According to Forbes, New York Magazine, Time, and Inside Higher Education, Donald Trump sent letters to high schools and colleges attended, plus SAT College Board personnel, threatening them with legal action if they released his academic records. One certainly might wonder why a 78-year-old man elected to the highest office in the U.S. would spend time focusing on this issue, which is relatively meaningless compared to one’s strength of character, integrity, honesty, and work ethic.
The grading that really matters is the grades the American public gives Mr. Trump during his first 100 days of office or 180 days -- according to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook -- as the time designed for Trump to implement their proposals. Trump’s actions will be graded by the world for eternity.
America’s 335 million citizens, especially the ~51 percent of voters who voted for someone else to become USA’s 47th president, deserve a five-week report card on Trump’s 2.0 endeavors. Recall Trump said at the 2024 Republican National Convention he was running for president “for all of America, not half of America because there is no victory in winning half of America.”
Twenty-nine issues have come front and center before the public since Jan. 20. Let’s see what the majority of citizens think of Trump’s 2.0 presidency to date:
- A Feb. 19 Quinnipiac poll revealed the majority of Americans feel Trump has failed on seven issues: immigration, economy, foreign policy, trade, federal workforce, Russia-Ukraine war, and Israel-Hamas conflict.
- According to a new Pew Research Center survey, 56 percent of U.S. adults disapprove of Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship (February 21).
- Since January 20, Trump has signed 64 executive orders and issued 27 proclamations while more than 70 lawsuits have been filed against Trump for his – most constitutional law professors have said- anti-democratic and anti-constitutional actions. Hence, a February 14 Pew Research Center survey found that “65 percent of U.S. adults say it would be `too risky’ to give Trump more power to deal directly with many of the nation’s problems.”
- According to Data for Progress, a super majority of voters oppose Trump’s proposal to take ownership of Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal, and Gaza.
- A YouGov poll revealed that the vast majority of Americans oppose Trump ending humanitarian aid to foreign countries (USAID), abolishing the Department of Education, and disbanding OSHA (ibid).
- Only 24 percent of Americans approve of Donald Trump withholding congressionally appropriated funds (ibid).
- President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance said judges should not have the power to review or block executive actions; 3 out of 5 Americans disagree (ibid).
- Of the 16 federal bodies (e.g., NASA, FBI, CIA, FEMA, USAID, DOGE-Department of Government Efficiency, etc.), the one that is the least favorable by Americans is DOGE, created by Mr. Trump (ibid).
- In separate Quinnipiac and Pew Research Center polls, 54-55 percent of voters think Elon Musk has too much power in making decisions affecting America (Politico, Feb. 19).
- Only 12 percent of Americans think Trump should seek out billionaires’ policy advice (AP/NORC poll).
- Two-thirds of consumers think Trump isn’t focused enough on the prices of products, which he said would be lowered on January 20 (CBS News).
- A majority to a supermajority of Americans oppose Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, Canada, and Europe (ibid), identified by the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board as “the dumbest trade war in history” (February 1-2).
- Trump shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), whereby farmers purchase $2 billion in agricultural products annually, and research is conducted at institutions like Iowa State University, Virginia Tech, and hundreds of other major universities (KCCI Des Moines).
- Due to Trump’s actions, the National Federation of Independent Business’s uncertainty index for small businesses recently reached its third highest level, coinciding with Stanford’s index of policy uncertainty for big businesses (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12).
- Trump’s program to deport immigrants illegally residing in America receives 59 percent approval (CBS News); Trump hits a home run with this issue.
To date, Trump has failed to serve the majority of Americans on 28 of 29 issues that are of importance. Evidence is replete Trump has not fulfilled his promise of being a president “for all of America.”
There are two additional developments that need to be mentioned. First, support for Trump by farmers, teachers, civil servants, CEOs, adults aged 18-44, and people 65 and over is rapidly declining. Secondly, a February 3-16 Gallup poll revealed Trump has a 45 percent job approval rating, which is 15 percent below the historical average for 10 other presidents elected since 1953.
With five weeks down in Trump 2.0 and 203 weeks to go, as Alexander Pope said in his 1733 poem, “hope springs eternal” ... though it seems unlikely.
Steve Corbin is a professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.