At 100 days, is a wounded Trump more dangerous? | Will Bunch Newsletter

144,000 minutes — how do you measure, measure 100 days? In tariffs, in scandals, in kidnaps, in cups of coffee? In crypto, in Hegseth, in insults, in lies? How about love?...for what America could be again once we pull together and stop the Trumpian nightmare before it’s too far gone.

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How are things going on the 100th day of Donald Trump’s second presidency? Let’s check in from the lawn of the White House, along a section nicknamed “Pebble Beach” that will look familiar to TV viewers who see reporters’ live shots on the morning news shows.

On Monday morning, when what America thought about Trump 47 on Day 99 was the lead story, reporters were shocked to find the entire strip lined with 100 mugshots of what the regime says are undocumented immigrants who’ve committed the most horrific crimes, like rape or murder. The effete snobs of the media might be obsessing about tariffs and the looming prospect of empty store shelves, but the “Real America” would see the monsters hiding under their bed, waiting for the strongman who promised he alone can fix it.

To Team Trump, the PR stunt was another sign of their own self-anointed brilliance. “White House lawn looks a little different this AM,” Kaelan Dorr, White House deputy communications director, wrote on the Elon Musk-owned social media site X. “And they say yard signs don’t win elections...”

Really? They haven’t invented “smell-o-vision” yet, so TV couch potatoes weren’t able to whiff the overpowering scent of desperation in POTUS 47’s latest attempt to use the alleged sins of the 100 worst humans in a population of 11 million or so in the hopes that you’ll join them in dehumanizing the 10,999,900 who mostly go to work, pay their taxes, and cherish their kids.

Arguably the worst thing about the Trump restoration is that screaming at the top of your lungs, “This is Nazi stuff!!,” has lost its power to shock or, arguably, move people — even when we remember this playbook of demonizing The Other to move the masses and deflect attention from the regime’s failings was on top of the pile on Joseph Goebbels’ desk.

The first 100 days of Trump’s weak strongman rule has, in many ways, proved even worse than his harshest critics (like me) would have predicted. The chaos has been crazier, as epitomized by the tariff regime that virtually no voter asked for and which has triggered a trade war with China that Trump’s America lacks the ammo to win. The Lies have been Bigger, from the president’s 200 trade deals when the actual number is at or near zero, or the frenetic spinning that a Maryland dad and sheet-worker mistakenly sent to a gulag in El Salvador is actually (with zero evidence) a major terrorist. The corruption has been massive, capped with a White House dinner promise to buyers of the Trump meme coin — money that goes directly into the president’s pocket.

The most surprising thing is not that any of this happened, but that the American people have actually noticed. Millions of voters in 2024 might have ignored all the bright red flags that Trump hoped to rule America as a dictatorial “Red Caesar,” but in 2025 they’ve noticed the autocratic style, and many of them don’t like it.

Trump’s approval rate has plunged in a couple of major polls, like the most recent Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos survey, to just 39% — not quite Richard Nixon Watergate territory, but getting there. It’s the worst poll numbers for any president nearing the 100-day mark since modern polling began. His approval from independent voters who provided his narrow margin over Kamala Harris is even worse, 31%.

At this point, the nice and easy thing for Trump to do would be to show some humility, not just as a human being but in rolling back some of his most unpopular policies such as the tariffs that have roiled the stock market, or to bring home the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. But there’s just one thing: You see, Donald Trump never, ever does nothing nice...and easy. Wounded and backed into a corner by the failures of his first 100 days, Trump is lashing out, and he’s arguably never been more dangerous.

Late last week, just as Trump’s terrible poll numbers were hitting the news, saw some of the worst moments of his presidency so far.

The rock bottom came Friday with the shocking news that a jurist in Wisconsin state courts — Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan — had been arrested outside her courthouse by FBI agents, charged with helping an undocumented immigrant “evade arrest” after a confusing episode involving federal immigration agents who arrived in the building seeking to deport a suspect in a case she was hearing.

Experts said the arrest was as legally dubious as it was unusual, but that didn’t stop top Trump regime officials from crowing about the dramatic seizure of the judge, including comments on Fox News from Attorney General Pam Bondi: “I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law. And they are not.” After 100 days in which judges have issued several dozen rulings against the Trump regime’s mass firings, dubious deportations and other moves, the Dugan arrest looked to most folks like a blatant effort to intimidate the entire judicial branch.

Bondi was at the center of a second controversy that day when reporters revealed a secret Justice Department memo telling federal agents it’s now okay to enter the homes of suspects without a warrant on suspicions of ties to groups like the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. The AG claimed legal authority for such raids under the ancient 1798 Alien Enemies Act. but legal experts call them a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Meanwhile, a separate Bondi memo that also leaked out on Friday revealed that her Justice Department is shredding a rule from the Biden administration that had limited the power of prosecutors to seize the records of journalists or force them to testify. She wrote that the Justice Department “will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.”

The vast powers of the U.S. executive branch — to investigate or spy on people and prosecute them or audit their income taxes or bring civil cases — are not new. Do you remember, your President Nixon? Still, Americans believed there were guardrails that included public opinion, congressional resistance, judicial rulings, and investigative journalism. Those were the four pillars that took down Nixon in 1974, and all of these tools have been activated with Trump in 2025. But rather than surrendering to political gravity, Team Trump seems determined to pretend none of this is happening and turn the knobs of dictatorship up to 11.

Nazi stuff? Well, it’s true that Adolf Hitler’s party never got more than 50% of the German vote, but when Hitler became chancellor by democratic means in 1933 he took just 53 days to dismantle civil society and establish his fascist autocracy.

Today, the Trump regime seems determined to cement its claim on absolute power while Democrats are still in a state of disarray and before the protests in the streets grow too large. After 100 days, there’s no doubt that the president is already bleeding, backed into a corner. But he’s still in charge of the world’s largest military and nuclear arsenal. A wounded Trump has never been more dangerous.

Question: Are the ports on the West Coast as empty of ships as what I’m hearing and if so what will the results be in stores in the future? — @moondance61.baky.social via Bluesky

Answer: Moondance, the short answer to your question is “yes,” and emphatically so. Cargo traffic to West Coast ports including the massive destination at Los Angeles and Long Beach has already seen a 45% drop that is continuing to accelerate, with the impact slated to hit East Coast ports soon as well. The trade war with China initiated by Donald Trump is, I predict, going to be THE BIG STORY of the summer of 2025, as consumers finding completely barren shelves at retailers like Walmart will make them long for the good old days of $9 eggs. When this happens, and it seems to be a matter of when, not if, I think the street protests of the Trump regime will grow exponentially, and even some Republicans may finally turn against him.

Last week’s question about what the government can do to incentivize young people to start families — as opposed to the Trump regime’s Hitler-borrowed idea of awarding medals to moms with six kids — was something of a wide-open, slam-dunk opportunity. Affordable child care, lowering rents, ending the student loan crisis, and preventing a future of climate change are some of the obvious ideas that newsletter readers endorsed — none of which are in the Trump playbook. “Women will have more children when reliable, convenient, affordable (or free) childcare is available,” wrote Carol Fritz, while Daniel Fleisher has a different take: “Not only are there already too many humans on the planet, there are already far too many humans in highly developed countries like the U.S."

📮 This week’s question: Our Super Bowl champ Eagles went to the White House — well, some of them. Jalen Hurts and a dozen or so other stalwarts seemed to have had other plans on Monday. But superstar running back Saquon Barkley, beloved in Philly as both an affable team leader and as someone who gives back to the community, raised eyebrows by palling around with Donald Trump at his Bedminster golf club the day before. Knowing the majority of readers are not Trump fans, do you think less of Barkley, or is the proper response, “It’s just golf!”? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Saquon Barkley” in the subject line.

Affectionately known as the “Nerd Prom,” the White House Correspondents Association’s (WHCA) annual dinner gala has always been a disgrace — revealing a depraved and decadent culture of Beltway journalism that parties and shares jokes with the power that it’s supposed to be speaking truth to. Things could have been different this year, at the start of a White House administration that is openly hostile to press freedom. With Donald Trump not even there, and with the comedy axed, the 2025 WHCA dinner on Saturday could have morphed into a rally of aggressive support for the First Amendment and criticism of the billionaire media owners who are bending a knee to the new Trump regime.

Sadly, the WHCA had already shown this was highly unlikely when it canceled the scheduled comedian, Amber Ruffin, after it came out that she’d called the Trump administration “kind of a bunch of murderers” in a podcast. Instead, the WHCA handed an award to Axios journalist Alex Thompson, who used his acceptance speech not to express his outrage at Trump’s attacks on a free press but to essentially echo them, saying the media has lost the trust of the America people. Not for its failure to aggressively warn of rising fascism, mind you, but for not going hard enough after Joe Biden’s mental acuity. “Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves.” Thompson said, in a statement that managed to be true yet also uttered about the wrong thing in the wrong place and time.

Look, I’m not saying that in a world of a million stories, Biden’s frailty and his ill-fated decision to try for a second term isn’t one of them. Thompson was blatantly, and I guess successfully, publicizing the forthcoming book he co-wrote with CNN’s Jake Tapper about exactly that subject. But...read the room, dude. Just the day before the dinner, it was reported that Trump’s Justice Department plans to more aggressively investigate journalists for alleged news leaks. Instead of attacking that, the headline coming out of 2025’s Nerd Prom was that maybe this guy plunging a knife into my back has a good point.

Just a day later, on CBS’ 60 Minutes, veteran journalist Scott Pelley showed Thompson and all the other black-tie nerds how it’s done. At the end of the program, Pelley stunned the audience with an impassioned defense of the show’s just-ousted boss Bill Owens and harsh criticism of his corporate bosses at Paramount for meddling in the show’s content while it seeks Trump administration approval for a lucrative merger. Said Pelley: “None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.” In a nation where honest journalism is fighting to breathe, we need more Scott Pelleys, fewer Alex Thompsons, and an end to the embarrassment of the Nerd Prom.

It’s important to note that this week marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. I had a lot to say on this date exactly 10 years ago to mark the 40th anniversary. I noted that while the contemporary hope, and vibe, had been that America would learn the lesson of avoiding pointless wars, the reality was that the nation instead learned how to fight them with drones instead of drafting young people and causing political unrest. I wrote: “The only lasting lesson of Vietnam was how to wage war without the people’s consent, and how to get away with it.” Read the rest: “Learning the wrong lessons from Vietnam.”

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