Sarah Smith: Trump’s breakneck start is fraught with political risk

Within hours of taking his second oath of office, Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders and declarations, and fired the starting gun on what has been a rapid and radical programme of change in his first 100 days.

So far, he has shown no sign of taking his foot off the pedal.

The sheer quantity of his news-generating actions over the past few months could be seen as a carefully considered strategy. It is one that Steve Bannon, the right-wing podcast host who advised Trump during his first term, first floated as long ago as 2018.

“The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told the writer Michael Lewis at the time. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone.”

So seven years on, with Trump back in the Oval Office and the zone not just flooded but virtually submerged, does Bannon think the strategy has worked?

“Flooding the Zone’ is an overwhelming success,” he tells me via text. “The biggest victory is a broken globalist media that finds itself too frayed to cover our assault on the institutions of America’s oppression.”

It is a typically bombastic response. A wide variety of opinion polls, however, suggest the public is less enthusiastic. Trump’s overall approval rating at this stage of his presidency, for example, is the lowest of any president in the past 80 years, according to a joint ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on the weekend.

In his usual fashion, Trump hit out at “fake polls from fake news organisations”.

But do they suggest ailing support that could pose a problem for him down the line?

It is still early, of course, and Trump’s base remains fully committed. Even so, the best laid plans of even the most cautious politicians can go awry. So after 100 days of action, is there anything that could derail Trump’s promised agenda in the coming months?

Here are three potential scenarios.

Trump has spent many years talking about the good that tariffs could do for America’s economy – and now he is trying to make it a reality.

But staking your presidency on a policy of global economic disruption comes with significant risks.

Trump has already reacted to tanking global markets by announcing tariff pauses, and he has signalled he is ready to make a deal with China by recently making warmer comments than the earlier angry barbs aimed at Beijing.

But in July, steep tariffs on imports from any countries that do not have a trade deal with the US are set to come into force.

Can the administration really agree 90 trade deals in 90 days as Trump has promised? If not, the president may find that his tariff regime and the potential for more market chaos begins to further shake his standing with voters.

Voters who backed the president in November, at least many I have spoken to, appreciate the White House message that he is standing up to countries that have for decades taken advantage of the US and seeking to inject fresh life into American manufacturing.

But there is a tension between this message and what plays out on the ground – not in diplomatic talks between leaders, but on main streets and in supermarkets as Americans go about their daily lives.

Trump’s tariff plans have driven a stock market sell-off and raised fears of economic recession. And a poll by CBS News on Monday indicated there is a growing belief among voters that the administration is focused too much on tariffs and not enough on lowering prices.

This feels key to the success of the Trump administration in coming months. Ambitions to reset the global trading order are one thing – and a popular one among the president’s supporters at that – but handing the cost of this to the average American consumer by increasing taxes on virtually all imports is dangerous politically, even more so if the country were to tip into recession.

Immigration has always been Trump’s signature issue. He enjoys higher approval ratings on it than any other policy area, with polls suggesting a significant number of voters support his swift actions to deport thousands of undocumented migrants.

As the administration pursues this immigration crackdown, it may not be the views of voters that hamper Trump, but rulings from the nation’s courts. Judges are repeatedly telling the White House that its actions may be in breach of the law.

The case of one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has already made it to the Supreme Court. The administration has admitted it made a mistake when deporting him to a notorious prison in El Salvador, but appears unwilling to follow a Supreme Court order to “facilitate” his return to the US.

So far, the White House has avoided the kind of clash with judges that could prompt a full-blown constitutional crisis, even as it has maneuvered around court rulings aimed at limiting some of its most radical policy moves. But a showdown may happen soon.

The ultimate confrontation, of course, would come if Trump chose to ignore an order from the Supreme Court.

Until now the administration has been happy to argue about deportations in the court of public opinion, convinced that voters are much more concerned about removing illegal immigrants from the country than they are about due process.

Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant, agrees. He told me that, in his view, many people do not believe undocumented migrants deserve legal rights.

“If you frame it between giving them due process and getting terrorist gang members… Republicans are going to side with getting MS-13 members off the streets,” he said.

Still, public support for Trump’s immigration moves could be slipping. A poll published late last week indicated his approval rating on the issue had fallen by 10 points in recent weeks.

Even if voters are prepared to accept the White House ignoring court rulings, any such move could pose a significant challenge to many Republican members of Congress who feel squeamish about it. So far, the party’s senators and representatives have virtually given Trump free rein to do whatever he likes. But could they remain silent when faced with a president defying the law?

Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” have not wasted a minute of these 100 days, taking their chainsaw to large parts of the federal workforce and cutting government spending including on international aid.

As with much of Trump’s agenda, there is a tension between the very real voter sympathy for the message – in this case, that the government is bloated, wasteful and inefficient – versus the extreme actions sometimes taken by the White House to address that message.

And with DOGE, the political risk for the president could come if it begins to cut government spending and programmes that voters readily rely on. That is a real risk, as the anger at Musk is already bubbling up.

Many elected Republicans have stopped holding open meetings for constituents, known as town halls, after being confronted by angry voters who are worried about cuts to their pensions or government-funded healthcare.

Tensions are also running high within Trump’s cabinet over Musk’s interference, culminating in a heated shouting match in the West Wing recently between the billionaire adviser and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The reality is that Musk is considerably less popular than Trump, and his expensive effort to influence a special election in Wisconsin fell completely flat with voters.

The tech billionaire will soon have to leave the president’s side. He is under pressure from Tesla shareholders to return to his struggling car company, and as a “special government employee” he faces time limits on working within this administration. There is a world in which less-frequent appearances at the White House could prove to be in the best interests of Trump.

But while Musk may be leaving, DOGE is expected to continue its work until July 2026. That leaves plenty of opportunities for it to make deeply unpopular spending cuts, which is undoubtedly a longer-term political risk for this White House, especially ahead of next year’s mid-term elections.

For now, however, Trump’s 100-day blitz of orders, actions and noise has steamrolled opposition and proved popular with his loyal base, who say he is simply doing what he promised.

Those risks, however, are there – and with an administration as unpredictable and fast-moving as this one, the potential for a crisis never truly goes away.