A few hours before taking office on January 20, Donald Trump promised his supporters that he would have "the most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in US history", and it is indisputable that he has delivered with flying colors. Historians, analysts, political strategists, and citizens themselves tend to evaluate presidencies based on rational and traditional criteria. By successes and failures, legislative or industrial capacity, approval ratings, and the global impact of their decisions. A presidency is considered good if it is effective, efficient, and decisive. It is considered bad if it is ineffective and irrelevant. And it is considered extraordinary if it achieves what very few do: truly transforming the country. What Trump has done in three months, however, is unprecedented, and there is no ordinary category to process it.
In a few months, the Republican leader, who had already managed to shape the conservative party in his image and likeness, has practically shattered all the pillars and consensuses on which the international system and liberal democracies have operated since World War II. Legal, economic, and geopolitical pillars, renouncing free trade as a driver of prosperity and cooperation and the idea of an international order based on rules. Turning his back on allies and on Ukraine and extending a hand to Russia, without ending the war on the first day as he assured he would. Imposing the logic and doctrine of zero-sum and America first.
At home, he has dismissed tens of thousands of officials, closed entire agencies, and eradicated all traces of diversity and equality policies from records. He has brought stagnation and possibly a recession to the world's largest economy, which was growing more than its partners and rivals and had lowered inflation to desired levels. He has insulted, humiliated, and belittled his neighbors. He has threatened to invade and occupy territories belonging to NATO allies and the American continent, asserting that the US will take control of the Gaza Strip, a historic shift in Middle East policy.
Trump has declared a unilateral trade waragainst the entire planet, destroying trillions of dollars along the way and causing the US to be compared to emerging economies due to the self-inflicted debt and currency crisis. He has initiated a siege on major private universities by cutting billions of dollars in funding and aiming for their surrender. He is dismantling checks and balances, attempting to strip citizenship from those born in the country to undocumented parents (unconstitutional), deporting immigrants, many with no criminal record and legal status in the country, without due process or legal guarantees. He has even stated that he is exploring whether he can also send megaprison inmates from El Salvador to American citizens.
All the while, he has revoked refugee status from tens of thousands of people and drastically cut development aid. He has deregulated, eliminatedsupervisors, lowered health and safety standards, appointed an anti-vaccine advocate to lead Health, and a Putin and China sympathizer to National Security. He has reversed environmental policies, abandoned international institutions and scientific consensuses, and directed his relentless machinery against cultural centers or museums, placing himself at the helm of their boards.
The US president has defied court orders, fueled the idea of impeachments to remove judges who have halted his measures, and even used the FBI to arrest two judges. In 100 days, he has brought the country to the brink of an unprecedented constitutional crisis in almost a century, a standoff symbolized by the continuous mentions of running for a third term in 2028, with his children already promoting Trump 2028 merchandise, his lawyers seeking shortcuts, and himself stating that if so many people want him to continue, a way must be found, even though the Constitution clearly stipulates term limits. "He who saves his country does not violate any law", he defiantly wrote on his social media in February. A total war, against everything and everyone who opposes his vision or did so in the past.
Politics in contemporary societies is marked by speed, constant movement, the daily torrent of news, and surprises. However, not everything that happens can be understood within electoral cycles of two, four, or six years. There are certain processes that emerge, develop, and decline over a long period. Historian Gary Gerstle has popularized the concept of 'political orders', something that endures beyond elections and has to do with a political party's ability "to organize a constellation of policies, electorates, think tanks, candidates, and individuals that come to define politics over long periods of time. Something so dominant and strong that opposition parties and their entire apparatus feel compelled, if they still want to remain relevant actors, to accept and join the new framework." They do not consolidate so often. They usually last 30 or 40 years, and economic crises are often involved in the emergence of a new order and the breakdown of the previous one. Every political order also has not only an ideology but also a vision of what a 'good life' is," Gerstle explains in his book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order.
Following that definition, in the last century, there have been only two major political orders in the United States: the one that emerged from the Great Depression with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, which lasted until the 1970s. And the neoliberal order, which took over shortly after and began to fade with the 2008 Great Recession and its aftermath. Both, not by chance, linked to the rise and fall of the USSR and communism. However, today we are in no man's land, in a void that Donald Trump, the great disruptor, is trying to fill with a new illiberal order, and these first 100 days, a period of instability, chaos, widespread fear, systemic helplessness, and settling of scores, are the calling cards.
In 2016, Trump came to govern. In 2024, to completely overhaul the country and society. He did not hide it at any time. "I am doing exactly what I promised in the campaign," he told Time magazine the other day. "In my first term, I had two things to do: govern the country and survive, but there were all those corrupt people. This second time, I govern the country and the world," the president told two reporters from The Atlantic this month.
In these 100 days, Trump has signed 150 executive orders, 36 in the first week. Many of them are of no legal importance, often repetitive. However, he has only signed five laws, one-sixth of those he pushed in his first term. According to Just Security data, there are more than 210 active lawsuits in the courts against the Government's measures. Everything goes through the Executive's steamroller and through a revolution in the idea of conceiving the president's power, almost unlimited, with total immunity, above the rest of the branches, which must bend and facilitate his work. The Congress, but also the courts.
For his followers, he is the most important president in history. For his detractors, the worst and the most dangerous. For analysts, probably the most influential American leader in the 21st century so far. Obama was popular, and his arrival was a turning point, but Trump has completely changed the way politics is done, in the US and the rest of the world. The way diplomacy is conducted, the way of communicating, the codes, the language. Also the rules, the values. A transcendental transformation that has accumulated a lot of power, but with consequences.
Trump returned to the Oval Office with the highest approval ratings of his political career. However, upon reaching 100 days in office, Americans' opinion of his management has become profoundly negative. The reputation of the country, its institutions, and international credibility, among allies, enemies, and also markets, has plummeted. Reversals, changes of ideas, improvisations, U-turns. Everything adds confusion and noise.
That's why Trump's 41% approval rating, a man obsessed with popularity, being a winner, being the best at everything, is the lowest for any president after 100 days since at least the Eisenhower era, according to CNN. Another NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey published on Tuesday agrees, a 41% approval rating, four points lower than the previous month. Gallup places it at 45%.
The CNN survey also reveals that his popularity has plummeted on almost all important issues he has tried to address during his term. In the economy, after his unusual tariff plan destroyed trillions of dollars in the stock market and drove up sovereign bond yields. In management, as after the purges and massive layoffs, only 42% approve of his management, six points less than in March, and only 46% trust that he appoints the best people for the job, 8 points less than in December. But even in immigration, an issue on which voters from both parties agree is one of the most concerning and support deportations of criminals. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has indicated that in March, there were only 7,180 border crossings from the southwest, the lowest number in history and a dramatic drop compared to the average monthly figure of the previous four years, 155,000. There is no doubt that this is the major milestone of these first months. And yet, only 45% of citizens approve of the president on this, 6 points less than in March, and only 53% trust his ability to manage it, compared to 60% in December.