The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s first 100 days were supposed to be the opening sequence of a dramatic political restoration: a new president arriving with an outsider’s swagger, a stack of aggressive promises, and the kind of momentum that could force Washington to move faster than it wanted to move. Instead, the polling that came in on April 23, 2017, suggested something much less cinematic and a lot more precarious. Trump was sitting on historically weak approval numbers for a newly inaugurated president, with surveys showing him struggling not only against his opponents but against a broader public judgment that the job was not being done well. The numbers were poor in the most basic sense, but they were also poor in a more revealing way. They suggested that many Americans were already deciding that the early Trump presidency was less a reset than a mess.

That matters because early approval is not just a popularity contest for its own sake. A president’s standing in the opening months shapes how much room he has to pressure Congress, how willing members of his own party are to publicly defend him, and how much patience allies and independents are willing to give before turning skeptical. Trump had sold himself on a simple proposition during the campaign: judge me by the results. But by the time the 100-day mark approached, the results were difficult to spin as a win. The White House had promised speed, force, and certainty, yet the public was seeing turbulence, reversals, and a steady stream of distractions. That combination tends to be especially damaging when a president is still supposed to be cashing in the good will that usually comes with a fresh inauguration. Instead of building a cushion, Trump appeared to be burning through it.

The bad news was not confined to one narrow question or one partisan slice of the electorate. The surveys showed Trump badly rated on basic measures that often define how a new president is perceived, including whether he was handling the job competently, whether he had achieved anything meaningful, and whether the country felt like it was moving in the right direction. That broader pattern is what made the polling more troubling than a simple headline about approval. A president can sometimes survive if the public dislikes him personally but still thinks he is getting things done. He can also survive if the public is frustrated but still believes he is learning on the job. Trump’s numbers pointed to a deeper problem: skepticism about both his style and his substance. Democrats were obviously eager to hammer the point, but the more meaningful warning sign was that independent voters and some Republicans also seemed uneasy. The base remained loyal, but the larger coalition a president usually relies on to stabilize early turbulence looked thinner than advertised.

The political implications of that are hard to ignore, even in a presidency that specialized in noise. Weak approval can make Congress less responsive, because lawmakers hate attaching themselves to a sinking brand. It can also embolden critics inside and outside the president’s party, who suddenly have more confidence that resistance will be rewarded rather than punished. For Trump, the problem was intensified by the way his White House had framed the early months. This was supposed to be an era of rapid wins and relentless dealmaking, a demonstration that his blunt style could overpower the normal slowness of government. Instead, the administration often looked like it was improvising its way from one crisis to the next. That left Trump in a difficult position: he wanted the public to see strength, but the polling suggested that many voters were seeing drift. He wanted to look inevitable, but the numbers made him look isolated. And he wanted the 100-day milestone to confirm that he had changed Washington, yet the data were starting to suggest that Washington might be changing him.

There is always some danger in reading too much into one set of polls, especially this early in a presidency. Approval can move, and political conditions can shift quickly when a president has control of the agenda and the megaphone. But the significance of the April 23 surveys was that they did not look like a temporary dip caused by a single bad week. They fit a larger pattern of early disillusionment, in which Trump’s brand of politics seemed to be losing its shine faster than a normal new administration would expect. The public was not just saying it disliked him; it was signaling that the early performance was not building confidence. That is a dangerous place for any president to be, and it is especially dangerous for one who entered office promising that everything would be bigger, faster, and more successful than before. By the eve of the 100-day mark, the honeymoon was not merely fading. It looked dead on arrival, and the polling suggested that a growing share of the country had already moved on to judging what kind of presidency this was likely to become.