“President Trump has accomplished more in 200 days than most presidents accomplish throughout their entire term,” White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers told the Washington Examiner. “America First is not just a mantra, it is President Trump’s legacy that has Made America Hot Again and will be replicated for generations to come.”

First 100 days

Trump aides promised during the transition that the president would deliver “shock and awe” during his first 100 days. He did that, in part, through his almost 200 executive actions, his upending of decadeslong trade relationships with his “Liberation Day” tariffs, and his encouraging of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to take a metaphorical chainsaw to the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency.

“After four years of having a president who was asleep at the wheel, Americans finally have a leader who is putting them and America first,” White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston told the Washington Examiner at the time.

Vice President JD Vance said Trump’s second 100 days would be different, with the president’s priorities being the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and foreign policy, particularly regarding Russia, Ukraine, and Iran.

“The next 100 days are going to be a lot of things that don’t change as quickly,” Vance told Fox News in the spring.

Second 100 days

To that end, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on Independence Day, including its tax code reforms, changes to entitlement programs, and national and border security provisions. Trump last week also provided Russia until Thursday to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or risk secondary sanctions, and in June, ordered Operation Midnight Hammer, through which he deployed bunker-buster bombs to strike three nuclear facilities in Iran.

As his administration implemented those and other policies, Trump has had to respond to political developments, including his very public relationship breakdown with Musk, the Justice Department’s mismanagement of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and his federalization of the National Guard in reaction to anti-immigration protests in Los Angeles.

There was also Trump’s response to the Texas floods and his disclosure regarding his benign venous insufficiency. The president, too, demoted his first aide of his second administration, nominating former national security adviser Michael Waltz to become his United Nations ambassador after Waltz instigated Signalgate by including Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a group chat on the app messaging about an attack on the Houthis in Yemen.

At the same time, Trump has had to grapple with his worsening approval ratings after a polling honeymoon. With a little more than 12 months before next year’s midterm elections, Trump’s average approval is net negative-5 percentage points, 51% disapproval to 46% approval, according to RealClearPolitics.

Trump’s polling

For pollster David Paleologos, Trump’s first 100 days were “aggressive” and his second were “excessive,” underlining that the president’s popularity actually started decreasing before “Liberation Day” in April.

“The first 100 days were marked by the anticipation of what President Trump would deliver on the issues he won on: the economy, immigration, and cutting waste,” Paleologos told the Washington Examiner. “He began this period in the high 40s of job approval. But by the end of the first 100 days, Trump’s approval had dropped into the low 40s.”

Paleologos, the director of Suffolk University’s Political Research Center, cited Trump’s immigration policies, mainly Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s arrests of illegal immigrants in raids of their homes, workplaces, and schools, as one reason for the president’s polling decline. That is in addition to his approach to trade and government spending, specifically funding cuts to medical research.

“While Trump maintained his strength among Republican voters in both the first and second 100 days, his actions alienated some independent voters, especially men, who witnessed an unprecedented use of presidential power on immigration, tariffs, and DOGE cuts,” Paleologos said. “It didn’t help Trump with this important demographic when Elon Musk criticized the ‘big, beautiful bill’ and called for a national third party, something that independent men already overwhelmingly support. Nor did it help Trump when top podcaster Joe Rogan criticized the Trump administration’s stalling on releasing the once-promised Epstein files.”

Selling the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Republican strategist Cesar Conda, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was in the Senate and a founding partner of lobbying firm Navigators Global, implored Trump to promote his policy and political achievements, from “securing the border, reducing inflation, rebalancing trade, cutting taxes,” and “restoring economic prosperity for all.”

“The president and his entire Cabinet must get out of Washington and fan out across the country to relentlessly tout these incredible accomplishments,” Conda told the Washington Examiner.

Trump himself has emphasized the importance of explaining the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to the public, with Vance launching that campaign last month in Pennsylvania.

“We’re going to have to start speaking about it because the Democrats use it,” Trump said in July. “They say it represents death. We’re the ones that are giving life. We’re giving life with that bill.”

Democrats are unpopular

Regardless, Reagan biographer Craig Shirley argued that Trump and Republicans have an edge in the public relations campaign, considering Democrats are dealing with their own unpopularity. Democrats do have an average 3-point advantage on a generic congressional ballot, again according to RealClearPolitics, but the same polling aggregator has their favorable-unfavorable rating at net negative-23 points. For comparison, Trump’s score is net negative-7 points.

“It’s iron lung time for Democrats in America,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner. “Trump has totally outmaneuvered them, and they are now at best, half a party, well on their way to extinction. Shortly, there will be a bounty on the heads of the few remaining Democrats, and the rest will be called ‘Jurassic Democrats.’”

Democrats have become increasingly frustrated by their own ineffectiveness at countering Trump, with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) venting those frustrations last week on the Senate floor.

“If you’re looking the other way from Trump’s actions, that’s complicity with an authoritarian leader,” Booker said.

Abhi Rahman, the deputy communications director of the Democratic National Committee, defended his party, reiterating that Trump promised to “bring down costs, release the Epstein files, and keep Americans on healthcare, yet more and more Americans are realizing that his promises — like their own wallets — are now empty.”

“His approval rating is dropping faster than his job numbers, and Democrats are fighting back every step of the way, hosting town halls in all 50 states, winning races previously held by Republicans, and mobilizing voters through our Organizing Summer program,” Rahman told the Washington Examiner. “The bottom line: Trump has failed in his first 200 days in office, and Democrats will win in 2025 and 2026.”

What’s next?

In the meantime, planning is underway for Trump’s next 12 or so months before the 2026 elections amid moves to gerrymander House districts in Texas to protect the House Republican majority.

Trump’s priorities before the elections include another reconciliation bill, which would be pushed through Congress using the same simple majority parliamentary procedure used for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, according to the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. That measure will likely include more tax proposals, spending cuts, and technical fixes to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

There will also likely be another piece of rescissions legislation to cancel spending appropriated by Congress, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The first iteration “clawed back” $9 billion from foreign aid and public broadcasting, with the second to focus on education funding.

“We’ve always said all our tools are on the table, and we’d hope to send more up,” an OMB spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner.

The Office of Legislative Affairs, too, will likely advocate against a government shutdown, pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, and address a problem with March’s continuing resolution that prevented the District of Columbia from using its fiscal 2025 budget.

Recap

Regarding his domestic priorities during his second 100 days, Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, the country’s first major cryptocurrency bill, and the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act into law. The president also published a white paper on artificial intelligence and his Make America Healthy Again Commission, a report that used artificially generated references. He similarly stirred controversy by proposing the reopening of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

Concerning foreign policy, Trump kept foreign allies and foes on their toes, departing the Group of Seven leaders summit in Canada early but supporting the sale of more weapons to North Atlantic Treaty Organization members for Ukraine after a more successful meeting in the Netherlands. He, too, removed sanctions on Syria during his trip to the Middle East and pressed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa over allegations of white genocide during their meeting at the White House.

But although Trump has demonstrated pride in his peace deals between India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, and Egypt and Ethiopia, the peace accords he promised on Day One between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas have eluded him.

“Ukraine and Russia is [former President Joe] Biden’s war,” a White House official told the Washington Examiner. “Then for the Gaza situation, I would just note that many of the hostages have been released, so that was a huge success that Biden clearly couldn’t get done, but the president did.”

Trump also supplemented Nippon Steel’s agreement to partner with U.S. Steel and Coca-Cola’s agreement to replace corn syrup with cane sugar in its recipe. Trump has also announced trade agreements with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Those arrangements have been criticized for their vagueness, as courts have challenged his tariffs.

WHITE HOUSE HOPES POSITIVE GDP REPORT WILL PLACATE RECESSION ‘PANICANS’

“The main issues of contention have all been resolved, and now we’re focused on the very small details of implementation,” the same official said.

Against that backdrop, the Commerce Department last week reported that the economy expanded during the second quarter of the year by 3% after contracting by 0.5% during the first three months of 2024. But the Labor Department also reported that the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge for inflation remains above the central bank’s target of 2% and that only 73,000 jobs were added to the economy in July, with 258,000 fewer jobs added in May and June, prompting Trump to dismiss the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.