100 Days of Construction vs. 100 Days of Destruction

A Promising New Deal and a Catastrophic Old Deal: 92 years after the first First Hundred Days, the latest First Hundred Days is its grotesque image in a distorting mirror.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, the American and world economies were in total collapse. The banking system had crumpled. The unemployment rate was roughly 25 percent. Hope was all but dead. What his administration accomplished over its first hundred days in office set that as the standard length of time for an early judgment of how a presidency is going.

Ninety-two years later, when Donald Trump became president for a second time, the American economy was by almost any measure other than those of the MAGA propaganda machine, the strongest in the world—and in the history of the nation. Unemployment was at 4 percent. The circumstances were mirror images. So, too, have been the actions the two presidents took in the opening weeks of their administrations.

‘Action, and Action Now’ — but with Opposite Goals

Both men embarked immediately on the “action, and action now” that FDR said the nation demanded. But the sort of action and the ends they sought to accomplish through it could hardly be more different. The most famous sentence in Roosevelt’s inaugural address is useful in introducing that contrast:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

For his part, Trump has no firm beliefs other than self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. He tells Americans that there are many people and things they should fear. He preaches fear itself and gives it names: women who fancy themselves to be equal and free, people with skin darker than that of those whose ancestors came from northern Europe, LGBTQ people (especially the “T” ones), science, education, books, expertise, medicine, research, immigrants, accurate history, judges, the poor, ill, and hungry, the Constitution and so on. He promotes unreasoning, unjustified terror to convert advance into retreat.

Roosevelt worked with Congress to create what came to be called an “alphabet soup” of agencies intended to help people in need, including in the first Hundred Days FERA, AAA, CCC, NRA, TVA, PWA, and HOLC.

Trump and his followers use acronyms, too, but in the same way Big Pharma companies do with diseases (AF, ED, HPV, IBS, PD …): to scare people. DEI, CRT, LGBTQ …

Easing Pain or Increasing It?

Roosevelt’s actions did not solve the Great Depression, but they did help people deal with its effects. Trump’s actions have been to tear down everything that helps people, supports democracy and the rule of law, international relations and, should his insane economic policies produce a new depression, leave the American people without means even to ease the pain.

Roosevelt had a group of unofficial advisers that the press named the “Brain Trust.” Trump has a Cabinet member who had part of his brain eaten by a worm. There were several outstanding men and one outstanding woman, Frances Perkins, in FDR’s first Cabinet. Trump’s 2025 Cabinet is a collection of incompetents, buffoons, sycophants, and people working against the national and public interest.

In his Inaugural address, Roosevelt indicated that he was prepared to use extraordinary executive power to deal with the emergency:

I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

Trump has used more extraordinary (often illegal and unconstitutional) executive power in his first hundred days, but there are key differences: There was no emergency until Trump’s actions caused one. Roosevelt, as he said, asked Congress for that power. Trump simply took the power and dared the slim Republican majorities in Congress to protect their Article One powers by opposing him. And in the present case, the great danger, the invasion, is coming from a domestic foe of the United States: Donald J. Trump.

Another example of how opposite the man who began to build an American government that helps people was from the one currently trying to destroy it is evident in FDR’s 1932 words at the Oglethorpe commencement:

It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Compare Trump’s insistence that tariffs will bring jobs to the United States by keeping out cheaper foreign-made goods, increase wages and lower prices for Americans, and bring in massive revenues—so much money that he may be able to eliminate the income tax. Wow!

It appears that arithmetic was not his best subject, a conclusion that is supported by his numerous business bankruptcies.

FDR was about rebuilding; DJT is about tearing down. FDR was about helping people. DJT is about hurting people. FDR was about compassion; DJT is about cruelty.

The Nightmare ‘Honeymoon’

The early months of a presidency are often referred to as the “honeymoon,” and early poll numbers usually reflect that. But when one of the newlyweds sees himself as the “ruler of America and the World,” the honeymoon will go well only if the spouse is willing to submit completely and without complaint. That well describes the sycophants—perhaps more accurately called “sickophants” or “psychophants”—around Trump and his cult followers. Both of these categories have readily taken on the submissive role traditionally assigned to women.

But, as I explained here a few weeks ago, when it comes to the American people, we have never been much into following unquestioningly.

Trump’s first First Hundred Days were the least popular in the last eighty years, and his second bite at that apple has been even worse. It has been, to use a technical term, a shitshow of chaos, cruelty, and America’s rapid decline.

It is hardly surprising that Trump’s approval at the hundred days mark is lower than any president since World War II, in most cases much lower. (There was no scientific public opinion polling in 1933, so we cannot compare Roosevelt’s rating then, but there can be no doubt that it was highly positive and he won reelection in 1936 in a massive landslide.) Apart from his own approval rating early in his first term, the only other president at 100 days who was below 50 percent was Gerald Ford, who had just pardoned Richard Nixon.

Empathy > Icy Indifference

In accepting nomination for a second term in 1936, Roosevelt summed up what it had been like when he took office in words that contrast sharply with the Trump attitude:

In those days we feared fear. That was why we fought fear. And today, my friends, we have won against the most dangerous of our foes. We have conquered fear.

Roosevelt fought fear. Trump promotes fear.

It was also in his 1936 acceptance speech that Roosevelt most effectively—and affectively—encapsulated the difference between a government and a leader that work to help people and those that do not, an attitude never more evident than it is with the Trump administration:

Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.

Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

It would be difficult to find better words to characterize the difference between the beliefs and practices of Franklin Roosevelt and some of his successors (notably Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden) and those of Trump, whose view is similar to that of Elon Musk, who sees empathy as fatal to civilization and spent most of Trump’s opening hundred days taking a chainsaw to everything empathetic he could find in government.

Trump and MAGA are on a mission to undo all the good done by Roosevelt and later presidents, including some Republicans, and return us to the last Twenties, which led to the Great Depression … or William McKinley’s 1890s.

We must stop him.

This is a guest column from author and historian Robert S. McElvaine, who writes the Musings & Amusings of a B-List Writer Substack. Read the original piece here.