With headlines like these, you have to wonder if Donald Trump is tired of “winning” yet...first up, The Washington Post:
Mr. Trump has reversed a generation-old trend toward openness, becoming the first president in modern times to conceal his tax returns and scrapping an Obama-era policy of publishing a list of White House visitors. He and his spokesmen frequently ignore facts and embrace misinformation. If he gets his way on policy, the nation will plunge more deeply into debt, global warming will accelerate and millions of vulnerable Americans will lose access to health care while the wealthy are further enriched.
But some of these policies are meeting resistance. When the nonpartisan CBO estimated that 24 million Americans would lose health coverage under Mr. Trump’s plan, even Republicans in Congress balked. Opposition bloomed at town hall meetings across the country. There have been women’s marches and scientists’ marches — and some politicians have listened. Federal judges have slowed Mr. Trump’s efforts to go after immigrants and immigration, efforts that at least in their early versions were closer to demonization than serious policy. Meanwhile, voters in Europe, perhaps sobered by what they see in the United States, have been choosing centrist internationalism and rejecting the kind of ethno-nationalist politics that animated the most dangerous of Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Peter Dreier at The Nation:
The president shouldn’t be so defensive. He has indeed accomplished a lot in the 100 days since his inauguration. Here is just a partial list of all that Trump has already achieved:
1. Revitalized Alec Baldwin’s otherwise fading career and expanded Melissa McCarthy’s visibility due to their respective impersonations of Trump and press secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday Night Live.
2. Galvanized a massive resistance movement that included what was likely the largest protest (as many as 5 million people) in American history—the January 21 women’s marches and rallies in over 600 cities. [...]
10. Set a record for the number (15!) of high-level appointees who withdrew (such as Andrew Puzder, his pick for labor secretary), quit (such as deputy White House chief of staff Katie Walsh), or were quickly fired (such as national-security adviser Michael Flynn) within a few weeks or months as a result of conflicts of interest, lousy vetting, ethics violations, negative media stories, and/or their inability to handle the White House’s chaos.
Former Obama and Clinton aide Ronald A. Klain analyzes the major failures of Trump’s presidency so far:
No president meets all of his ambitious promises for action in the first 100 days — but no president has done less to even try to deliver on his economic promises than Trump. [...]
Trump has been stunningly blasé about staffing his administration. His victory was a surprise, so his transition was understandably less prepared. Republicans may be less easily enticed than Democrats into taking government jobs. But no president has done so little to staff so much of the government so far into his term as Trump.
This failure presents a long-term problem for Trump. Delays in filling higher-level jobs mean delays in filling mid-level jobs, and so on. Luckily for Trump, his administration has not had to face a major crisis. That string will break at some point. A hurricane will devastate a city, an offshore oil well will explode, an epidemic will threaten our shores. And a government without appointees in key posts will be woefully ill-equipped to cope. The inevitably inadequate response will have a lasting impact, not least for Trump.
David Graham at The Atlantic writes about Trump’s incompetence:
The twin pitfalls for a new president are the same ones the great Tommy Lasorda described in his approach to baseball: “I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.” A president can try to push his vision aggressively on Congress, risking backlash from members—let’s call that the Bill Clinton approach. Alternatively, he can try to hang back and let Congress act, risking the chance that without presidential leadership, members will come up with something he doesn’t like, or even worse that they can’t pass. We’ll call that the Barack Obama approach.
Donald Trump now runs the risk of making both errors, one of each on his two major legislative priorities: Obamacare repeal and tax reform.
Amy Davidson takes on Ivanka Trump:
[A}s John Oliver noted in a recent segment on Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, there is no proof that she is benefitting anyone beyond her family. She is simply brilliant at giving the impression that she might be. For example, in Berlin, when NBC News asked her about admitting Syrian refugees to the United States, she said that it should be “part of the discussion, but that’s not going to be enough in and of itself.” The resulting headlines suggested that this constituted a break with her father. But how, exactly? Refugees are “part of the discussion” when he rails against them; and “not going to be enough” could just as easily refer to what the President sees as the need for “extreme vetting,” or letting in only Christians. She referred, for a second time, to the areas “in which I’m fully aligned with my father—which are many.” “Many” could mean anything, but, in practice, her duties as what Germany’s ZDF television news referred to as “Papas Pressesprecherin“—Daddy’s press secretary—are extremely broad. She wanted voters to know that he ought to be President, and now she wants the world to understand his greatness, too.
Even by Trump’s own 100 day agenda, he’s failed:
He has taken some action on the executive orders he proposed, but even a favourable reading of the document would, at best, give him a mark of one out of 10.
On the second page of the contract, Mr Trump outlines 10 legislative goals he promises to introduce and pass through the Congress with the first 100 days. To date, he has barely followed through on one of them — to repeal and replace Obamacare. His first draft at a new healthcare bill was pulled before it was even introduced because it was clear it didn’t have enough votes. And a new version is now being debated among Republicans before being introduced to the House of Representatives.
It’s not exactly what you would call “winning bigly”.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch:
His bombastic, overblown rhetoric blew up in his face time and time again, with embarrassing results. Outlandish campaign promises — to build a border wall, repeal Obamacare, renegotiate the NAFTA free-trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, label China a currency manipulator and implement “extreme vetting” of immigrants — withered as the new president learned that it’s a lot easier to talk and tweet about governing than it is to actually govern.
Will Bunch says that despite not scoring up legislative wins, it will take years to undo the damage Trump has done to the presidency:
Yes, it's true that Trump is nowhere close to delivering some of the cataclysmic policy changes that he promised during his campaign: The repeal of Obamacare, the "great wall" on the southern border, the Muslim ban, etc., etc. Don't let those failures lull you into a false sense of security. Trump has already sledgehammered the basic trust between Americans and their government in ways that will take years to repair.
And, on a final note, the editors at USA Today call out Trump for his inability to simply do his job:
Trump’s presidency is a chaotic and haphazard affair. He tweets up a storm but doesn’t bother to fill key positions in government. He obsesses over how he is covered on cable television while letting U.S. relations with allies deteriorate.
If there's any kind of coherent vision or moral purpose, it's hard to discern. As president, Trump seems mostly focused on keeping the Republican base in his corner and creating moments that allow him to claim a “win” in that day’s news cycle.
Trump spent his entire career selling himself as the smartest businessman with the best properties for sale. And now he can’t stop the selling. He has spent roughly one in three days in office at a Trump-branded property, continuing his frontal assault on ethical government, and has continued spouting exaggerations and outright falsehoods. [...]
Lately, he has offered a new selling point: that no administration has accomplished more in its early days in office. If the benchmark is turmoil at home, doubts about America abroad, a degradation of public discourse and dogged efforts to deprive citizens of health coverage, then he is right. By more common standards, he is dead wrong.
So far, Mr. President, we're not tired of winning.