its authority over spending, war, and social programs, or whether Trump’s executive approach keeps setting the terms of government.
