*TV20 NEWS || AMERICA : Frank Islam is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, civic leader, and thought leader, Trump’s 100 Days: A “Tarrifying” Start to His Second Term*

“Tarrifying!” That is our invented one-word assessment of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office as president for a second term. Those days have been “tarrifying” not just in terms of trade, but in actions taken across the board by the Trump administration.

The nature of Trump’s performance was not unexpected. In fact, this is what Trump campaigned on, and he is doing what he said he would do.

Trump himself confirmed the accuracy of this perspective during his 100 days interview with Time Magazine on April 22, in which he said, “… I think that what I’m doing is exactly what I’ve campaigned on…You know, everything that I’m doing — this is what I talked about doing.”

Trump’s performance during these 100 days was also not unexpected because it is an extension and amplification of who he was in his first term.

If that seems like an overstatement, consider the following from a blog we posted in April 2018 after Trump’s first year in office:

Recently it dawned on us that because of Trump’s unique style and persona, no existing term could depict it completely or accurately. So we have coined divert-autocracy as a new compound word to capture the essence of Trump-ness.

This divert-autocracy is a full-frontal assault on the United States of America as we have come to know it. The divert-autocracy is a system in which:

• • One person attracts attention to himself as the source of all power but deflects it when that attention is unfavorable.
  • Decisions are guided by impulse and instinct instead of facts and figures.
  • Blame is placed on one’s predecessors for all problems future and past.
  • Lies are the leitmotif for changing the subject.
  • The Fox is in the henhouse, and watching TV beats reading anything.
  • Loyalty is demanded but none is given in return.
  • The citizens are deliberately divided into supporters and opponents.
  • Many are called to serve but few are asked to stay around for very long.
  • Saying one thing today and the opposite tomorrow, or an hour later, is par for the course.
  • The government is the enemy and reducing or eliminating government agencies’ capacity to fulfill their stated missions is the goal line.
  • Building a Wall takes precedence over building bridges to bring Americans together.
  • America First is the slogan signifying America’s withdrawal from world leadership.

As Yogi Berra would say, in many ways the first 100 days of Trump’s second term looks like “Deja vu all over again.” Much of what has gone down was expected because of Trump’s previous time in office and his promises this time round. What was not expected, however, was the extreme and frequently cruel nature of the actions taken during the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.

These actions were made possible by three primary factors: the game plan put together for Project 2025; Trump’s cabinet and the key individuals around him; and Trump’s persona on full display.

Project 2025 In Play

When Donald Trump came into office on January 20, 2017, he didn’t have much, if any, plans for what he actually wanted to accomplish as president. This was not the case on January 20, 2025.

Trump had a game plan called the Project 2025/Presidential Transition Project (Project 2025 or The Project). During his campaign for election to be President, Trump purported to know nothing about The Project because his advisors feared it would hurt his chances to be elected. (As always, Trump was telling the truth.)

The goal of Project 2025, as stated on its website, reads as follows:

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.

The project was built on four pillars:

• A Policy Agenda — proposals for every major issue facing the country
• A Personnel Database — a network across the country for conservatives
• Training — by experts, in workshops, seminars, online videos, mentorship
• A 180 Day Playbook — actions to bring relief from the Left’s devastating policies

Project 2025’s Policy Agenda pillar was constructed based upon the book Mandate for Leadership (The Mandate), published by the Heritage Foundation.

Georgetown history professor Thomas Zimmer concluded Part One of his highly critical four-part commentary on Project 2025 by declaring:

Unfortunately, this is not just a campaign speech, not just the abstract manifesto of a feverish mind. It comes with over 900 pages of concrete plans and a detailed strategy of how to take over and transform American government into a machine that serves only two purposes: autocratic revenge against the “woke” enemy — and the imposition of a reactionary vision for society against the will of the majority. From the perspective of multiracial, pluralistic democracy, “Project 2025” is not a promise, it is a threat.

Project 2025 was definitely a threat when it was published in 2024. At that time, though, it was only proposals on paper. In 2025, those proposals have been put into play in order to wreak havoc throughout the federal government and across this country.

An important thing to note from Project 2025 is that the goal for the Project stated “we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry out this agenda on Day One…” and that its fourth pillar was a “180 Day Playbook.”

The governing agenda was there, and the right people were there as well. And sadly, there is still time left in the Playbook to use the Project’s plans to continue its damaging impact on America and Americans. David Graham emphasized this in his article for The Atlantic, writing:

Project 2025 has proved to be a good road map for understanding the first months of Donald Trump’s second term, but most of the focus has been on efforts to dismantle the federal government as we know it. The effort to restore traditional families has been less prominent so far, but it could reshape the everyday lives of all Americans in fundamental ways.

The Trump Disruption Team

During his first term, when President Trump wanted to take disruptive actions or launch initiatives that made little or no sense, and could have had negative consequences, his key staff and cabinet members persuaded him to change his mind or change his plans.

In this second term, there’s no one in the Trump inner circle to speak out against what might be ill-advised steps. The Trump team this time around is comprised of advisors, actualizers, and enablers dedicated to implementing a disruptive extremist agenda.

The members of Trump’s cabinet, such as Peter Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel, who we commented on in an earlier blog, receive the greatest media coverage for their lack of qualifications and/or egregious behavior.

There are others in the inner circle who are even more influential. They include, but are not limited to: Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and Peter Navarro. All three of these not-so gentlemen served in the Trump administration during its first term, and have leadership positions in the second.

Stephen Miller, who will turn 40 in August, was a White House policy advisor and speechwriter during Trump’s first term. He became known then for his negativity and outspokenness, drafting Trump’s inaugural address, and for his aggressive, authoritative anti-immigration stance.

In this term, Miller has moved closer to center stage, serving as Homeland Security Advisor, and upped his volume to speak untruths and attack those who disagree with his perspective. The Southern Poverty Law Center begins its article on Miller by stating:

Stephen Miller is credited with shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump, which include the zero-tolerance policy, also known as family separation, the Muslim ban and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Russell Vought served as the Deputy Director and Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during Trump’s first term. He has returned to serve as the Director of OMB in the second term, with an ambitious agenda to cut all federal programs and spending, and to accomplish what he could not during round one.

After Trump lost to Biden, Vought left OMB to found the Center for Renewing America. While there, he was a key author of Project 2025 and The Mandate, writing chapters on increasing executive power to give the president virtually unbridled authority over the government. Due to that, Bloomberg News wrote an article citing him as the “Real Mastermind Behind Trump’s Imperial Presidency.”

The extent of Vought’s current influence and power as the head of OMB is indicated by the fact that the AP reports that during his confirmation hearing, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech, “Confirming the most radical nominee, who has the most extreme agenda, to the most important agency in Washington [is a] triple-header of disaster for hardworking Americans.”

Which brings us to Peter Navarro. Who would never have been called a mastermind, but perhaps could be called a “foolish mind,” and also perhaps an even bigger “disaster for hardworking Americans,” because of his leadership role in Trump’s “tarrifying.”

Navarro was Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy during the first Trump administration, advocating for a trade war against China and large tariffs. He had only nominal impact, though, because, as Ann Swanson notes in writing for the New York Times, he was “sidelined, mocked and minimized by other officials who saw his protectionist views on trade as factually wrong and dangerous for the country.”

Two of the things Navarro did in the four years between Trump’s first and second terms were:

• Write a memoir titled Taking Back Trump’s America.
• Serve four months in prison for contempt of Congress, by refusing to testify to the House Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Navarro proclaimed he was in prison as a “martyr for MAGA.”

This fealty to Former President Trump was repaid by the re-elected President — and convicted felon — Trump naming former prisoner Navarro senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Together, these two collaborated to launch the comprehensive world-wide tariff trade war for which the United States and its citizens have already begun to pay a heavy price.

Tariffs properly used are important tools. What was announced on the so-called Liberation Day as a full-out tariff assault on every nation in the world made absolutely no sense.

As Michael Kranish and Jeff Stein note in their masterful Washington Post article on Navarro:

Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s, said the policy is so “egregiously bad” that it could “wreck the economy.”

Zandi said that while economic consensus on anything is rare, in this case, he doubted whether even one out of 100 economists would agree with Navarro’s approach — but Trump does. “The reason Navarro has such influence is it dovetails with what the president thinks about the world…”

Donald J. Trump on Full Display

It’s not only what Trump “thinks about the world” on trade that we see in this second term. By Trump’s being surrounded now only by folks like Miller, Vought, Navarro, and others who are his apprentices — or should we say acolytes or accomplices — and facilitated by the Project 2025 Trump Liberation document, we see “an extension and amplification of who Trump was in his first term.”

Don’t take our word for that. Take President Trump’s. In an interview conducted in late March, he said to Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic, “The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys.” “And the second time, I run the country and the world.”

Yes, this time we see Donald J. Trump, the conqueror and the ruler on full display. We see among other things: the monarch, the know-it-all, the revenger, the truth-teller, and the flip-flopping rambler.

The Monarch 

While Trump has not been named king, there is no question that he is moving toward exercising almost total control over the three branches of our federal government and our American citizenry. He is doing this because he believes, or at least says he believes, that he had a “landslide election victory” and has a “mandate” to do what he thinks is right. (Truth be told, Trump’s election was not a landslide, nor was he given a mandate.

In addition, even though Trump does not have a crown to wear, he has remade his oval office in the style of a king. According to Carolina A. Miranda of The Washington Post,

Trump has gone golden, taking the office into baroque and rococo realms typical of 17th- and 18th-century French monarchs… the sparkle conveys something more insidious about how Trump views himself. Behold the new Sun King, a wannabe emperor who views his powers as absolute…

The Know-It-All

In the mid-nineteenth century here in the U.S, there was a Know Nothing Party. In this 21st Century, there is a Know One Thing Party — The Party of Trump (POT — formerly the Republican Party).

The one thing the POT knows is that Donald Trump knows it all. He first told them so when he accepted the nomination to be their candidate for president at the Republican convention in 2016, stating, “I am your voice.” “I alone can fix it.”

In spite of that claim, as Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker document in detail in their book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, he failed completely in his attempt to demonstrate his fix-it capabilities in his last year and throughout his first term in office.

The Revenger

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023, Trump told the audience, “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

Unlike his unsuccessful attempt to “fix it” in his first term, Trump is delivering on his promise of retribution during his second term. That retribution is being accomplished by governing primarily on behalf of the MAGA base and seeking revenge for them. What Trump didn’t tell his supporters was that the main person whom he would be seeking revenge and retribution for is Trump himself.

While Trump didn’t fix-it during his first term, he did implement policies that hurt certain groups such as immigrants and women. Adam Serwer pointed that out in his Atlantic article, published in 2018, in which he wrote, near the beginning, “The Trump era is a whirlwind of cruelty…” And explained near the end, “It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him…”

In his second term, as Thomas Edsall stresses in his New York Times article, titled “Trump is Insatiable,” the retribution is more targeted and focused on those who have offended Trump, such as specific law firms, universities, and media providers.

The Truth Teller

When he was running for office in 2016, candidate Trump said “I will never lie to you. I will never tell you something I do not believe…. I will always tell you the truth.” And, thankfully Trump has never lied to us.

At least, that’s what Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist, would have us believe. As Deena Zaru of ABC reports, in an interview with Jonathan Karl in January 2018, Bannon stated that to his knowledge, Trump had never lied as President, and clarified that “I think he speaks in a particular vernacular that connects to people in this country.”

Fast forward to 2025. In his Time Magazine interview, Trump asserted that because of his tariff threats, “I’ve made 200 deals.” When questioned about who they were with, and when they would be announced, Trump began by explaining, “Because the deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price.”

He rambled on from there, but never answered the question. The good news is we know that because Trump will never lie to us, we will soon learn about the 200 big, beautiful deals that he has done for us in his department store.

The Flip-Flopping Rambler

Trump’s here today, gone tomorrow, back some time, in some places, on some things. Tariff talk is undoubtedly the most well-known instance of his flip-flopping approach.

The Time Magazine interview is an absolute must-read to see his meandering approach to discussing important issues in detail. Here’s just one example from that interview. The interviewer says: You said you would end the war in Ukraine on Day One.

Trump responds: “Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.”

This gobbled-gook non-answer says it all about Trump’s incoherent speaking and thinking style.

To be fair, in this second term there are some areas in which we think Trump excels.

The areas that come top-of-mind for us: Signing executive orders with a felt tip pen. Getting screen time for himself in the Oval Office, on Air Force One, and in all points inbetween. Taking time off from work to play golf and to visit his golf courses. Getting Elon Musk and DOGE to do the dirty work, and take much of the blame for the cuts to the federal government. Using his White House connection to raise funds for himself; promote and market Teslas; and sell crypto-currency. Bringing the country to the edge of a possible recession. Alienating our traditional allies and global partners.

In closing, we must repeat that the first 100 days of the Trump administration have indeed been “tarrifying.” They have also been terrifying because they are the product of much more than 100 days.

These first 100 days are the product of Trump’s first term of 1460 days in office, plus his 1460 days out of office. In combination, those 2920 days were devoted to putting together an aggressive and destructive agenda, and a team to execute that agenda in the first 100 days and going forward.

The question becomes: will those executioners kill our American democracy? At this early stage, they are threatening the future and scaring the people of the United States about the current state of our country.

The extent of that damage is reflected in Trump’s poor and declining polling numbers. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll conducted between April 18–22 showed that only 39% approved — while 55% disapproved — of “the way Donald Trump is handling his job as President.” This compares to 45% who approved and 53% who disapproved in their February poll.

In this poll, Trump received negative marks of “disapprove” on all seven issues surveyed. These marks ranged from a low disapproval rate of 53% on handling of immigration, to high disapproval rates of 64% on handling of tariffs on imported goods, and 67% on the recent turmoil in the stock market.

The poll also gave Trump high disapproval ratings on: Looking out for the interests of average Americans (58%). The economy (61%). And U.S. relations with other countries (61%).

The American public in general is obviously dissatisfied, and wants a change in direction. David Brooks provides his perspective and advice on our current condition in his April 17 New York Times article. He writes:

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

We agree with Brooks, and will present our own thoughts on what needs to be done in our next blog.