As we approach the 100-day mark of the second Donald Trump presidency, let us look at what has happened.
A lawless authoritarian blitz is a good summary. Maybe a MAGA mess?
Let’s review some of the lowlights by checking in on some predictions and questions I asked after Trump’s election in November.
Will Trump, who seems to serve only his interests, unravel legal issues he has faced and begin using the Justice Department to go after political opponents and serve his personal grievances? In short, yes.
Through executive orders, the appointment of a pliable loyalist in Pam Bondi as attorney general, and the resulting vacating of legal cases and the ouster of dozens of career U.S. attorneys, Trump is well on his way to doing precisely what he and his followers decried so often. That would be weaponizing the Justice Department and legal system.
Threatening law firms that do business with his perceived enemies, openly criticizing and belittling judges who have stopped his often illegal actions, and getting the Justice Department to drop cases that don’t fit his views, no matter the legal merits, are but a few of the examples of wholesale weaponization in his name.
And the vast majority of these actions are blatantly unconstitutional and illegal.
Will Trump enflame culture wars with his early actions? Yes, again.
For example: Attempts at mass deportation, blackmailing universities considered to be too liberal, shredding anything considered to have a perceived connection to diversity, equity and inclusion, and continuing to attack LGBTQ rights using the Trumped-up issue of transgender athletes.
Again, the vast majority of these actions face valid legal challenges because they are part of a lawless authoritarian blitz.
Will Trump continue coddling and imitating the world’s worst dictators and drag U.S. foreign policy into an unimaginable abyss? Well, that’s a yes, too.
A constant stream of adoring comments about Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, among other authoritarians, destroying the U.S. global leadership role through a series of actions against longtime allies and casting a vast shadow over the global economy with his on-again, off-again tariffs.
Something I, for some inexplicable reason, did not see coming was the Elon Musk-led incoherent mass firing of government employees and agency takeovers. This decidedly and dangerously inefficient exercise is being carried out in the name of, ironically, government efficiency; it has repeatedly had its actions reversed and has served as a flash point of anger for voters.
Of course, this list of items is but a fraction of the carnage that Trump is bringing to the United States and the world through his self-serving, petty and lawless rampage.
Legal challenges are holding up many of these actions, and the American people are starting to pay attention. According to polls measuring Trump’s approval/ disapproval and as shown in well-attended rallies nationwide, the general mess that anything Trump does so often becomes is serving as a fragile buffer.
Sadly, each day brings another blitz of lawless authoritarian actions.
Chaos is not a strategy for success. Glaring incompetence and inexperience among federal agency leadership is not Making America Great Again. Using executive orders and the Justice Department to go after “enemies†is not ending the imaginary political weaponization of government but, instead, making it real.
The first 100 days have been a lawless, authoritarian mess.
