WELL it certainly feels like far longer, but today Donald Trump sails past the 100 day mark in the White House, leaving a world reeling in his wake.
With a frantic — perhaps even manic — energy, the 47th President has installed his grip on Washington and the West with eye-popping results.
EPADonald Trump sails past the 100 day mark in the White House today, leaving a world reeling in his wake[/caption] AFPTrump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky argue in the Oval Office[/caption] GettyThe pair held an impromptu meeting at the Vatican before the Pope’s funeral on Saturday[/caption] AFPTrump meets PM Sir Keir Starmer[/caption]He has sacked thousands of civil servants and taken out whole government agencies at home, while abroad he has flipped over the tables of international norms, once again.
Nato countries are in a tizz after being told to finally pay their way, while the EU wobbles under regular assault from a President that hates everything it stands for.
China has been hit with the sort of giant stick it uses to throw its weight around the world, while in Iran enemies spend their days nervously looking skyward fearing the dreaded crack of a drone strike.
At home Trump has shut down swathes of illegal migration on the southern border and left the human rights brigade howling at the moon with his sweeping deportations back to South America with the flick of the pen.
It turns out this sort of thing can be done where there is the political will and a tough enough hind to ignore the shouting.
Woke and trans sacred cows have been slaughtered within the US government by Presidential decree, leaving ultra-right-on corporate America scrambling to ditch their own DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) agendas in a dramatic game of catch-up.
Wasteful international aid spending has gone up in smoke, while every day the Elon Musk-led Department for Government Efficiency is exposing eye-watering fraud and waste that has taken the American taxpayer for mugs.
Carnival of chaos
Meanwhile, once scathing tech titans and world leaders, including Sir Keir Starmer, have been quick to take the knee in a newly decorated West Wing that appears to have had its interior design done by Auric Goldfinger.
“It’s just a higher level of respect,” the President chortled to the Atlantic magazine this week.
Critics howl, markets have wobbled and the world has watched agog as the reality TV guru has turned the Oval Office into a near nightly must-watch docu-drama where you never quite know what will happen next.
Dictators have been fawned over, friends have been lambasted and domestic political enemies humiliated — all while the cameras rolled.
Ever the showman, the shot of the leader of the free world standing on the White House balcony last weekend flanked by a giant Easter bunny as he gave solemn remarks about the death of the Pope was a typically and hilariously iconic image that just about sums up the madness of the last the four months.
But unlike his first tilt at the Presidency, Trump has installed a White House machine and Cabinet that seem to have his back.
The media leaks that plunged his first administration into a den of toxic back-stabbing and paranoia have been plugged, bar a spectacular mishap of two of his most senior lieutenants accidentally texting war plans to a cock-a-hoop magazine journalist.
And for a man who knows he only has a couple of years before he becomes a “lame duck”, he has certainly been in a hurry and appears to be enjoying conducting a carnival of chaos.
“The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” the President added to Atlantic.
“And the second time, I run the country and the world.”
But is he right? And is there a method to the madness?
That is the million dollar question that will come to define President Trump’s entire legacy.
His critics will say otherwise, but what other President has been able to bend the global news and economic agenda to his will in such a way?
Countries, including Britain, are literally begging the Americans to spare them from the pain of tariffs — and in doing so, offering to scrap their own import levies on American goods.
Trump was talked into a 90-day pause on the most vicious of export duties by Wall Street giants and by seeing the rocketing cost of American debt.
Rocketing cost of American debt
But that has not stopped world leaders from swinging into action to try to ease their punishment beatings, vowing to close trade deficits and ease barriers to business with the Americans.
Should Trump pull that off — and his “Liberation Day” tariff assault on the world’s free markets actually results in lower tariffs and barriers around the world — then he will be laughing.
But it will take far longer than 100 days for that pipe dream to be believed.
And while the President tells the world he is greatly loved and everything is going swimmingly, the numbers tell a different story.
At home his enemies have been quick to leap on an 80-year low in approval ratings for a President after 100 days.
For a man who sees TV ratings as the ultimate success benchmark, his 39 per cent approval standing has clearly niggled him, with the President taking to social media to slam pollsters.
GettyTrump announces his tariffs which wiped billions off global financial markets[/caption] TwitterTrump left the human rights brigade howling at the moon with his sweeping deportations back to South America[/caption] The Mega AgencyTrump was joined by the first lady and a life-sized Easter bunny for the White House Easter Egg Roll[/caption]Meanwhile, abroad it is a similarly downbeat picture.
According to pollsters Ipsos, only 39 per cent of Brits now think the US — once the undisputed leaders of the free world — is still a “force for good.”
That is down 17 points since Trump’s remarkable comeback election victory late last year.
Alarmingly, across 29 countries, the average of people saying the US is a “force for good” is just 46 per cent, which is lower than Communist China, for the first time, who are at 49 per cent.
Positive sentiment about America has dropped in 26 of 29 countries after Trump’s tariff wars sent global markets into freefall and he threatened to invade his nearest neighbours — perhaps not entirely seriously.
With the menace of his New York real estate dealer past, he has threatened to annex Greenland, Panama and even the King’s own Canada.
Rogue state
Meanwhile, it appears the President was talked out of bombing Iran with the help of Israel in a bid to rid the rogue state of its alarmingly advanced nuclear developments.
A rear-guard action from his own isolation team led by Vice President JD Vance appears to have won the argument, for now, that the administration was elected to stop being the world’s policeman.
And the tense ceasefire in Gaza, that briefly saw the release of some of the Israeli hostages, has lapsed back into fighting and blockading Hamas, who show no sign of backing down.
But nowhere has there been a clearer sign of the President’s failure to deliver than in Ukraine.
After promising to bring peace within days and weeks of taking office, it appears the self-proclaimed deal-maker may have bitten off more than he can chew.
Lavishing praise on Putin has not worked, nor has biting off Zelensky’s head in front of a global TV audience.
Losing patience with Putin
The Kremlin appears to be thumbing its nose at the White House, while it is far from clear that any Ukrainian leader could sign up to the terms being discussed — tracts of land lost to the invader and no guarantee that Putin would not be back for the rest before too long.
Trump talks about his loathing of bloody war, but it is far from clear there is an end in sight beyond a total capitulation.
The White House said yesterday that the President was increasingly losing patience with Putin’s refusal to properly come to the table.
But you can not help feel that he is itching to lift sanctions on Russia rather than twist the thumbscrews even further right when the time to squeeze is here.
The sovereignty of a ravished nation must not play second fiddle to Trump’s desire for economic gain and attempt to lure Russia away from closeness to China.
While it may not hurt his domestic standing much, a failure on Ukraine could poison Trump’s already rocky standing around the world.
Trump’s rocky standing
And he does not have long to turn things around and for the fruits of his big promises to come true.
Those that know him best say there is a zeal to Trump 2.0 that was just not there in his first term.
Some put that down to his surviving the horrific assassination attempt last July, where he dodged the reaper — and a sniper’s bullet — by just an inch.
Others say it is the freedom from the concerns of re-election that mean he has been truly unleashed.
But he does not have long.
Unable to stand again due to the two-term limit, by the end of next year the question of who comes next to keep the MAGA flame alive will be dominating.
The ceaseless pace of the US election cycle means it will not be long before the mid-terms come around and eyes are on the 2028 race.
Were the Republicans to lose the House in 18 months’ time, Trump’s enemies will have more than just screaming in their arsenal as they crank up hearings, probes and the inevitable attempt to impeach him once again.
And unless he is careful, plenty of decisions and moments from these first 100 days could give them just the ammunition they need.
AFPTrump, pictured with Vance, holds an executive order he has just signed[/caption] AFPElon Musk and his son join Trump as he signs more executive orders in the Oval Office[/caption] Read More Details
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