Trumping FDR

Like Donald Trump, Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived at the White House as a wealthy man eager to remake the nation’s economy.

Both faced a nation in economic collapse — FDR was elected to end the Great Depression, Trump to restore American sovereignty at the border and its primacy in the world economy. They were both exemplars of presidential leadership — in his first 100 days, Roosevelt signed 99 executive orders — including a four-day bank “holiday” to stop the run on cash that was sucking dry the US economy. FDR’s record of hitting the ground running stood for 92 years, until Trump 2.0. In the first 100 days of this second term, according to the Federal Register, Trump signed 143 executive orders.

The similarities end there.

As the Washington Post recently put it, FDR wanted to expand the government’s footprint in the lives of Americans. From the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that put unemployed young men in environmental jobs to the Work Projects Administration (WPA) that employed millions in designing art projects for public spaces like post offices or constructing roads and buildings — FDR created so many new government programs they became known, collectively, as the alphabet agencies.

Trump wants to reform the federal agencies bequeathed by FDR and LBJ. These Democrats convinced generations of Americans that they were victims, that capitalism was the villain, and that the government could rescue them from these evils. But contrary to the Post’s assertion, Trump has no desire to dismantle the bureaucracy. He certainly has no designs on Social Security, perhaps FDR’s signature achievement. He just wants to clean it up.

Engaging Elon Musk and his team of techies at the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump has asked them to look for waste, fraud and abuse. Already, Musk says they have saved federal taxpayers $160 billion. Among their victories: discovering 11 million “recipients” to be 120 years of older on the Social Security rolls. These fraudsters have been referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Where FDR build up the federal bureaucracy, Trump wants to build up the economy. Trump is a businessman who prefers a lean fighting machine with a reduced federal footprint. He’s also a fan of returning federal monies to the states, closer to the citizens, where there is likely to be more accountability. But he is no libertarian.

FDR’s New Deal specialized in adding regulations — from New Deal agencies like the Securities & Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda wants to slash regulations that hamstring businesses from succeeding and torture Americans with red tape.

But the greatest difference between the two presidents may be that FDR had a largely compliant press corps, which compromised its own journalistic principles by agreeing to his request to never photograph Roosevelt, who suffered from polio, in his leg braces. More, this fawning media — in those days comprised of print, photography and radio — did all it could to hype the president’s pro-government agenda.

As for Trump, he is stuck with a biased legacy media that loathes him, and shows it in haughty coverage that ignores his successes and sensationalizes controversies of its own making. At the Cabinet meeting to mark Trump’s first 100 days in this term, Vice President J.D. Vance pointed out that in the 40 years he has been alive, the country went from the world’s manufacturing superpower to dependence on the People’s Republic of China, from the proudest military in the world to one that couldn’t even meet its recruiting goals, and from a bipartisan immigration policy to one designed by Democrat Joe Biden to allow 20 million illegals to spread crime.

“In 100 days, we started to reverse every single one of those negative trends,” he said. Turning to the media in the room, he said, “That’s the story you guys should cover.” Instead, “too much of the media is so focused on fake BS” they haven’t noticed what’s happened to the country over the last 40 years, and how Trump is righting the ship.

Trump is the first president to televise his Cabinet meetings, and if you watch them on YouTube (I have become a fan) you will learn about the additional savings that almost every department has found thanks to DOGE. You will also marvel at their sheer talent, dedication and work frenzy. As the EPA’s Lee Zeldin put it the other day, “All of us can sprint, Mr. President, because you are running.”

Predictably, the first media question out of the box was about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a member of the terrorist MS13 gang with a valid court deportation order, an illegal alien suspected of human trafficking and wife beating, now in jail in El Salvador.

The media’s bad-faith reporting and Trump Derangement Syndrome virtue-signaling makes 47’s achievements in the first 100 days even more remarkable than FDR’s.