The 7 Phases of Trump 2.0

If Donald Trump understands one thing, it’s the rhythms of the news media.

Trump’s core insight about media — honed over decades as a tabloid star — is that there may be many stories in a newspaper, but only one will receive top billing on the front page. Or on a magazine cover. Or as a cable news chyron. That’s the story journalists will chase, and it’s the one audiences will pay attention to — that is, until the next thing comes along.

Trump and his allies always want to be that story — though sometimes for different reasons. Trump wants it because it guarantees attention. His allies often want it because the centrality of one single story allows them to slip other things under the radar. As Steve Bannon memorably put it:

The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time… All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day, we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never be able to recover, but we got to start with muzzle velocities.

The zone has certainly been flooded for these first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term. But the way I see it, we’ve been through seven cycles of stories that have dominated above the rest:

1. January 6th pardons

2. DOGE

3. Zelensky meeting

4. Alien Enemies Act deportations

5. Signalgate

6. Tariffs

7. Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation

Taken together, these seven stories can tell you a lot about Trump’s second administration: how it has expanded executive power (#2), sidelined Congress (#2), reimagined America’s role in the world (#3), disrupted the global financial system (#6), rewarded allies while punishing adversaries (#1), face-planted in high-profile ways (#5), cracked down on immigration (#4, #7), and flirted with defying judges (#4, #7).

What do they tell us about how successful Trump’s first 100 days have been?

Well, there are at least two ways to measure success: substantively and politically. Let’s look at them both:

On the substance

Every president has FDR to thank for adding “the first 100 days” to the political lexicon, giving his successors a yardstick they would have to measure up to after only a few months in office.

Roosevelt signed 77 laws (a record) and 99 executive orders (a record, until Trump) in his first 100 days, vying to stabilize the banking system, create millions of jobs, and offer aid to farmers and other vulnerable groups. “We have built a granite foundation in a period of confusion,” Roosevelt boasted in his 100-day address.

Trump, on the other hand, has built a period of confusion. He has signed markedly fewer laws than FDR (five), though more executive orders (142) — despite the reality that a president can really only make a lasting policy impact through acts of Congress or a handful of areas where executive power is unquestioned.

Of the seven stories above, you’ll notice none of them involve Congress (unless ignoring Congress counts). Accordingly, only the January 6th pardons can be called an unmitigated (substantive) success, as a president’s clemency powers are more or less absolute: the president said X people should be freed from jail; they are now freed.

A big fat question mark sits over the rest, the natural consequence of governing by executive action. DOGE has succeeded in firing at least 120,000 federal workers, although legal challenges could adjust that number. By its own claim, the initiative has saved $160 billion — hardly on track to cut $1 trillion by September, as Elon Musk had promised. (And its estimate is known to be inflated.) The program has sought to axe numerous federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), but it is far from clear doing so will pass muster in the courts.

Trump’s greatest substantive success has probably been at the border, where attempted crossings are down 94.8% (!) compared to this time last year. But large parts of his immigration agenda have uncertain fates as well, from his attempt to limit birthright citizenship to his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

The Zelensky meeting and the tariffs both speak to deals — to create peace in Ukraine and to reset America’s trade relationships — that Trump has tried, but so far failed, to strike. On the tariffs, Trump has repeatedly staked out aggressive positions, before being cowed by the markets and CEOs into backing down, a pattern which also recently played out regarding Trump’s hypothetical firing of Fed chairman Jay Powell.

Trump has staked his second term on a flurry of executive orders, making it harder to assess the success of the period, since so much is still left to be litigated in courts. Trump’s orders aimed at law firms and universities, for example, have certainly succeeded in alarming potential critics (and, in some cases, inducing them to make concessions). Whether those orders will survive challenges against them is much more difficult to say.

On the politics

Trump entered office more popular than he has ever been. He is now about as unpopular as he was at this point in his first term.

If you chart my seven phases over the trajectory of Trump’s approval rating, you’ll see nothing but a constant slide, from one phase to the next:

Put in these terms, each phase of Trump’s second term has been strikingly politically unpopular. Trump has dominated attention for the past 100 days, but apparently not the good kind. Americans started Trump’s term relatively optimistic about how he would fix issues like immigration and the economy; the more they have seen from him, the more pessimistic they have gotten.

The last few days have brought a particularly bruising round of polls. A New York Times/Siena poll found Trump underwater in every area — and particularly so on his handling of issues like the war in Ukraine and the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia (21 points underwater on both).

In a Washington Post/ABC poll, 72% (!) of Americans said it was “very” or “somewhat” likely that Trump’s economic policies would lead to a recession in the short term. Trump’s deputy, Elon Musk has had a similarly stark decline: 57% of Americans now disapprove of his role in the administration, according to the Post/ABC poll.

The less popular DOGE has seemed to be, the less influence Musk has seemed to have within the White House, as he has steadily receded from public view. Unfortunately for Trump, the attention paid to Musk has largely been replaced with other issues on which the president is (now) viewed negatively.

In November, I wrote that if Trump won the election, it would be because of I&I: immigration and inflation. Trump’s approval is now underwater in both categories.

Starting the wheels

FDR actually first referred to his 100-day mark in a July 1933 “fireside chat,” a few weeks after the milestone passed. He told Americans he waited for a reason:

I think that we all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.

“Crowding events” certainly rings true when it comes to Trump. But I’m more struck by FDR’s phrase, the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.

Trump’s first 100 days, like Roosevelt’s, were action-packed. But to what end? Roosevelt’s objective was to put in motion a political project — the New Deal — that would define American politics for a generation, both substantively and electorally.

Every major policy fight for the next few decades would revolve around the programs Roosevelt set up — several of which even came to be embraced by the opposition party — while elections were oriented around the New Deal coalition he cobbled together.

Even if Trump’s executive actions withstand legal tests, they are, of course, vulnerable to be overturned in four years, making it unlikely they will permanently scramble politics. But, even aspirationally, it is hard to describe an enduring political project his policies are trying to cohere around.

The fight against “wokeness” has largely already been won, even without government action. The objectives of Trump’s trade policy appear to vary by the day, and likely lack enough Republican support to be carried beyond his term. Many of his actions seem aimed at expanding executive power — but something can hardly be seen as a long-lasting goal if Republicans are sure to begin opposing it as soon as a Democrat takes office.

In the first week of his second term, Trump said that he was “forging a new political majority that is shattering and replacing Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which dominated American politics for nearly 100 years.”

Indeed, his victory showed impressive gains among a number of groups Republicans have historically struggled with, like young people and people of color, possibly paving the way for a new Republican majority. But Trump — in seek of chaos, attention, and idiosyncratic policies, rather than a coherent or popular political program — has spent his first 100 days largely squandering that newfound backing.

According to the Times/Siena poll, 18-to-29-year-olds now disapprove of Trump’s administration, 69% to 26%; Hispanic voters disapprove, 59% to 36%.

Trump’s second term has succeeded in winning attention. But it is hemorrhaging support in the polls and struggling to place policy wins on the board due to its unclear sanction by legislation, either new or old. In January, a significant majority of Americans were willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt for the first time; 100 days later, that support has mostly been gambled away, and arguably without much of substance to show for it.