Mick Clifford on Donald Trump's '100 days of greatness'

Starting off his second term in a position of unparalleled power, the controversial US president has flooded the zone in order to usher in a country ruled by autocratic diktat

Donald Trump began his second term on January 20 in a position of unparalleled power for a new president. Picture: AP Photo/Alex Brandon

“No one can say when the unwinding began — when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip, first gave way. Like any great change, the unwinding began at countless times, in countless ways — and at some moment the country, always the same country, crossed a line of history and became irretrievably different.” — George Packer, The Unwinding: Thirty Years of American Decline

Donald Trump hit the symbolically significant mark of 100 days in office on Wednesday. This benchmark came into being in first term of Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1930s when he mentioned it in a radio broadcast.

The time referenced is taken as an indication of the direction of the presidency at a point where the incumbent is likely to be at his or her most powerful and most influential.

Of course, in the case of Donald Trump, this is his second first 100 days. Only one other president in the history of the country, Grover Cleveland in 1893, has managed to win two non-consecutive terms.

The achievement of such a feat by Trump represents one of the greatest comebacks in modern political history. As a result, he began his second term on January 20 in a position of unparalleled power for a new president. So what has he done with that power?

Since assuming office, on the most cursory level, he has followed the advice of his confederate, Steve Bannon, who coined the phrase: “Flood the zone with shit”.

Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed in the White House on February 28. They were due to discuss a peace deal with Russia. Picture: Saul Loeb/Getty

So it was that, even before entering office this time around, he introduced the possibility of expansion in Greenland and an intervention in the Panama Canal.

He engaged in the silly stuff like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, along with the deadly serious business of whipping away the biggest aid agency in the world from under the tiny feet of the most vulnerable children on the planet.

He has signed a record 124 executive orders — yet only five bills from congress — leaning into his executive power and pulling away from the centuries-old checks and balance provided by congress.

No president over the last 75 years has signed less bills into law in their first 100 days. His executive orders have strayed into the work of individual states, and have included an order to seek out evidence of corruption against opponents.

On the mad king front, he has signed an executive order to increase the pressure on showerheads — because he likes a good shower

He has completely changed the narrative of democracies siding with Ukraine in the war to protect their countries from Putin’s invasion. His positioning appears to be informed primarily by the fact that he likes how Putin governs, and he just doesn’t like Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

This week, he has made it plain he wants a quick win over the war.

If the sides don’t agree to his plan — which largely favours Russia — Trump has said he will throw his hat at it and move on.

The kudos of a quick win is what matters to him rather than any achievement to preserve human life or influence the tides of man in a positive manner.

On the slaughter in Gaza, he has proposed turning the territory into an Atlantic City on the Mediterranean Sea — a paradise for wealthy holidaymakers and gamblers, built on the blood of dispossessed Palestinians.

Like much of his top-of-the-head notions, this one betrays his complete lack of understanding of history and what has to be a sociopathic inability for empathy.

Everything is a transaction. Every individual or group is categorised as ally or opponent, their wants or needs assessed in terms of how it might benefit him.

The only real check on his global forays has been the market. He termed April 2 as ‘Liberation Day’, signing off on a series of tariffs against most of the US’s trading partners. This was, he said with typical hyperbole, “one of the most important days in American history”.

He was right on one front. Global markets tanked at the prospect of the economic chaos he has set off and, if he hadn’t backed down, ‘Liberation Day’ would have been noted by history as one in which a single person’s wanton incompetence had initiated a global recession.

Trump sent billionaire Elon Musk in to slash government spending and jobs — gifting them the makey-upy title: The Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). Picture: AP

Not that the world is out of the woods yet. The uncertainty his tariff obsession has caused is continuing to be ripple across the globe. This week, he turned his guns on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

The chair’s brief is to set interest rates according to the best available expertise in terms of what best serves the economy. Trump believes that he knows better, and has berated Powell for not cutting rates as the US economy slumps in the face of the king’s madness.

On Tuesday, Trump warned that the US economy is heading for a slowdown “unless Mr Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates NOW,” the king posted on his Truth Social account.

The blatant grab for power makes no mention of the fact that any slowdown is directly attributable to Trump’s harebrained economic policies.

Insulting the chair of the Fed for not doing as the president wishes is unprecedented, but is also of a piece with a whole series of actions that — more than anything else — have informed Trump’s first 100 days.

The over-riding objective in flooding the zone with shit is to dismantle a democracy that has been built up and maintained for over 200 years.

Donald Trump’s whole ascent can be ascribed to the unwinding that is referenced by George Packer’s book quoted here.

Over the last 40 years now — Packer’s book was published in 2013 — America has become unmoored from old certainties.

The social contract underpinning the American dream has frayed as corporate power came to dominate economic life, as the rich got richer, and those left behind grew desperate and disillusioned.

Globalisation played its part, but mainly by shifting wealth within US borders rather than from the country.

It didn’t matter who was in power. Nobody appeared to be serving the interests of the former hard-working family that had a home, a decent job, security, and the prospect of their children reaching a higher rung on the ladder. And into the breach stepped a TV personality who promised to bring back the old days — to make them great again.

The unwinding that opened doors for Trump has, since January 20, moved onto another plane. 

Now, a new unwinding is Trump’s direct assault on democracy in order to usher in a country ruled by autocratic diktat

The various pieces of scaffolding that support and maintain the strength of American democracy have endured a multi-pronged assault in the last three months. This began with the permanent government.

In the week he was inaugurated, Trump sent billionaire Elon Musk in to slash government spending and jobs — gifting them the makey-upy title: The Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

Musk, along with a team of twentysomething wannabe tech bros, behaved as if they had acquired some form of super power that enabled them to spot inefficiencies.

The US aid agency, USAid, was effectively dismantled, sending shockwaves through aid agencies across the world.

Experts have warned that the move could lead to millions of deaths from malnutrition, Aids, TB, and malaria in the years ahead.

In South Sudan, from where the Irish Examiner’s Niamh Griffin recently reported, the cuts are already being felt. Children are forced to walk for hours in 40C heat to receive medical care.

Christoper Nyamandi, the country director for British agency Save The Children, has suggested that the world is looking away.

“There should be moral outrage that the decisions made by powerful people in other countries have led to child deaths in just a matter of weeks,” he said.

In the US, over 216,000 federal workers have been laid off and a whole host of programmes abandoned.

Robert Rubin, who served as Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, last month told Bloomberg that none of it makes sense on any level.

“We balanced the budget in 1998, for the first time in 30 years,” he said. “We knew what we were doing. I think these people haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re doing.

Doge is doing tremendous damage to government and the recipients of government services and activities

For Trump, the slash and burn works to both install people who are loyal to him, rather than the republic, and to provide leverage for tax cuts which will benefit the wealthy to the greatest extent.

The rule of law is under assault. The administration is blatantly ignoring the courts when it suits.

One judge ruled that deportations to Venezuela should cease because they were illegal. The justice department — now fully under Trump’s appointees — said the flights went ahead because Judge James Boasberg’s order was verbal rather than written.

Another judge has ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was illegally deported to El Salvador, because he was mistakenly identified as a criminal. Trump has claimed there is nothing he can do about it — which is entirely false.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland speaks during a news conference at Casa' Multicultural Center.  Mr Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Picture: Jose Luis Magana/AP

The judge, Paul Xinis, has threatened to hold officials in contempt of court. Trump’s people don’t seem to care, because they are confident that any such matter will go all the way to the Supreme Court — which has three Trump appointees and a majority of conservatives.

Elsewhere, the administration is targeting law firms that have represented people Trump considers opponents. Last month, investigations into 20 of the country’s top law firms were initiated.

The ostensible reason for the probe is to investigate whether these firms have used diversity employment practices to exclude white people from employment or promotion.

The premise may be ludicrous, but the investigation will cost a whole heap of time and money for the firms. After dealing with the judges, the autocratic playbook suggests nobbling the lawyers is the next priority.

Then there is the media. In the early weeks of his term, Trump banned leading new agency Associated Press from White House briefings because the agency refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

AP went to the courts and a judge ruled in its favour.

Last week, Trump’s people appealed the ruling. The issue is trivial, but the message imparted has a chilling effect: If you stray into territory uncomfortable for the president, expect to have cherished access whipped away.

Elsewhere, Trump has initiated legal actions against a number of media outlets which had reported on his various court actions.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on — but we don’t live in ordinary times

To complete the flooding of this zone, he has invited into press briefings various minor media personnel who have a strong record of supporting him and his politics.

These individuals are not there to hold power to account, but to deflect the media from doing so.

He has also turned his guns on academia, demanding that the government has unprecedented say over how universities are run.

The premise for this kind of overreach is that colleges have facilitated protests against the slaughter in Gaza which have been seen as antisemitic.

Harvard, the wealthiest such institution, has responded to the freezing of €2bn in federal funds with a lawsuit, claiming Trump wants control over admissions and the hiring of staff.

Recently, The Atlantic tracked the route Trump has taken to authoritarianism. It pointed out that he is following a playbook well worn by others such as Duterte in the Philippines, Orbán in Hungary, and Erdogan in Turkey.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth arrives on the South Lawn of the White House before president Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter egg roll on Monday, April 21. Picture: Alex Brandon/AP

“First, the leader removes those with expertise and independent thinking from the government and replaces them with leaders who are arrogant, ignorant, and extremely loyal,” it reported.

This is precisely what Trump has done, most disastrously with defence secretary Pete Hegseth, right across his administration.

The piece goes on: “Next, he takes steps to centralise his power and claim unprecedented authority.

“Along the way, he conducts all-out assault on the truth so that the truth-tellers are distrusted, corruption becomes the norm, and questioning him becomes impossible.”

America is not Hungary nor Turkey, but the long-standing democracy that — in the last century alone — was a bulwark against both fascism and communism.

In his first 100 days, Trump appears to be reshaping the country from within.

Whether the US has the strength to resist this grab for autocratic power should become clear before we hit the mid-term elections in 2026.

Hang onto your hat. Donald Trump has only just begun.