Opinion: What do you think of President Trump's leadership in his first 100 days?
On a bonus episode (first released on April 28, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: We asked: Do you support President Trump's actions so far? What concerns you about what he and his administration have executed on? Readers across the country shared their opinions with us. Forum is a series from Paste BN's Opinion team, dedicated to showcasing views from across the political spectrum on issues that Americans are starkly divided on. If you'd like to weigh in on a different topic, you can find more questions at usatoday.com/forum. And if your submission is selected for print, we might invite you to add your voice to a future special bonus episode like this one. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Michael McCarter:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. It's been nearly 100 days since President Trump was inaugurated. What do you think of the President's leadership so far? Are Americans better off? I'm Michael McCarter, I lead the opinion sections of Gannett, the parent company of Paste BN. This is a bonus episode of The Excerpt, highlighting a series from Paste BN's opinion team called Forum. Here's what readers told us.
Cerissa Fortune:
I do think America is better off under Trump's leadership. I really think that he's doing a lot of things that really needed to be done for the past, probably a couple of decades, and has the most, I believe, transparent administration in probably modern history really.
Michael McCarter:
That's Cerissa Fortune, a 45-year-old who lives in New Castle, Pennsylvania. She supports Trump's trade and immigration policies.
Cerissa Fortune:
I support everything. I support the illegal aliens being deported if they're here illegally. I feel that there are so many people that work so hard to come here, the legal way, that set roots. The one thing I do not agree with though, is I believe the Dreamers should be able to stay. I do absolutely 100% agree with the fact if you did not come in this country illegally, if there is a judge in any type of court that has said, "You are here illegally." You have every right to be deported. I'm not concerned about the economy. Wall Street, of course, is a mess right now, but I'm not worried about Wall Street.
Yes, I do have money in a 401(k) as a lot of Americans do, but I trust President Trump. I trust the tariffs. I trust the process. I believe that we should be making everything here. We shouldn't rely on a country that threatens to cut off our electric if they're upset with us. We already have so much tension with other countries, especially China, but we deserve fair trade. We deserve to make everything here, to not have to rely, we used to have tons of jobs, millions of jobs here, and they all went overseas again. So bringing the jobs back, making fair trade. I feel honestly, if it takes a couple months, it took us how many years to get here? It's not going to fix overnight, fix itself, but people have to trust the process, I think, and I absolutely trust the process.
Michael McCarter:
Diana Lane is from Boulder, Colorado. She has concerns about Trump's leadership, particularly regarding the impacts she sees on the economy and scientific research. She's 56.
Diana Lane:
There's a lot of things that make me concerned. One of them is really these just chaotic economic policies that we're seeing leading to rising prices. Our retirement accounts are plummeting as so many people's are. I just stopped looking because it's so bad. There's like little ups, and then it's just this steady down. We're at risk of recession, which is really scary. We're all being harmed by these tariffs. We're all paying the price, and it's really upsetting. I'd like to see them stopping all the illegal actions that Elon Musk and the DOGE team have been taking, and particularly around privacy, where they're going into these government databases, they're breaking all of these privacy rules that the government has set up.
There seems to be evidence of them taking data out of these government systems, and we don't know where the data's going. That's just incredibly upsetting. I mean, efficiency, okay, it's a good thing. We don't want to pay more for taxpayers, but this isn't efficiency at all. And one of my kids has a disability, there's really sensitive information in the social security databases about my kid. Who's getting access to that? Who's seeing that? There's supposed to be all of these rules and safeguards, and they just, from what we can tell, they're being completely disregarded.
Michael McCarter:
Bob Phillipp is 41 and lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He shared that he admires Trump's aggressive tactics, seeing them as necessary to secure the country's future.
Bob Phillipp:
I think it's going to take time, and I think everybody wants to see some countries actually get some good trade negotiations, because it's scary, and I totally understand that too. But it's like I see the effort being made at a very fast and aggressive pace to try to get things undone in some cases, but also to push things forward. The amount of debt we have is so staggering, and I don't want America to be the next Greece. I don't want us to come in a relevant country. I've been blessed. I grew up in the '80s. I've lived a really good life in America that I think was a time where a lot of people, not everybody believes this, but a lot of people did prosper and felt this was a strong place, a strong economy, and also a place that got along well. So that's certainly an area I think all sides of the aisle want to get back to.
So I'm concerned, but again, I think a lot of these things that Trump's doing, it's going to be unsettling for a little while. It's going to be a bumpy thing while we transition, as we try to adjust the global market to a new trade system that is, as Trump says, fairer to all parties, certainly to America. But I think I'm willing to deal with that unsteadiness and that bumpiness right now, knowing that there is a plan, and it's not just, let's... I mean, you just can't spend your way out of everything. You have to at some point be like, I'm a homeowner, you have to know I can't do every project today. Sure, I'd love to do the yard, the landscaping, the gutters, the roof, the shingles, the windows, but you pick your spots. So I think he's doing one thing at a time, and this is not going to be fixed tomorrow, but I think we're heading in a trajectory that will get America in back in a better, stable place.
Michael McCarter:
And last today we have Tatiana Maxwell, who lives in Twisp, Washington and is 61 years old. She shared that she worries about the erosion of democracy and other harms happening under the Trump administration.
Tatiana Maxwell:
I think this administration is both inept and inhumane and irrational. Trump and his administration are just willy-nilly destroying the country from education to public safety, to our standing in the world, to our military. When you fire so many people willy-nilly and kick working immigrants out of the United States, you're creating some real problems. The tariffs are beyond comprehension and making enemies of our long time neighbors and friends, Canada and Mexico, hard to imagine why you want to do that. I think prices everywhere are going up. The automobile industry is roiling. My children are super concerned about being able to afford a house, whether or not their jobs will exist. I think on every level, I don't think there's any part of the economy that is moving positively at this point.
At least during Trump's previous administration, there were some adults in the room. It does not appear that there are any adults in the room, and it does not appear that there are any guardrails that so many people have brought up. There are guardrails to keep our government in place. They seem to be crushed one after the other. I would like to see the Trump administration behave in the way that government is intended to behave, that the executive is one of three branches of government. And when the Supreme Court issues a ruling or when Congress passes a law, the executive should respect and enact those actions. But it would be great if they just behaved in the way that our Constitution intended.
Michael McCarter:
That's all we have for today's episode. This is a co-production with the Forum team at Paste BN, where we invite our readers to weigh-in in writing on a national topic of interest. If your submission is selected for print, we might invite you to add your voice to a future special bonus episode like this one. There's a link to Forum in the show description. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Michael McCarter, Vice President of the Gannett Opinion Group. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.