Donald Trump and the Republicans create one hundred days of chaos

Echo opinion published in The New Yorker by David Remnick

100 Days of Ineptitude

Donald Trump incompetent administration 
ImpeachTrumpNOW

Eight years ago, in this space in The New Yorker magazine, a survey of the first hundred days of the initial Trump presidency described just how “demoralizing” the Repubican Administration had already proved for any citizen concerned with the fate of liberal democracy. In both rhetoric and action, Donald Trump had undermined the rule of law, global security, civil rights, science, and the distinction between fact and its opposite. As we noted,The 

"A hundred-day marker is never an entirely reliable indicator of a four-year term, but it’s worth remembering that Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama were among those who came to office at a moment of national crisis and had the discipline, the preparation, and the rigor to set an entirely new course. Impulsive, egocentric, and mendacious, Trump has, in the same span, set fire to the integrity of his office."

Trump never concealed his motives or his character. He came to office in 2017 celebrating the illiberalism of Andrew Jackson and William McKinley and waving Charles Lindbergh’s banner of “America First.” At the Inauguration, he took in the spotty attendance on the Mall and instructed his press secretary to declare the crowd the “largest ­audience to ever witness an Inauguration—­period.” Trump went on from there, demagogue and fantasist, striving to ban travellers from predominantly Muslim countries and to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Media-drunk, he tweeted at Kim Jong Un, Hillary Clinton, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, while hate-­toggling between CNN and MSNBC. He appointed Michael Flynn, a QAnon❗ favorite, as his national-security adviser––until he regretfully had to fire him three weeks into the term. He amused himself by antagonizing close European allies and declaring nato “obsolete.”

There were many more moments of chaos and cruelty to come, but now we know that Trump’s first term, his initial attempt at authoritarian primacy, was amateur hour, a fitful rehearsal. The reflexes and ambitions were all there; he just didn’t know yet what he was doing. His victory over Clinton had been a shock, so when he frantically prepared for office he threw together a motley staff of bug-eyed ideologues, silver-haired establishmentarians (who “looked the part”), and family members and retainers who hoped to profit from the job while getting off on all the super-cool trappings of power. 

As a result, his first term was characterized by an ambient contempt for him inside his own Administration. 

His first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was reportedly convinced that Trump was a “moron,” and both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, and the chief of staff, John Kelly, eventually concluded that the Commander-­in-Chief was, in a word, a fascist.

Trump still managed to exact plenty of damage, yet the feuding in his midst, along with the episodic flashes of congressional opposition, popular protest, and resistance in the courts, forestalled some of his fondest ambitions from being realized. Time ran out. He lost reëlection. His insurrection failed.

But he was not done. During his four-year interregnum at Mar-a-Lago, Trump gazed down the fairways and concluded that Joe Biden was too diminished to win again. On this, he was right and the Democratic leadership deluded.

 What’s more, Trump resolved to be himself, only more so: Trump Unbound. While the commentariat saw his increasingly bizarre improvisations at the lectern as no less disqualifying than Biden’s confusion during the fatal debate, Trump kept faith with his dominant source of inspiration––retribution. With a wink, he denied any knowledge of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s vision for the ­exercise of executive power, but few doubted that he would enact its plans. For would-be advisers and Cabinet officers, obedience was the sole qualification. 

In fact, the Trump Republican Administration is now stocked with the greasily sickeningly obsequious cult Republicans, like attorney general Pam Bondi (IMO her next job should be to recreate the character of Nurse Cratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest). Rank incompetence also seems no impediment to employment. 

How else to explain Pete Hegseth’s move from the weekend desk at Fox News to the big office at the Pentagon? And in what other Administration would put bulbs as dim as Howard Lutnick or Peter Navarro, be called upon to craft the future of the world’s largest economy?