(KRON) -- On Monday, former President Donald Trump was inaugurated as president for the second time, completing a remarkable political comeback. Trump's win followed on the heels of him inspiring an insurrection against the US Capitol four years earlier, being twice impeached, and convicted of a felony. He also survived two assassination attempts. Following the second Trump inauguration, the KRON4 political panel led by Anchor Catherine Heenan weighed in on what has changed since the first time Trump was elected, and whether Trump himself had changed, or the country had. "It's a different America," said UC Berkeley Professor of Political Science Steven Fish. "It was easy to assume when Trump was first inaugurated that this was just a glitch. In fact, Trump won in the most unlikely way. He lost the popular vote by several million votes. Hillary Clinton, 99 out of a hundred times, would've become president. But there was a confluence -- a kind of bizarre confluence -- of number that when you got to the electoral college, enabled him to become president." (L-R) Steven Fish, Corrin Rankin, Donna Crane, Catherine Heenan "He was so unusual," Fish continued. "He was so different from former presidents that I think a lot of people thought, 'OK, we're stuck with him for four years and we'll move on.' But him coming back a second time, no longer does Trump seem to be an anomaly. Looks like he might be the new normal in American politics. After all, he won the popular vote as well as the electoral college. I think it might be a new America." "I think it's a combination," said Corrin Rankin, vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party. "It's a new America. It's a new President Trump we're seeing. And I also think that Americans largely asked themselves, 'Am I better off now than I was four years ago under President Trump?' And that message alone is a large contributor as to why he did so well this time around. I think after two failed assassination attempts, that really changed him and changed his perspective and changed his approach to being the president and I think that we as Americans are going to get the benefit of that." "I didn't see any change in President Trump based on his address this time, versus eight years ago," countered Donna Crane, political science lecturer at San Jose State University. "But I do think America has changed. I think the country has moved to the right. I think the country has been through a lot of trauma and is looking for a strong leader and I think that in 2016, his win looked anomalous, and it no longer does." "There was a lot of pushback after Trump's first win among the broad public, when you think about the size of the women's marches around the country and also the elites were not aligned with him back then," Crane added. "The Republican Party was not his, it was more old-line Republicans, and corporate America, and that has all changed now."