The Life in My Years

America has reached the momentous, yet really meaningless milestone that occurs every four years; the completion of the president’s first 100 days in office. It’s an unofficial-official anniversary demanded by nothing more than tradition. Neither required by law or mandated by the Constitution, the hundredth day is when the pollsters poll, the press reports (in varying degrees) and the pundits analyze, harrumph or huzzah, and then issue their report cards.

An article (link here) published by the think tank Brookings, provides a thumbnail history and explanation of the first 100 days and its importance; as if there actually is any importance to it.

The marking of a president’s first 100 days began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term. There’s a sad irony when one compares the two men on each end of the timeline; the one who received the very first 100 day report card with the man who received the latest. The differences are stark and revealing and shows just how far the dignity of the office can tumble.

Roosevelt began his presidency when America was in the depths of the Great Depression. His first 100 days were characterized by actions meant to stop the bleeding and to begin recovery. FDR, who had opened his presidency with the famous line from his inaugural address, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” augmented his legislative program by speaking regularly to the American people, with honesty and in reassuring tones, during his famous fireside chats. By the time death took Roosevelt, the U.S. economy was booming (admittedly with the help of a war that boosted production and the need for manpower).

In contrast, Donald Trump took a thriving economy which, after the disruption of COVID, was in full recovery, and in less than 100 days, managed to ravage it. Trump could’ve done absolutely nothing as regards the economy and after 100 days could have bragged about a healthy economy and brighter days ahead. Instead he’s owning an economy that’s on the brink of both inflation and recession (a magnificent feat in itself), along with the specter of empty store shelves just weeks to a few months away (indeed it’s estimated that in a week from this writing the volume of shipping arriving to the Los Angeles ports will be at 35% below normal).

Trump ran for office as the man who would fix the economy (which didn’t need fixing) on “day one.” He can be excused for using a politician’s hyperbole, but 100 days in, the economy is in shambles and Trump has gone back on his first promise by making a new promise, one that is 180 degrees the opposite, saying now that there will be some pain. So which promise does one believe? The answer is none, because Trump’s promises are a solid and reliable as wet toilet paper.

As the American economy melts down due to Trump’s tariffs, described by economist Paul Krugman as “malignant stupidity,” and Justin Wolfers, economics professor at University of Michigan, as “Monstrously destructive, incoherent, ill-informed tariffs based on fabrications, imagined wrongs, discredited theories and ignorance of decades of evidence,” and people begin to descend into a gulch of fear, Trump remains aloof, much as Herbert Hoover did as the economy careened into the Great Depression during his term.

Ironically, it was FDR who rescued America from the failure that was Herbert Hoover.

The parallels between Hoover, a failed president, and Trump, a failing president are hauntingly stark. Just as Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which increased tariffs (albeit focused ones) by about 20 percent helped to tank the U.S. economy, Trump’s tariffs which have absolutely no focus, no reason and no strategic planning behind them are the economic equivalent of two locomotives converging on the same track.

But the parallels don’t end with tariffs. Herbert Hoover in blaming America’s economic woes on immigrants, infamously said “American jobs for real Americans.” And the mass deportations began. Over 1 million Mexicans, including some who were actual citizens were deported.

In 100 days, Trump and the soulless members of his administration, Noem, Rubio, Holman, Miller, and Patel, have turned ICE, DHS and the FBI into America’s version of Hitler’s Gestapo or East Germany’s Stasi.

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FDR spoke to all of the American people as a leader working to lift up and unite a hurting America. All one has to do is to compare the messages delivered by the two presidents. during Holy Week.

In 1938, Roosevelt delivered a fireside chat during Holy Week. He began,
“Five months have gone by since I last spoke to the people of the Nation about the state of the Nation. I had hoped to be able to defer this talk until next week because, as we all know, this is Holy Week. But what I want to say to you, the people of the country, is of such immediate need and relates so closely to the lives of human beings and the prevention of human suffering that I have felt that there should be no delay. In this decision I have been strengthened by the thought that by speaking tonight there may be greater peace of mind and the hope of Easter may be more real at firesides everywhere, and that it is not inappropriate to encourage peace when so many of us are thinking of the Prince of Peace.”

Donald Trump knows no such language. He spews vengeance fueled, hate filled rhetoric that only serves to further divide all Americans. On Easter Sunday, the Christians’ day of eternal hope, the holiest of holy days, Donald Trump delivered vitriol, “Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack to violent that it will never be forgotten!”

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FDR was a man who bore the responsibility and the vast burdens of the presidency. Donald Trump reveals himself to be the deflecting coward that he is. During a recent interview with Time Magazine, Trump was asked about the case of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia:

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that you have to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. You haven’t done so. Aren’t you disobeying the Supreme Court?

Well, that’s not what my people told me—they didn’t say it was, they said it was—the nine to nothing was something entirely different.

Let me quote from the ruling. “The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.” Are you facilitating a release?

I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions. They feel that the order said something very much different from what you’re saying. But I leave that to my lawyers. If they want—and that would be the Attorney General of the United States and the people that represent the country. I don’t make that decision. (Italics mine)

In a later interview, one with ABC, Trump tried the same deflection, leaving the decision to return the man to Justice Department lawyers.

Somewhere, the sign saying “The Buck Stops Here,” that once resided on Harry Truman’s desk is collecting dust. It certainly isn’t on the current coward’s desk.

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Respect for the house the house that the people own
Roosevelt said during his Holy Week oratory, “I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust.”

Donald Trump, during his 100 days has been literally, and quite likely illegally, selling access to himself with a corrupt meme coin grift that is putting money in the Trump family’s bank accounts. Link here.

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One hundred days and what has changed?
For ten years, America has been shocked and buffeted by Trump’s vile, hateful magniloquent speech; from mocking the disabled, a Vietnam War POW, immigrants, people of color, the press, and anyone who he considers, at any given time, to have insulted or opposed him. Some Americans, the duped and the callous, see his churlish behavior as symbolic of strength. Any person with any measure of decency recognizes Trump as the vile knave that he is.

But over the first 100 days of Trump 2.0, the question of whether the second iteration could be worse has been answered. In three months Trump has portrayed himself as a king, acted as an authoritarian, and sheltered the rich while ignoring the poor. The most corrupt president in American history has broken the law, maligned judges, usurped power, and abused the Constitution. He’s been a ten years long scourge on decency, diplomacy and deference, but in this first 100 days Donald J. Trump has doubled down on the corruption, the hate, the incompetence, the sleaze and the vulgarity – and he’s done so with impenitence.

Below are links to transcripts of Trump’s Time Magazine and ABC interviews. Both interviews are filled with deflection, obfuscation, paranoia and disdain.

Time

ABC

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I could end this piece with a catalogue of Trump’s disdain and hatred but instead I’ll celebrate 100 days with the words of a past President who, despite his human faults, those that plague us all, spoke with empathy for all Americans.

“I try always to remember that their (the American people) deepest problems are human. I constantly talk with those who come to tell me their own points of view; with those who manage the great industries and financial institutions of the country; with those who represent the farmer and the worker; and often with average citizens without high position who come to this house. And constantly I seek to look beyond the doors of the White House, beyond the officialdom of the National Capital, into the hopes and fears of men and women in their homes. I have traveled the country over many times. My friends, my enemies, my daily mail, bring to me reports of what you are thinking and hoping. I want to be sure that neither battles nor burdens of office shall ever blind me to an intimate knowledge of the way the American people want to live and the simple purposes for which they put me here.”

A link to all of FDR’s fireside chats can be found here.