President Donald Trump has spent the first 100 days of his second term rapidly burning through the political capital he accumulated after winning the 2024 election.
Trump’s election to the White House was an improbable political comeback. The remainder of his term will be defined by whether he has a second comeback in him.
When Trump won last year and returned to the Oval Office in January, even his opponents had to show grudging respect. Some were privately in awe of him. He was at the peak of his political power after nearly a decade atop the Republican Party.
The shock-and-awe executive orders galvanized Trump’s base. Unlike in the first term, when Republican establishment figures were trying to slow down the train and various factions were constantly knifing each other in the back through the press, the whole Trump administration appeared to be singing from the same song sheet. The progress on illegal border crossings was quick and substantial.
“The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation,” Trump told Congress in March. “‘We must have legislation to secure the border.’ But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.” Republican lawmakers began chanting Trump’s name.
Trump wasn’t content to simply govern on the issues that got him elected or animate portions of his political coalition, however. He allowed Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to be front and center in a way that didn’t seem likely during the campaign. Trump then roiled the markets with sweeping tariffs undergirded by unpredictable messaging and frequent policy changes.
Both of these developments were previewed by Trump on the campaign trail. But DOGE wasn’t central to Trump’s winning message. It was more of a promise to a libertarian-leaning subset of Trump voters. The tariff talk always seemed balanced by commitments to cut taxes, roll back regulations, and otherwise make the U.S. a more attractive place to do business, marrying economic nationalism to a supply-side growth agenda.
This reading also was borne out by Trump’s first term. Trump’s tariffs were more limited and directed at China, with former President Joe Biden keeping many of them intact. The Trump tax cuts were larger and the tariffs were compatible with low inflation, running 1.2% in 2020.
Trump wasn’t preoccupied with spending or the size of the federal government during his first four years in office. He did not run as a government cutter in either the primaries or general elections in 2016, 2020, or 2024.
Yet DOGE dominated the headlines early in Trump’s second term, with Musk promising major savings. There were also announcements of seemingly scattershot firings of federal workers.
The “Liberation Day” tariffs on allies and adversaries alike exceeded anything Trump seriously attempted in his first term. While many of them were quickly paused, the 10% tariff floor was not. There were early losses in the stock market and gross domestic product in the first quarter of the year.
Trump’s poll numbers have taken a hit, especially on the economy, long his ace in the hole politically. Many pollsters now put his job approval rating, not long ago the highest he has ever had, in the low 40s. About 45.1% approve of the job he is doing, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
That’s about where pollster James Johnson has Trump too. He points out that the big media pollsters that have Trump at record lows don’t have a great track record measuring his support and may still be oversampling Democrats. But even Johnson has Trump underwater with the specter of a recession and product shortages lying ahead.
Ronald Reagan survived a recession and 10.8% unemployment in 1982. While it was bad for congressional Republicans that November, by next year the Reagan boom was in full effect, inflation was down, and he cruised to a 49-state landslide. But Biden, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush were never able to overcome early economic problems and all became one-term presidents.
PRESSURE BUILDS ON TRUMP THE DEAL-MAKER TO DELIVER
Trump is constitutionally barred from running again in 2028. He is already a two-term president. But this term will likely define his historical legacy. Vice President JD Vance and those who champion Trump’s populist renovation of the Republican Party have a lot riding on his success.
The pollsters and pundits who have most often been wrong about Trump in the past are once again predicting his failure. But after the first 100 days, it is clear that Trump may need to follow up one of the greatest political comebacks in history with another.