One Hundred Days of Cruelty and Ineptitude

One hundred days into the Felon's second regime, the global economy has been destabilized, the regime is seemingly poised to accept Russia conquest of parts of Ukraine, presidential corruption is running rampant, prices have not fallen "on day one" as promised (and are likely to rise substantially thanks to the insane tariff policies of the Felon), ICE is seizing individuals and making them disappear like a modern day Gestapo, federal agencies have been decimated, food safely regulations are being slashed or terminated, threats to the social safety net are  threatened in order to fund tax cuts for the super wealthy, and a Handmaiden's Tale like implementation of Project 2025 is underway.  As all of this unfolds, congressional Republicans either cower or cheer on cruelty and misogyny and the Felon acts as if he has a mandate even though only a third of eligible voters cast their ballots for him (the other two thirds either cast ballots for Harris or betrayed the nation by failing to vote).  A piece in the New Yorker looks at where America finds itself and poises the question of when will the citizenry rise up and say "no more."   Much of the MAGA base remains consumed with "owning the libs" and the mainstreaming of racism and bigotry.  The rest of the public needs to wake up, rise up and put an end to the madness and cruelty.  Here are column highlights:

Eight years ago, in this space, a survey of the first hundred days of the initial Trump Presidency described just how “demoralizing” the Administration had already proved for any citizen concerned with the fate of liberal democracy. In both rhetoric and action, Donald Trump had undermined the rule of law, global security, civil rights, science, and the distinction between fact and its opposite.

Trump never concealed his motives or his character. He came to office in 2017 celebrating the illiberalism of Andrew Jackson and William McKinley and waving Charles Lindbergh’s banner of “America First.” At the Inauguration, he took in the spotty attendance on the Mall and instructed his press secretary to declare the crowd the “largest ­audience to ever witness an Inauguration—­period.” Trump went on from there, demagogue and fantasist, striving to ban travellers from predominantly Muslim countries and to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. . . . He amused himself by antagonizing close European allies and declaring nato “obsolete.” . . . . There were many more moments of chaos and cruelty to come, but now we know that Trump’s first term, his initial attempt at authoritarian primacy, was amateur hour, a fitful rehearsal.

Trump still managed to exact plenty of damage, yet the feuding in his midst, along with the episodic flashes of congressional opposition, popular protest, and resistance in the courts, forestalled some of his fondest ambitions from being realized.

[In 2024] With a wink, he denied any knowledge of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s vision for the ­exercise of executive power, but few doubted that he would enact its plans. For would-be advisers and Cabinet officers, obedience was the sole qualification. The Administration is now stocked with the greasily obsequious. Rank incompetence also seems no impediment to employment. How else to explain Pete Hegseth’s move from the weekend desk at Fox News to the big office at the Pentagon? And in what other Administration would bulbs as dim as Howard Lutnick or Peter Navarro be called upon to craft the future of the world’s largest economy?

The record of failure after a hundred days is, at once, astonishing and predictable. With no evident purpose, Trump has alienated Europe, Japan, Mexico, and Canada, further undermined NATO, and made even more plain his affection for Vladimir Putin. He has sanctioned his benefactor Elon Musk to hoist a chainsaw and commit mayhem against government agencies that save countless human lives. With evident pleasure, Trump has deported more than two hundred ­people (nearly all of whom have no criminal record) to a Salvadoran gulag. With his tariff proposals, he managed to destabilize the global economy in a flash, perhaps the worst own goal in history. As part of his revenge campaign, he has waged a war of intimidation against dozens of scholarly, commercial, and legal institutions.

Trump has normalized Presidential corruption. If one were forced to choose two representative events in the life of this Administration so far, they would surely be the White House meetings with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, and, six weeks later, with the Salvadoran President, Nayib Bukele. In the first, Trump treated a moral hero as an ungrateful scoundrel. In the second, he treated a sadistic dictator as a soulmate.

In recent weeks, there have been encouraging signs of opposition to Trump, on the streets and in the courts. Cory Booker, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-­Cortez, and Bernie Sanders are among the clearest voices of dissent on Capitol Hill. But accommodation and cowardice remain the norm. “We are all afraid,” the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, said to a gathering in Anchorage. No doubt. The threat of retaliation is no joke, but the Senator’s plaintive cry does not exactly meet the demands of the moment. This is not primarily a matter of competence or a clash over policy. The Trump Administration is carrying out a coördinated assault on first principles. “The limits of tyrants,” Frederick Douglass said, “are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” The President will persist in his assault until he feels the resistance of a people who will tolerate it no longer.