President Donald Trump’s first couple of weeks in office have been described as chaotic and damaging by members of the media following several executive actions directed at government spending, immigration, and more.
“No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of President Donald Trump’s second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1.0. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable,” The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus wrote.
Trump signed a series of executive orders in his first two weeks in office, aimed at immigration and the border crisis, threatened tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and took steps to eliminate DEI offices in the federal government. Trump’s administration has also taken steps to scale back USAID.
“None of this is normal. Little of it is legal. All of it is misguided, and that’s a mild term. The damage to the federal workforce is incalculable. Years of expertise down the drain. The ability to recruit talented employees: same. Why would anyone join an operation that treats its workers this way?” Marcus wrote of Trump’s early moves, specifically with regard to federal workers.
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Marcus warned that Trump’s “damage” would be difficult to reverse.
“The object is nothing less than the transformation of the American presidency,” she wrote.
The Post’s Drew Goins titled his opinion newsletter, “The worst two weeks in American governance, ever.”
The New York Times editorial board also accused the president of crossing lines.
“The first two weeks into his second tour in the White House have seen so many lines crossed in the pursuit of his agenda that anyone who believes in the Constitution and honest governance should be worried: Many of Mr. Trump’s first assertions of executive power blatantly exceed what is legally granted,” the editorial board wrote.
The Times added that the president was “testing Washington and the American people to see how far he can go in accumulating authority.”
“It is a test the Constitution cannot afford to lose,” the editorial said.
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The Times’ David French said the president was not just “enacting policies; he’s launching a constitutional revolution.”
Meanwhile, the paper’s climate newsletter deemed Trump’s first weeks in office as chaotic.
“Trump’s First Two Weeks Have Thrown U.S. Climate Spending Into Chaos,” the newsletter read.
The Los Angeles Times also published a report on the start of Trump’s second term that described his first couple of weeks as “chaotic.”
The Trump White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Trump has also said the U.S. would take over the Gaza strip, following a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, which prompted criticism.
The announcement was met with rebukes from media pundits, including MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who was visibly shocked by the breaking news that aired during her show, repeatedly referring to Trump’s comments as “stunning.”
“Donald Trump is off-roading here, and he has no idea which direction is north,” Reid’s MSNBC colleague Alex Wagner reacted. “When thought of the sort of catastrophic iterations of Trump 2.0, this is the kind of stuff that people imagined.”
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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes accused Trump of “backing explicit ethnic cleansing” and warned viewers to take him seriously.
