Señor Trumpanzyy: 100 Punks Rule? Guerrilla Operator Ain't Heard Of Cool

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 7.1% since Inauguration Day on Jan. 20... the worst start to a presidency since the start of Richard Nixon's second term in 1973. The S&P 500 is down 7.6% in that period and is also on track for its worst first 100 days since Nixon's second term… The Russell 2000 gauge of smaller stocks is down more than 14%. That puts it on pace for the worst first 100 days on record.”

“Trump,” wrote Ed Kilgore yesterday “had a basic choice to make in planning his second administration. He could have moved cautiously to consolidate his support, extend the public-opinion honeymoon any presidential-election winner invariably enjoys, register some early wins, and convince a skeptical and fearful country that Trump 2.0 would represent the sort of return to normalcy that Joe Biden once promised but could not provide. This approach might have sent the wounded Democrats into an extended wilderness and made MAGA Republicanism into the greatest political success story of the 21st century. As we now know, Trump chose a very different approach that highlighted all his worst characteristics: a raft of extremist appointments rewarding loyalty rather than competence, a vast array of executive actions that stretched every known limit on presidential powers to the breaking point, an escalation in vituperative rhetoric and threats against anyone who dared to question him, a rapid reorientation of America’s international positioning to blow up alliances or any other restraint on aggressive assertion of unilateral American interests, and a  trade war that spooked global and domestic markets and U.S. consumers alike. And typifying Trump 2.0’s radicalism, which exceeded already high expectations for radicalism, was his weaponization of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to run wild through the federal bureaucracy in search less of budget savings than of making federal agencies as dysfunctional as possible, a chaotic end in itself. Even as each and every one of these actions has had its own negative impact on Trump’s public support, the 47th president has contemptuously pushed aside opportunities to moderate the pace and intensity of his agenda.”

While polls show Trump bleeding support on almost every issue and in particular losing the independents who were so crucial to his 2024 victory, there’s something even worse about how he’s conducted himself during the last 100 days. All the light and heat and noise and fear and chaos he has engendered has put Joe Biden very far in the rear-view window of public perceptions. It’s now Trump’s unsatisfactory economy; Trump’s executive power grabs; Trump’s disorderly world; Trump’s despised and privacy-violating federal government; Trump’s arrogant, wealthy elites; Trump’s contempt for the struggles of working people— it’s Trump who’s in the news each morning, to the point that he can no longer embody the chronic hunger and thirst of the American people for change. And that’s very bad news for his party in both 2026 and 2028, and for any hopes he had of leaving office with the mantle of “greatness” he so desires.

For conservative Republicans who support many of Trump’s policy goals and who hope to build a party that can survive without him, the most frustrating thing is probably that he can’t or won’t “read the room” and understand the importance of changing course. That’s because he has devoted so much of his own astounding career— even before he entered politics— to creating a cult of personality insulated by a closed information loop in which all his worst traits are celebrated, including those that frighten and repel people outside the fun-house mirror of MAGA self-celebration and self-deception. It should be a bright red flashing sign of “Danger!” to the 47th president that his fans are happiest when his administration does something that is guaranteed to offend swing voters, like the FBI rushing in to arrest a local judge in Wisconsin who didn’t help ICE grab someone out of her own courtroom. Right now, even people who share a lot of the administration’s goals are concluding he’s simply going too far. Even if he had enough mental clarity and self-discipline to build an authoritarian regime, like Viktor Orbán’s, that used state power to make a temporary majority permanent, he’s lost the temporary majority before he rightly possessed it.

So Trump’s trajectory is right back toward the fever swamps from whence he arose in 2015 and into which he fell back again after January 6. Unless he changes his ways quickly, Trump’s last comeback has come and gone.

Yesterday, Elizabeth Warren reminded her readers that “During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to lower people’s costs ‘on day one… But after the election, Trump has ignored his promise. Instead, the chaos and corruption of his first 100 days are raising costs for American households and inflicting terrible damage on our economy. The economy is now teetering on the edge not because of a pandemic or the sale of millions of sleazy mortgages, but because of one man alone: the President of the United States.”

This morning, David Graham noted that “As Trump hits his 100th day in office today, pollsters have been releasing new surveys, and the results are ugly. NBC News finds that 55 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the job, but that’s rosy compared with the 59 percent in a CNN poll. An ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that just 39 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance— the lowest ever recorded, going back to 1945, and smashing through the previous record of 42 percent, set by one Donald Trump in 2017. More than half of Americans say that Trump is a ‘dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy,’ according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Asked by NPR to give Trump a letter grade for his first 100 days, a full 45 percent of Americans gave the president an F, including 49 percent of independents… [C]onsumer confidence is at its worst level  since the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has frequently promised a historic presidency, and he’s delivering it.”

“Trump,” wrote Graham, “is lashing out furiously about them.” Yesterday, he posted this psychosis, demonstrating again that his “impulse is always to shoot the messenger, but the messenger isn’t Trump’s problem here. It’s the message that voters are sending him.”

Warren, by the way, also had a lot to say about why this has been a catastrophic 100 days and concluded by noting that “The chaos and corruption of Trump’s first 100 days can be curbed. On tariff policy and a range of other economic actions, Trump has only as much power as Congress is willing to let him keep. It is time for Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, to step up and head off a crisis before millions more American families are hurt.” Fat chance the Republicans will abandon the sinking ship now!

Last night she was on the floor of the Senate calling for accountability for 100 corrupt actions in 100 days. These 4 pages: