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IN 100 DAYS, TRUMP HAS INVENTED SOMETHING NEW: CLOWN-SHOW FASCISM  
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Michael Tomasky
April 28, 2025
The New Republic
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_ The Trump administration is a serious threat to democracy.
They’re also laughably incompetent. But the result is no laughing
matter. _

, Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

 

Remember how April 2 was “Liberation Day”
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That was the day Donald Trump announced his tariff regime; it was, I
think, the third grand announcement out of about six total. I know you
remember it—the shock to the markets created headlines that are hard
to forget.

What you may not remember is that it was also Trump’s _second_
Liberation Day. The first, I was reminded recently as I reread his
inaugural address
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while reflecting on the administration’s 100-day mark that arrives
this week, was Inauguration Day itself: “That is why each day under
our administration of American patriots, we will be working to meet
every crisis with dignity and power and strength. We will move with
purpose and speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety, and peace
for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed. For American
citizens, January 20th, 2025, is Liberation Day.”

How’s that working out?

There is much to say about these 100 days. The odor of fascism is
unmistakable—and entirely intentional. The bullying of universities
and law firms; the probably illegal firings of those 18 inspectors
general (you’d forgotten that one, I bet!); the ghastly executive
order
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instructing the Justice Department to investigate two U.S. citizens
for expressing their political views; the purposeful lawlessness of so
many actions, designed to force showdown after showdown at what Trump
assumes will be a pliant Supreme Court; the daily inversion of reality
peddled by Karoline Leavitt, Cabinet officials, and not least Trump
himself.

And more: the brazenly indefensible treatment of Mahmoud Khalil, a
legal resident and green card holder, arrested without a warrant and
held in a Louisiana detention facility where he missed the recent
birth of his son, apparently just for engaging in political activism
that Trump didn’t like. The clearly illegal deportation of Kilmar
Abrego Garcia. The list goes on and on, and now, as of last week,
includes a 2-year-old U.S. citizen who was deported
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and another child-citizen with_ metastatic cancer_ who was deported
without access to medication
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But hey, let’s not focus on the extreme cases. Let’s just think
about your average Americans.

It’s not working out so great for them, either. Here’s another key
line from the inaugural address: “I will direct all members of my
Cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what
was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.”

Gee! That … doesn’t seem to have happened. Inflation is down a bit
from last year, at 2.4 percent
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right now, largely because energy prices have fallen. Which, by the
way, isn’t a Trump accomplishment: Energy price decreases are a
function of overproduction, the explosion in electric vehicle
production in China, and fears of recession (OK, he does get credit
for that!). Meanwhile, the worry that Trump’s tariffs will spark new
inflation is widespread: Fully 71 percent in a recent poll
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said they believe the tariffs will spike inflation. Even 47 percent of
Republicans agreed. And this is the kind of topic on which public
perceptions drive behavior and help create reality.

A _New York Times_ reporter noted last week
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that the paper had heard from “hundreds” of businesses across the
country “who said they have been stunned into paralysis by Trump’s
barrage of tariffs.” An airplane parts manufacturer in Alaska was
shocked at how “quickly and chaotically,” in the _Times_’ words,
the tariffs have been applied. The company has no choice but to import
some parts because they’re made only overseas. It has raised prices
17 percent, the owner has moved to Brazil where the living is cheaper,
and he’s consulting a bankruptcy lawyer.

Liberation Day.

When we think of the word _fascism,_ everyone’s mind races
immediately to Adolf Hitler. But the world has seen many variants of
fascism, Nazism being only one. There’s Italian _fascismo_,
there’s Francoism, there’s Banderism (that was Ukrainian) and
Ilminism (South Korean) and more. There’s neofascism and
crypto-fascism
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and ur-fascism [[link removed]] and
Islamofascism. But Donald Trump has given us something new: clown-show
fascism.

Clown-show fascism describes a regime marked simultaneously by
hubristic and defiant assaults on the democratic and constitutional
order on the one hand and, on the other, a nearly laughable
incompetence in just about every other area of the regime’s
activity. The first characteristic certainly applies to the Trump
administration, and it’s chilling and frightening and not at all
funny. Just ask Mahmoud Khalil.

Yet at the same time, in other areas, the incompetence has been
staggering. Trump’s constant about-faces and walk backs on tariffs
have been an international embarrassment. Elon Musk’s DOGE has fired
federal workers willy-nilly only to turn around and rehire many after
the Musketeers realized they weren’t deep-state bloodsuckers and the
work they did was kind of essential, after all—you know, like the
people who tend the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile
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It can be hilarious to watch. But it carries two consequences that are
no laughing matter.

First and more obviously, we have the prospect of the impact of
Trump’s tariffs policy on real people. Will they cause inflation and
a recession, as most experts now believe? As fate would have it, Trump
will go to bed the night of his 100th day in office—Tuesday—and
wake up the very next morning to the release of the first-quarter GDP
number. Economists expect anemic results. The Atlanta Fed even
predicts negative growth
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around -2.5 percent. During Trump’s first week in office, its
forecast nudged a gaudy 4 percent, but the president’s actions have
liberated that figure ever downward.

Second and more insidiously: Even the gross incompetencies take us
into treacherous territory because they contribute to making this all
about one man, the man who must be in front of the cameras every day.
He doesn’t have policies so much as he has urges, which he must
announce to the world on a constant basis in a desperate plea that we
keep him front of mind at all times. Some of those urges are cruel;
some of them are a joke. What unites them is that they make the story
entirely about him.

That is not how it’s supposed to work in democracies. Which we still
are, for now, as we reach this 100-day mark. Only 1,361 to go.

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Michael Tomasky is the editor of _The New Republic_ and the author of
five books, including his latest and critically acclaimed _The Middle
Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared
Prosperity_
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With extensive experience as an editor, columnist, progressive
commentator, and special correspondent for renowned publications such
as _The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times_, the Daily
Beast, and many others, Tomasky has been a trusted voice in political
journalism for more than three decades.

* Trump Adminstration 100 Days; Trump Style Fascism; US Democracy;
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