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200 Lawsuits in 100 Days: Trump’s presidency fuelled by 'revenge'
FRANCE 24 English
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5/1/2025
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00:00
We can now bring in Todd Bell, Director of the Political Management Program at George Washington University.
00:07
Thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
00:10
Not too long ago, Donald Trump was elected with a pretty strong mandate.
00:15
Now the polls are saying, the recent polls are saying, that 55% of the American population disapprove of the way he's handling the presidency.
00:23
So what went wrong, in your opinion?
00:27
Thanks for having me on again. It's great to be with you.
00:30
Well, to first say that Donald Trump has a mandate, he would certainly say so.
00:34
But remember that it was 49.8% of the vote that voted for him.
00:38
So a majority of Americans actually voted for someone else.
00:41
He would like to say that he won all the swing states and claimed that as his mandate.
00:45
But things have gone wrong. They've really gone off the tracks.
00:48
Donald Trump, with his 40% approval, is at the lowest we've ever seen for a president, going back to Eisenhower, for whom we have data.
00:56
Second lowest, him during his first term.
00:58
So it's been really bad, and it's been on a bad slide.
01:01
And his approval ratings for the economy are even worse than his overall approval numbers,
01:07
showing you that people are really worried by the fact that he has not been focused on the bread and butter issues.
01:12
In our GW politics poll, we found that the number one issue for people was the economy.
01:17
Number two was health care costs.
01:18
That was kind of surprising because neither candidate last year talked much about that.
01:22
And the third was prices.
01:23
And with these tariffs, people are very concerned that prices will spike because, you know,
01:28
if you restrict imports and supply is restricted, prices are going to go up.
01:32
So I'm curious to know about your poll, what people feel on immigration and his handling of immigration.
01:41
Right.
01:42
Our finding on immigration is that people are broadly supportive of stronger measures in order to restrict illegal immigration,
01:49
even to the extent that many of them are supportive of deporting families with children who are here legally.
01:58
So that is something that is within what he's been doing.
02:03
However, it's how he's been doing things.
02:05
The devil's really in the details here.
02:07
Lacking any due process for the people that he's sent to El Salvador, the mistakes that have been made.
02:14
It just looks like he's done everything too fast, too quickly and without proper procedures.
02:19
And when you get down to it, this is what our country, the United States, was founded on,
02:24
was the fact that King George was throwing people in jail without due process.
02:28
This is in our Constitution.
02:30
Americans are very faithful to the Constitution.
02:32
And it looks like Donald Trump is violating them by the way he's going about it,
02:36
even though people support the policy in general.
02:38
Do you see a scenario where Donald Trump reverses course,
02:44
or does he not really care about risking it for Republicans come the midterms?
02:49
Well, of course, Donald Trump is never going to say that he did anything wrong or apologize for anything.
02:55
But we have seen him go back and forth on the tariffs.
02:58
Right now, he says that they were leveraged to get better deals,
03:02
and these better deals are coming forth with other countries.
03:06
But he also said that America was going to have to have a little bit of pain.
03:09
And one thing about people in the United States is they don't like any short-term pain.
03:14
You can think back to Jimmy Carter with our oil shocks and the embargo back in the 1970s and the rationing that went on.
03:22
Americans just don't like to take a little bit of pain.
03:25
They have a short-term view of this.
03:27
But Donald Trump has changed his mind on tariffs, and I think a lot of people are hoping he will.
03:30
The problem is the inconsistency.
03:33
Businesses can't plan.
03:34
The financial markets don't like it when they can't rely or make long-term plans on what things will be.
03:39
But this is what's surprising about Donald Trump's tariff policy,
03:43
because there have been so many inconsistencies, sometimes within the span of 24 hours.
03:50
And as somebody who claims and touts his business credentials, it's surprising that he does it anyways.
03:54
Yeah, it is surprising to most of us, but he will say, and his supporters will say,
04:00
that this comes out of his book, The Art of the Deal,
04:03
and the fact that you don't want to be predictable and be able to walk away from a deal at any moment.
04:09
Those are core principles for negotiating in business.
04:13
However, Donald Trump is not running a business.
04:15
He is running a country, and countries are not businesses.
04:18
Governments have to provide services that the private sector doesn't provide.
04:22
And because of that, he needs to provide more certainty to businesses,
04:26
instead of just looking at it as a one-to-one transactional issue,
04:30
which is the way he tends to do things.
04:33
Todd, during Donald Trump's first presidency,
04:35
we had the Democrats who said, you know, there would be adults in the room
04:41
to keep the U.S. president in check.
04:44
But now we see that there are no adults in the room,
04:47
and it seems that he pretty much has a free hand to do what he wants.
04:53
And the levers of power in terms of the judiciary or Congress also are giving,
05:01
in terms of the Republicans out of the aisle, are giving the president a free pass.
05:07
You're absolutely right.
05:10
Donald Trump part two is very different than Donald Trump part one.
05:13
As you mentioned, he's surrounded by a number of yes people
05:16
who are much more compliant this time.
05:18
They want to help him do what he wants,
05:20
rather than to provide those guideposts and restrictions
05:23
as, you know, the traditional Republicans
05:26
who came in with him in the first time.
05:28
He's put a lot of people around him who he prioritizes loyalty for.
05:32
Secondly, we have that Supreme Court case, as I think you were alluding to last July,
05:38
that says the president for his constitutional actions has full immunity
05:42
and for his executive actions has presumptive immunity.
05:47
And, of course, Donald Trump is motivated by revenge,
05:50
and he learned from last time that he needs to get a fast start.
05:53
So roll that all together,
05:54
and that's why you have so much action coming out of the presidency right now,
05:58
sometimes too fast, right?
05:59
They're making mistakes,
06:00
and there are 200 lawsuits against the president
06:02
for a lot of these executive actions.
06:04
So a lot of it has been stalled in the courts as well.
06:07
I just have to ask you about the Democrats here,
06:10
because have they gotten their strategy
06:13
with how to stand up and fight Donald Trump in order?
06:16
Because it seems like the Democrats are singing
06:19
from very, very different song sheets,
06:21
because on one hand, you have people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
06:24
and Bernie Sanders who are going off
06:26
and doing their own thing with their rallies,
06:28
and you have, obviously, the leadership, Chuck Schumer,
06:32
what have you, on the other side.
06:34
What are the Democrats doing here?
06:35
It seems they're in disarray still.
06:39
Well, you're exactly right.
06:40
It's no surprise that Democrats are in disarray.
06:43
That's usually their natural state.
06:45
But they have no levers of power, right?
06:47
And so that's really the problem.
06:48
The only thing that they can do is file court cases
06:51
from the state level where the Democrats do have some power
06:53
to the federal level.
06:55
But, of course, Donald Trump really stacked the federal bench
06:57
before he left office with a lot of judges
07:00
that are sympathetic to his side.
07:02
And because of that, Democrats are looking for some leadership.
07:06
Chuck Schumer has not risen to the challenge,
07:08
as many Democrats might have wanted.
07:10
And so they're looking for someone new.
07:11
You have governors out there like Gavin Newsom
07:13
and J.D. Pritzker going around as well,
07:16
in addition to Bernie Sanders and AOC.
07:18
Democrats are looking for leadership,
07:19
but it's hard to figure out who's going to be a leader
07:22
if you don't even have any levers of power yet.
07:25
Interesting point.
07:26
Todd Belt, we're going to have to leave with that, unfortunately.
07:28
Thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
07:31
Great to be with you.
07:32
Thanks for having me on.
07:33
Now.
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