The prediction was conditional on a Republican—specifically Donald Trump—winning in 2024 and taking office in January 2025. That condition was met: Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the November 5, 2024 election and was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)

The substantive claim was that, under that Republican administration in 2025, it would become easier to get M&A done than under the prior Democratic administration.

Evidence shows a meaningful easing of merger enforcement and greater receptivity to large deals in 2025 relative to the Biden years:

• While the FTC and DOJ initially kept the Biden‑era 2023 Merger Guidelines in place in February 2025—contrary to expectations of an immediate rules rollback(mayerbrown.com)—subsequent practice shifted.
• A July 2025 analysis notes that new Trump‑appointed antitrust leaders explicitly rejected the Biden “anti‑merger” agenda and began rolling back tactics such as routine “prior approval” requirements and other policies that had discouraged many transactions, characterizing these as a departure from the previous administration’s merger policies.(forbes.com)
• A Wall Street Journal report in late November 2025 describes corporate dealmaking as “bigger and bolder under Trump,” with U.S. deal value up over 40% year‑over‑year to $1.9 trillion, twice as many deals over $10 billion, and only three mergers challenged that year versus an average of about six annually under Biden—a roughly 50% reduction in challenges. The article attributes this shift to more lenient antitrust enforcement and a willingness to clear or settle large transactions, including in media and tech.(wsj.com)
• Specific cases reinforce that high‑profile deals became easier to clear: DOJ quickly ended its probe into T‑Mobile’s $4.4 billion acquisition of UScellular, a move widely read as a sign of decreased scrutiny under Trump, and T‑Mobile is pursuing additional acquisitions.(businessinsider.com) Likewise, Trump reversed earlier opposition to Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel by negotiating political conditions (e.g., a golden share and governance guarantees) and allowing the acquisition—one that had faced significant resistance under Biden—to close in June 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Trump also fired the remaining Democratic FTC commissioners in March 2025, leaving the agency in full Republican control—an institutional change expected to soften the stance on major mergers, particularly in tech and other concentrated industries that had been focal points for Biden‑era enforcement.(washingtonpost.com)

At the same time, enforcement did not disappear: antitrust suits against Big Tech (e.g., the Meta monopolization case) and a continued focus on “pocketbook” sectors like housing, healthcare, and groceries persisted, and several law‑firm and practitioner memos describe Trump’s second‑term approach as still “robust” but more case‑by‑case, with the stricter guidelines retained for now.(wilmerhale.com) This nuance, however, is fully compatible with the forecast: the claim was not that antitrust enforcement would vanish, only that M&A would be easier to get done than under the Biden administration.

Given:

• The realized condition (Trump taking office in January 2025), and
• Multiple independent indicators of materially more permissive merger enforcement and a surge in large‑scale M&A activity relative to Biden’s term, including fewer challenges, rollback of prior‑approval requirements, faster clearances, and high‑profile deals that likely would have faced more resistance previously,

the prediction that “there will be an opening up of M&A” and that it would be easier to get M&A done in 2025 under a Republican administration than under the preceding Democratic one is best judged as right.