Donald Trump’s Excuses Are Falling Flat

Donald Trump recently hit the media circuit to make his case to, or perhaps, to plead with the American people, as polls show the majority of them aren’t on board with his extreme agenda and chaotic course for the country. For someone who has called the media “really corrupt,” and has complained that news outlets “literally write 97.6 percent bad about me”—which, in his view, is surely “illegal”—Trump has been busy making the rounds with journalists, from The Atlantic to Time, ABC to NBC.

There is a lot to criticize when it comes to Trump and the media, like his authoritarian treatment of the White House press corps, such as barring the Associated Press for continuing to go with “Gulf of Mexico” over the Pravda-esque “Gulf of America.” Still, Trump does a lot of interviews, which help reveal how he’s trying to create a narrative and shift public perceptions—and also provide a sense of where on earth his head is.

Well, the results lately have been mind-blowing. Here’s one response from arguably the most powerful person in the world: “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl—that’s 11 years old—needs to have 30 dolls. They can have three dolls or four dolls,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker over the weekend on Meet the Press, when defending his tariffs, adding, “They don’t need to have 250 pencils, they can have five.”

Yes, this is the same guy who was elected to make things cheaper, who vowed to “end inflation and make America affordable again” on Day 1. But on Wednesday—or Day 101 of the Trump presidency—he was busy blaming Joe Biden for the economy contracting in 2025’s first quarter and suggesting the second quarter will be his predecessor’s fault too. The public doesn’t appear to be buying Trump’s excuses, with a CNN poll finding 6 in 10 Americans already saying his “policies have increased the cost of living in their community.”

Trump has brushed off concerns about Americans having less and spending more. It was in a cabinet meeting last week where he first started talking about a reduction in toys, suggesting “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls” and “maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.” Welker asked him during Sunday’s interview when it becomes the “Trump economy,” to which he responded, “It partially is right now. And I really mean this. I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy, because he’s done a terrible job.”

Meanwhile, Trump has embarked on a trade war, and was asked by Time about his adviser Peter Navarro promising “90 deals in 90 days,” none of which had yet been announced when the interview was published on April 25, or even now. “I’ve made 200 deals,” Trump claimed, though he didn’t provide any examples.

And then there was the very scary prospect of a recession. Presidents tend to work very hard to prevent one—as even talk of a recession can rattle the markets. But bafflingly, Trump seemed open to the possibility. “Anything can happen,” Trump told Welker, while adding that he thinks “we’re going to have the greatest economic boom in history.”

In a dizzying 100 days, Trump signed 142 executive orders, which is 100 more than Biden in the same period, and his administration is embroiled in legal battles over a number of them. One of the problematic fights Trump is waging at the moment is over due process, with potentially huge ramifications for American democracy. It’s a war Trump has been losing in the courts, including the Supreme Court, which ruled 9-0 that the United States must facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man lawlessly deported to El Salvador.

When asked by Time if he had requested that El Salvador president Nayib Bukele turn over Abrego Garcia, Trump said, “I haven’t been asked to ask him by my attorneys. Nobody asked me to ask him that question, except you.” An odd answer from someone who has been repeatedly asked about the Abrego Garcia case. Meanwhile, Trump acknowledged in his interview with ABC’s Terry Moran that he could get Abrego Garcia back by making a call. When asked about the court’s order to facilitate his release, Trump said, “I’m not the one making this decision. We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.” The exchange, which included Moran correcting Trump after he claimed Abrego Garcia had “MS-13” tattooed on his knuckles, grew increasingly tense, as the president started complaining that Moran was “not being very nice.”

Days later, Welker asked Trump, “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution as president?” Trump responded, “I don’t know.” This answer is perhaps the scariest of all the answers Trump has given. Slightly more than 100 days ago, Trump swore on the Bible to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” So the question becomes: Does Trump no longer believe this to be true? Or did he never believe it?

While Trump may act like he doesn’t care, and is the ultimate decider—“I run the country and the world,” he told The Atlantic—these interviews suggest Trump does care about shaping perceptions, or at least trying to explain himself. So he’s turning to the same media that he vilifies to spin his unpopular Project 2025 agenda and disastrous tariff rollout. Sure, he’s going to try and spin the mess of his first several months in office, but that doesn’t mean the public will buy it.