Donald Trump's first 100 days of his second term as president has been a real horrorshow. I use this term deliberately, mostly because it can be used in two opposing ways... at least, if you either speak Russian or are a fan of Anthony Burgess. It can be used in the traditional English meaning of "something that is difficult to deal with or watch because it is so bad or unpleasant." It can also be used as Nadsat future-teen slang from the novel (and film) A Clockwork Orange, where it was borrowed (Anglicized) from the Russian word khorosho -- which actually means "good." So how you personally use it will depend on how you see Trump.

While I do love A Clockwork Orange (including the 21st chapter that was omitted from both the American publication of the book and the movie), I have to go with the traditional English usage when I say Trump's first 100 days has been an absolute horrorshow. It has been both bad and unpleasant, and it has been difficult to both deal with and watch.

[Note: As I was writing this, it grew to such a point that I realized it really should be delivered in two parts, so what follows is only "Part 1" of this 100-day roundup. "Part 2" will appear tomorrow. It was cut solely based on length, not for any conceptual reason, so the break is somewhat random. Join us back here tomorrow for the conclusion of this article.]

Polling

More and more, the public at large agrees with the traditional definition of horrorshow. Trump's job approval ratings are in the middle of an absolute tailspin. Nate Silver's poll-of-polls average now has him at only 43.6 percent approval to 53.3 percent disapproval -- a gap of almost 10 points that is widening by the day. The only real question about Trump's polling numbers at this point is whether they are worse or slightly better than the first 100 days polling from his first term in office. Some polls have him worse, which puts Trump in the dubious (but superlative, which he always seems to like, right?) position of "worst presidential polling since public polling began more than 80 years ago." He qualifies for this dubious distinction either way, mind you, it's just a question of which term was worse than the other.

This is all likely to get even worse in the near future, and it's also likely that the voters that Trump is losing now won't rally back to his side for a very long time, mostly because he's losing them on the economy. When people feel the economy is bad and getting worse, it takes a lot of time and good economic news for them to shift their opinion back to the positive (this is a general political reality in polling).

Trump overread his "mandate," plain and simple. This isn't all that unusual -- many other presidents have done so. Trump's victory was an awfully thin one (he didn't even win a majority of the votes cast), and not everyone who pulled the lever for Trump was a die-hard MAGA fanatic. A lot of them voted for Trump because they thought he would make the economy better somehow.

The economy / tariffs

Trump campaigned heavily on this, of course, and made sweeping promises of a magical and instantaneous consumer Wonderland, starting on Day One of his second presidency. Over and over again, he promised to bring prices down on Day One, that the price of gasoline would fall by half his first year in office, that groceries and everything else would get cheaper overnight, and that he'd "make America affordable again!"

Obviously, that hasn't happened yet. And things seem to be either stalled or headed in exactly the opposite direction. The price of gasoline on the day he took office was roughly $3.10 a gallon nationwide. It has gone up and down since then (up to $3.26, down to $3.03) and now stands at $3.14 a gallon -- four cents higher than it was 100 days ago. This could improve in the upcoming months, as the price of crude oil is extremely low right now, but this is largely because of fears of an imminent worldwide recession looming, so it wouldn't exactly be the best economic news (the low point on gas prices Trump loves to brag about during his first term came when COVID had devastated the economy, so far fewer people were driving around all that much). But it certainly doesn't seem on track to hit $1.55 any time soon (which would be the 50 percent reduction Trump promised on the campaign trail).

As for the rest of the economy, everyone -- Wall Street, big corporations, small businesses, and especially American consumers -- is waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is reflected in the polling, where Trump is now underwater on the economy by double digits. Trump has said many memorable things over the past 100 days, but the one that might best sum up the Orwellian nature of his rhetoric was Trump declaring "Liberation Day" -- as he "liberated" American consumers from paying cheap prices for all the stuff they buy. Trump has been at his most chaotic on tariffs, never giving a single cohesive explanation for even what he is trying to do. Instead, he gives lots of explanations, which all tend to contradict each other. Are the tariffs designed to bring in so much money to the federal government that Trump could even do away with income taxes (as he has claimed)? Or are they designed to force other countries to make new trade deals with America? Or are they designed to bring manufacturing back to this country in a big way? Or are they designed solely to have a big bilateral trade war with China? The rationale shifts, but quite obviously these goals are mutually exclusive to one degree or another. If the tariffs are just to be used as leverage in deal-making, then they won't bring in tons of money (because after the deal is struck, the tariffs will go away). Likewise for manufacturing -- if the tariffs are bargained away then nobody's going to onshore factories here again.

The chaotic nature of the tariff rollout was made even worse by Trump's fickle nature. He announces enormous worldwide tariffs only to pull them back (to "only" 10 percent) with a "90-day pause" almost immediately afterwards. He slapped big tariffs on Mexico and Canada and then dialed them back too. Just today, he announced he's dialing back his 25 percent tariff on automobiles and auto parts, since they would hike the price of cars (or fixing one) enormously. Nobody knows what's next in the trade war -- each day it all seems to be based on how Trump feels, with no rhyme or reason to any of it. None of it makes any sense, which is why big businesses are freezing their plans for the future (until some unspecified future date when some sort of consistency and predictability will emerge). The one thing Americans can agree on is that Trump's tariffs are going to make inflation a lot worse in the very near future, as prices go up for any number of products. Trump's polling on inflation is now over 20 points underwater, and still falling.

Trade war with China

As for a trade war with China, if this was the real aim then Trump went about it in perhaps the worst way possible -- by first alienating all our allies who he could have instead recruited to stand firm with us against China. Slapping tariffs on all our allies was an insult and not only are they now not going to stand with us in anything, but all their citizens are now deciding not to take vacations in America or buy any American products in their stores -- which will further blow up Trump's plans to somehow solve all the trade deficits we run with other countries and it will instead wind up hurting the American economy in multiple ways.

Trump badly miscalculated China's response. And now we have two major world leaders who are both absolutely refusing to back down (because it would mean a giant loss of face to the rest of the world). China isn't even interested in talking to Trump right now, much less doing any deals. Trump is the one who is going to get backed into such a political corner that he's going to wind up begging China to come to the table.

As I said, we're all waiting for the other shoe to drop. There is a considerable lag time in shipping things across the ocean. Orders from China take anywhere from one to two months to arrive at an American port. And we're approaching the one-month mark from when Trump slapped his insanely-high 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods. While big corporations stocked up in advance of "Liberation Day," at some point their stockpiles will dwindle. And that's the point where consumers could start seeing empty shelves at their local stores.

This is already in progress. West Coast ports are already slowing to a crawl. Nobody's shipping anything from China, because a tariff of 145 percent is essentially an embargo. This means dock workers will be laid off, and then truckers (since there won't be as many goods to move around), and then it will cascade throughout the rest of the economy. Just to pick one potently symbolic product, America may have a tough time affording (or even finding) fireworks for July 4th, because virtually all of them are made in China -- and those factories are shutting down. And the Christmas shopping season could be at risk as well, since orders for Christmas goods are usually placed early in the year (around now, in fact). This is all going to cause a whole bunch of small businesses to go under, because they can't afford the insane tariffs and they know that their customers won't pay $75 (or more) for a stuffed toy for their kids.

Average Americans are feeling incredibly gloomy in their economic outlook for the future, which is why Trump's polling on the issue is so dismal right now (even though it was such a big campaign issue for him). People expect inflation to spike due to the tariffs and they are very worried about an imminent recession. Trump announcing some new trade deal (with Japan, for instance) isn't going to change this outlook much. Neither will the Republicans in Congress putting together a new budget that extends tax cuts. People are still going to be looking at their retirement accounts and seeing nothing short of a complete horrorshow. And that's before they start seeing empty shelves at the local Target or Home Depot.

Foreign policy

It hasn't been just the economy, though. Trump's grandiose promises on the campaign trail on foreign policy have been just as laughably unkept as his promises to lower everyone's prices immediately. Trump explicitly promised that in his "first 24 hours" in office, he would end the war in Ukraine. Sometimes he even promised to end it before he was sworn in. Here we are at 100 days in, and the war rages on, despite Trump essentially offering Russia everything they want and nothing they don't, in the starkest example of appeasement since Neville Chamberlain's infamous deal with Nazi Germany. Trump also promised he would end the war in Gaza lickety-split, which also continues to drag on with no end in sight.

As he did in his first term, Trump has been scathingly insulting and disrespectful towards all the leaders of America's allies, while cozying up to every dictator on the planet (except China's Xi, because of the whole trade war thing). But this time he's added threats to just take land (the Panama Canal, Greenland) from other countries, or even subsume them completely (Canada) into becoming America's "51st state." Trump's insulting bombast (calling the prime minister of Canada "governor" as if this fantastical 51st state was already a done deal) just caused an election upset in Canada, as their voters chose a candidate and a party who will push back against Trump's bullying.

Worse than all of this is the dismantling of America's "soft power" on the world's stage. Elon Musk and Marco Rubio (and their minions) decided to abolish all foreign aid worldwide. No longer will we feed hungry children, vaccinate the vulnerable, promote democracy and human rights, provide disaster relief assistance, or any number of projects that showed the world (since the end of World War II) that America was a good friend and ally for other countries to have. Now, the Trumpian message is: "Go screw yourself, you're on your own." This will cause many small countries to look towards China for such soft power, which diminishes the stature and strength of America on the world stage. When other countries now look at America, what they see is not a helpful friend but rather a complete horrorshow, plain and simple.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant