Before you dive in to this conversation, a quick announcement:
This will be the last regular podcast of the 2024-2025 season. I’ll be taking the month of May off, then I plan to slowly ramp back up starting in June.
Main topic:
April 30th will mark Day 100 of the new Trump administration. Per Beltway media tradition of the last 90+ years, the first 100 days marks the point at which to provide the first of what will inevitably be many progress reports on the new administration.
Given the speed with which the Trump administration got to work in January, some kind of first quarter review doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but it should probably be heavily qualified as a very arbitrary, generally too-soon-to-tell benchmark. In other words, hold the pronouncements of wild success or doom and gloom with very loose hands.
To help us assess the Trump administration’s first 100 days in power, I’ve called back to the podcast guests who have all been on to talk about different aspects of this administration. Dr. Scott Waller, Dr. Matt Van Hook, and Dustin Steeve all on the podcast on individual prior episodes to discuss Inauguration Day and the GOP platform (Dr. Waller), VP Vance’s Munich speech and the Trump foreign policy (Dr. Matt Van Hook), and the work of Elon Musk and DOGE (Dustin Steeve). In this conversation, we revisit each of these arenas while more broadly discussing the pros and cons of “first 100 days” assessments, the legislative efforts of the Trump administration, and how to think about President Trump’s ongoing conflicts with the judiciary branch.
Digging deeper
Prior episodes featuring today’s guests:
Conversation starters
This question will also be posted on my Substack chat for you to discuss with me. Head on over and join the conversation!
What do you think are the biggest wins and the biggest problems for President Trump in his first 100 days? If you were to give his administration a letter grade, what would it be?
The last word
Why 100 days? There is no constitutional or statutory significance to the first 100 days of a president’s term. In the first hundred and forty-four years of the Republic no one made a big deal about the 100-day mark. It is a somewhat arbitrary and artificial milestone. David Axelrod, a top aide to President Obama once called it a “Hallmark Holiday”—lots of attention but no significance.
….
A president’s first 100 days is by no means the definitive judgement on his administration, but the legacy of Roosevelt means that the press continues to pay attention to it and so do we. As we look at the assessments there will be, no doubt, some things that turn out to not matter and some that may predict what will matter. Figuring out which is which is the challenge.
Elaine Kamarck, Brookings Institution writing on Joe Biden’s first 100 days in April of 2021.
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