The 100 Day (so far) Trump Dumpster Fire

We start this episode by discussing the ongoing controversy surrounding Release Time Religious Instruction (RTRI) in Ohio, spearheaded by LifeWise Academy. This initiative allows public school students to leave school for religious education in the middle of the day, exploiting legal loopholes to introduce religious content into public education. As part of my advocacy against these policies, we expose the tactics being employed by LifeWise representatives, including aggressive legal threats aimed at school districts adopting more cautious policies, particularly concerning promotional materials like treats and trinkets that facilitate recruitment into their programs.

Then we do an analysis of President Donald J. Trump's approval ratings after his first 100 days in office during his second administration. We provide insights into how these ratings can serve as a barometer for his political effectiveness, drawing comparisons with historical figures and past administrations. The consensus is clear—Trump's numbers are significantly underwater, reflecting dissatisfaction across multiple demographics and even within core support bases.

We assess what Trump's low approval ratings mean for the Republican Party and democracy at large. By drawing parallels with Trump's past actions and the historical context of his presidency, we convey a sense of urgency regarding the potential consequences of his policies and rhetoric. Recent protests against his administration's immigration policies highlight the public’s growing discontent and the strategic missteps that may lead to political upheaval.

We conclude with a sobering reflection on the tumultuous first 100 days of Trump's presidency and provide a call to action for listeners to engage with their political communities actively while remaining informed.

Full Show Notes & Links

Chapters

• 0:50 First Liberty Bullying Public-Schools
• 11:56 20,000 Leagues Underwater Approval Ratings for Trump

Transcript

[0:01] In this episode, we get in our submarine and take a very deep dive underwater

[0:07] to find the approval ratings for Donald J. Trump in his first 100 days of office. Then we discuss what's going on with the release time religious instruction in Ohio and some updates.

[0:21] Music.

[0:24] I'm Doug Berger, and this is Secular Left.

[0:50] As people know that regularly follow this podcast one of the issues that i've been fighting against for at least a year, maybe more, I think it's been more than a year, has been Release Time Religious Instruction in Ohio.

[1:06] It's led by this Christian nationalist group called LifeWise Academy. And what they do is they do the end around of not allowing prayer in the school by forcing their way into a public school district to have a Bible class in the middle of the school day. Not before or after, but in the middle. So I'll throw some links to some previous information about this issue. If you've never heard of it before, you can take a look at that information and then come back to this. But what I wanted to talk about is, and I'm familiar with this tactic too, because secular groups have done this tactic in the past. So what happens is you have a public entity that's doing something you disagree with that you believe to be illegal. Maybe it's violating your civil rights in some form or way, or you think it is. So basically, with a public entity, a lot of times what you'll do is you'll have a national secular group like FFRF or American Atheists, American Humanist Association. They'll write a strongly worded letter to this public entity.

[2:24] Detailing why the behavior that they're doing is wrong and why this they should stop doing it. And and if they don't and here's the key, and if they don't, then this national group or it doesn't even have to be a national group. It could be the ACLU is going to file a lawsuit and for have the courts force you to stop it. So basically what you're doing is you're trying to preempt their behavior to get them to change so that they don't go to court, don't have to waste money on lawyers and take the time to go to court and possibly lose anyway. So for church-state separation issues, that is one of the things that is in the toolkit, especially in this climate where we can't count on the judicial branch to protect real religious freedom.

[3:19] So, there was an article in the Columbus Dispatch a couple of weeks ago, and it was from talking about LifeWise Academy and the change in the state law. And the RTRI law was changed at the end of the last legislative session in December to mandate that public schools have a policy. An RTRI policy so that groups like LifeWise can come in and set up and take the kids off campus, take them to Bible class.

[4:00] So they got this change done. They lobbied for it. They got this change done. And now it's April and it's about ready to take effect. So, Some of the grassroots groups, including some that I work with, like Honesty for Ohio Education, have been working with these school districts to tailor their policy to hopefully protect the children as much as possible. Because the state legislature didn't put in any guardrails again into the law. The only thing that they require is a background check. And they don't say it has to be the same as a teacher. They just say that they have to prove that they had a background check. That's the only thing that got added. The rest of it that's currently in the law, besides saying that they have to have a policy, is everything that was in there before. You can't have it on campus. You can't pay for it with tax dollars.

[5:00] Parents have to give permission. And the staff and the district personnel cannot promote it. They can't talk again, oppose it, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, so groups like Honesty for Ohio have been working with these school groups to come up with these policies in this group, this consulting group called, I believe they pronounce it NEOLA. It's N-E-O-L-A. And what they do is they assist school boards in developing policies. And so they have like model policies that they help, they give to the board so that they can pass it as their own. They also provide cloud space for agendas, bylaws, and other materials that they use for school board meetings. And one of the model policies that they came up with for RTRI, one specific choice that the school district can do is it can prohibit treats and trinkets of.

[6:11] Being brought back to the public school from the LifeWise class. And the reason why this was added to the model policy, and this was one of the things that we fought for when we were lobbying against RTRI, was that that is how groups like LifeWise recruit new students, is they'll ply their students that attend with candy and little Jesus dolls and I think a little red bus and games and things like that. And they'll take it back to the school. And the friends that don't attend will see this and say, oh, cool, you guys have toys. Or you guys get candy, free candy. I want to go too. And then they'll talk their parents into sending them. See how insidious that is? It's how they recruit the kids. Because LifeWise can't go into the school to recruit kids. They can't have the staff people try to recruit kids.

[7:13] You know, that's the only avenue that they have to recruit kids at the public school unless they stand outside the school building or put an ad in the paper or whatever. So that was one of the things, was that school districts could ban bringing treats or trinkets, they call it, treats or trinkets back to school. Well, LifeWise obviously got wind of that, and they were upset. So they got their legal people, which is actually First Liberty, which is a Christian nationalist law firm that does that, got them. And they sent a strongly worded letter to this group, this group that did the model policy, threatening them with a lawsuit because they're violating LifeWise's First Amendment rights. Or, no, they're violating the students' First Amendment rights to be allowed to bring back things from Bible class to the public school.

[8:20] And that if they didn't change it and get the school districts to remove that particular thing from their policy, then they would file a lawsuit against the group and against any schools that did that. This other group said, well, look, you know, we've had our lawyers go over this model policy and this is what they said we could do. So they've spent money on lawyers. They know what's legal and what's not. So basically what it was was First Liberty and LifeWise was trying to bully the schools into not having such a strict rule about stuff like that.

[9:03] Now, the other thing that they complained about, LifeWise complained about, was that some school districts were, they were following the spirit of the law, if not how LifeWise wanted them to follow it, was that they were doing these policies and saying that students could only leave campus for these classes once per quarter or once per grading period. period. Now, LifeWise wants to have one class a week, at least one class a week. They don't want to have one class every three months, because it costs the local group money to fund these classes. And they don't want people sitting around not doing anything and having these donated buses sitting around. They want to have a class every single week, because they're trying to convert these kids into Christians to come to church. And you can't do that every three months or every two weeks or however long it was. So they talked to their buddies in the state legislature and got an item added to the state budget, which is being considered right now, where it would require.

[10:19] At least one period per week. It would mandate one period per week of RTRI classes. and then two units of credit for high school students. Now, personally, I think that that violates the spirit of the Zorach v. Klassen law because what it's doing is it's supporting, it's tax dollars supporting LifeWise Academy because they're forcing the school to have a class every single week, instead of leaving it up to the schools. The orders to be clothed and said it should be left up to the schools. So we'll see how that turns out. I had a letter to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch published the week of the 24th. It was published and it was in the print edition in the Sunday edition on the 27th. So if you have the Columbus Dispatch or I'll probably have a facsimile of my letter on the show notes, check it out.

[11:27] Hello, this is Doug, host of Secular Left, reminding you that I like to be validated. If you like this podcast and want to thank me, feel free to buy me a coffee. Go to buymeacoffee.com slash secularleft and donate some cash to help make this a better show and validate me as a person. You'll feel better in the morning.

[11:56] At the time that this is being recorded, it is the 100th day. I don't know if it's exactly today that I'm recording this, but it's the 100th day of the second administration of President Donald J. Trump. What that means is here in the United States and in the United States political press and politics in general, we try to gauge the effectiveness of our elected leaders or how we do the polling, approval, disapproval. And usually they start breaking it out with 100 days. How a president does in his first 100 days in office, either for good or for bad, is one of those touchstones, those mile markers that they use for an administration. Like I said, it's for good or for bad. Most of the time, it's like the guy is just getting started or the woman is just getting started. And they barely have their cabinets posted because they had to go through the vetting process and the confirmation process. And so, personally, in most cases, I would give the person some leeway because they just got into the job.

[13:19] Well, I don't feel that way with Donald J. Trump because it's his second administration. he should know better by now and unfortunately the people that he hired to do his job for him they screwed up big time.

[13:40] Because they have not kept him contained and every little thing, every little, weirdness, irrational thought that comes into his head there's some flunky ready to execute it. And then you have his other minions like Tom Holman and the Secretary of the Treasury that they're already with these executive orders for him to sign. And you can clearly see in any time that they show video of him signing a new executive order that he has absolutely no idea what is in that executive order. It's not his idea. in most cases.

[14:27] And so basically what it is, is it's his little bubble, his little MAGA bubble that is running things and they're doing a very bad job. To say that Trump's approval ratings are underwater, you would need a submarine to get to his approval ratings currently. Across the board, every poll in this country, every legitimate poll in this country, even Fox News, which isn't as bad, all show that his approval rate is way down. His disapproval rate is way up. There are a lot of people that do not like him, and it's getting worse. And this is just his first 100 days. And a friend of mine kind of made a comment or repeated a comment she heard. It said that William Henry Harrison had a better first 100 days, and he was dead for 70 of them.

[15:32] So that cracked me up because it's true. William Henry Harrison, he gave his inaugural speech, and in 30 days, he was dead. And I think it was Tyler had to take over for him. But yeah, so that's apropos. In fact, the only president that has been less popular than Donald Trump in the modern era is Richard Nixon, who was forced out of office, who had to resign and get a pardon for crimes that he committed while he was in office. Trump is less popular than him. In fact, I heard somebody else today liken Trump popularity to be between lice and bedbugs.

[16:28] Lice is more popular than Trump, but he's more popular than bedbugs or something like that. Oh my goodness. And it's just a constant thing. They had the funeral for the Pope last weekend. Checked it out a little bit. Because what I was watching, you know, I'm not into the Pope thing and, you know, he's dead. It doesn't matter to me. But when they have these big state funerals or big funerals for important people, I always do the people watching and see who comes out. And so I saw a lot of the famous people and one of them was President Trump. Who happened to wear a blue suit. Now, this is a Catholic funeral, Catholic mass funeral. And typically for funerals, you wear black. He brought Melania with him and she wore black. He wore a blue suit because he's that way. He wants the attention. The problem is that he was like in the front row of all the dignitaries. And it showed in some of the clips that I saw later he nodded off he had a quick couple minutes of nap now.

[17:49] I get it. He flew all the way over from the United States. So, you know, it's probably a combination of jet lag. It's in Italy in the spring. The sun's beating down on St. Peter's Square. There's no cover. I can see him getting sleepy. But you can obviously tell he's zonked out. So his approval ratings for everything across the board, Everything that they measure, he is underwater by double digits, and in a lot of cases, double digits.

[18:28] And he thought that he would do all these things and these terrorists and arresting illegals and deporting them immediately and deporting citizens by mistake. And he thought that people would love him and people don't. And you can tell that he doesn't like the polls because in one of his social media posts, he exclaimed that the Department of Justice should investigate the pollsters. He says that they're fake. So, you know, he's a big baby, just like usual.

[19:02] The other thing that has bothered me that he's done in his 100 days is he's trying to wipe out DEI, or what they think is DEI, diversity, equality, and inclusion, because they think it's discriminatory towards white people. They don't actually say that in public, but that's why they are doing it. They're saying it's discriminatory, but they don't say it's discriminatory towards white people. It's not, but that's what they say. And so they are sending out executive orders Which again are not the law It's just memos he writes to his staff.

[19:38] Telling one of them was he sent them out to the public schools in the United States, telling them that they were going to lose funding, federal funding, unless they got rid of DEI programs. And what is amazing about that is that, you know, in a combination with that CRT hysteria about not teaching controversial subjects and trying to erase trans kids, which is another thing that his administration is doing, is this is the same group that cried when they started taking down Confederate statues because they claimed it was erasing history. And they are so for erasing history, like they've targeted the African-American, the National African-American Museum, wanting them to take down stuff, including the exhibit for the Woolworths, I think it's Woolworths, the lunch counter exhibit. They want them to dismantle it. He has appointed J.D. Vance to be the arbiter of what values the Smithsonian Institution should should include on a website for their Tuskegee Airmen. They erased the entire history of the Tuskegee Airmen off the U.S.

[21:04] Air Force website. And if it wasn't for public condemnation and pressure to put it back, they probably wouldn't have put it back. Then you also have NASA. They erased the history of women serving in NASA and going into space, including the first woman that went into space.

[21:27] And removed her information from their websites. And this is just the first 100 days. There was some good news in the first 100 days, at least this week. Canada had their parliamentary election, and that one is they have writing. They're called writings. They're elected officials that serve in parliament have to run in these things. They're like U.S. representatives and state representatives, but the terminology is called writings. And at the time that I'm recording this, the CBC, the national news organization in Canada, has called the election for the Liberal Party. And the Liberal Party, they were previously the prime minister. They were previously in charge before this election. And the prime minister at the time was Justin Trudeau. and he had become unpopular because of something called a carbon tax and some other issues. And so he had stepped down as prime minister a couple months ago. And this other guy, Mark Carney, took over.

[22:40] And according to the news reports that I saw out of Canada, that up till January of this year, it looked like the Conservative Party was going to run the table and return to power after so many liberal governments. And people were just done with the Liberal Party. They were just done with them. And it happens when you have a party in power for a long amount of time and you don't you don't try to fix the system like with gerrymandering or or oppressive election rules and things like that. People get tired of you and they sweep you out of office and they bring in new people because that's just people want to do that, especially if things are not going well in general. And so people were writing off Carney and the liberals that they were going to lose significantly in this election. Then President Donald J. Trump gets involved.

[23:48] Threatens Canada with tariffs to start, wants them to become the 51st state. Then during the election, when the election was starting on the 28th, he put out a social post telling people in Canada to vote for the conservatives. And that he still wanted the candidate to be the 51st state and vote for the conservatives would be a vote for him. And I think that turned off enough people because the liberals have won handily. I mean, they called the election within about an hour after the polls, all the polls had closed. And in Canada, you need 172 seats in Parliament to have a majority. And based on their projections, they were going to have at least 172. They still don't know if it's going to be a majority party where they don't have to work with anybody else, or if they're going to be a minority party where they'll have to have a coalition and ask one of the other parties to work with them. So and what was really stunning about the Canadian elections was the Quebec Party, Bloc Quebec. I can't speak French. I'm sorry. But it's the Quebec Bloc.

[25:11] Normally, they always vote Quebec. Anybody, French, Canadian, they vote for them. This time, most people voted for liberals because they didn't want Donald Trump to win. They didn't want to give Donald Trump a victory by having the conservatives win. Not saying that the Canadian conservatives would go with Trump, but just that prospect of a conservative party at the same time that Trump's in the United States. Anyway...

[25:43] So in Quebec, the Quebec party lost at least 11 seats in the parliament, and that was picked up by the liberals. So there's something good that came out of that. But like I was saying, you know, Trump is like that. He's triggered. He assumes that everybody loves him. Not everybody loves him. And now more and more people. There's protests almost every day somewhere in this country. Every weekend, bigger protests. There's a big protest coming up on, I believe, May the 1st or May the 3rd. One of them. I think it's May the 3rd this weekend. Another big one across the country. People have been protesting the arrest of the judge in Milwaukee. People have been protesting another legal immigrant who was arrested after he was checking in with the Border Patrol, or not Border Patrol, but Immigration Service, got arrested.

[26:52] There's also the story about two children who were deported. They were citizens, and they were deported when their mothers were deported.

[27:04] And even after the fathers of those children, who are legal residents, begged for the kids. And the Trump administration was like, nope, they're going with their moms. So you got all that. Then you have the stuff where they're talking about wanting people in this country to have more kids, and they're going to give a stipend of $5,000 for each new kid. But I can tell you right now, it's not for poor people. They don't want people on welfare getting that $5,000. It's for the people that they want to have more children, white people living in the suburbs.

[27:50] But I can tell you that people living in the suburbs aren't going to have more children just for $5,000. $5,000 for somebody in the suburbs who are not poor, but not affluent, but not poor, $5,000 is chump change. You know, that's the kind of money that they spend to get their car repaired. And you're asking somebody, some white woman, to go through nine months of a pregnancy to have a child just for $5,000. The $5,000 wouldn't even cover the birth, the hospital bill for the birth. You know, the insurance company wouldn't even, it wouldn't cost way more than $5,000. So that's funny. Then, because of the mess with the tariffs and they're screwing over the farmers again, like they did in his first term, now there's talk that they're going to do a bailout for the farmers again.

[28:51] And so it's like, this is just the first 100 days. It's a dumpster fire. It is. It's truly a dumpster fire. And the other thing I wanted to point out before I close this segment is that Trump won a majority of the votes in the last election by about 1%. His gap between Harris and himself was about 1%. So he could not screw anything up in his first 100 days, but he screwed up everything. So now you have people that do not like him. The numbers are in the 50s. Disapproval ratings.

[29:40] 50%, mid-50s. I've seen some in the upper 50s. The approval ratings are only in the 30s or lower 40s. You know, he is completely underwater. And I think it was Rachel Maddow on one of her shows was talking about, you're going to see some wild pitches coming from him. And I'm sure we will. I'm sure we will see. He'll throw a bunch of crap on the wall and see what sticks to try to get this narrative switched around, which it won't. Now, normally what he would do, and I don't know why he's not doing this, is he would just go and do rallies. That's what he did when he, even before he started running again, he was doing these public rallies all over the place, but he hasn't been doing them. So I'm thinking that's probably what he's going to do next.

[30:33] But yeah, so 100 days and he's really tanked everything he's touched. And there's going to be a lot of recriminations coming up for a lot of these Republicans who are just shrugging their shoulders and letting him rampage over everything. And there is a lot of discontent. And unless they break away from Trump, you're going to see, you know, and it's not going to take much. I think they said three seats in the House. House, the majority, the Republican majority in the House is only three seats, you know, and it's only, I don't know, five or six seats in the Senate.

[31:18] And you're going to see, I could tell you, if the Democrats get control of the House, I think it's going to be probably a monthly impeachment series going on. They're going to impeach him at every turn. Every action that he takes or has taken, they're going to impeach him constantly. And people are like, oh, Doug, come on. That's terrible. That's divisive and all that stuff. That doesn't matter because what he's doing, a lot of the things that he's doing, and he's ignoring the courts, a lot of the things that he's doing, it's simply illegal, unconstitutional. And he needs to be held accountable to it. And if that happens with the midterm election, that's what we need to do. Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us. Our theme music is.

[32:46] Music.