On day 100, Donald Trump made a rally. By crossing the symbolic barrier of the first 100 days of its presidency towards the remaining 1,361, Trump was cheered by a multitude of supporters and stated that he has just completed the “100 most successful days of any administration in the history of our country.” He nostalgically recalled his last term with usual complaints and hyperbolic statements, taking the moment to draw a course for what comes next. However, the events of the day only illustrated that, despite all the actions already taken, there are difficult tasks ahead.
Even before arriving at Michigan, Donald Trump had already retreated to the cars he had been imposed on weeks after alerts from executive and car industry analysts who warned that rates could increase the price of a new car by thousands of dollars.
And spent the morning annoyed with news that indicated that a. He issued a warning to founder Jeff Bezos and classified the measure as hostile (Amazon said, after Trump’s warning, that the plan was just an idea and would not be implemented).
The president now leads to an increasingly skeptical public opinion. Its approval rate of 41% in the last CNN poll is the worst of any president after 100 days. The approval of 39% of economy management marks the lowest point of his career. But, surrounded by posters that proclaimed this “the golden era” at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, Trump – and their supporters – were radiant. “Still now we started,” said the US President. “They haven’t seen anything yet.”
For an hour and a half, Trump made his usual comments about the “sleepy Joe” in reference to former President Joe Biden. He pulled applause from the crowd by criticizing former vice president Kamala Harris, whom he called a “great candidate.” And he repeated the greatest falseness of all: who won the 2020 elections.
“I miss you,” said Trump. “I miss the campaign.”
While the White House now begins to focus entirely on the president’s legislative agenda, with a deadline in July for the budget and the country’s fiscal plan, Trump has devoted very little time to discuss the next 100 days, which could be crucial in defining his presidency. It hardly mentioned the economic concerns that have harmed its popularity, although its visit to Michigan highlighted its volatile approach to tariffs, based on the conviction that this is the way to revitalize the American transforming industry.
The next chapter of this challenge is yet to write as Trump tries to balance the demands of car manufacturers – who argue that tariffs can cause major economic damage – with the interests of the working class, which he has sought to defend. But, according to the US President, their constantly evolving tax and tariff measures have already convinced manufacturers “to return to Michigan and build automobiles again.”
“Finally there are a worker defender in the White House,” Trump said, “instead of putting China first, I’m putting Michigan first and putting the United States first.”
Trump highlighted his stricter immigration policies as an emblematic achievement – one of the biggest “promises fulfilled” of his campaign – and, in an interview that was transmitted later at, released doubts about whether allegedly present in the country illegally deserve due process of law. “If people come illegally in our country, there is a different standard … They have a process in which we have to expel them,” he said. “They have what my lawyers say.”
Donald Trump also stated in the rally that he had ended with Joe Biden’s “crazy mandate of electric vehicles”, although he never existed a federal decree to ban Americans from buying gasoline cars. He claimed to know “much more” than the president of the Federal Reserve, with whom he has had disagreements about interest rates. He said he was still ending the “junction of the” bureaucrats of the deep state, “but then told ABC that he was considering reversing some of the cuts implemented by his, led by Elon Musk.
During the first three months of his presidency, Trump has been something homey, spending most of his time in the White House or in one of his homes and golf course in Florida or New Jersey. But as he extended on stage on Tuesday night, at the end of the rally, he seemed delighting to return to the aura that has dominated almost a decade of political life. “We’ll never retreat. We’ll never surrender,” said Trump. “We will fight, fight, fight and win, win, win together. Together, we will become powerful America again.”
