As a progressive, I can take some comfort from President Donald Trump's dive in the polls. Recent polling show that he has the lowest approval rating (somewhere around 40%) for his first 100 days of any modern president, with only his own first term ratings coming close. Clearly the public has turned on him, even on the two issues that fueled his campaign: immigration and the economy.
While I'm glad to see the public going this way, part of me is incensed that many people who voted for him apparently didn't see this 100 day dumpster fire coming. Because, while Trump lied repeatedly during the 2024 campaign (remember when he claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs?) he did tell the truth about what he planned to do.
So when the public seems to be turning against him on immigration because of the number of innocent people being swept up by his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, it's hard not to point out that this was inevitable. Oh sure, he said he was only going to go after criminals, but it takes only a small leap from deporting criminals to Kilmar Ábrego García being sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador because of an "administrative error", which Trump now claims never happened because Garcia is a gang member, despite there being no solid proof of that.
As for the economy, Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he was going to impose heavy tariffs on all imports, which nearly every economic analyst on both the left and the right, predicted would cause inflation and hurt the economy. While some Wall Street conservatives claimed that he was only going to use them as a "negotiating tactic", it's now clear that he always meant it. He began his tariff plan quickly, culminating on April 2nd,, which he dubbed "liberation Day", with a wide range of tariffs on both friendly and unfriendly countries. The result was a loss for Wall Street of 6 Trillion dollars since he took office (so far). Indeed, the three days after April 2nd. caused the biggest loss for American stocks since WWII. He backed off on some of those tariffs in the days afterwards, but the market is still spooked by the specter of upcoming product shortages due to his keeping a tariff rate on China of 145%. And he has shown no sign of ending his trade war, dismissing the possibility of a toy shortage during Christmas by saying, "Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.” (Which may be the most tone deaf and stupid thing he has ever said as president, which is saying something!).
Other things that Trump has done were also as predictable as they were terrible: he let Elon Musk and his DOGE bros run roughshod through the federal government, cutting programs and firing workers thoughtlessly while Robert Kennedy Jr. has taken the same wrecking ball to our nation's health, cutting the Health and Human Services department that he heads by billions of dollars. Add to that Trump's attempts to defund scientific research at universities he considers too "woke", and his rolling back of Joe Biden's attempts to transition our country away from fossil fuels, and you have, quite simply, the most anti science president in American history. But again, we should have seen that coming, there's nothing here that he didn't say he would do.
Another sad, predictable part of the second Trump term is his attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in government hiring, private companies and universities. Yes, the man who was given a successful business by his father, who then bailed him out with hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid loans, now claims that we should only judge people on merit. This has also lead to American history being whitewashed to downplay the importance of slavery and Jim Crow laws in our nation's history; even our national park service has removed stories about Harriet Tubman and the underground railroad. As, Darren Beattie, a Trump appointee to the state department once posted on X: "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men." This would often seem to be the unspoken guiding principle of the Trump administration. (Sadly, Beattie was fired from the first Trump administration for attending a white supremacist rally, but now he's back, showing just how little this new Trump administration cares about racism). Also, one of the president's first orders was to deny the existence of trans people at all, because hatred of the trans community has sadly been a winning issue for conservatives in the past few years.
Then there is Trump's vengeance against his perceived enemies, as he has used his office to attack law firms that took legal action against him in his first term, while also attacking news outlets that he has seen as too negative towards him. He has even gone after Chris Krebs, a cybersecurity official who served in his first administration, just because he publicly said after the 2020 election that voting machines had not been hacked and their count for Bien was correct. Sadly, some of these people have given in to then president (ABC settled with Trump over a frivolous lawsuit, while some law firms will be doing pro bono work for him). And once again, we should have seen this all coming, since he repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he will be getting "retribution" in his second term.
He has also been as corrupt as he was in his first term, blatantly starting a crypto coin business just before taking office and then selling presidential access to the highest buyer, while his wife was paid a whopping twenty eight million dollars to make a documentary for Amazon. While this kind of corruption is disgraceful, it's nothing new from the man who had a hotel in Washington DC with his name on it during his first term that foreign dignitaries could stay at and purposely run up a huge bill in blatant violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution. He has also played golf twenty four times in the first 100 days of his second term, continuing his record of laziness, while also charging secret service members an entrance fee at his properties that costs taxpayers millions of dollars.
Even his laughable desire to serve a third term is keeping in tone with his past behavior; he's always teased the idea that he should stay in office as long as he likes, so the fact that he now claims that he's serious about doing so should come as no surprise. Of course, his serving a third term would violate the constitution, but he obviously sees that document as something he can ignore, given that on his first day as president he issued a presidential order violating the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. (I assume that will be turned over by the Supreme Court, although with this court you never know!).
Really, the only terrible thing Trump has done that I didn't see coming was his trade war with Canada, combined with his insane, misguided and unpopular desire to turn that country into an American state. (While he has also pushed an equally insane, misguided and unpopular desire to take over the territory of Greenland, he did first mention that desire in his first term). Why Trump has suddenly decided to sour relations with one of our country's oldest allies is puzzling to say the least, with reasons ranging from a failed business attempt he made there in the past to just a desire to be remembered as an expansionist president. In any event, it has had one positive benefit; it helped the Canadian liberal party in their election, with Canadian voters fiercely rejecting most candidates perceived as possible Trump allies. To me, this whole craziness with Canada highlights what I think is the worst thing about Trump's second term so far: he is hurting the American brand around the world. His trade war, combined with his hostile statements about our allies (he has ludicrously said the European Union was "established to take advantage of the United States") are not only going to harm our economy, it makes America look foolish and weak on the world stage. Even worse, his anti scientific polices will see our country falling behind in many levels of research (France is already inviting American scientists who've had their funding cut to continue their work there) while his trade war has pushed other countries into making deals with China rather than us.
In the past decade since Trump has become an unlikely and wildly reckless political figure on the world stage, I have often wondered if the country will be able to survive this terrible man's fascistic views and cult like hold over the Republican voters. After one hundred horrific days of his second term, I'm still wondering.
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