42 wild and unhinged moments from Donald Trump's first 100 days back in the White House

Donald Trump has the worst approval rating of any President ever. After 100 days back in the Oval Office, he is less popular than any of his predecessors - including the previous most unpopular president, himself.

In November, he was returned to office in a dramatic near-landslide, soundly defeating Kamala Harris in what was expected to be a very close election. His re-election came amid warnings that even the chaos of his first term in office would look tame compared to a re-elected Trump.

He’s older, more vengeful, less awestruck by the Washington system and all the grown-ups who tempered his most outrageous impulses are long gone.

People always used to say that you should take Trump seriously, but not literally. Those days are over. He’s doing exactly what he threatened do on the campaign trail - and there’s every indication that he wants to follow through on even his most outlandish suggestions.

Almost every day since Trump’s return to office, we’ve rounded up the most unhinged things he and his team did the previous day. To mark his 100th day back in the White House, here’s a comprehensive roundup of his wildest, most insane and dictator-esque moments.

READ MORE:

The really dumb stuff

1. Mount Mckinlay

On his first day in office, Trump renamed Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America, as Mount Mckinlay. Most locals call it Denali. People have been calling it Denali for centuries. But its official name for a few decades last century was Mckinlay, after President William Mckinlay.

There isn’t a firm consensus on why Trump changed the name - other than that its official designation as Denali was signed by in 2015, and he doesn’t like him.

2. The Gulf of America

This one’s even sillier. For no adequately explained reason, Trump decided the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America, despite it having been called the Gulf of Mexico for centuries, and Mexico owning more of the shoreline than the States.

It’s made no practical difference other than as a test of how much Trump can bend reality to his will. Out of fear or fealty, most news outlets and maps have changed the name - in the US at least. There have been notable exceptions, which we’ll come to later.

But he’s so weirdly proud of it. Every now and then he puts a big map of it up in the Oval Office behind him for no reason.

3. Getting rid of America’s disaster response agency

In response to what he felt were failures in dealing with the California wildfires, he openly threatened to get rid of FEMA, the government’s disaster response agency. “FEMA has turned out to be a disaster,” Trump said. “I think we recommend that FEMA go away.”

4. Sending Elon Musk to Fort Knox to see if the gold was still there

Trump has spent fair amount of time promising to look into or fix some of the ’s wilder conspiracy theories - and here’s a case in point, the unsubstantiated supposition that all the gold is gone from Fort Knox.

He even said he’d dispatched weirdo in chief Elon Musk to the island, just to check it was all there.

Presumably it was still there because he said this in February and nobody’s mentioned it since.

5. Threatening to annex Greenland

This started as oddness dates back to Trump’s first term, when he idly mused about purchasing the island that he believes has essential strategic and security importance to the US. As well as its 56,000 inhabitants, the Danish-owned world’s largest non-continental island hosts a number of US military and comms stations, including a “space base”.

And Trump think having a massive island right next to where and are building up their Naval capabilities is a great idea.

So it all comes down to whether Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory, would rather be American than Danish. Which despite a somewhat bizarre visit by Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha, they apparently do not.

6. Threatening to make Canada a state

Yikes, here we go. Trump has often mused about how, in his view, it’s daft that Canada is a country. The border, he says, is an “artificially drawn line” (much like any border…) and in any case, America subsidises Canada (it absolutely does not). His conclusion is that Canada would be loads better off if it was simply the 51st state of the US.

Canada, and in particular former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, disagree.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump referring to Mr Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau”, and repeatedly making the case for the US annexing its nearest and dearest neighbour, although he’s cooled it a little since the election of Mark Carney as PM.

One thing he doesn’t appear to have calculated for is how liberal and anti-Trump Canada is. Making it a state would be like adding another California to the US, and would almost certainly put the Republican Party out of power for a long, long time.

Hiring

There are so many wild hires in Trump’s top team - from Kristi Noem to Steven “Renfield” Miller. But today, we’re going to concentrate on the least qualified, least capable people the worst President has thrust into frontline politics.

7. Hiring RFK Jr to run the health department Trump is said to have wanted Robert F Kennedy Jr as his running mate - but the nephew of one of America’s most iconic Presidents chose to continue his run as a third party spoiler candidate…until he dropped out at the last minute. So instead, Trump put him in charge of America’s entire healthcare system and public health policy. For those unfamiliar with RFK Jr, he’s an unhinged conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic who admitted a worm had eaten part of his brain. There’s also the thing about the dead bear he dumped in Central Park, but we truly do not have the space to get into that here. Bottom line, he’s perhaps the person you’d least want in charge of keeping your family healthy. In 2000, the number of cases were so few and vaccination rates so high that the US government declared measles eradicated. Three months into 2025, there have been 800 cases of measles in the US - more than the whole of last year.

8. Hiring a Fox News host to run the Defence Department

Trump named Pete Hegseth, a man previously most famous for nearly accidentally killing a marching band drummer with an axe live on TV, as US Secretary of Defence. Hegseth, who until now has been a morning weekend host on Fox News, has been described as “so uniquely unqualified” and “dangerously unfit” to lead America’s military. And he’s demonstrated this with great aplomb, most prominently with “Signalgate”, which we’ll come to later.

At the time of writing the Democrat Party are openly musing about whether he’ll last longer at the Pentagon than an unrefrigerated lettuce.

DOGE

9. Bringing Elon Musk into the heart of government

Elon Musk’s nebulous, opaque role within the Trump administration made many headlines in the first days of his second term. Within hours of Trump taking office, there were reports that random nerds, some of them teenagers, were turning up at Government buildings, telling the staff they were from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, and that they had to give them access to their computers. Also, occasionally, that they were all fired.

Thus far, despite claims to the contrary, DOGE has yet to uncover any large scale fraud or abuse in the government. What it has done is shut down a lot of programmes - most famously USAid, which distributed foreign aid and was a key part of America’s soft power abroad - that Republicans don’t like.

Peak Musk was probably his , where he waved a gold-plated chainsaw around as a metaphor for cutting government waste.

But since failing in a bid to use his vast wealth to swing a Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, his star has been on the wane. He's said to be preparing to take a step back from the front line of the Trump wars to concentrate on his businesses, which have been dramatically floundering in his absense.

10. Claiming the US spent $50m to make condom bombs for Hamas

One of Musk’s early - and most wildly stupid - claims was that the US government was $50 million sending condoms to Gaza. The claim was repeated by Trump, who occasionally put the value up to $100 million.

Of course, the US wasn’t doing that. Either Musk or Trump or someone at DOGE got confused because the actual destination of reproductive aid was Gaza, Mozambique - around 6,000km from the Middle East.

The funding went towards global efforts to tackle AIDS in Africa - where 25.6 million people are living with HIV, and 380,000 died from AIDS related illnesses in 2022.

So it definitely, definitely wasn’t - as the President claimed Musk had told him - being used to fund condoms for Hamas, who were blowing the condoms up, tying them to bombs and floating them over .

I wish I was making this up.

While Musk didn’t directly admit this claim was untrue, he did say: “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. Nobody can bat 1,000.”

He added: “We all make mistakes. But we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”

As yet, they have not actually corrected the condom thing.

11. Suggesting 300-year-old people were claiming pensions

After half-reading another spreadsheet, Musk - and Trump - claimed there were tens of millions of people - some of whom were 100, 200 or even 300 years old - claiming .

There obviously aren’t. Sure, some improper payments had been made, because there are millions of people in the system and as Musk said himself, nobody can bat 1,000.

But what actually happened is the US Social Security system’s software system is based on the COBOL programming language, which has some issues measuring dates. Which you’d think Musk’s gang of teen tech savants would know.

This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago.

Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these individuals were receiving benefits.

The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million. So they actually saved money by not fixing the problem. Hey ho.

12. The redundo emails

Musk has by all accounts been trying to apply the methods he used to strip down and - some would say - ruin to the federal government. Among his strategies was sending out mass emails to pretty much every government employee demanding they justify their jobs by replying with a list of the things they did in the previous week. DOGE quietly walked back from this demand, when it was pointed out that there are a lot of government employees who do pretty sensitive and often secret stuff, and probably shouldn’t be emailing their to-do list to random youths without security clearance.

13. Mass firings

Trump and Musk have embarked on an unprecedented - and incredibly messy - firing spree. It’s not just the generals, inspectors general and political enemies of Trump who got the chop. The DOGE-led cull has seen a raft of agencies lose staff or be shut down entirely. They offered voluntary redundancy to basically everyone who works in the government - by giving them a few days to respond to an email. Parts of this scheme have been held up in the courts. This has, as you may expect by this point, not gone entirely smoothly. For example, workers maintaining America’s nuclear weapons arsenal, scientists trying to fight a worsening outbreak of , and officials responsible for supplying electricity have all been accidentally fired - and later rehired - as part of the spree.

READ MORE:

Immigration

14. Deportations

During the election campaign Trump promised the mass deportation of undocumented people from America on a scale not seen in decades. He’s long claimed 15 million “illegal immigrants” had entered the country during Biden’s four years in office, which is untrue. Most estimates suggest the total number in the US is significantly less than that, and the number coming in during the Biden administration didn’t go up that dramatically. He also painted all immigrants as murderous gang members intent on raping and killing American children, rather than, you know, people who come to the US to make a better life for themselves.

15. Accidentally sending people to a foreign torture prison

Keen to get the ball rolling, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has been targeting “gang members” for immediate, and often arbitrary deportation. Or another way of putting it is they’ve been rounding up people from South American countries, many of whom have no gang affiliation beyond having a tattoo and not having a legal right to remain in the country, and rendering them to another country with little to no due process. The most prominent case of this has been Kilmarnock Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran father of a 5-year-old disabled child. He is married to a US citizen, has no criminal record in the US, and came to the US fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador in 2011, aged 16. He was granted protected legal status which should have prevented him being removed to El Salvador for his own safety.

But after what the Trump administration accepted was an “administrative error”, he was rounded up, put on a plane and not only sent to El Salvador, but to CECOT - a mega prison, effectively a gulag, housing thousands of gang members in borderline torture conditions.

The Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration had to bring him back. The White House has so far resisted the order.

16. Threatening to do the same to US citizens

Trump has openly mused about the idea of using foreign prisons - like CECOT - to house America’s worst criminals, a move that would be manifestly unconstitutional.

17. Illegal rendition flights Meanwhile, the White House is facing a possible contempt of court charge, after a Judge ordered one deportation flight temporarily grounded - and it was allowed to take off anyway.

Alongside this, a string of people - some of whom have permanent residency status in the US - have found themselves detained and deported for taking part in protests against Israel on college campuses.

Much of this is being challenged in court, a process which will almost certainly rumble on throughout Trump’s second term.

Trade wars, tariffs and tanking the economy

18. On again-off again tariffs with Mexico and Canada

In early February Trump threatened to slap both Canada and Mexico with hefty tariffs. Then he backed down when they made essentially meaningless pledges to step up their border security. Since then they’ve been on and off so many times it’s been difficult to keep up.

19. Liberation Day

Last month, Trump sent global markets into freefall when he stepped out into the Rose Garden and announced sweeping tariffs on trade from basically all nations. Trump has become obsessed with the idea of tariffs. He believes that if a country buys less from the US than the US buys from them - which is basically every country, because America is one of the world’s biggest consumer countries - then the US is being “ripped off”. So, he held up a big piece of cardboard listing all the countries of the world, and what tariffs he was going to place on those countries. His argument is that either they’ll stop “ripping America off” and buy more US made stuff, or they’ll pay the tariffs, which will make the country billions in tax revenue. What actually happened was the stock markets fell into near collapse - followed by the bond markets. A week or so after the announcement, Trump was forced to “pause” the tariff programme for 90 days, to allow negotiations towards trade deals to go ahead - and to halt the total meltdown of the global financial markets. Thus far, no trade deals have been agreed.

Threats to democracy

20. Pardoning 1,500 supporters prosecuted for taking part in the January 6th attempted coup

In perhaps the most chilling action ever taken by a US President on the first day jn office, gave pardons to his supporters who took part in the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021. They include thugs who assaulted police officers and leaders of far-right groups - with as many as 418 people were convicted of violent offences - and some for serious felonies including sedition.

21. Firing the government watchdogs

Late at night on day 5 of his second Presidency, Trump fired 17 inspectors general from various departments, whose job it is to prevent fraud, abuse and misconduct in public office. Senator Elizabeth Warren warned in a statement that Trump was “dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”

22. Firing the generals

Trump unexpectedly fired General CQ Brown from the highest office in the - the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was one year into a four-year term - and the Chairman usually stays in place even if the Presidency changes. He also fired Air Force Vice Chief of Staff James C. “Jim” Slife, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

23. Taking security clearances and protection away from his enemies

Trump terminated security protection from, among other people, Hunter Biden, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former military chief Mark Milley (whose portrait was also removed from the Pentagon) former chief of staff John Bolton and former medical chief Anthony Fauci - who has faced serious and ongoing threats to his life. He also rescinded security clearance for , Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Liz Cheney, former intelligence chief James Clapper and John Bolton.

24. Banning law firms who acted against him from doing their jobs

Trump targeted a string of law firms whom he saw as his enemies - even banning them from government buildings. Given courtrooms are government buildings, that might have been an issue. All of the firms had been involved in legal disputes which related to him personally, or his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Some of them cut costly deals with the White House, offering to do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free legal work for causes he supports. But four firms have chosen instead to sue the White House challenging an executive order claiming it had violated the constitution.

25. Repeatedly hinting he plans to stay in power beyond his second term

This is probably the most concerning case of democratic backsliding that Trump is threatening - because it’s probably the most likely to come to pass. The “jokes” started in speeches he gave on Inauguration Day, and continued on. Trump claims people are clamouring for him to be allowed to run for a third term. More recently, the jokes have given way to him seriously telling people in interviews that the administration is considering “loopholes” that would allow this to happen.

26. Calling himself a king

In a February Truth social post declaring the end of congestion pricing in New York, Trump wrote: “all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” Later a Tweet from the official White House account repeated Trump’s quote and added a computer-generated image of a smiling Trump wearing a crown, Manhattan in the background. It’s made in the style of “Time” magazine but replaces the publication’s name with “Trump.”

27. Threatening to only help California respond to the wildfires if they introduced voter ID

He openly attached political conditions to the release of more assistance to the wildfire-hit blue state - where 10,000 buildings were destroyed leaving residents homeless, and 30 were killed. “I want voter ID for the people of California, and they all want it right now,” he told reporters. “You don’t have voter ID. People want to have voter identification. You want to have proof of citizenship. Ideally, you have one day voting. But I just want voter ID as a start…and they’re going to get a lot of help from the US.”

28. Seizing control of the press room

For decades, the pool of journalists writing the official record of the President’s words and movements has been managed by the White House Correspondents Association - an independent group of professional Washington reporters from all sides of the political spectrum. Each day a different outlet writes the official pool report - with authors being assigned from a wide variety of outlets, from the Washington Post and HuffPo to the Daily Mail and the Wall Street Journal. While there’s a little colour in there, it’s usually a fairly straight, factual record of events. The President boarded Air Force One at this time. He went to a McDonalds at this time. In February, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that those days are over. Instead of the independent WHCA deciding who does the pool report each day, the list will now be managed by the White House press team - something Leavitt insisted was returning “power to the people”.

29. Banning the Associated Press from events for the stupidest reason

The administration decided to make an example of the Associated Press for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. In response, the White House banned AP from a string of presidential events where space is limited - like Air Force One and the Oval Office. The AP took the White House to court, and a judge ordered them to knock it off. As yet, they have declined to knock it off. But they have downgraded the wire services - which make their stories available to many outlets around the world - to the same level as any other print or digital outlet in the pool rota.

Threats to minorities

30. Blaming diversity for a deadly plane crash

On January 30, Trump blamed a tragic plane crash that killed 60 people in Washington DC on diversity hiring, disabled people and Joe Biden in a deeply shocking press conference. Within hours of the crash, he was claiming (without evidence) that the air crash “may have” been caused by “diversity hiring”.

31. Cancelling all diversity, equity and inclusion programmes

He’d signed an order cancelling all Diversity, Equity and Incusion (DEI) programmes the previous week. The programmes were intended to, as the name suggests, widen the talent pool from which the government hires people further beyond straight white men. President Trump decided that was a terrible injustice to straight white men, and branded them “social engineering.” The crackdown is facing significant pushback in the courts, with federal judges blocking some parts of the executive order. But the administration seems intent on pressing ahead regardless.

32. Removing protections for trans people from the law

Again, on his first day in office, he signed an executive order declaring that the federal government would recognise only two genders: male and female. The order restricts access to gender-affirming medical care, and demanded passports list holders as male or female - banning the “x” designation used by many non-binary people.

33. Banning trans athletes from taking part in women’s competitive sport

In an additional anti-trans order, Trump banned trans women from taking part in competitive women’s sports. The NCAA - America’s college sports association - estimates there are at most 10 trans athletes playing any sport at a competitive level in the United States. There have been around 45 ever.

Threats to the world

34. Pulling America out of the Paris Climate Treaty, again

During his first term, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Treaty - under which newrly every country in the world committed to trying to limit global warming below 2 degrees. Joe Biden signed it again early in his presidency. Of the 197 countries in the world, only Libya, Iran and Yemen have not ratified the deal. As of his first day back in office, America rejoins that short exclusive group.

35. Pulling the US out of the World Health Organisation

The WHO’s work was critical in helping limit the impact of covid-19, particularly in developing countries. Bu according to lunatic conspiracy theorists, far-right grifters and idiots, the WHO is a shadowy, New World Order organisation which invents, or at least exaggerates diseases in order to exert power, control population or benefit pharmaceutical companies. On his first day in office, Trump sided with the lunatics. With America leaving the group, the WHO loses its biggest single source of funding, which will impact on its ability to respond to future pandemics.

36. Signalgate

Last month, the Atlantic Magazine published an absolutely wild story, claiming its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been - apparently accidentally - added to a group chat on the app Signal, where cabinet members including VP JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth were discussing in quite a lot of detail plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. Nobody has, so far, been fired for this enormous, probably illegal breach of America’s national security. Apart from a number of Mr Hegseth’s own staff, who were sacked for allegedly leaking to the media details of yet more secret military plans being discussed on the messaging app.

Gaza

37. Deciding to turn Gaza into a real estate opportunity

From his first day in office, the clues were there that Trump had his eye on Gaza - gushing about its “fantastic location”. He later elaborated that he wanted to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. He said his plan would be for the US to “take over” the Gaza strip, rebuild it from the rubble - and keep it. Trump said people “from around the world” would be allowed to live in the newly refurbished land. But that doesn’t include the 1.7 million Palestinians who call Gaza home. Under Trump’s plan, Palestinians would be resettled somewhere in a “nice, happy place”. He suggested Jordan and Egypt could offer land for displaced Palestinians to live in. Both Jordan and Egypt have, thus far, said no.

38. Posting this deeply unusual video

Donald Trump, on his Truth Social account, posted an AI generated video and song showing a vision of what a Trump-owned and branded Gaza Strip would look like. It’s complete with a “TRUMP GAZA” hotel, a 40ft tall statue of the man himself looking remarkably svelte, and - blink and you’ll miss them - a pair of bikini babes with long black beards. The song is almost inhumanely catchy, and it culminates with an image of Trump and Benjamin Netenyahu laying next to each other on sun loungers.

Ukraine

39. The first broken promise

Finally, we come to the war in , which Trump during the campaign promised to end within 24 hours of taking office. After failing to do so, Trump eventually started to get involved with trying to get Russia and Ukraine round the table to talk a peace deal.

40. The Oval Office standoff

This all seemed to be going remarkably well, until an infamous standoff in the Oval Office between the President, , and VP JD Vance - with the two Americans openly berating Ukraine’s leader for being insufficiently grateful.

Meanwhile, Trump’s has surprised nobody by appearing to lean towards Putin’s side in the dispute - accusing Ukraine of starting - or at least lengthening - the war by not rolling over in the face of Russia’s illegal invasion.

41. The bad deal

The most recent deal to be proposed by the White House involved Ukraine giving up territory invaded by Russia, and Russia basically giving up nothing - and getting a pathway to sanctions being loosened as a nice bonus. Ukraine - not to mention European leaders who don’t think it’s a good idea for an aggressor to be rewarded for a violent incursion on neighbouring territory - has said no thank you.

42. Threatening to walk away

But while a brief meeting between Trump and Zelensky at the Pope’s funeral apparently went quite well, America’s patience for being peacemakers in the conflict seems to be waning. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have openly mused about the US just walking away from the peace process, complaining that as they see it neither side is really interested in stopping the fighting.

And on Sunday, Trump gave an apparent deadline of two weeks to reach an agreement before America washes its hands of the whole affair. It’s still unclear whether the US is just planning to walk away from the peace process or withdraw all its support from Ukraine too - which would leave the conflict dramatically one-sided and leave European nations to pick up where they left off.