THE HUNDRED DAYS: The bell has been tolling for President Trump!

MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2025

Has it also been tolling for these? It's as we reported last Friday afternoon:

Wandra Petronski, a fictional grade school kid, said she had "a hundred dresses," all lined up in her closet.

In similar fashion, President Trump has now had (almost) a hundred days in the White House in this, his second time around.

As the hundredth day approaches, a wide array of polling entities, including the Fox News polling unit, has surveyed the public's view of this second bite at the apple. Last Friday night, as she opened her show, Rachel Maddow reviewed the findings of those polls. 

In our view, she may have overstated a bit—though then again, possibly not. For ourselves, we've been vastly encouraged by these polls—but in several programs at the end of last week, Maddow seemed elated. 

Below, we'll link you to Mediate's fuller report about what Maddow said last Friday night. Here's the way she started:

MADDOW (4/25/25): ...We started last night’s show with a look at public opinion concerning this president and this presidency as he approaches the end of his crucial first 100 days in office. And as we discussed on last night’s show, the numbers for him are brutally bad.

In the Pew poll, President Donald Trump is underwater in his overall approval rating by 19 points. 

In the Fox News poll, people are asked if Trump’s policies are helping or hurting the U.S. economy. They say Trump’s policies are hurting the U.S. economy by a margin of 22 points. 

In The Economist/YouGov poll, they asked if Trump is generally helping or hurting not just the economy, but the whole United States....The American people say Trump has hurt the United States, and they say it by a 24-point margin.

From there, Maddow proceeded to list detailed results from a newly released New York Times / Siena College poll. In this report for Mediaite, Tommy Christopher provides a lengthy transcription of Maddow's remarks:

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Gleefully Roasts ‘Rejected And Hated’ Trump Over Brutal Blizzard Of Polls

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow gleefully mocked President Donald Trump over a raft of devastating poll numbers, and suggested his desperation is making him do “crazy” things.

On Friday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, the host opened the hour with a recitation of devastating poll numbers...

That's the way Christopher started. Soon, he provided a lengthy transcript of Maddow's remarks about numbers she said were "brutally bad"—about numbers which, she further said, show that Trump is "roundly rejected and hated."

Was Maddow right in her general assessment? Yesterday, the situation almost seemed to get worse for the president when the Washington Post reported the results of its own new poll. 

Some of these numbers were brutally worse! Here's a chunk of the Post's report: 

Trump approval sinks as Americans criticize his major policies, poll finds

[...] 

Trump’s overall approval rating is lower than it was only two months ago. The poll shows that 39 percent of adult Americans approve of the way Trump is handling his job, compared with 55 percent who disapprove, including 44 percent who disapprove strongly. In February, those numbers were 45 percent positive and 53 percent negative.

Among registered voters, the deterioration has been even larger. In February, 48 percent of registered voters gave him positive marks, compared with 51 percent negative. Today those numbers are 42 percent positive and 55 percent negative, a swing from net negative three percentage points to net negative 13 points.

Trump’s approval rating is lower than for any past president at the 100-day mark in their first or second terms. At a similar point in their first terms as president, 42 percent approved of Trump and 52 percent approved of President Joe Biden... 

The Washington Post had the president all the way down to 39 percent. It was "lower than for any past president at the 100-day mark in their first or second terms"—and the numbers got even worse with respect to most major issues.

Meanwhile, even the Fox News poll had Trump's job approval at 44 percent, as opposed to 55 percent disapproval. And that survey was released last Wednesday, at a time when the approval numbers seemed to be getting worse on a daily basis.

That said, consider this:

All across the Fox News firmament, messenger children struggled and strained to keep those low approval numbers away from Red America's eyes. This started with a comical performance on last Thursday afternoon's broadcast of The Five—a performance which showed how far we humans will sometimes go, possibly in service to true belief, possibly in defense of high corporate salaries.

As the week went along, the numbers were bad—and they seemed to be getting worse. That said, to our own eye and ear, the numbers aren't bad enough.

What do we mean by that? Consider that first number from the Washington Post's report:

Just 39 percent of respondents approved of the job President Trump has been doing—but 42 percent of registered voters said they approved of his performance.

Presumably, 42 percent is more than enough to keep the president moving ahead. His ability to function unfettered is tied to the refusal of Senate Republicans to oppose his various ventures—and their refusal to stand and fight is directly tied to the strong allegiance Trump still holds within the Republican base.

If (something like) 40 percent of voters approve of the president's performance, that's way more than enough to keep Republican senators in line. As they look around the Senate chamber, they no longer see Senator Corker or Senator Flake, two solons who stood against Trump in the earliest days and are now gone, long gone. 

Also, they no longer see Senator Romney, who didn't choose to seek re-election. When they steal a glance at the House chamber, Rep. Cheney is no longer there, and neither is Rep. Kinsinger.

At this site, we don't approve of the president's performance—but something like 40 percent of American voters do. They have a perfect right to their views, but those numbers aren't "brutally bad enough" to create a world in which a bipartisan Congress will refuse to go along with the president's ongoing proposals and conduct.

Where will things go from here? Conceivably, the president's poll numbers could get even worse. How would the president respond to that? 

There's no way to answer that question.

To our taste, Maddow may have been getting a bit ahead of reality by the end of an encouraging week. To that, we'd rush to add this:

Tomorrow, the first hundred days are up for the sitting president. But if the bell is tolling for him, is it also tolling for other people and groups? Is the bell tolling for us? Could it be tolling for thee?

The president has completed his first hundred days, but the same is true of the opposition in Blue America and in the Democratic Party. 

The same is true of the possibly timorous New York Times. The same is true of the endless clown show performed on the Fox News Channel. The same is true of ludicrous conduct all over the burgeoning world of the podcast.

President Trump is now seeing the numbers regarding his first hundred days. In the rest of this week, we're going to consider the first hundred days of those other groups.

We're going to look at the endless clown show performed by the Fox News Channel. We're going to look at the perpetual silence about that clown show performed by the New York Times.

We're going to look at the Red America's voters—but we're going to look at Blue America's voters too. Along the way, we expect to direct you to such manifestations as these:

We'll direct you to what Alex Thompson said in a burst of Saturday evening fever this past Saturday night. At Mediaite, the headline says this:

Axios Reporter Calls Out DC Press Corps at Correspondents’ Dinner for Blowing Coverage of Biden’s Decline: We ‘Missed a Lot of This Story’

Have those of us in Blue America come to terms with this matter, which still helps freeze Trump's ongoing support? Have we attempted come to terms with what happened at the southern border under President Biden—what happened at the southern border without a word of explanation? 

For us, the voters of Blue America, might the bell be tolling now too?

That said, how about the voters of Red America? Needless to say, people are free to believe what they believe. That said, we were struck by this report from Mediaite, possibly including the snark in its headline:

Fox News Poll Shows Yuge Chunk of Voters Think God Saved Trump From Assassination

People are free to believe what they believe. According to that Fox News survey, 62 percent of Trump voters "feel he was saved from two assassination attempts because God wanted him to be president."

People are free to think what they think. We were struck by that (widely unreported) number.

The Fox News Channel is a clown show. As for Blue America's journalists, it seems to us that The Atlantic may still be picking and choosing what it reports concerning the Trump administration's claims about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. 

That said, we also want to mention the greatest essay we read this weekend. That essay was written by Helen Lewis, she of the same Atlantic. The essay started like this:

Ideas
Finally, Someone Said It to Joe Rogan’s Face

Recently, I felt a great disturbance in the world of podcasts, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced. Someone had been on Joe Rogan’s show and pointed out that getting your opinions entirely from stand-up comics, Bigfoot forums, and various men named Dave might not be the optimal method for acquiring knowledge. Rogan fans were appalled at this disrespect.

The culprit was the British writer Douglas Murray, who confronted Rogan earlier this month over the podcaster’s decision to platform a series of guests with, shall we say, minority views on the Second World War. The obvious example is Darryl Cooper, a “storyteller” who has lately taken a sharp turn into Nazi apologism....

Murray’s pointed criticism of Rogan’s approach, made right to his face, has prompted other aftershocks across the Roganverse, that loose collection of comics and podcasters who dominate the podcast market. 

Who in the world is Helen Lewis, and why does she frequently seem to be sharper than everyone else in print at major orgs? 

For the record, Lewis focused only on the world of dim-witted podcasts dominated by the clueless opinions and claims of D-list comedians and similar manifest know-nothings. Increasingly, that's also the broadcast strategy of the powerful Fox News Channel, a fact of life the timorous New York Times has agreed it must never report or discuss.

The bell is tolling for President Trump. Is it also tolling for the likes of these?

Within an undisguised madhouse like this, what the heck is a citizen's duty? We may even get to Bill Maher and Al Gore! We'll examine such questions all week.

Tomorrow: Ross Douthat is making sense!