One year in, Donald Trump has redefined the presidency

Tweet it out, put on “tapes,” or just let the cameras roll. There will be a clear historical dividing line that separates what the American presidency and American politics were on either side of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

That’s the unmistakable conclusion one year into the entirely unconventional and enormously consequential presidency of Donald J. Trump.v Trump has fundamentally remade the office and how it functions, often on the fly, and generally in ways that he alone could have envisioned or executed. His instincts – to fight, to divide, to disrupt, to insult – have redefined what it means to be presidential.

There will surely never be another Donald Trump. But neither can there be a wholesale reversion to what the office he holds was like before he assumed it.

“He brought a whole new rambunctious, freewheeling style to the presidency that won’t go away,” said Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University.

“He keeps doing things that other presidents didn’t do, and that we assumed they couldn’t do,” Zelizer added. “There’s no need to presume the next president will be like Trump. But now it’s all on the table.”