Do you know what today, Sunday April 20th, is?
Need another second?
Give up?
Today marks three months since Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. His second go-round as the world’s most important and most powerful leader.
Traditionally, journalists, columnists, pundits, wait 100 days to plumb the depths of a new president and his policies. They’ll get all wonky and in President Trump’s case, there’s a lot to get wonked about.
I think it’s fair to say we’ve seen, heard and experienced enough of President Trump that we don’t have to wait till we hit 100 days.
So, I’m going to mostly use my gut, with an assist from my brain, to take this early shot at evaluating the president.
For me, it boils down to one simple question:
- Do you like the way Trump has handled the economy, trade, foreign relations and domestic policy issues and do you have confidence he will make America great again?
So far, the second Trump administration has been like a ride on a big roller coaster. There have been a couple of high moments when you felt like you were on the top of the world, followed by that yuck feeling of your stomach dropping as the coaster plunges down, down, down.
Our 401k’s and IRA’s have been whipsawed and eviscerated due to his schizophrenic, on and off again, higher, really high, lower, really low, knee-jerk tariffs.
He’s crapped all over our foreign friends and has pushed our long-time alliances to the brink.
By allowing Elon Musk to make the Federal Government his personal government personnel abattoir, he has thrown out some important babies with the bathwater.
And that’s just a few of the moves Trump has made.
Let’s start with the economy.
Agreed, China is not our friend. They’ve stolen our intellectual property and have made US consumers addicted to the heroin of their cheap products.
Yes, we should be making more stuff right here at home, especially the important stuff like semiconductors and ships. It is truly a national security imperative.
But has Trump convinced Americans that’s what’s really at stake here?
He and his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, claim that by slapping super high tariffs on China, companies like Apple will be rushing back to the United States to make iPhones, and Americans will buy them at double the price.
Read my lips, not gonna happen.
Have some of our global trading partners been screwing us for years? Yes but Trump could have been tough on trade inequities with more deftness, skill and consistency.
Instead, he’s plunged the stock market into turmoil and more importantly, he’s made the bond market very jittery. It’s not a good thing when countries that hold billions of dollars of US bonds, in other words, billions of dollars of US debt, start dumping them on the market.
Trump has used tariffs like Frank Costanza used the airing of personal grievances on Festivus.
If you are a true Trump believer, can you tell me how this is all going to turn out for the good?
On the war front, remember when Trump was going to solve the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours because he and Vladimir Putin were pals? This past week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said peace talks have hit a dead end.
Maybe instead of 24 hours, Trump meant 24 months.
And who speaks for US foreign policy anyway? Is it Marco Rubio? Is it negotiator-in-chief Steve Witkoff, who said Hamas isn’t “ideologically intractable” and who also said Iran doesn’t really have dismantle and destroy its nukes? Or is it National Security Advisor Mike Waltz who put Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in a chat group about bombing raids on the Houthis? Or is our foreign policy simply set by however Trump answers a question shouted at him on Air Force One?
And about Israel, does your gut tell you Trump will make a good deal to really denuclearize Iran? And if he doesn’t, do you believe he has the guts to partner with Israel in using military power to do the job? Leaking details this past week of a possible Israeli attack on Iran doesn’t make me feel real good.
On the domestic front, I will give Trump credit for ratcheting up the pressure on universities like Columbia, that coddled the antisemites in its student body and in its faculty since the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7th, 2023.
Threatening to withhold around $400 million in federal grant money to Columbia, for example, certainly got the attention of its administrators and it is apparently forcing them to do what they should have done months and months ago to protect their Jewish students.
Next on the list was Harvard, another hotbed of Jew hatred.
But beyond pressuring Harvard to course correct on campus antisemitism, Trump-land sent Harvard a letter demanding it hire a third party, approved by the federal government, to audit the student body, faculty, staff and leadership to monitor “viewpoint diversity.”
On Saturday, the administration says the letter was sent by mistake. Huh? Nevertheless, Trump has threatened to withhold billions of dollars from Harvard, and revoke its tax exempt status.
So who knows what the truth really is, but having the feds decide who can attend and who can teach, is huge governmental overreach, and has made the school’s widely criticized administration into heroes of academic independence and has pushed them to the vanguard of the Trump resistance.
On immigration, Trump did what Biden said couldn’t be done. The southern border is now effectively closed to illegals and the deportations have begun.
These have been big wins for Trump and for national security. But now he’s allowing the Democrats and the media to get in a snit over a handful of people who may have been wrongly rounded up.
Instead of giving them more oxygen by defying court orders, he should have just let the game play out. So what if a couple of them have to come back?
Trump doesn’t operate with the deftness of a skilled robotic surgeon. He wields meat cleavers and hacksaws. He’s still the angry guy, using the presidency to settle personal scores.
But here’s one thing I’ll give him.
It is now known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that President Joe Biden was mentally incapable of answering press questions in any meaningful way. He held the fewest press conferences of the last seven presidents. He gave the fewest media interviews since Ronald Reagan. He couldn’t remember the names of the reporters in the White House press corps unless they were written down for him on an index card.
President Trump. on the other hand, regularly speaks to the press in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in other random settings. He knows who the reporters are, even though he relishes using some of them as target practice.
You cannot deny Donald Trump is the opposite of Joe Biden in the transparency department.
So, there is it. Trump’s 90 day report card. Please don’t defend him by saying, well the alternative was worse. Trump defeated Kamala Harris and he now owns what he has wrought.
The question remains. Do you have confidence he will make America great again?
My gut, with an assist from my brain after 90 days, say no.