STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today marks 100 days since President Trump took office, and last night, he celebrated with a rally in Michigan.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We've accomplished more in three months than most administrations accomplished in four years or even eight years, and we're just getting started. Believe me, we're just getting started.
INSKEEP: NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith has us look at what has changed since Trump's first term.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: When Trump came into office in 2017, it was a shock to the political system, but his first term looks downright tame compared to 100 days of Trump 2.0. And a lot of that has to do with Trump putting his stamp, or rather, his large Sharpie signature, on the government and the nation's institutions with incredible speed and intensity. It started on inauguration day as Staff Secretary Will Scharf presented him with one executive action after another.
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WILL SCHARF: The first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive orders, presidential memoranda and others.
KEITH: And he did it all in a sports arena, packed with cheering supporters.
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TRUMP: Could you imagine Biden doing this? I don't think so.
KEITH: These signings have become a near daily occurrence in Trump's White House, and they've led to far more dramatic and immediate action than the first time around, reshaping the government and seeking retribution against his political enemies. Trump even changed the name of the body of water that borders America's southern states.
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TRUMP: You know, we're flying over - right now we're flying over a thing called the Gulf of America.
KEITH: Just like his first term, Trump is dominating the national conversation. But this time, he's meeting with less resistance.
DAVID URBAN: By the way, he's enjoying the hell out of himself at this point, too.
KEITH: David Urban is a longtime Trump ally.
URBAN: The president is much more confident in his own abilities, in his understanding of what needs to be done and how to pull the levers and make things happen.
KEITH: Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser in the Clinton White House, and he says he expected Trump would transform Washington in a way that he didn't in his first term.
DOUG SOSNIK: Now, having said that, never in my wildest dreams did I think for a moment that Trump would come in and do what he's done.
KEITH: He says Trump's public fights with allies have upended America's relationship with the world. The president took his tariff ambitions much further and much faster this time around, sending consumer confidence into a tailspin. Trump is also pushing the limits of presidential power, a fight now playing out in the courts. But Sosnik says there is a risk in Trump's aggressive approach to the presidency this time around.
SOSNIK: Just doing a lot of stuff doesn't necessarily make you successful.
KEITH: During Trump 1.0, he faced pushback from within his own administration. The second Trump administration is all loyalists. Gone are the establishment Republicans who saw themselves as guardrails working behind the scenes to temper his plans. Congress is more compliant as well. Back in 2017, there were Republicans like Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who openly questioned what Trump was doing in this Washington Post video.
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JEFF FLAKE: I think the Republican Party is in a crisis.
KEITH: But Flake and Republicans like him aren't in Congress anymore. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate are far more willing to go along with Trump's demands. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is a rare Republican still willing to oppose Trump, but only sometimes.
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LISA MURKOWSKI: We are all afraid.
KEITH: At an event earlier this month in Alaska, she said she was anxious about speaking up.
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MURKOWSKI: Because retaliation is real.
KEITH: Trump's approval rating at a hundred days has fallen to the lowest of any president in 80 years. And in the sprint to do everything all at once, there have been mistakes - tariffs on an island inhabited only by penguins, firing critical employees only to have to beg them to come back, top national security officials talking about military attack plans on a group chat that a prominent journalist had been added to by mistake. Billionaire Elon Musk, charged with cutting the federal bureaucracy, conceded there would be mistakes.
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ELON MUSK: Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's going to bat a thousand.
KEITH: But unlike in Trump 1.0, so far, at least, no heads have rolled in the upper ranks of the administration.
Tamara Keith, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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