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Trump Celebrated His First 100 Days by Attacking Biden

Multiple polls show that Trump has the worst ratings of any President in decades at this point in his term. But he doesn’t believe the polls unless they affirm his claims. While polls show that the public is opposed to his tariffs, economic uncertainty, and continued inflation, he continues to claim great success and to attack Joe Biden. One big change: he switched referencing “the late, great Hannnibal Lecter” and now refers to “the late, great Al Capone.”

In other words, he’s the same old Trump: boasting, lying, and insulting his enemies.

Dana Milbank watched his 100-day celebration of the “new golden age” and reported back:

President Donald Trump, at his Michigan rally on Tuesday night marking 100 days in office, gave a shout-out to his traveling groupies from the campaign trail. There was “my friend, Blacks for Trump,” the guy in the brick-patterned suit he identified as “Mr. Wall,” the group of “beautiful women” from North Carolina and the “Front Row Joes.”

“I miss you guys,” he said. “I miss the campaign.”
I believe him.

After 100 days on the job, Trump has found the hard work of governing to be less pleasant. His tariffs have destabilized markets and brought historic levels of pessimism to American businesses and consumers. His policies have alienated allies and emboldened Russia and China. He has the lowest approval rating that any president in generations has experienced at this stage of his presidency.

Those were simpler times, when he could make up nonsense claims about how Joe Biden, “the worst president in history,” had turned the United States into a “failing nation” and a “third-world country” — and could present an alternative in which Trump would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, spread peace across the planet and make a booming U.S. economy the envy of the world.

So what did Trump do to mark his 100th day in office? He renewed his campaign against Biden.
“What’s better, Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe?” he asked his supporters in Michigan. “Ready? A poll!”

Having ascertained from the crowd that they preferred the moniker “Crooked Joe,” Trump revived a favorite campaign story about his retired former opponent. “He goes to the beach, right? And he could fall asleep … drooling out of the side of his mouth. And he’d be sleeping within 10 minutes.” The story went on in disjointed fashion: “Carrying the aluminum chair, you know, the kind that’s meant for old people and children to carry? It weighs like about four ounces. And he couldn’t get his feet out of the sand … He’d be in a bathing suit. Somebody convinced him that he looks great in a bathing suit.” [Imagine Trump in a bathing suit!]

Trump invoked Biden’s name 21 times on Tuesday night, not counting an additional nine references to “Sleepy Joe” and “Crooked Joe,” a transcript shows. This is on top of various and sundry disparaging references to the “last administration” or simply “this group” or “that guy.” By comparison, Trump made just two mentions of the economy in an hour and a half, and seven of inflation — and even these were often employed to describe “Biden’s inflation disaster” and the like.

Here was a president with so little to say about his own achievements that he dwelled on the imagined failures of another man: “Sleepy Joe, the worst president in history … Biden had no control … Joe Biden was down 35 points. The debate was not a good one for him … Whoever operated the autopen was the real president.”

On some level, Trump must have known it wouldn’t really work to blame Biden for his problems. Recounting a conversation with an appointee about the price of eggs, Trump said the price would have to come down, because “nobody is going to believe me when you get out there that it’s Sleepy Joe Biden’s fault.”

And yet that’s just what Trump spent the night doing. For 100 days, he has run the country with authoritarian sweep, unconstrained by Congress (with its subservient GOP majority) or by concern for what is legal or constitutional. If things aren’t going well, he has nobody to blame but himself.

Yet he looked everywhere for villains to take the fall. He mocked “Kamala, Kamala, Kamala” and “lunatic” Bernie Sanders “going around with AOC.” He blamed “fake polls” put out by the “crooked people” in the media. He cited the “totally crazy” backbenchers who want to impeach him and imagined that “the radical Democrat Party is racing to the defense of some of the most violent savages on the face of the Earth.”

He recited his grievances as if the months and years had never passed: Democrats “tried to cheat” in 2024. They “tried to jail your president.” He was “under investigation more than the late, great Alphonse Capone.” To his familiar list of persecutors, he added a few new entrants: “grandstander” Republicans,” the Federal Reserve and “communist radical left judges.”

Even so, he insisted that he presided over “the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, and that’s according to many, many people.” By “many people” he apparently meant “Stephen Miller,” for the presidential aide joined Trump on the stage and shouted at the crowd that Trump is “the greatest president in American history!”

Trump regaled his audience with phony achievements in lieu of actual ones. The cost of eggs is down 87 percent. We now have a trade surplus. His actual approval rating is “in the 60s or 70s.” Americans say the country is headed in the right direction for “the first time ever.” His tariffs are acts of “genius.”

The crowd cheered for his inventions. They cheered for Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth. They cheered for a video showing migrants, deported without due process, being humiliated at an El Salvador prison. They cheered him for pardoning the “political prisoners” who attacked the Capitol. They cheered when a junior aide joined him on stage and asked, “Trump 2028, anybody?”

The rally began, as during the campaign, with the song “God Bless the USA” and ended by doing his Trump dance to “YMCA.” Supporters waved placards proclaiming a new “Golden Age.”
And yet, the magic was gone. The pool traveling with Trump’s motorcade found relatively few supporters lining the motorcade route. When Trump called a supporter onstage for a lengthy tribute ending with the words “President Trump, I love you,” a girl on the stage behind Trump yawned. Attendees started trickling out of the arena 30 minutes into his speech and continued doing so over the next hour.

Perhaps they had come seeking reassurance about their present troubles — only to hear from a man mired stubbornly in the past.

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01/05/2025
Trump Plans to Harass More NonProfits that Help Poor People: His Easter Message

Politico reports that Trump plans to go after the tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations he doesn’t like or send in DOGE to destroy them. Should we refer to him as King Donald? He also intends to wipe out the career civil service, replacing civil servants with appointees who are committed to his agenda, not to the U.S. government.

His second term is not about making America “great again” but about vengeance, retribution, and cruelty, as well as complete power over the federal government. Trump is now intent on punishing anyone who ever criticized him or stood in his way. It doesn’t matter to him that federal law prohibits the President from influencing IRS decisions. When has a law ever stopped him? Emoluments clause? Forget about it. Due process? No way. A nonpartisan civil service? No way.

Politico reported:

LATEST: President DONALD TRUMP announced this afternoon that he plans to invoke “Schedule F,” which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. The change would make it easier for Trump to fire career government employees he believes are not in line with his agenda. The move comes three months after a Day One executive order which reinstalled Schedule F from his first term.

“If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” Trump said in his post. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”

NONPROFITS FEEL THE HEAT: The Trump administration is mounting a sweeping offensive on America’s nonprofit sector, deploying a blend of funding cuts, the elimination of tax benefits, bureaucratic paralysis and even installing a small DOGE team to target organizations that challenge the president’s agenda.

The tactics include indirect measures, like hollowing out entire grant-making agencies like AmeriCorps and USAID, and making federal personnel or contract cuts at other agencies so deep that groups can no longer access grants or loans. But there are also more direct efforts, like visits from DOGE or the USDA halting $500 million in deliveries to food banks.

DOGE staffers have attempted to install their own operatives inside major nonprofits like NeighborWorks, a community development group, and the Vera Institute, which advocates for lower incarceration rates.

It’s a campaign that’s hitting a sector that’s already struggling. “You’re cutting or eliminating government funding at the same time when donations are going down, at the same time that costs are going up for the nonprofits and the demand for their services is going up,” said RICK COHEN, chief communications officer at the National Council of Nonprofits.

In just over two months, at least 10,000 nonprofit workers have lost their jobs, according to an estimate from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And groups providing essential services including housing, education and domestic violence support — and who are already scrambling in an uncertain economic environment — could now face an even steeper funding drought.

“Non profits have been running wild off of the drunken unchecked spending of the federal government and that stopped on Jan 20. We are no longer going to support organizations that stand in stark contrast to the mission of the president of the United States,” White House spokesperson HARRISON FIELDS said in a statement.

The Trump White House is considering a budget proposal that would completely eliminate funding for Head Start, a federal program providing early childhood education administered by 1,700 nonprofit and for-profit organizations, the Associated Press reported. It’s unclear if Congress, as it did during Trump’s first term, will keep funding for groups that Trump’s proposed budgets stripped.

Meanwhile, other groups such as NeighborWorks and the Vera Institute are being pressured from the inside. DOGE staffers met with senior leadership at NeighborWorks on Tuesday and requested that a DOGE operative be embedded in the organization’s staff, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting granted anonymity to avoid retribution.

“NeighborWorks America is a congressionally chartered nonprofit corporation,” not a government agency, said NeighborWorks spokesperson DOUGLAS ROBINSON, emphasizing that the group is aligned with the administration’s housing goals.

NeighborWorks, which provides grants and training to 250 community development groups, is usually governed by a five-person board composed of senior leaders from five different federal agencies.

“There’s concern they’re going to load the board up, get rid of officers, and install someone else to implode the organization,” one of the people said. “Slashing that organization during a housing crisis really goes against the president’s platform of creating additional homes and the ticket to the American dream.”

At the same time, Trump is escalating rhetoric against nonprofits that don’t receive federal dollars but have challenged his administration, including good governance groups.

Asked this week about whether he’d consider revoking tax-exempt status from groups beyond Harvard, Trump singled out Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit ethics watchdog group. “They’re supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump.”

“For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government,” said CREW spokesperson JORDAN LIBOWITZ.

Meanwhile, White House officials are finalizing a set of executive orders that would revoke the tax-exempt status of environmental nonprofits, particularly those opposing oil, gas and coal development, Bloomberg reported. The move could be unveiled as early as Earth Day on Tuesday, symbolically reinforcing the administration’s fossil-fuel priorities.

Meanwhile the AP reported that DOGE contacted the Vera Institute of Justice, which tries to reduce incarceration rates, and said that DOGE planned to embed a team at Vera and all other nonprofits that receive federal funding. Vera told them they had already lost their federal funding so DOGE staffers were not welcome.

Vera, which has an annual budget of around $45 million that mostly comes from private funders, advocates for reducing the number of people imprisoned in the U.S. They consult with law enforcement and public agencies to design alternative programs to respond to mental health crises or traffic violations, and also support access to lawyers for all immigrants facing deportation.

Nonprofits told the AP that the Trump administration was eroding civil society by its efforts to undermine their work.

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20/04/2025
Boston Globe: Harvard May Beat Trump by Using His Tactics

James Pindell of The Boston Globe predicts that Harvard University has a better hand than Trump in their epic confrontation. Harvard, like Trump, can employ the tactics of delay, delay, appeal, delay, appeal, which Trump used to avoid accountability for provoking an insurrection and trying to overturn the election that he lost. Despite plentiful evidence of the greatest crime against our in our history, Trump used delay-and-appeal to evade punishment.

Furthermore, Harvard has its pick of the best lawyers in the nation. And it has the funding to bear the burden of prolonged litigation.

He writes:

Harvard University is unrivaled when it comes to securing smart, high-powered legal advice, often from people who have the institution’s long-term interests at heart. Four of the nine current US Supreme Court justices are Harvard alumni. Retired Justice Stephen Breyer still maintains an office at the law school. And with a $53 billion endowment, Harvard can afford to hire virtually any white-shoe law firm it chooses.

But as Harvard formally resisted the Trump administration’s latest round of demands this week — unprecedented even by the administration’s own standards — it seemed, ironically, that the university might be borrowing a legal strategy from President Trump himself.

Step one: Deny any wrongdoing. Step two: Assemble a team of elite lawyers to challenge every question, motion, and investigation at length. Step three: Stall, delay, and wait it out.

This is a playbook Trump has used for decades. Most recently, it served as the foundation of his legal strategy in three criminal trials during his post-presidency. In each case, he managed to use procedural maneuvers and aggressive delay tactics to his advantage.

Sure, Trump’s ability to dodge accountability is often described as uniquely his own. But in this case, Harvard may actually hold the better cards, at least in terms of timing and institutional resilience.

In just 600 days, Democrats could reclaim the majority in the US House of Representatives. In four years, Trump will no longer be president. (Speculation about a third term is a separate column.) Harvard, by contrast, was founded 389 years ago. Those entrusted with its future are planning for it to exist at least another 400. From that perspective, Trump’s second term is a blip.

The Trump administration first went after Harvard two weeks ago, with what at the time was largely about antisemitism on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. But on Friday night, the Trump administration sent Harvard a second letter, escalating its pressure campaign. Unlike the first letter, which focused on claims of rampant antisemitism on campus and threatened a loss of federal research funding, this second demand went much further. The administration insisted that Harvard overhaul its hiring and admissions practices, abandon academic independence in curricular matters, and adopt some vague form of ideological “balance” — as defined by the administration now and in the future.

And in another move right out of Trump’s own playbook, Harvard isn’t just preparing for court — it’s leveraging the standoff as a public relations opportunity.

Columbia University, facing immense internal and external pressure, saw two university presidents resign in two years and ultimately made concessions. Harvard, too, had a president resign under pressure from conservatives in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. But this week, by contrast, the school is being praised within academic circles for standing its ground. It is positioning itself as a standard-bearer for academic freedom and likely sees this moment as one that could define its leadership and credibility among peers.

But in the long term, Harvard uniquely may have the resources and the legal muscle to delay without conceding a single point, at least until there is a new US president. It also has the financial cushion to cover essential programs it deems vital to its mission. This, for Harvard, is what a rainy day looks like — and it has a very large umbrella.

The Trump administration apparently realized belatedly that they went too far in the demands they made in threatening Harvard. The New York Times reported that the letter demanding control of the curriculum, of admissions, and of “ideological diversity” among the faculty and students was sent in error and did not have the appropriate vetting.

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19/04/2025
Trump Goes After Two Critics, and His Attorney General Will Help His Vendetta

Trump is following through on his frequent threats to punish anyone who crossed him in the past. He recently ordered his compliant Attorney General to investigate two men who were critical of him during his first term. Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, wrote about the tyrannical nature of this action and about Pam Bondi’s willingness to do whatever he wants.

Honig writes at the website Cafe, a hub for legal experts:

Donald Trump’s presidential payback tour rages on, and now it’s personal. It’s one thing to target multi-billion dollar law firms, universities, and media outlets for organizational retribution; those efforts, aimed at stifling and punishing any criticism or dissent, are reprehensible in their own right. But now Trump is going after individual private citizens, using the might of the Executive Branch to potentially throw his detractors in prison.

In a pair of official proclamations – rendered no less unhinged by the use of official fonts and White House letterhead – Trump identifies two targets who worked in the federal government during his first tenure and dared to speak out publicly against him. First: Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from 2018 to 2020 and made headlines when he publicly contradicted Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. For this act of heretical truth-telling, Trump labels Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor” – whatever the hell that means – who poses grave “risks” to the American public.

And then there’s Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who publicly criticized the President in an anonymous book and various media appearances. Taylor, like Krebs, purportedly poses “risks” to the United States, is a “bad-faith actor” (though apparently not a significant one like Krebs) and “stoked dissension” with his public commentary.

Are you scared? Don’t you fear the “risks” posed by these two monsters?

True to the form he has displayed when going after disfavored law firms, Trump hits below the belt. The President orders security clearances stripped not only from Krebs and Taylor but also from everyone who works with them (Krebs at a private cybersecurity firm, Taylor at the University of Pennsylvania). He’s punishing his targets – plus their employers and colleagues, First Amendment freedom of association be darned.

It gets worse. In a separate set of orders, Trump directed the Attorney General to open criminal investigations of Krebs and Taylor. Notably absent from the orders is any plausible notion that either might have committed a federal crime. This hardly needs to be said, but it’s not a federal crime to be a “bad-faith actor,” to “stoke dissension,” or even to be a “wise guy,” as Trump called Krebs from the Oval Office.

The next move is Pam Bondi’s – and we know how this will go.

Any reasonable, ethical attorney general would follow the bedrock principle that a prosecutor must have “predication” – some kernel of fact on which to believe a crime might have been committed – to open a criminal investigation. The bar is low, but it serves the vital purpose of preventing precisely the baseless retributive inquests that Trump has now ordered up. In observance of this foundational precept, even Bill Barr – the subject of sharp criticism in my first book, Hatchet Man – generally ignored Trump’s public pleas for the arrests of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and others. Like the exhausted parent of an unruly toddler, Barr would mostly sit back and let the tantrum pass.

Don’t count on Bondi taking the same course of passive resistance to the President. She has already shown her true colors, and they’re whatever shade Trump pleases. For example, despite the distinct possibility of criminality by top administration officials around the Signal scandal, the AG refused even to investigate. Instead, she decreed – after zero inquiry, with zero evidence – that information about military attack plans was somehow not classified, and that nobody had acted recklessly. Case closed, no inquiry needed.

Bondi no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. She’s in the bag for Trump. The question now is whether she’ll cross the line that even Barr, her crooked predecessor, would not, and use the Justice Department’s staggering investigative power as an offensive weapon.

Even if DOJ investigates but concludes it cannot bring a criminal charge, the threat to Krebs and Taylor is real. Any criminal inquiry takes an enormous toll on its subject; subpoenas fly, friends and colleagues get pulled into the grand jury, phones get seized and searched, legal costs mount, professional reputations suffer, personal ties fray. Ask anyone who has been investigated by the Justice Department but not indicted. They’ll tell you it’s a nightmare.

If Bondi does somehow convince a grand jury to indict somebody for something, Trump has unwittingly handed both Krebs and Taylor a potent defense: selective prosecution, which applies where an individual has been singled out for improper purposes. Exhibit A (for the defense): Trump’s own grand proclamations, which openly confess to his personal and political motives for ordering a Justice Department inquiry. Selective prosecution defenses rarely succeed, often because prosecutors typically don’t commit their improper motives to paper. But this would be the rare case where the evidence is so plain – it’s on White House letterhead, signed by the President – that a judge could hardly overlook it.

Trump has long made a habit of threatening his opponents with criminal prosecution through social media posts and by spontaneous outbursts from the lectern. Until now, it was mostly bluster, a public form of scream therapy for the capricious commander-in-chief. But now it’s in writing, from the president to the attorney general, who typically jumps to attention to serve whatever suits the boss, prosecutorial standards be darned. Trump’s dark fantasies are coming to life.

Elie Honig served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8.5 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5.5 years. He is currently a legal Analyst for CNN and Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities

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12/04/2025