As Donald Trump approaches the 100 day mark of his ambitious presidency, the news isn’t looking very positive for him. The shock and awe of these first three months has left the country dazed and confused and it is starting to rebel. Pollsters always go out into the country as a president reaches this milestone and the results show a floundering administration that’s lost the support of a sizeable majority on virtually every issue.
The “flood the zone” strategy has revealed the classic Trumpian chaos and ineptitude that too many people dropped down the memory hole last November in favor the braggadocious hucksterism at which he excels. Virtually all of his promises during the campaign have come up short.
He said he would end the war in Ukraine on the day after he was elected. It rages worse than ever with Trump openly selling out Ukraine. He has produced a ludicrous tariff policy which every economist, hedge fund manager, CEO, small businessman and stock trader knows is virtually designed to cause inflation, if not stagflation and recession. (He’s saying that gas and grocery prices have come way down but he’s lying.)
His immigration policy, driven by the increasingly unhinged Stephen Miller, is far more draconian than he even said it would be, randomly hitting foreign students, tourists, scientists and business people and the brutal deportations to a Salvadoran gulag have brought shame and dishonor on America around the world.
And then there’s Elon Musk, the wealthy weirdo nobody in America voted for, to whom Trump gave the keys to the federal government and told him he could fire anyone he wanted to. That’s resulted in pandemonium in the U.S. and all over the globe as life-saving services have been abruptly ended, people have been fired and programs that Americans depend on are no longer functioning. All of that in the name of saving money which doesn’t appear to be materializing.
Meanwhile, weirdo #2, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has taken another wrecking ball to the American health care system, ending decades of medical research, firing the scientists who know what they’re doing and replacing them with cranks determined to chase conspiracy theories down the rabbit hole. Following up that demolition of the medical system, Trump himself has decided to destroy the education system including some of the most prestigious universities in the country by dictating they change their policies and curriculum or lose the funding that has made the United States the leading nation in the world for scientific research.
Foreign policy and national security are both bleak and dismal nightmares. There is the above mentioned Ukraine “peace deal” which comes down to forcing Ukraine to surrender to Vladimir Putin so Trump can do some of his vaunted “deals” with Russia. He’s alienated our closest allies, made demented proposals such as offering to have the U.S. ethnically cleanse Gaza to build an international resort there, demanding that Greenland give itself to the United States and essentially insulting every international institution that America helped build. On top of that, he’s put the U.S. military in the hands of a weekend TV show host so out of his depth that even his closest allies are abandoning ship.
Pundits and analysts keep saying that the huge drops in the stock market and the subsequent, ongoing volatility are a reflection of their deep dissatisfaction over Trump tariff policies. And it’s true that their dramatic reaction has had some success in tempering some of his worst impulses. But it actually seems to be more than just that. The weird behavior in the bond and currency markets and the way the world has reacted to his erratic and bizarre behavior suggests, as some economists and important investors are saying, that people are “selling America”
Well, why wouldn’t they? It’s not just his economic policies, as daft and dangerous as they are. It’s that whole (waves arms frantically) list of atrocities I just outlined above. Donald Trump and his administration are totally berserk and America is in the middle of an unprecedented, turbulent maelstrom. Who would buy something in condition?
When you look at it that way, it’s very hard to see how any American can support this president and his administration but apparently quite a few do. The good news is that fewer and fewer of them are standing behind him every day. The spate of recent polls have his approval ratings lower than he was at this point in his first term, which was the lowest of any president up to that time. So he’s breaking his own record.
Even the Fox poll has him underwater:
The Pew Poll shows him right at 40%
And these polls are all showing that the public disapproves of his other policies as well. Even on immigration, his supposed strong suit, he’s underwater. The Economist You/Gov poll shows:
45% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling immigration, while 50% disapprove, a net approval of -5. That’s down from 50% approval and 44% disapproval — a net approval of +6 — on Trump’s handling of immigration when it was last asked about two weeks ago
The drop comes as Americans are more likely to side against Trump on the highest-profile immigration case over the past week: that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was recently deported to El Salvador despite a court order prohibiting his deportation. 50% of Americans say Trump should bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S., and 28% say he shouldn’t.
That’s consistent with the other polls as well. And according to Pew, 78% of Americans believe that the administration must obey the rulings of the courts. That includes 65% of Republicans. If the Supreme Court were to issue the ruling, that goes up to 95% among Democrats and 82% among Republicans. If Trump decides to defy the high court and trigger a constitutional crisis he will not have the support of the American people.
At the 100 day mark, President Donald Trump finds himself more unpopular than any other president at this point in their terms and he’s sinking fast. Contrary to his repeated lies that he won in a landslide and has a mandate for the radical change he’s enacting, even many of the people who voted for him did not expect this level of chaos, ineptitude and lawlessness.
Whether he cares about that remains to be seen. Trump will never face the voters again and he is determined to use his power to wreak vengeance on his enemies and prove that his cockamamie ideas about tariffs and world dominance through threats and bullying were right all along. Despite the massive amount of damage his shambolic first 100 days has already caused and will likely continue to cause for some time, none of that is actually working. People are beginning to fight back. The public is turning on him. The courts aren’t buying his arguments.
He’s proved once again that he’s a weak, vain, ignorant man which should have been obvious to anyone who lived through his failed leadership during the pandemic. Unfortunately, it’s only been a hundred days. We’re going to have to find a way to survive the 1,365 days that are left and I don’t think anyone knows yet how we’re going to do that.
Salon
