Trump Marks 100 Days, Steve Bannon On Trump's Presidency, The "Big Beautiful Bill"

0:01On day 100 of his second term, President Trump celebrated changes to America in his second term. Those changes include a trade war, punishing perceived political enemies and invoking wartime authorities. I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Faddle, and this is Up First from NPR News. Steve Bannon, a sometime advisor to the president, talks of a busy summer. I think the convergence, particularly of spending cuts, and the simultaneously constitutional crisis that we're hurtling to is going to make this summer a summer like no other. How is a populist podcaster defending the president's first hundred days, and what does he see in the next hundred?

0:41And congressional Republicans return from recess with a goal of passing the president's so-called Big Beautiful Bill in a month. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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1:38Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. This message comes from Rinse, who knows that mastering the perfect house party table spread takes time. But so does laundry. So Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned. And you can take the time once spent sorting and waiting, folding, and cueing to finally pursue your real passion. Rolling delicate roses of capicola alongside meandering ribbons of Amon Serrano, transforming a humble plank of weathered barnwood into a show-stopping charcuterie spread. Rinse. It's time to be great. President Trump took a victory lap in Michigan last night.

2:19In 100 days, we have delivered the most profound change in Washington in nearly 100 years. I read a editorial today that this is the most consequential presidency in history. How about that? It's a little early for that superlative, but Trump's critics and fans alike agree that these 100 days were consequential. Trump has pushed the limits of presidential power. He invoked wartime authorities to crack down on immigration. He punished his political enemies and launched a trade war that shook consumer confidence and also shook U.S. relationships with the world. Joining me now to talk about this milestone is NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.

2:58Hi, Tam. Good morning. Good morning. So that was a long but incomplete list of what President Trump has done since January. So suffice to say, a lot has happened. How did the president take stock of things at his rally last night? Well, he covered all of that and more in a 90-minute speech that was actually rather joyful by Trump's standards. You know, at times during the campaign, his speeches got pretty grim. But this was his first rally since Inauguration Day, his first time fully feeling the embrace of the MAGA faithful. And he comes alive with a crowd, especially when he can boast about owning the libs and taking back the country from a, quote, sick political class.

3:39We are stopping their gravy train, ending their power trip and telling thousands of corrupt, incompetent and unnecessary deep state bureaucrats, you're fired. Get the hell out of here. You're fired. Get out of here. He also talked about paper straws and low-flow showerheads, along with border security, working to bring down prices. And there were also, as always, plenty of exaggerations and outright falsehoods throughout. I want to ask you about the difference and the similarities with Trump's first term, which you also covered. What are you seeing as the key differences so far? He has a lot more experience.

4:21As a longtime Trump ally told me, he has been through the knife fights and knows how to use the levers of power. And he's having an easier time of it so far as well. During Trump 1.0, he faced pushback from within his own administration. The second Trump administration is all loyalists. Gone are the establishment Republicans who saw themselves as guardrails working behind the scenes to temper his plans. And Congress is more compliant as well. Most of the Republicans who criticized him last time are no longer in office. A big test of that is coming soon, though. And Trump last night seemed to be transitioning to a campaign-style push for what he calls his one big, beautiful bill, a massive tax and spending cut measure that Trump is urging Republicans to pass quickly.

5:09He has done a lot through executive action in these first 100 days, but he's going to need Congress for this. And what about the similarities? Well, last night, Trump complained repeatedly about polls he said couldn't possibly be valid. That's the raft of public polls out in recent days indicating Trump has the lowest approval rating at the 100 days mark of any president in 80 years. A lot of Americans told pollsters they think Trump is going too far. And like in his first term, significant parts of Trump's agenda are being held up in the courts, which he made clear he isn't happy about. The courts and the polls are the two biggest hints of gravity that Trump is experiencing right now.

5:50NPR's Tam Marquis, thanks for joining us, Tam. You're welcome.

5:59The president's sometime advisor, Steve Bannon, expects a busy summer. Bannon has a front row seat for whatever happens. He broadcasts a daily webcast from a Washington, D.C. townhouse that we visited this week. There's going to be a confrontation. I think the convergence, particularly of spending cuts, and the simultaneously constitutional crisis that we're hurtling to is going to make this summer a summer like no other. Now, Steve Bannon promoted Trump's cause back in 2016 and worked in the White House for a time. Now he is pushing the administration to go even further. Political observers still follow Bannon as one of several indicators for where a part of Trump's coalition may be going, and that is one reason we've been over to see him.

6:39So, Steve, what faction does Steve Bannon represent? Well, he says he represents the working class, the average person. We should be clear, Bannon is a Harvard MBA, made lots of money on Wall Street and Hollywood. And in the first Trump administration, he had the Elon Musk role, the upscale advisor. This time around, he's had his differences with Musk. He talks about oligarchs. He attacks Wall Street and the economic system. And he spends a lot of time on his podcast and webcast insisting the working class is being screwed. He talks about income inequality, which is a widely accepted idea. People on the left can nod their heads when he talks about that.

7:16The debate, of course, is about his solutions, which involve attacking the bureaucracy and expelling immigrants without legal status and even some people with legal status. And what's he saying as Trump finishes 100 days? Tamara just said that polls indicate Americans think Trump has gone too far. Bannon wants more. More intense attacks on universities, for example. He wants to go after public universities, not just the elite private ones. Trump has canceled some student visas. Bannon was on his program Monday talking about sending home hundreds of thousands of Chinese students, all of them immediately if it were up to him.

7:50If Bannon is conservative, what's he say about Trump's treatment of the Constitution? Oh, we had a very long discussion about this. The Supreme Court, of course, unanimously said that people who are being thrown out of the country deserve some kind of due process. This includes Trump appointees. A Trump-appointed judge said due process hadn't even been followed in one case for a two-year-old U.S. citizen recently. But Bannon is using this phrase, it's very common on the right, judicial insurrection, saying judges are improperly standing in the way of the president. We also, in this conversation, talked about the president's claim of sweeping powers to raise tariffs.

8:25And here's how some of that discussion went. Does it concern you at all that a president could claim the power to completely transform the economy all by himself just on his say-so? Well, it's not just on his say-so. It is – he did execute emergency powers to do this given the emergency that's there both on fentanyl and on the national security. But the emergency is he says there's an emergency. That's all there is. No, he gave back up document to on the fentanyl issue. Canada? The deficits alone – the trade deficit is$25 trillion, brother. That's not an emergency? The U.S. does have an annual trade deficit with other nations, which the White House estimates at$1.2 trillion last year.

9:03OK, so now Bannon has been provocative, controversial for years. He supported Trump's effort to overturn the election he lost in 2020. He's favored attacking the government bureaucracy, urged giving it, quote, blunt force trauma. But here's a question. What is the future that he wants to see? We got a sense of that in this part of the interview. We've got to start making things again. The high value added part of manufacturing has to come back. Something that a man or a woman can have a job and have a family and have their spouse stay home if they so want and raise their kids. Once we're back to that, the country is going to be vibrant and robust again.

9:39He's looking at an older idea of the economy, which is connected to a more traditional idea of the family. Of course, we're far from that now. And as we heard, Bannon is forecasting a summer of crisis. Fascinating. So the full interview, video interview is at the NPR app and elsewhere.

10:01Republicans in Congress returned to Washington this week after a two-week recess. Ready to make good on President Trump's promise to pass a big bill full of his top policy priorities. In the House, they say the goal is to write these plans covering everything from taxes and immigration to spending cuts and pass it by Memorial Day, which is less than a month from now. NPR's Elena Moore is following this, and she joins me now in studio. Hi, Elena. Good morning. Good morning. So Republicans have been talking about their plans to pass President Trump's agenda for some time now. Just remind us of where they are in this process.

10:33Yeah, well, a few weeks ago, the House and the Senate approved a budget framework for this big spending bill. Now, House Republicans say they're focused on drafting and agreeing to all the pieces of the legislation based on that framework. Here's how Republican Congressman and Majority Leader Steve Scalise put it to reporters on Tuesday. All of our committees have been meeting both individually. We've been meeting with the president for about a year to get to this moment and start delivering on those things that we all ran on. Yeah, and House committees are planning to release and work through their proposals for the spending bill over the next few weeks.

11:10After that, the House Budget Committee will work to put it all together so the whole House can vote. And we should say, Layla, this is entirely a partisan process. And Democrats who don't have the power to stop this are unanimously opposed. OK, Elena, Memorial Day is about a month away. Does it seem like they will actually be able to meet this goal? Well, Republicans want to pass a lot of policy, but some of it is divisive, even among Republicans. And that's just a difficult task given their razor-thin majority. It means Republicans need virtually full-party support to get this bill over the finish line.

11:46So they need to keep different factions of their conference happy. Plus, there's already one big problem. House committees have been directed to propose at least$1.5 trillion in cuts. In the Senate, they're supposed to slash just$4 billion in cuts, but they've promised to cut more. Okay, so they're working with different numbers, but what about policy? What are the biggest divisions right now? Well, one is over the future of Medicaid, the government insurance program available for low-income Americans and folks with disabilities. It falls under the House Energy and Commerce Committee's control, and the committee is looking to propose$880 billion in cuts.

12:26And Democrats point to a recent analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to conclude that cuts to Medicaid would have to happen in order to get to that number. Still, you know, some Republicans have come out strongly against this, both in the House and in the Senate. You know, it's something Missouri Senator Josh Hawley told me he's not going to compromise on, given just how many people in his state rely on both Medicaid and the related children's health insurance program. Some people, I think, would like to cut Medicaid. That's a goal. They view that as a feature, not a bug. But I view it as a bug.

13:01I mean, I'm not going to vote for Medicaid cuts, not with 21 percent of my state, including a lot of kids who are getting Medicaid or CHIP. What else are they considering? Well, some committees have started to spell out what they would already cut. Just this week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released their spending proposal, which includes scrapping some current student loan repayment plans and capping how much Americans can borrow from the government. So we'll be watching how lawmakers negotiate these cuts over the next few weeks. That's NPR's Elena Moore. Thank you, Elena.

13:33Thanks.

13:37And that's Up First for Wednesday, April 30th. I'm Laila Faldud. And I'm Stephen Skeep. You can listen to this podcast sponsor-free while financially supporting public media with Up First Plus. Sponsor-free because you're sponsoring the programming, which means it's in your interest. Learn more at plus.npr.org. That's P-L-U-S.npr.org. And today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Reena Advani, Kelsey Snell, Vincent Nee, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Damian Herring, and our technical director is Carly Strange.

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