BONUS | Opinion: What do you think of President Trump's leadership in his first 100 days?
The Excerpt
USA TODAY
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
We asked: Do you support President Trump's actions so far? What concerns you about what he and his administration have executed on? Readers across the country shared their opinions with us. Forum is a series from USA TODAY's Opinion team, dedicated to showcasing views from across the political spectrum on issues that Americans are starkly divided on. If you'd like to weigh in on a different topic, you can find more questions at usatoday.com/forum. And if your submission is selected for print, we might invite you to add your voice to a future special bonus episode like this one. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to [email protected].
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the excerpt. It's been nearly 100 days since President Trump was inaugurated. |
| 0:10.1 | What do you think of the president's leadership so far? Are Americans better off? |
| 0:16.9 | I'm Michael McArthur. I lead the opinion sections of Gannett, the parent company of USA Today. |
| 0:22.5 | This is a bonus episode of the excerpt, highlighting a series from USA Today's opinion team called Forum. |
| 0:28.4 | Here's what readers told us. |
| 0:34.0 | I do think America is better off under Trump's leadership. |
| 0:50.3 | I really think that he's doing a lot of things that really needed to be done for the past probably a couple of decades and has the most, I believe, transparent administration in probably modern history, really. That's Sarissa Fortune, a 45-year-old who lives in Newcastle, Pennsylvania. |
| 0:56.2 | She supports Trump's trade and immigration policies. I support everything. I support the illegal aliens being |
| 1:04.5 | deported if they're here illegally. I feel that there are so many people that work so hard to come here, the legal way, that set |
| 1:13.3 | roots. |
| 1:14.3 | The one thing I do not agree with though is I believe the dreamers should be able to stay. |
| 1:19.7 | I do absolutely 100% agree with the fact if you did not come in this country illegally, if |
| 1:25.6 | there is a judge in any type of court that has said you are |
| 1:29.2 | here illegally, you have every right to be deported. I'm not concerned about the economy. Wall Street, |
| 1:34.6 | of course, is a mess right now, but that's, I'm not worried about Wall Street. Yes, I do have money |
| 1:39.0 | in a 401k as a lot of Americans do, but I trust President Trump. I trust the tariffs. I trust the process. |
| 1:46.0 | I believe that we should be making everything here. We shouldn't rely on a country that threatens |
| 1:51.1 | to cut off our electric if they're upset with us. Or, you know, we already have so much tension |
| 1:58.2 | with other countries, especially China, but we deserve fair trade. |
| 2:02.7 | We deserve to make everything here, to not have to realize. We used to have tons of jobs, |
| 2:07.8 | millions of jobs here, and they all went overseas again. So bringing the jobs back, making fair |
| 2:14.0 | trade, I feel honestly, if it takes a couple months, it took us how many years |
... |
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