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Reality has a vote. That is one lesson administered to the body of politics in the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second administration.
After the president gleefully announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, stock market prices fell sharply, and the bond market became, as Trump put it, "yippy." So after just one week, on April 9, he put the Liberation Day tariffs on a 90-day pause.
Perhaps contributing to this choice was automaker Stellantis' April 3 decision to lay off workers in five U.S. factories.
That can't have been what he expected to happen and what he expected to do. Reality and widespread reactions to a policy I and many others regarded as "lunatic" caused him to change course. Reality has a vote.
Something like that scenario has been playing out, in slower motion, on Trump's attempts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Trump ultimately got Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire after his contentious White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 28.
But his confidence that he could similarly muscle Russian President Vladimir Putin has, so far, proved unfounded. Putin evidently calculates that prosecuting the war is a political necessity that outweighs any damage Trump could inflict. The issue simmers, momentarily out of the headlines. Reality has a vote.
In the headlines last weekend was Trump's anger at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for not somehow reducing interest rates. That's a longstanding Trump cause, like his 40-year embrace of tariffs. Real estate developers operate on borrowed money and always want lower interest rates.
However, Trump's contemplation of firing Powell, contrary to statute, raised fears of a protracted legal struggle and chaos in monetary policy. It did not help that automaker Volvo announced it was laying off workers at three U.S. facilities. The stock market juddered downward again on Monday.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, "Word leaked that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a private investor conference that he expected trade tensions between the U.S. and China to ease soon." Trump then signaled that his triple-digit tariffs on China might be lowered and that he has "no intention to fire" Powell. Reality once again has a vote.
There's been limited damage to Trump's poll numbers so far. But his job approval is already negative and, as Clinton administration veteran Doug Sosnik writes in The New York Times, "If past presidencies are any guide, the worst is yet to come." Precedent might not be a guide for a politician who inspires unusually strong and durable feelings, both positive and negative, but Trump's approval did dip below 40% at least momentarily in his first term.