Trump claims mantle of FDR’s first 100 days, but differences are stark

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s earthshaking first 100 days in office, no president has matched the sheer drama and disruption of that 15-week sprint in 1933, which rewrote the relationship between Americans and their government. At least until now.

President Donald Trump’s opening barrage has similarly upended government operations, disturbed traditions and even raised new questions about what it means to be American. It is no accident that Trump has repeatedly cited Roosevelt as a model when it comes to his impact and place in history.

But as Trump’s 100-day mark arrives Tuesday, the differences are at least as stark as the similarities. Roosevelt’s onslaught, in the depths of the Great Depression, was aimed at expanding the federal government’s presence in Americans’ lives. Trump’s crusade is aimed largely at dismantling it.

Perhaps more crucially, Congress came together to pass more than a dozen major laws in Roosevelt’s first 100 days, reflecting the wide national eagerness for his revolution. Trump, in contrast, has governed largely by unilateral executive action, which enables to him to ignore his opponents but avoids a broad political consensus - and leaves his actions more vulnerable to reversal.

“Roosevelt spent an awful lot of time trying to craft constitutional justifications in legislation, and draft it in such a way that the courts might accept it,” said Anthony Badger, a historian and author of “FDR: The First Hundred Days.” “He wasn’t trying to do it by executive order.”

Few would dispute that Trump has had a major impact in his first 100 days. He has forced out thousands of federal employees. He has shut down agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development. He has imposed far-reaching tariffs on America’s trading partners. He has eliminated diversity programs nationwide and forced changes on universities, law firms and corporations.

“In his first 100 days, President Trump has delivered on hundreds of promises and already accomplished his two most important campaign goals - the border is secure and inflation is ending,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “The next 100 days will consist of trade deals, peace deals, and tax cuts. More American greatness is on the way.”

But most voters disapprove of his policies so far, including his handling of immigration and the economy, two of his traditionally strongest issues. Overall, his job approval has fallen to 39 percent of adult Americans compared with 55 percent who disapprove, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

And while many of Trump’s actions could have long-term consequences, a future president could instantly reverse Trump’s executive orders, and in the interim, they face a series of court challenges.

“Roosevelt was putting into place things that lasted for the rest of his century and well into this century,” said Elaine Kamarck, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution who served in the Clinton administration. “Nothing, nothing, nothing in these 200 executive orders is likely to last beyond Trump’s term.”

This, of course, is Trump’s second experience with a “first 100 days,” since his two presidential terms have not been sequential. But in 2017, he often seemed surprised by various aspects of the job and moved more slowly, signing 24 executive orders by this point in his first term compared with roughly 140 so far in 2025.

Arguably the only significant bill to pass so far this year, besides required budget measures, is the Laken Riley Act, which allows the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of theft-related crimes.

In contrast, Congress passed 16 major pieces of legislation in Roosevelt’s first 100 days, by Badger’s count, often by overwhelming bipartisan margins. They included such landmarks as the National Industrial Recovery Act, which created two major new agencies and established enduring rules on union rights and corporate competition.

Trump regularly invokes Roosevelt, sometimes depicting him as a model and sometimes as an adversary.

At a meeting with Republican governors in February, Trump suggested that he and FDR have led America’s political shifts of the past century. “We’re forging a new political majority that is shattering and replacing Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which dominated American politics for nearly 100 years,” he said.

As early as June 2017, Trump named FDR as one of the few presidents whose record was comparable to his own. “I will say that never has there been a president - with few exceptions; in the case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle - who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than what we’ve done,” Trump said.

He also has clearly been intrigued by Roosevelt’s status as the only president to serve more than two terms. In May 2024, speaking to the National Rifle Association, Trump began musing about Roosevelt’s lengthy tenure.

“You know, FDR was a beautiful, had a beautiful patrician voice. Magnificent voice. Great debater. Very smart man,” Trump said. “You know, FDR - 16 years, almost 16 years. He was four-term. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term or two-term?”

In 1951, as a reaction to Roosevelt’s presidency, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, limiting an individual to two presidential terms.

Roosevelt was able to accomplish so much so fast because the country was in the throes of an unmatched calamity, leaving some Americans wondering whether the United States was on the brink of collapse.

Almost 25 percent of Americans were unemployed. The banking system had disintegrated, with some 7,000 bank failures. Prices had plummeted by 25 percent. Shantytowns sprang up across the country as desperate families cobbled together makeshift homes.

“The country was in some places unrecognizable,” said David Woolner, professor of history at Marist University and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. “There was even the prospect of starvation in places like West Virginia. The state of Georgia laid off all of its teachers because it couldn’t pay them anymore.”

The economy when Trump took office in January was relatively strong, despite lingering inflation that frustrated many Americans. Unemployment was at 4 percent and the economy added 143,000 jobs in January, part of a long run of job growth.

But Trump did not see it that way. As he took office, he declared the U.S. to be in a state of moral, economic and social crisis that required drastic remedy.

“A radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair,” he said in his inaugural address on Jan. 20. “We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad.”

In his first hours in office, Trump declared an “energy emergency,” allowing him, for example, to ease regulations on fossil fuels. He invoked emergency economic powers in imposing tariffs on America’s allies and adversaries. He declared that the U.S. faces an “invasion or predatory incursion” to justify a wave of summary deportations.

Tevi Troy, a presidential historian who worked in the administration of George W. Bush, said Americans can feel they are experiencing a crisis even when experts do not view it as such.

“At the time, things can feel like a crisis,” Troy said. “That is the way Trump presented things to his voters: ‘We have a crisis at the border; we have a crisis with China.’ Presidents often present things as a crisis to win votes, but also justify the actions they are taking.”

Trump and his aides have repeatedly justified his early barrage of actions not just by portraying a country in crisis, but also by citing a mandate from voters.

But any Trump mandate pales in comparison with Roosevelt’s landslide in 1932, which reflected the public’s deep thirst for change. Roosevelt garnered 57 percent of the popular vote to incumbent President Herbert Hoover’s 40 percent, and voters handed Democrats overwhelming margins in Congress - 59-36 in the Senate and 310-117 in the House.

Trump in November fell just short of 50 percent of the popular vote, defeating his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, by 1.5 percent. Republicans have razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate.

It would be a mistake to paint Roosevelt as entirely unwilling to take unilateral action in violation of long-standing norms, historians say.

He warned lawmakers in his first inaugural address that if Congress failed to enact needed legislation, he would seek “broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

Like Trump, Roosevelt faced numerous court challenges, prompting his widely panned proposal to expand the U.S. Supreme Court so it would stop striking down his legislation. And Roosevelt knew how to attack opponents for political advantage.

“Roosevelt was very good at, without naming them or identifying individuals, talking about the ‘economic royalists’ who were trying to prevent the changes that he wanted,” said H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” “He was good at going after the ‘fat cats of Wall Street,’ for example. He would say, ‘They hate me, and I revel in their hatred for me.’”

Historians say the conditions leading to Roosevelt’s election may never be repeated. The Great Depression was a historic catastrophe, and the country has become so polarized in recent decades that a collective push for action like the one that led to the New Deal seems remote.

Despite that, presidents routinely face pressure to show that they are off to a roaring start within their first 100 days.

“Every administration since FDR feels that: ‘What are we going to do in the first 100 days? What are we going to accomplish for the American people in that first period?’” said Troy, who joined the Bush administration at its outset.

Kamarck recalled that the Clinton administration dealt with the 100-day mark by reporting progress on the president’s signature initiatives, including health care and welfare reform.

“The only way that anybody can come close to Roosevelt’s 100 days is if you have massive majorities in Congress,” Kamarck said. “Of course, we knew that the 100 days would be a metric, no matter how phony it was. We knew the press would write about it.”