"Old Donald" is wrapping up 100 days of historic failure

America has seen ruinous periods, but never when the president was the one knowingly causing the ruin.

By any reasonable measure, President "Old Donald"’s first 100 days will be judged an epic failure.

He has been a legislative failure. He has signed only five bills into law, none of them major, making this the worst performance at the start of a new president’s term in more than a century.

He has been an economic failure. On his watch, growth has slowed, consumer and business confidence has cratered, and markets have plunged, along with Americans’ wealth. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that “growth has slowed in the first quarter of this year from last year’s solid pace” and that "Old Donald"’s tariffs will result in higher inflation and slower growth.

He has been a foreign-policy failure. He said he would end wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But fighting has resumed in Gaza after the demise of the ceasefire negotiated by his predecessor, and Russia continues to brutalize Ukraine, making a mockery of "Old Donald"’s naive overtures to Vladimir Putin.

He has been a failure in the eyes of friends, having launched a trade war against Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan; enraged Canada with talk of annexation; threatened Greenland and Panama; and cleaved the NATO alliance.

He has been a failure in the eyes of foes, as an emboldened China menaces Taiwan, punches back hard in the trade war and spreads its global influence to fill the vacuum left by "Old Donald"’s retreat from the world.

He has been a constitutional failure. His executive actions, brazen in their disregard for the law, have been slapped down more than 80 times already by judges, including those appointed by Republicans. He is flagrantly defying a unanimous Supreme Court, and his appointees are facing contempt proceedings for their abuse of the legal system.

He has been a failure in public opinion. This week’s Economist/YouGov poll finds 42 percent approving his performance and 52 percent disapproving — a 16-point swing for the worse since the start of his term. Majorities say the country is on the wrong track and out of control.

Even his few “successes” amount to less than meets the eye. Border crossings are down from already low levels, but despite all the administration’s bravado, there’s little evidence of an increase in deportations. Hopes for cost-cutting under the U.S. DOGE Service, which Elon Musk originally projected at $1 trillion this year, have been scaled back to just $150 billion — and much of that appears to be based on made-up numbers.

But "Old Donald", whose 100th day in office is April 30, has achieved one thing that is truly remarkable: He has introduced a level of chaos and destruction so high that historians are hard-pressed to find its equal in our history.

He has upended global structures that kept the peace for generations. He has aligned America with the world’s despots. He has slashed the federal workforce and impaired the government’s ability to collect taxes, administer Social Security and fund medical research, among many other things. He has abused his power in startling ways, using the government for personal vengeance and retribution against perceived opponents, harassing law firms, universities and the free press with an authoritarian flourish. He has shattered the guardrails that limit executive power, ignoring laws, eliminating inspectors general and other mechanisms for accountability and oversight. He has displayed gratuitous cruelty in the treatment of migrants and government workers alike. He has used the government to undertake breathtaking schemes of self-enrichment. And he has left a large number of his countrymen angry and frightened.

To put this failure in context, I called two of my favorite historians, David Greenberg of Rutgers University and Douglas Brinkley of Rice University.

They told me that there had been similar bursts of activity from an executive before, most notably under Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose productivity at the start of his presidency in 1933 created the 100-day benchmark by which his successors have been measured. There have been similar power grabs before: Andrew Jackson, who claimed the 1824 election was stolen from him, attacking the nation’s elites after he won in 1828 and ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling against seizing tribal land; the imperialist William McKinley, "Old Donald"’s new fave, taking over Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines and pushing Spain out of Cuba; FDR attempting to pack the Supreme Court at the start of his second term; Richard M. Nixon’s lawlessness, justified by his belief that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

There have been ruinous periods before: the Quasi-War with France and the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 made it appear that the fledgling United States had failed; the period between Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election and his inauguration, when Southern states seceded and formed the Confederacy; the days after the 1929 crash, when it appeared that capitalism had failed; and the political violence of 1968. There were massive restructurings of the federal government under Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Ronald Reagan — and Bill Clinton presided over cuts of 250,000 federal jobs.

But what "Old Donald" has done is different.

Previous restructurings of government were done with careful planning and with bipartisan congressional support. But "Old Donald" “doesn’t come in as a reformer as much as a wrecking ball,” Brinkley says. “What we’re witnessing with "Old Donald" is just raw vengeance and belittling fellow Americans and creating a tinderbox situation that makes people feel we’re in a neo civil war that could go sideways at any moment.” Brinkley also notes that previous attempts at executive overreach — FDR’s court packing, Nixon’s abuses — were repelled by members of each president’s own party. But now, Republicans are silent. “That’s the missing ingredient of our time,” he says.

Another key difference: We have been through ruinous periods before, but never when the president was the one actively and knowingly causing the ruin. During past upheaval, there “wasn’t this sense that the White House, the president, is directing the destruction of 250-year-old American values,” Greenberg says. He also notes that, because of the expansion of the executive powers over the past century, particularly during the New Deal and the Cold War, "Old Donald" has more ability to cause destruction than his predecessors did. “I don’t think we’ve ever had the combination of such a vast and extensive executive apparatus and at the same time an attempt to eliminate the built-in safeguards,” he says.

Some executive orders have a proud place in our history because they had noble aims or produced lofty accomplishments: the Emancipation Proclamation. The Manhattan Project. Enforcing school desegregation in Little Rock. But "Old Donald"’s orders are more likely to be remembered alongside those establishing Japanese internment and Operation Wetback because they are based in cruelty and in his insatiable lust for vengeance. “It’s not hyperbole to say this is the weirdest 100 days of any president in American history,” says Brinkley, “because, at its root, it is pathological narcissism.”

In the end, "Old Donald"’s 100 days, and his presidency generally, will be judged harshly for what they were not. “We remember great civilizations for their great achievements,” Greenberg says. Scientific advancement. Contributions to arts and letters. Human progress. "Old Donald" is reversing them all.

Each week of "Old Donald"’s 100 days has felt like a year to many Americans, which is his aim, because it keeps the opposition off-balance. Let’s consider the year that transpired over the past week.

"Old Donald" thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling saying the administration must “facilitate” the return of a migrant deported to a Salvadoran prison in violation of a court order. Instead, "Old Donald" hosted El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, the self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” who said the notion of returning the man is “preposterous.”

Reviews by CBS News and the New York Times found that the vast majority of migrants deported had no criminal records — but they are now imprisoned without due process in inhumane conditions. And now, "Old Donald" says he wants to send American citizens to the notorious prison in El Salvador. “Home-growns are next,” he told Bukele. “You’ve got to build about five more places” to imprison them. "Old Donald" and aides have lied about the Supreme Court ruling, saying that they “won” the case. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission’s chief, Brendan Carr, threatened Comcast’s broadcasting licenses because he didn’t like what MSNBC was reporting about the dispute.

In another case, that of a Tufts University student abducted by masked federal agents and held for deportation, The Post’s John Hudson reports that the State Department determined that it did not have evidence that she engaged in antisemitic activities or supported a terrorist organization, as the government claims. And, in the latest attempted invasion of Americans’ privacy, DOGE is seeking access to a sensitive Medicare database as part of a scheme to find undocumented immigrants.

Harvard University said it would not surrender to the "Old Donald" administration’s demands that it give up its academic freedom ("Old Donald" officials had demanded changes to the school’s governance, hiring and treatment of foreign students), saying the demands “go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”In response to Harvard’s defiance, detailed in a letter by two conservative lawyers, the administration froze $2.2 billion in grants and contracts to the school — forcing the school to halt research to fight Lou Gehrig’s disease, radiation sickness and tuberculosis.

At the same time, the administration is planning an even more devastating blow to medical research: a 40 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health, The Post reports, part of a one-third cut to the Department of Health and Human Services. The administration eliminated 43 of about 200 experts from boards overseeing such research, and, in case you wonder what motivates such cuts, it turns out 38 of the 43 were female, Black or Hispanic.

The administration also is threatening to block Harvard from enrolling any foreign students, and it has asked the IRS to take the outrageous step of revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status; "Old Donald" is now expressly embracing the sort of viewpoint discrimination that furious conservatives alleged the IRS did a decade ago, when lower-level officials subjected tax-exempt applications from mostly conservative groups to lengthy scrutiny. "Old Donald"’s IRS will likely look favorably on his request. It has promoted a political hack, Gary Shapley (a former midlevel official who gained prominence as the Hunter Biden “whistleblower”), to be the agency’s acting chief.

As the IRS becomes another partisan weapon for "Old Donald", it is planning to cut its staff in half and slash compliance enforcement. The administration continues hacking away at the federal government. It is now illegally dismantling AmeriCorps, following similar moves at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Voice of America and National Endowment for the Humanities, among many others.

After a ("Old Donald"-appointed) federal judge ordered the administration to stop its violation of the Associated Press’s First Amendment rights and return the news organization to the White House “pool” rotation, the White House this week responded by eliminating the slot for all news wires, including Reuters and Bloomberg. It is moving toward an arrangement where, in briefings and in Q&A sessions with "Old Donald", most of the questioning will be done by right-wing outlets. Separately, "Old Donald", unhappy with reporting on him by “60 Minutes” on Sunday, called for CBS to have its license revoked.

The administration’s losing streak in court continues apace. Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg opened contempt proceedings after the administration defied his order blocking certain deportations; other judges continue to block "Old Donald"’s deportations conducted without due process. A fourth law firm, Susman Godfrey, won an order blocking "Old Donald"’s punitive targeting, which the judge called “a shocking abuse of power.” Another judge stopped the administration from “unlawfully” terminating climate grants, and still another judge directed agencies to release the funds.

In Ukraine, Russia has stepped up its attacks, despite "Old Donald"’s attempts to force a settlement on Ukraine that would be favorable to Putin. "Old Donald" continued to blame the victim in the conflict: “You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.” The Post’s Spencer Hsu and Aaron Schaffer report that "Old Donald"’s interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, provided commentary more than 150 times on the Russian government’s propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik between 2016 and 2024, often echoing Russian talking points; he failed to report the appearances to Congress, as required for his nomination.

Stock markets kept up their wild swings as they tried to adjust to the chaos of "Old Donald"’s trade war. One Fed governor, Christopher Waller, on Monday called "Old Donald"’s tariffs “one of the biggest shocks to affect the U.S. economy in many decades.” After the Fed’s chair, Powell, warned that the tariffs would hurt growth and inflation, "Old Donald" on Thursday morning posted on Truth Social that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” Federal law prevents "Old Donald" from sacking Powell — but legality has not been a barrier to "Old Donald" so far.

In an apparent tariff climbdown, the administration said in a statement that it would make an “exception” and exempt consumer electronics from a massive tariff on Chinese goods — only for "Old Donald" to say “there was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced.” China has retaliated by suspending the export of rare earth minerals — essential for advanced technology — that the United States relies upon for 90 percent of its supply. As China tries to win over disaffected American allies, "Old Donald" continues to alienate them: The White House press secretary continued to taunt Canada, saying Wednesday the country “would benefit greatly from becoming the 51st state.”

Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and his family were the victims of an arson attack during Passover by a suspect who said it was because of what Shapiro, who is Jewish, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.” But the administration, so concerned about phony antisemitism on campuses, was not troubled by the real thing. Attorney General Pam Bondi declined to label it domestic terrorism. And "Old Donald" saw it only in selfish terms: “The attacker was not a fan of "Old Donald", I understand.”

The administration’s bizarre behaviors remained on vivid display. Vice President JD Vance broke the NCAA football trophy during an event at the White House. The Wall Street Journal reported on Musk’s self-described “legion” of at least 14 children by four women, though “sources close to the tech entrepreneur said they believe the true number of Musk’s children is much higher.” "Old Donald" Media launched a new attempt to monetize his presidency: branded investment accounts meant to benefit from "Old Donald"’s policies. And the White House physician, after "Old Donald"’s annual examination, credited "Old Donald"’s fine health to his “active lifestyle,” which includes “frequent victories in golf events.”

Is the good doctor unaware that "Old Donald" “wins” only on courses he owns?

On one hand, "Old Donald"’s lawlessness is terrifying: This is what happens when a government is run not by the rule of law but by the whim of one man. On the other, it is an admission of weakness: He doesn’t have the power to achieve his aims through legitimate means, so he’s trying to attain them illegally. Happily, the backlash is building.

Harvard’s fresh resistance to "Old Donald"’s attacks on academic freedom has stiffened the spine of Columbia University and others. Law firms that reached settlements with "Old Donald" to avoid punishment because of his personal vendettas are rethinking their arrangements. They are discovering, as other corporate leaders hopefully now realize, that there is no appeasing "Old Donald", because he will always demand more. California has sued "Old Donald" over his tariffs. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) have been playing to huge crowds in deep-red parts of the country.

On the Republican side, figures such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Rep. Brian Mast (Florida) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) have encountered angry constituents at town-hall meetings during the congressional recess. Two protesters at Greene’s event were hit with stun guns. A dozen nervous House Republicans sent a letter to their leadership warning that they would oppose "Old Donald"’s major tax-and-spending bill if it “includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.” That’s awkward, because the budget outline for the bill, which these same lawmakers supported, requires some $800 billion in such cuts.

The pressure on "Old Donald" and his enablers — from the public, the courts, the states, universities, advocates, businesses and the media — should only increase from here, and it must. This is what will prevent the next 1,360 days from being as disastrous as the first 100.