President Donald Trump learned from his first term how to be a sore loser and to be a worse president if given a second chance. Now, history repeats itself in the ashes of the epic defeat that his war, tariffs, high prices, deportations and corruption brought upon his party.

The election denier is back. So is the fabulist who falsely claims victories and flaunts his hatreds.

Promoting Stephen Miller to chief of staff was an act of defiance not only to the newly-ascendant Democrats but to Republicans in Congress who need to somehow build a constructive record for themselves and their party before 2028.

A “horrible decision,” said Indiana Rep. Marlin Stuzman, who earlier called for Miller to be fired.

“I no longer believe that Trump is working for the Russians,” wrote satirist Andy Borowitz. “I think he’s working for the Democrats.”

Clueless about the election

“Forty years after his mentor’s death Mr. Trump has found his Roy Cohn,” wrote the biographers Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark in the New York Times. Cohn taught the youthful Trump how to be ruthless.

As deputy chief of staff and the most influential ideologue in Trump’s orbit, Miller was the architect of the deportation cruelties that hurt Republican candidates nationwide and nearly cost the GOP three safe congressional seats in Miami-Dade.

Miller instigated the Muslim immigration ban and demanded the steep deportation quotas that encouraged masked ICE agents to go rogue. He was behind the deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean that are one of the articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. An outspoken white nationalist, Miller is an apostle of the bigoted “great replacement theory” that liberal elites are importing immigrants to outvote native-born Americans.

It is hard to square Miller’s growing power with what Trump said about immigration in his rambling interview on “60 Minutes” last week Sunday.

Admitting the deportations might have been “too tough,” the president said he would “like to do something on immigration” in his final two years. In context he was talking about allowing hard, law-abiding workers to stay rather than be rounded up and sent in chains, many of them to countries where judges had agreed that they face persecution.

There hasn’t been an immigration reform since the one President Reagan signed 40 years ago. For Trump to accomplish one would be a magnificent achievement. Like Richard Nixon going to China, perhaps only Trump could pull it off.

Still in election denial

On election night, Trump pleasantly surprised everyone by saying he was “absolutely willing” to accept the election results.

That new Trump was a mirage.

“Does anybody really believe that this ‘election’ was honest,” he later posted on Truth Social. “How could the polls be so wrong? Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote … It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!”

In reality, there were few complaints from any voting places on election day or from candidates sweating out the final counts in close races.

Republican lawmakers looking to Trump to foster compromise with the new Democratic majority would find little comfort in that “60 Minutes” interview. Trump still sounds delusional.

He expressed a unique opinion of his prowess, declaring that “if I was on the ballot, it would have been a much different situation, because I saw the level of popularity and love … I mean, we had massive rallies.”

Abusing his power

He claimed without evidence that Iran was two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon when he and Israel bombed its nuclear facilities last year, that he has won the war with Iran, and “we’re going to get all that money back.”

When interviewer Ross Douthat asked who issued the order to slow down Starlink to Ukraine’s disadvantage in its war with Russia, Trump replied “I don’t know.”

That’s a pretty important fact for the commander-in-chief not to know.

Trump continues to abuse the power of the presidency. He and Todd Blanche, his incandescently unethical attorney general, have been talking of opening criminal investigations against anyone who promotes impeachment resolutions or investigations.

If Trump cared to make something constructive of his remaining two years, he would call off the Justice Department’s existing search for enemies to prosecute and accept that the earlier investigations of his conduct were entirely within the law.

The resignation of Jason Reding Quiñones, the Miami-based U.S. attorney who was in charge of that witch hunt, should be a convenient opportunity to end it.

The latest persecution of former FBI Director James Comey should stop, too.

In that “60 Minutes” interview, the conversation ventured into theology, and Douthat asked about Trump’s expectations for an afterlife and whether he could forgive his enemies.

“I do hate some of my enemies and always will,” the 47th president replied.

How sad for him — and us.

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