President Donald Trump marked the 100th day of his second term in office yesterday. He celebrated the milestone with a rally in Warren, Mich., a swing state that will be pivotal in the midterm elections next year. (Readers may recall that, last November, President Trump eked out a surprise 1.4 percentage point win against Kamala Harris in the Wolverine State.)
At the rally, the president boasted that he had “the best … 100-day start of any president in American history.” He called on Congress to approve the budget reconciliation package that will include the tax cuts that Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are working on, and criticized some of the individuals he believes are standing in the way of his success. Regarding Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, for example, he said, “You’re not supposed to criticize the Fed … But I know much more than he does about interest rates, believe me.” The president also criticized judges who are overseeing cases that challenge many of his executive actions.
Of course, there are some important metrics President Trump left out of his remarks yesterday. Let’s take a look at some of those data points.
By The Numbers: President Trump’s Second Term
The inside the Beltway newspaper The Hill offered some key statistics regarding the second Trump term in a newsletter yesterday. A few of these numbers are quite astonishing and clearly surpass presidential precedent.
For example:
- 142: The number of executive orders (EOs) President Trump has signed so far. That number breaks the record for the most EOs signed by a president in the first 100 days of his term. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt previously held the record with 99 EOs.
- 123: The number of active lawsuits against the Trump administration’s agenda.
- 5: The number of bills signed into law by President Trump. You would have to go back to the 1950s to find a president and a Congress that was less productive in the first 100 days of a new administration. President Barack Obama signed 14 bills into law in his first 100 days while President Joe Biden signed 11. In his first term, President Trump signed 30 pieces of legislation into law in his first 100 days.
- 7.9: The percentage drop in the S&P 500 since President Trump took office. That performance is the second worst on record, behind only President Richard Nixon’s first 100 days in his second, and disastrous, term. The Hill noted the S&P 500 usually increases around two percent in the first 100 days of a new administration. The dollar also has fallen nearly 10 percent since President Trump took office, the steepest drop for a new president in the 21st century.
Additionally, according to AXIOS, President Trump has declared more national emergencies than any president in modern U.S. history. That metric matters because, as AXIOS explained, “Powers originally crafted to give the president flexibility in rare moments of crisis now form the backbone of Trump’s agenda — enabling him to steamroll Congress and govern by unilateral decree through his first three months in office.”
One final number: the U.S. Department of Commerce released data on first quarter gross domestic product this morning. The economy shrank 0.3 percent in the first three months of this year. That number is a sharp decline from the 2.4 percent expansion the country saw during the final full quarter of President Joe Biden’s presidency. It also is a far cry from the first quarter growth rate of 1.7 percent seen in the first quarter of 2017, during President Trump’s first term.
Impact Of Elon Musk And The DOGE
There are perhaps two initiatives that are driving the weak economic numbers: tariff policy and the large-scale layoffs within the federal government. President Trump has imposed trade penalties on nearly every country and he has yet to strike a deal with a single nation to reduce tariffs, though the White House has for weeks teased that many such deals are imminent.
On the government spending side, while tech billionaire Elon Musk may be stepping back from his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the government efficiency commission clearly had an impact on President Trump’s first 100 days in office. According to Politico, the DOGE “cut a wide swath — shrinking the federal workforce to 1960s levels.” Indeed, nearly 250,000 federal workers have left or are expected to leave their federal jobs. That number includes more than 112,000 federal workers who have taken advantage of the Musk-offered deferred resignation program and approximately 121,000 workers who have been fired.
Politico also reported the DOGE “has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants.”
Musk’s team of analysts report that they have saved taxpayers $160 billion, but critics have argued those cuts will come at a cost. In fact, according to the Partnership for Public Service, the DOGE’s actions will cost taxpayers $135 billion this year alone. (That number is based on the lost productivity from departed federal workers.) There is no doubt that the DOGE cuts are making it harder for federal workers to do their jobs. Case in point: According to Reuters, because of DOGE-imposed freezes on the use of government credit cards, at one center at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, it took a scientist one month to get authorization to buy $200 of dry ice to preserve samples that needed to be sent to a lab for testing.
“The $135 billion cost to taxpayers doesn’t include the expense of defending multiple lawsuits challenging DOGE’s actions,” CBS noted. Nor does it include “the impact of estimated lost tax collections due to staff cuts at the IRS.”
This all may explain why Americans are largely unhappy with Musk and the DOGE. Not only are Tesla stock prices plummeting, but a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found 57 percent of Americans disapprove of how Musk is handling his role within the Trump administration. According to a Center Square poll out last week, 47 percent of Americans think the “DOGE is cutting too much.” Finally, a CNN poll out last month found 55 percent of Americans believe the DOGE spending cuts will hurt the U.S. economy. More than half, 51 percent, said the cuts would have a direct negative impact on their families.
Musk is more unpopular than the president, but, after 100 days in office, the commander-in-chief’s poll numbers are hardly trending in the right direction, either.
What The American People Think of the First 100 Days
In general, U.S. voters seem to disagree with President Trump’s assessment that he has had the best start of any president in American history.
On the economy, specifically, support for President Trump is slipping. Worries about how trade penalties will affect the cost of living have driven consumer confidence to a five-year low. Additionally, a CNN poll released earlier this week found nearly 60 percent of Americans believe President Trump’s policies are making the economy worse. A Gallup poll found that, for the first time since 2001, a majority of Americans believe their economic situation is worsening.
Top Republicans agree that, when it comes to Americans’ financial health and well-being, the president has not impressed the American people. “When it gets to the economy, he is in very bad shape,” GOP strategist Karl Rove told Fox News.
The president also seems to be losing support on a signature issue, immigration. According to The Associated Press, less than half of Americans, 46 percent, approve of President Trump’s immigration policies. About half believe the commander-in-chief has “gone too far” when it comes to the deportation of immigrants.
General approval ratings are also down and low compared to President Trump’s predecessors.
According to a Fox News poll released earlier this week, only 44 percent of Americans think the president is doing a good job. That number is far lower than it was for recent former presidents. President George W. Bush’s approval rating was at 63 percent after his first 100 days in office, for example. That number came after a prolonged and contentious recount and before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks united the nation behind the president. President Barack Obama’s approval rating was at 62 percent in late April 2009, and President Joe Biden’s was at 54 percent in late April 2021.
President Trump’s current approval rating is similar to what he amassed for his first 100 days in 2017. In mid-April of that year, 45 percent of Americans said they approved of the job President Trump was doing.
Voters also feel that the Trump administration is generally unstable. According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 66 percent of Americans described President Trump’s second term so far as “chaotic.”
Could President Trump turn these declining numbers around?
Of course, and there is plenty of time to do so. President Trump has only gotten through the first 100 days of his second term in office. Counting today, there are still 1,361 days left to go.