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“I’m not a fan of Trump, but he’s delivering a long-overdue kick in the pants to the bloated bureaucracy of the US federal government,” said Martyn, a marketing executive from California. “Seems odd to ask Trump to focus on eliminating corruption, but sometimes you need a crook to catch a crook. It’s been, however, way more chaotic than I thought was possible.”
Martyn was among thousands of Americans who shared with the Guardian how they felt about the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second term, painting a picture of voters who felt disoriented and maximally alarmed on one side, and exhilarated, hopeful or positively surprised on the other.
The president has spent the first 100 days since his inauguration issuing a flurry of executive orders and making a series of policy moves that have dominated the global news and politics agenda and raised fears of autocracy in America and a fundamental shifting of the international order.
Hundreds of Americans who were opposed to Trump said they felt his first few weeks in office had been “a nightmare”, “absolute chaos”, “a dictatorship” and “an embarrassment to the American people”, among many similar verdicts.
Those who supported Trump felt overwhelmingly that his second term had so far been “fantastic”, “energizing”, “an impressive success”, “a beacon of change” and had shown the president to be “a man who keeps his promises and truly delivers”, among similar sentiments.
Scores of people who felt outraged about the Trump administration said they could not comprehend why Americans were apparently broadly “accepting” or “tolerating” Trump’s policies, with various people decrying the absence of mass protest or concerted efforts to have Trump removed from office.
A number of people who said they remained broadly sceptical of the Maga movement said they had embraced some of the president’s policies, such as deep cuts to federal spending and foreign aid, attempts to expose corruption in government agencies and a harsh crackdown on illegal migration.
Many felt that Trump was disrespecting America’s system of checks and balances between the executive, the judiciary and the legislative branch of the US government.
Scores felt that Trump had not used his first weeks in office to focus on the needs of the American population, as promised, such as cheaper groceries and housing. Many respondents expressed shock about Trump’s expansionist rhetoric on Greenland, Canada, Gaza and Panama, and what they considered assaults on free speech.
Many others, however, pointed out that Trump had begun to deliver multiple policy pledges from his campaign, among them Doge, tariffs, ramped up deportations of migrants, the dismantling of DEI and efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
“This is a fiasco,” said Maritza, a Hispanic woman from Florida in her 40s who had come to the US as a refugee from Colombia in the 1990s.
“It’s been overwhelming and confusing. Here we are, drowning in executive orders, with a spineless Congress. There’s no rhyme, no reason, they’ve created chaos on all levels. All we’re seeing is the fallout domestically and internationally from their approach – the constant reversals, the radical dismantling of government institutions.
“I’m disgusted that life-saving aid has been cut to vulnerable populations with zero regard for human life. As a person of color in this country, I’m concerned for what comes next in the crusade Musk and Trump are waging on democracy. The tariffs are another shit show.”
“It’s been devastating and far worse than I imagined,” said Mary, 58, a physician from Seattle. “Watching Ukraine get served up to Putin, watching tens of thousands of faultless federal employees be summarily fired. He wants to be a dictator.
“In his first term, he had reasonable people around him who held to norms of governance. Now, he’s pushing every boundary. It’s not the executive’s place to close the Department of Education. It’s out of Trump’s purview. He doesn’t have the authority per the constitution, because we have three co-equal branches of government.”
Mary pointed to the deportation of more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan drug gang who were rapidly deported to El Salvador by the administration – possibly in defiance of a court order blocking the deportation – after Trump invoked a law last used during the second world war.
“That’s not due process,” Mary said. “He’s doing these things in ways that have never been done before.” For others, however, that was exactly the point.
“The people who say Trump is authoritarian and acting illegally – they’re essentially saying that it’s unconstitutional when a democratically elected president delivers the drastic change people voted for,” said Ron, a 36-year-old worker in a manufacturing workshop and father of two from Detroit. “I voted for almost all of this.”
“Trump is doing a lot by executive order, because he knows that what he wants to do is not going to get through Congress, and America is kind of in an emergency situation, running out of time,” said Matthew DeLuca, 55, a data scientist from Atlanta, Georgia.
“I’m still happy I voted for Trump. I think he’s doing the right thing. I don’t agree with every detail of what he’s doing, such as how he’s treating Canada and Denmark. I think it’s very counterproductive to suggest to Canada that it may be our 51st state, and I don’t think we need to take Greenland or, you know, buy it against their will.
“But Trump is the first president in my lifetime who is actually trying to do something about our biggest problems. I’m not confident he will be successful, but just the fact that he is trying gives me hope.”
DeLuca was particularly impressed with both Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration as well as with the ‘“department of government efficiency” or Doge.
“You can’t have a country without borders. My wife is a federal worker, she’s facing losing her job. That would be a bad thing for us, but she voted for Trump knowing this was a risk. I hate for anyone to lose their job, but something has to give.
“We have $36tn in debt. If we don’t make radical changes, this country will go under. We don’t have a choice, we’ve got to straighten this out.”
“Even though I’m an opponent [of Trump], I understand the appeal of action, after we’ve had a long period of stagnation due to our structure of government,” said Brian, a university professor in his 60s from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“Over the last decades, Congress has been increasingly paralyzed and focused simply on obstruction, and so they’ve done very little. As somebody on the other side, I’m deeply frustrated by the inaction, too. Even when Democrats win the presidency and have control of both houses, they do very little.
“This contributed to the rise of Trumpism, but also to dissatisfaction on the left. The realization that the federal government really was not responding to things that people want – the housing crisis, homelessness, the escalating cost of higher education – we have a whole variety of things that are never addressed.
“I’m not persuaded, however, that the things that Trump is ramming through are actually the things his voters wanted.”
Trump, Brian felt, was determined to break “the accomplishments of generations”, from the social safety net to collective security abroad.
“I’m dismayed by the absence of a meaningful response from the Democrats, who seem to have given up, and by the capitulation of the legacy media and institutions like Columbia University, which appear to have made peace with Maga. That concerns me, as we are witnessing the final unraveling of checks and balances,” he added.
“The only check and balance on the Trump train I see is the bond market and its view on the health of the US economy,” said Patrick, 51, a finance professional and father of three from New York.
“The conversation in the streets and offices is astonishingly positive. Only soundbites [about the political situation] are making it through. People are generally onboard with Doge and cutting government waste here, except those directly impacted. Colleagues and others in my social circle, including West Village neighbours and working-class people, are looking for reasons to say ‘it’s fine’, and this is New York!
“This administration is not going to be brought down by social issues [such as mistreatment of migrants]. All people care about is their pay and the economy.
“There is nothing that he and his administration are doing that I didn’t expect, but the lack of outrage, the general apathy and calm acceptance have been terrifying and extremely depressing,” said Daniel, a former teacher and translator from San Diego, who is currently taking care of an elderly parent.
“I have been paralyzed by fear. Friends who weren’t born here are terrified. We look over our shoulders when talking in public.”
Mindy*, a 59-year-old homemaker from Maryland, said she had experienced “constant anxiety” since Trump had taken office.
“Anxiety over whether Immigration Control Enforcement (Ice) will randomly arrest a friend, or their kid at nursery, about whether my federal government worker husband will have a job when he comes home, about whether they’ll allow my Guatemalan foster son and me back into the country if we go and visit his grandparents,” she said.
“Egg prices have come down, I paid $4.97 a dozen this week, but they’re still higher than they used to be. I have anxiety about losing freedoms – are you going to be able to express an opinion that the administration disagrees with?”
While many respondents said that Trump had been much better prepared than they had expected, many said the administration’s “Flood the Zone” strategy had created much of the chaos engulfing the White House in recent weeks, but had also succeeded in overwhelming the opposition.
“Trump is obviously trying to push as much through as he can in one fell swoop. The result has been chaotic,” said Wyatt, a college student from Tacoma, Washington.
“I don’t think his administration has the knowledge nor ability to actually curb inflation. I think if prices continue to go up it could create an opening for the Democrats, but they would really have to get it together.
“I think the Democrats have done a lousy job with messaging and never really innovated like the right has done with social media and the internet. This left a big opening which the right has capitalized on, and they now seem to dominate the cultural narrative.”
Various respondents felt hopeful that Trump would revive the fortunes of America’s declining industries, among them Howard Trenholme, a bakery and cafe owner from Moab, Utah, who hoped that Trump would be “making the US strong in terms of being the manufacturing juggernaut of the world again, as well as confronting China’s growing dominance”.
“Trump [claims] that he will bring factory jobs back to the USA, but I don’t think that the US has the infrastructure or the interest in doing so,” said Joel, an epidemiologist from Chicago in his 30s. “Young people do not want factory jobs. The US cannot compete on the global market as a producer of goods. It is a nonsense concept that will not work.”
The actions taken to halt USAID-related activities, Joel warned, would put the health of Americans at risk, for instance by failing to provide foreign countries like Sudan and Uganda with the means to screen travelers for infectious diseases that could then spread in US cities.
Eileen, 72, a retired English teacher from New York, said her son’s and daughter’s government-funded jobs in oversees humanitarian aid and education were affected by Elon Musk’s sweeping cuts, meaning she had stopped all discretionary spending to be able to support them financially.
“I’m horrified at the vicious means Trump is using to dismantle this country,” she said. “The ambush of President Zelenskyy was disgusting beyond belief, and I never dreamed our government would do an about-face and side with Russia, treat our allies so badly.
“It shakes you at your core, watching these values being trampled into the ground. I do hope that the tide will turn.”
*Name has been changed
