Donald Trump returned to the White House with a sweeping victory, winning the popular vote. But those who voted for him, with expectations and hopes, in November, have already seen enough.
Trump’s approval ratings have been falling steadily, polling average shows. Public opinion polls show his rating to be around 40%, which has changed from 52% since his inauguration. If a poll could be conducted on the percentage of Trump’s decline and America's decline in the world, the index would undoubtedly be much higher, with the unprecedented hits to the global economy and world order.
Trump exaggerated his promises to end wars, and managed to convince even the Muslim Arab American voter base in swing states that he would end Israel’s atrocious mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza and establish peace in the Middle East
Opinion polls are enough as an indicator of the progress or decline of the popularity of any president in the US, and the measure adopted by respondents is the extent to which the president has fulfilled the promises of his campaign.
Trump exaggerated his promises to end wars, and managed to convince even the Muslim Arab American voter base in swing states that he would end Israel’s atrocious mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza and establish peace in the Middle East.
In cities and states with large numbers of Arab and Muslim Americans, Trump beat his opponent Kamala Harris from the previous Biden administration by a high margin. Take for example, Dearborn, Michigan, where more than 55% of the residents are of Middle Eastern descent. This election cycle, Trump won more than 42% of the vote, up from 30% four years ago.
He initially brokered a ceasefire in Gaza, seemingly to show his early success, but everything he has fulfilled since has been the complete opposite of his campaign’s promise.
Instead of seeing the end of the war on Gaza and the establishment of peace in the Middle East, his voters saw him participate in opening the gates of hell on Gaza, and determining its destiny by emptying it completely of its people and turning it from a homeland, to a mere real estate investment project in which tourist facilities would be built, on a layer of the bodies of its children, women, and youth killed in Israel’s ongoing genocide.
Trump’s threat in February, that “all hell is going to break out,” has meant Israel restarting the war and blocking further new aid from entering Gaza, worsening the dire situation for the Palestinian residents and speeding up the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump has infamously cracked down on peaceful protests for Palestine on US soil, in ways never seen before. Students and protesters -- both foreign and green card holders such as Columbia University’s Mohsen Mahdawi -- have been targeted. Mahdawi, who was released by a federal court on May 1, was first detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) when he turned up at an American citizenship interview in Vermont in mid-April.
His unlawful detention and attempted deportation by the administration is part of a nationwide push to target visa holders, permanent residents for their Palestine solidarity, in order to let Israel commit their crimes with impunity. Mahdawi’s unlawful and shocking arrest has shown the Trump administration’s strategy of using Palestine and anti-Semitism as wedge issues to crack down on all forms of dissent in a nation that has long championed freedom of speech.
It is also worth noting that the Trump administration has weaponized anti-protest bills across 22 states to expand criminal punishments for pro-Palestine protests, which are in fact protected in the US constitution. Five federal bills targeting college students, anti-war protesters with large fines, and unfair prison sentences were introduced, leading experts and observers around the world to speculate the symbolic expiration of the first amendment rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and petition under Trump.
The first 100 days not only show his failure to keep his promises regarding the Middle East, but rather reveal Trump’s utter failure to “make America great again.” If anything, the whirlwind of tariffs -- that threaten a recession, detention of immigrants, and attacks on education and health, show that Trump is out to make America anything but “great.”
He has signed the most disruptive executive orders compared to any other modern president, aggravated a trade war, collected the most tariffs, and had the most lawsuits filed against him in his own country.
He has turned America into a field of experiments, making it lose its credibility as a superpower, even to its closest allies. He has opened his own nation’s doors wide to opponents to benefit from his misadventures. The amount of damage that Trump has caused in the first hundred days would require others years to achieve.
Trump had promised that his first 100 days would be “extraordinary.” Ironically, he seems to have kept one end of his promise: His first 100 days have truly been extraordinary -- an extraordinary failure.
Yousef SY Ramadan is the Palestine Ambassador to Bangladesh.
