President Trump has tightened the lid on the leaks and infighting that plagued his first term, but his familiar zeal for clashing with the media is leading to his own verbal mistakes and miscommunications piling up.
During Mr. Trump’s first 100 days, his new administration operated with more noticeable organization and discipline than his first term. The president quickly enacted his agenda upon taking office, issuing sweeping executive orders, slashing the federal workforce and government spending and cracking down on illegal immigration.
He has reeled off a series of victories, including an unprecedented securing of the southern border and two better-than-expected jobs reports. He even announced the NFL draft will return to Washington after more than eight decades.
Much of the infighting and staff clashes that occurred during Mr. Trump’s first term have disappeared, or at least have been kept out of the press. His decision to hire loyalists rather than veteran Washington officials has led to fewer internal disputes.
Yet Mr. Trump remains alarmingly loose-lipped amid a growing list of communications missteps in recent days. In less than one week, the president insisted that kids should cut back on toys as a solution to the impact of his tariffs and said he didn’t know it was his job to uphold the Constitution in the legal battles over his deportation policies.
In addition, a controversial AI-generated image of Mr. Trump dressed as the Pope was posted on social media, including the official White House account, drawing criticism.
After a whirlwind 100 days with many of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises met, perhaps the president’s honeymoon is over. Media watchers say Mr. Trump has lost some of his earlier discipline as frustrations mount.
A peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine — something Mr. Trump promised on the campaign trail that he’d deliver in his first 24 hours — remains elusive. His tariff plan, the signature piece of his economic agenda, has rattled the stock markets and unleashed economic uncertainty.
Mr. Trump’s approval rating has dropped 14 points since entering office, and he is now 6 points underwater, with 45% of voters approving of his performance compared to 51% who don’t, according to aggregate polling from RealClearPolitics. Voters give his weakest ratings on his handling of the economy.
“It’s been a messy week. I think part of this is that he is now having to account for the results of his administration’s policies, and before it was braggadocious,” said Robert Rowland, who teaches presidential rhetoric at the University of Kansas. “He has to defend his actions and one of those tactics has been to say outlandish things in part to obfuscate and in part to distract.”
Peter Loge, who teaches political communication at George Washington University, says Mr. Trump making controversial remarks has always been how he operates, even dating back to his time as a New York real estate developer.
“This is Trump being Trump,” he said. “Even before this week, he’s talked about running for a third term, making Canada the 51st state and invading Greenland.”
The White House blamed the media for ginning up controversy when there wasn’t any, and pointed to Mr. Trump’s actions over the past week, including banning gain-of-function research, participating in a FIFA World Cup Task Force meeting, and announcing that Washington would host the 2027 NFL draft.
“The public would be better served if the legacy media spent less time manufacturing controversy and more time reporting on all the president is doing to deliver on his promises including over 140 executive orders in just over 100 days,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to The Washington Times.
Still, there has been a growing list of missteps.
Mr. Trump has faced a backlash for saying at a Cabinet meeting last week that children could do with fewer toys if his sweeping tariff plan drives up costs. He later doubled down on his comments, adding that children could also get by with fewer pencils, during an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t have to have 250 pencils, they can have five,” he said.
Critics on both sides of the aisle said the comment showed Mr. Trump was out of touch with everyday Americans.
Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, said the president doesn’t “have a clue about what it means for a working-class family trying to buy presents for the kids or to take care of basic necessities.” He said, “It’s an incredible arrogance and ignorance” on the part of the president.
Republican strategist Karl Rove on Fox News compared the president to “Mr. Scrooge” for talking about fewer toys for American children.
Mr. Rowland compared the comments to when President Carter went on television wearing a sweater in 1977 and told Americans to turn down their thermostats because of the energy crisis.
“People don’t want less stuff,” he said.
In the same “Meet the Press” interview, Mr. Trump questioned whether he had a duty to uphold the Constitution and the Fifth Amendment right to due process, expressing frustration at the judicial pushback to his mass deportation effort.
When asked if, as president, he needed to uphold the Constitution, Mr. Trump deflected.
“I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are obviously going to follow what the Supreme Court says,” he said.
Legal scholars complained, noting that when Mr. Trump took the oath of office on Jan 20, he swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
In between those messy statements, the White House posted an AI picture of Mr. Trump dressed as the pope, a move widely condemned as tone-deaf and disrespectful after Pope Francis’ death a few days earlier.
Mr. Trump brushed off the backlash, saying it was a harmless joke that was overblown by his critics in the media. He also insisted he had nothing to do with it, but the White House did not respond to questions about who posts to Mr. Trump’s social media account besides the president.
Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was blunt in his criticism of the photos, saying the image “offends believers, insults institutions and shows the leader of the global right enjoys being a clown.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump’s frustration appeared to boil over when he erupted at The Wall Street Journal, which has been extremely critical of his tariff proposals, aboard Air Force One.
“You people treat us so badly. The Wall Street Journal has truly gone to hell. A rotten newspaper. You hear me, what I said. It’s a rotten newspaper,” he told the reporter after asking a question.
Then he decided not to answer the reporter’s question, saying it would be “wasting time” to talk to the outlet.
