The good news: Trump's second term has already hit historic levels of unpopularity. The bad news: we're still only 100 days into it. The White House marks this milestone by bragging about its record on immigration and defending the arrest of a Wisconsin judge and the deportation of three very young American citizens, ages 2, 4, and 7. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy reflect on where the country stands at the 100-day mark and take stock of the opposition—as Democrats, media outlets, universities, and even some law firms all ratchet up their efforts to push back. Then, Dan sits down with Neera Tanden, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress and a former top advisor to Joe Biden and Barack Obama, about the unique dangers of Trump and his allies, and how to defend against them.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast. You can watch Lovett's interview with Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Semafor and host of the Mixed Signals podcast, on our YouTube page at www.youtube.com/@podsaveamerica. Check out Mixed Signals at www.semafor.com/hub/mixed-signals-media-podcast
Chapter 1: What are the key immigration issues during Trump's first 100 days?
Yes, Tommy.
They're calling it 100 days week. So it's like it's the 100th day, but then it's a week of days. I wonder if it's like 100 days month. Again. How do you do the math there?
Just being by the dumbest motherfuckers on earth. A friend of mine. We sure are. A friend of mine is on a jury and it's federal or it's in a federal building. And he went to report for jury duty. And there was a notice on the front of the DOJ saying that they hadn't been paying their water bill and that the water is going to be turned off starting next week.
It feels like that's an Elon question.
An Elon question. Oh, they dozed the water. Did big balls turn the water off? They dozed the person that's in charge of paying the bill?
They dozed the water payment person. On day one of 100 Days a Week, they want to talk about deportations. They kick things off on Monday morning by putting signs all over the White House lawn that had photos of people they've deported along with the crimes they've committed. I'm sure. Stephen Miller was out there in the middle of the night putting up the signs.
He was doing Photoshop. He was making these himself. Yeah.
Doing something. Doing something. Getting pretty excited. Not pictured on the lawn were three small American kids the administration just deported. A two-year-old, a four-year-old, and a seven-year-old. All U.S. citizens who were sent out of the country when they showed up with their mothers for routine immigration check-ins in New Orleans.
The two-year-old's father is an American citizen who had asked a federal court to keep his daughter with him. But before the courthouse could open, the government had already deported the girl and her mother to Honduras.
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Chapter 2: How did the Trump administration handle controversial deportations?
And according to the family's lawyers, the four-year-old has stage four cancer and was deported without their medication or the ability to contact their medical team. Stomach churning stuff. The other big deportation story is the highly publicized arrest on Friday of a county judge in Wisconsin, Hannah Dugan.
who the administration says helped an undocumented immigrant escape from her courthouse as ICE agents arrived to make an arrest.
FBI Director Kash Patel essentially live tweeted the arrest and later posted a photo of Dugan being frog-marched to a cop car, while Attorney General Pam Bondi called Dugan, quote, a criminal judge on a criminal bench and labeled all judges who opposed Trump's immigration crackdown, quote, deranged. And here's Border Czar Tom Homan talking about the deported children today.
If you choose to have a U.S. citizen child knowing you're in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position. You put your family in that position. What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested their children depart with them. This was a parental decision. Parenting 101. The mothers made that choice.
And I tell you what, if we didn't do it, the story today would be the Trump administration separating families again.
lawyers for the family said the mothers did not make that choice but you did separate families but anyway tom so the white house line is basically these weren't deportations these were mothers who chose to take their kids with them you just heard home and but the trump judge in louisiana said in his ruling basically that he couldn't take that into account until the administration actually proved it in court uh what do you guys make of all this tommy
I mean, I think big picture, it tells you that the process is a rush disaster. And the Trump administration doesn't really care. I mean, you hear Tom Homan there. He's just so... unapologetic about the human suffering involved in this. I think they think it's the price of doing business.
It's similar to what we saw with the Venezuelans who were sent to El Salvador, who were just people who had tattoos, who are clearly not members of a gang in 90% of the cases. And, you know, in this case, I mean, you have a father, apparently ICE threatened to arrest the dad too. Yeah. And the dad was allowed a one minute conversation with the
the mom while she was in custody before they were deported. So, I mean, they're just the, I mean, the cruelty is the point has become a cliche, but clearly they are rushing this process because as we've read, there's a goal of deporting 1 million people this year. I think Tom Homan said today they had deported 138,000 so far. So they're behind schedule.
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Chapter 3: What was the significance of the Wisconsin judge's arrest?
Well, they lie, right? Like Jose Hermosillo, the 19-year-old U.S. citizen who was in prison for 10 days by U.S. immigration authorities. It turns out he had a seizure and he went to the hospital and then he saw a Border Patrol agent and asked that guy for help and then they threw him in jail. It's...
And then Trisha McLaughlin, the DHS spokesman, went online on Twitter and lied and made up this whole story about how he went up to a Border Patrol agent and claimed to be from Mexico and the country illegally. And it's like, this is just the pattern over and over and over again. They do something horrible and they pretend something else happened.
So if you deported, even if the mother wanted the kid to come, if it's a four-year-old with cancer and you find that out and you're the government, wouldn't you do something? Wouldn't you make it so that the kid could get their medication or a doctor or something? These people don't fucking give a shit.
On the Judge Dugan case, it certainly seems like whether or not she broke the law, there wasn't a legal or public safety rationale for frog marching her out of the courtroom and having the FBI director and the attorney general essentially celebrate the arrest in the media. What did you think of the story? How alarming was it to you, Lovett?
You know, Donald Trump's been arrested, and nobody showed up at his house and frog-marched him out of the door because they understood that he's not a danger in that circumstance, that there's no urgency to this, that you can show some respect and have this person report. Clearly, this judge is going to fight these charges.
The judge was angry that they were even trying to serve this arrest warrant, the judge claiming they had the wrong kind of warrant. We're going to learn more about this. Whatever the exact facts turn out to be, this will be a gray area. Even if it's the worst possible version of what fucking Kash Patel is saying, it will be a gray area at best.
I can't trust these people or anything that they're saying about it anyway. What is certainly clear is they are excited about the prospect of arresting a judge and sending a message to other judges about, hey, if you're –
Thinking about standing up for an immigrant that's in in your courtroom as a dangerous thing to do should be really careful about how you do that You should be worried that if you cross some invisible line that you won't know about till after till we tell you about it You might find yourself arrested in front of your courthouse.
Yeah, Tom Homan threatened others today at that press conference at the White House I mean, it's very clear that these guys home in Stephen Miller all the hardline immigration folks they want to fic fights with state and local officials and So they can call them soft on immigration or call them sanctuary cities or whatever. And this does seem like it's a shocking escalation.
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Chapter 4: Why did the Trump administration abandon efforts to terminate foreign students' legal status?
Or people that just happened to have been touching the immigration system at the moment where they were getting beat down by their boss to go find people. Right.
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Media is a chance to do some retrospectives. And if they're lucky, get an interview with the president. Pollsters get a chance to put out a bunch of new polls. Trump's doing a rally in Michigan on Tuesday night. He'll also be sitting for an interview with ABC News. He's already done big interviews with Time magazine, another with our friends Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer at The Atlantic.
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Chapter 5: What insights do Trump's recent interviews reveal about his policies and mindset?
He really is at a point in his life where he's like, everything's, you know, I came back from, he thinks that he came back from the dead, although he doesn't like to call it a comeback, he said, because he thinks he was never really gone. But he basically thinks he has defied political gravity
And what's worse, the people around him are all people who believe he has chosen by God and has defied political gravity. Well, he was. Right, of course. And so none of them are going to pull him back either, except poor Scott Besson, who's like hoping that we don't have a global economic collapse. So I really do think, look, he's Donald Trump at some point. He pulls back how much damage there is.
Who knows? But I think in general, whether it's tariffs or anything else, he is going to go much further down. than he ever has in the past because he does not care as much about public opinion as he ever did.
Yeah. Oh, I think that's, first of all, I think that's already true. He's already gotten further than he did in his first term. Now, I have no idea whether or not Donald Trump will cave. I just think, uh, I don't think you'll show the same patience as the nation of China.
I think the Chinese, you know, Xi Jinping has prepared his people for a war and the American people are not at all prepared for what a war with China could look like. What it means if we have zero rare earth minerals, That means we can't produce cars anymore. If 99% of child safety seats are coming from China and you can't travel with your kid anymore because your car seat's too small.
Or buy them toys. 95% of cooking appliances, 93% of coloring books for kids, 88% of microwave ovens. 70% of toys intended for children under 12 are from China. Americans are going to squeal if this shit really happens. And I do think political gravity will come for Trump because he is a Congress unlike the Chinese Communist Party.
Yeah, I think when people started going to Walmart instead of church on Christmas, it really made having stuff on the shelves important.
Let's talk about the polls, which are much worse for Trump than they were even a few weeks ago. Certainly worse than they've been for any other president at this point. I think his average approval rating is now tied with his first term approval rating at 100 days. The New Times-Siena poll has Trump at 42-54. He's underwater on every issue. Immigration by four points.
The Abrego-Garcia case specifically by 21 points. And the economy by 12 points. ABC-Washington Post has him at 42-55. CNN's 43-57. Pew 40-59. Fox is 44-55. And AP is 39-59. Trump's numbers with young people, independents, and Hispanics are pretty abysmal. after he made inroads with all those groups in the last election.
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Chapter 6: How are tariffs and the trade war affecting the US economy and politics?
And Trump will be more weak and afraid of the consequences of violating court orders when the public are so thoroughly behind them. the courts. It is interesting thinking about 2017 versus now because chaos was the kind of order of the day when Trump first won.
And he was at his lowest ebb when he was actually almost, it didn't come through because of John McCain, but he was on the precipice of repealing Obamacare. And it was a moment where he was about to be effective. And when he was about to be effective, he was never more unpopular. And I do think like the early days we were, I think, caught off guard by the swiftness and like
I think word effective is wrong, but like the speed and deliberateness with which they were like attacking the government, going after immigrants, kind of implementing the 2025, Project 2025 agenda. But he's actually paying for that success.
He's paying for the lack because chaos stopped him from doing the policies that we are currently seeing that the American people, even though it's very clear that this is what Trump has always said he was going to do, we're not fully, couldn't fully imagine what it would feel like to live under.
Yeah, I think that's right. I also think, you know, deciding to tank the stock market, not a great political strategy. I mean, I think 73% said the economy is in bad shape. 53% said it's worse since Trump took office. 41% said their own finances have worsened. 62% said prices are rising. So they're doing a ton of shit. They're dozing, they're harming migrants, etc.,
But they're doing nothing to deal with inflation and the tariffs are just actively causing inflation and no one – only 31 percent believe that they'll strengthen the economy long term. Like 64 percent of people disapprove of the tariffs. So they're not – the American people are not buying what he's selling on the theory of the case here.
Yeah, and – He did act fast and he did do a lot. But the Times asked people for like a word to describe the first hundred days and chaos was still the order of the day. It's his essence. It is his essence. Question on the polling. Guy can't run for reelection despite selling Trump 2028 merch on his website. How much do you think the polling matters?
I talked to Ro Khanna on Love or Leave It about what the prospects are for reconciliation. And he basically said he'd never had felt more confident or hopeful. I don't think he would say he's confident, but more confident that they'd be able to get enough Republicans to say no, at least before they strip out certain parts, who knows where it leads. But I do think it matters because
He has a razor thin majority, and there are a lot of Republicans who would like to stay in Congress. And there are a lot of them in districts that right now they are gonna have a very hard time successfully getting reelected in. And I just think that is gonna affect their ability to pass this agenda. He was much stronger a couple of weeks ago.
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Chapter 7: What do recent polls reveal about Trump's approval ratings and political challenges?
in like the resilience of the American economy and the unique place we have as like an innovative and kind of creative country that contributes so much to the world that we can repair the damage. But to me, like the core question from the day Trump won is Is Donald Trump's second victory a door that locked behind us? Right.
Like the damage can't be undone, but we can kind of rebuild and repair if we can win. Right. We can take back the House, take back the Senate, take back the White House. I do worry about what happens if the economy gets worse, the chaos gets worse. That's a tinderbox. It's people in the streets and an authoritarian president that is already unhappy with people at town halls.
I'm already unhappy with town halls. You had Stephen Miller out there today criticizing JB Pritzker, suggesting that what he's doing is inciting violence just for calling for protest, right? Like it is dangerous. These are people that are, they are instinctively fascist. They are instinctively authoritarian. That is incredibly,
But one sign of, to me, at least hope is just, I think even the past couple of weeks, we've seen Democrats starting to get their legs under them a little bit in a lot of interesting ways. You could talk about Pete, you could talk about Pritzker, you could talk about Ro Khanna, talk about a bunch of people, Cory Booker, others.
And I did have this feeling in the first few weeks of the Trump administration of a kind of defeatism, like, oh, he's turning us into Hungary, he's turning us into Russia. And I really was looking for more leaders to say, but we'll have to fight that and we'll win because America's filled with Americans. And we're a rebellious and freedom-loving and democracy-loving bunch.
And maybe we're a little soft and a little decadent, but we'll find our footing and we'll fight back and we'll win. And he can't take this country from us. And I feel like that energy is starting to appear more and more. You see it at protests. You see it at people showing up at rallies and town halls. And so that has made me feel like the question, did the door lock behind us?
And I think the answer is still no.
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Chapter 8: How are Democrats and other groups organizing opposition to Trump’s agenda?
That was great. It was great.
And like, this is why like I- Didn't save press freedom?
No. It didn't do much too much damage either. But like, I talked about this with Eugene on Love It or Leave It that like part of the, like what I was disappointed by is that Amber Ruffin, who's great, like would have brought a lot of attention to journalism. And like, there should be a comedian at dinner because otherwise no one's going to pay attention to it.
That's part of what the like the weekend is all about. And then I said that like, obviously I'm available.
You know, I think Alex Thompson got a lot of attention for talking about how the media should have done a better job covering Biden's age, et cetera. And like, there's some truth to that. Alex also has a book coming out on the subject. So it's a little bit self-serving, more than a little bit self-serving if we're being honest, but also it's just an example. Like, yes,
Maybe there could have, should have been more coverage of Biden's age and mental acuity and decline. But also the American people were very aware of it. Yeah. It showed up in every poll.
Every single one. Every single one, even without the additional intrepid reporting. Yeah. They kind of got the hint.
Yeah. He was held accountable. Yeah. Like it seems like a couple of these. Yeah. This is the, these two journalists were picking it up. Dear listener, I pointed out my eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, here's Leslie Stahl and Anderson Cooper were on the case.
Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I'm excited for the book. I'm excited for the book, too. I'm excited to talk to them on this podcast. Oh, yeah, we're going to talk to them. Anyway, anyway, it was a good time. Always good to pop into D.C. and then leave. One more thing we wanted to mention before we go.
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