In his first 100 days back in office,Donald Trumphas made a strong case that his second term will be by far the worst presidential term in US history. So many of his flood-the-zone actions have been head-spinning and stomach-turning. His administration seems to be powered by ignorance and incoherence, spleen and sycophancy. Both he and his right-hand man,Elon Musk, with their resentment-fueled desire to disrupt everything, seem intent on pulverizing the foundations of our government, our democracy, our alliances as well as any notions of truth. Tragically, Trump’s second term is already more lawless and more authoritarian than any in US history.
The worst and most dangerous part of Trump’s agenda is his war against our democracy and constitution –defyingjudges’orders, deporting people without due process,suggestinghe will runfor a third term, calling toimpeach judgeswho rule against him,pardoninghundreds of January 6 criminals,guttingfederalagenciesandfiring thousands of federal employeesin flagrant violation of the law, and banningbooks from military libraries. (One wonders, will book burning be next?) Underlining just how dangerous and lawless Trump is, he is talking publicly about ofdisappearing US citizens to foreign countrieswhere they could be locked in prison forever. For those who care about democracy and basic freedoms, this is DefCon 1 stuff.
From Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, every president since world war two has worked hard to build alliances to promote peace and prosperity and deter aggression. But right out of the box, Trump 2.0 has rushed to blow up our alliances and cavalierly alienate our allies. Trump quickly rejected the US’s traditional foreign policy and ideals by warmly embraced Vladimir Putin, a brutal dictator, and turning against Ukraine and its noble fight against Putin’s aggression. Trump sounded like a rapacious 19th-century imperialist when he threatened totake over the Panama canaland, ditto, when he talked of using force toseize control of Greenland, which belongs to our longtime Nato ally, Denmark. Then there’s Trump’s astoundingly idiotic talk – and taunt – that Canada should be our51st state. What a way to anger and alienate a nation that has long been America’s best friend.
Then there is the disaster – or should we say clown show – of Trump’s on-again, off-again, on-again, who-knows-what’s-going-to-happen-tomorrow tariffs. His “liberation day” tariffs were put together by a clown car crew, just three hours before announced it, and Trump and company seemed to have zero idea that his hodgepodge of tariffs would send the world’s stock markets into a nervous breakdown Trump’s team was stupid enough to think that China was too feeble to respond effectively to Trump’s trade war – treasury secretary Scott Bessent said China had “a losing hand” withjust “a pair of twos”. Trump and his clown car failed to realize that China had the ability to retaliate in devastating ways – by clamping down on rare earth exports that American manufacturers and tech companies desperately need and perhaps by selling off hundreds of billions of dollars in US bonds. Former treasury secretaryJanet Yellen was appalled,saying: “This is the worst self-inflicted policy wound I’ve ever seen in my career inflicted on our economy.”
Moving beyond his bombastic rhetoric, Mr Make America Great Again has been showing the world that the US is not so great. Because of Trump’s incoherent policies, bond investors are souring on the US and the dollar as never before as they question America’s reliability with such an unstable man at its helm. Investors are even questioning whether the US under Trump will make good on its debts – a fear that has causedinterest rates to soar on treasury bonds. For the first time in modern history, they arequestioning the dollar’s primacyand whether it should remain the world’s reserve currency. To the world’s investors, it’s clear that Trump is dragging American down, not lifting it up.
Indeed, Trump’s economic stewardship has been so astonishingly inept that we went from economists saying early this year that there was no way the US would have a recession anytime soon to many economists predicting arecession this year.
Steven Greenhouse is a labor reporter