I’ve got no clue why so many in the media decided yesterday (Tuesday) was the 100th Day of Donald Trump‘s second term in office, when it is actually today (Wednesday). Am I missing something? No matter how many times I checked, counted, re-checked, recounted, asked AI, the 100th day — not that any of it actually matters, unless you find accuracy from your media to be helpful — is today. So, today is when we officially “celebrate” it on The BradCast. [Audio link to full, rollicking show follows below this summary.]
As we are wont at landmark moments in the second Trump Presidency, we are joined again today by two of our old school blogger friends who have been right about almost everything over the past 20+ years, whether the rest of the world wanted to notice or not. HEATHER DIGBY PARTON is the award-winning columnist at Salon and proprietor of Digby’s Hullabaloo blog, and ‘DRIFTGLASS’ is the notorious eponymous blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast. They’ve both got plenty of thoughts to share at this particular “landmark moment”.
Trump’s approval ratings are plummeting on virtually every single issue via every single legitmate poll released over the past few days. Perhaps most notably, for the moment — and for his own softening supporters — his self-induced tanking economy is top of mind today. But, he’s a loser on his immigration and mass deportation policies as well. Now, why would that be, given that he was supposedly elected for his great economic prowess (“Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary of words!,” he declared repeatedly in last year’s campaign and right on up through his fateful “Liberation Day” on-again, off-again worldwide tariff proclamation earlier this month) and to “solve” the immigration issues that he and Republicans and Fox ‘News’ have been stoking and worsening for political purposes over so many years?
But none of it is working, as it turns out China is refusing to cower in the face of Trump’s 145% tariffs because, as their Foreign Minister explained this week, “it will only make the bully want to push his luck more.” There are quite a few elite American law firms, universities and media outlets that may wish to take notice of that response from the largest exporter of goods purchased by Americans, as ships will soon no longer be arriving and shelves at stores may be bare by the time we get to Christmas. That, as new economic numbers out today find that American GDP in the first quarter has fallen by 0.3% after increasing by 2.4% in the final quarter of last year under the economic guidance of President Biden, and more than two-thirds of Americans now predict a Trump Recession on the near horizon.
As to the violence, recklessness and fecklessness of his mass deportation policy, both of our guests concur that is backfiring as well. His supporters also seem to have begun to take notice. As Driftglass argues, they are seeing that “if anyone without a visa can be locked up and deported overnight, you can be, because now we have no Due Process.” As Digby observes, “this is happening to people just like you who voted for Trump. And it could be you. They are not discriminating.”
But there is much more on our plate to discuss today — from why all of this is happening and whether it meets or exceeds our guests expectations; to what each of them expect to be Trump’s response to his plummeting polls; to who they expect to be the first Trump cabinet member to fall; to what sort of Democrat is needed out there to guide the party back to relevance and put Humpty-Dumpty back together again — if it can be.
Digby says she’s “aged 10 years in the last 100 days” — me too! — as Driftglass breaks down what he describes as Trump’s “fascist death spiral”. Let it be true.
Join us, won’t you?…
“I’ve got no clue why so many in the media decided yesterday (Tuesday) was the 100th Day of Donald Trump’s second term in office, when it is actually today (Wednesday).”
Good eye!
“Am I missing something?”
I would say no you are spot on with your arithmetic and they reserve the right to a “new meaning of 100 days” (The First 100 Days: Origins and Facts).
Anyway, ChatCPT may “be knowin’ ” (The AI Chronicles).
“The Romans Tried to Save the Republic From Men Like Trump. They Failed.” (The Village Voice)
Obviously, Trump’s greatness is so vast, that 99 days under Trump equals 100 mormal days. Or sump’n.
But I wonder . . . If the economy gets bad and STAYS bad, does that mean the Biden presidency never ends?
DonL @3,
LOL!