Donald Trump's first 100 days of his second term as president has been a real horrorshow. I use this term deliberately, mostly because it can be used in two opposing ways... at least, if you either speak Russian or are a fan of Anthony Burgess. It can be used in the traditional English meaning of "something that is difficult to deal with or watch because it is so bad or unpleasant." It can also be used as Nadsat future-teen slang from the novel (and film) A Clockwork Orange, where it was borrowed (Anglicized) from the Russian word khorosho -- which actually means "good." So how you personally use it will depend on how you see Trump.

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Let's start with some good news today, shall we?

Donald Trump's second-term honeymoon phase now seems to officially be over. As new polling continues to roll in (in advance of his 100-day mark next week), it seems to all be telling pretty much the same story. Trump is now in a neck-and-neck race for "fastest slide into disapproval ever" -- with himself. Only one other president in modern times has seen his job approval numbers with the public go underwater this fast, and his name was also Donald Trump (in his first term). It depends on the poll, but in some he's already worse than he was at this point in 2017. No other president was even in negative territory at this point, it bears mentioning.

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The Pentagon, under the "leadership" of Pete Hegseth, seems to be in meltdown mode. That specific word was used by several different people to describe it, I should mention, lest I be accused of being hyperbolic. This news kind of surprised me, because while I fully did expect there to be Pentagon-meltdown stories before now, I expected them to come from a different direction entirely. I thought Elon Musk and his minions would have taken the chainsaw to the entire Pentagon structure and procurement process and it would have blown up in their faces (much like many of their other efforts has) and thus be a big scandal. But so far, that hasn't happened in a big way. Maybe Musk has been told "hands off the Pentagon" or something? At this point, it's hard to tell.

But getting back to the actual scandal (rather than my expectations of a scandal), Pete Hegseth seems once again to be teetering on the edge of becoming more trouble than he is worth to the White House. What's more, this seems to be the result of a power struggle not between Hegseth's own personal minions and the entrenched bureaucracy at the Pentagon (as might have been expected), but it seems to be coming entirely from within Hegseth's inner circle itself. Which is also kind of surprising.

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This weekend will mark the end of the third month of Donald Trump's second term in office. Only 45 more fun-filled months to go!

Sorry if that's a bit disheartening, but at this point it's hard to find much in the way of optimism in the political world. And we're certainly not alone in this view.

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As is now the new normal, there were so many things happening in the political world this week it is hard to keep track of them all. But what is currently in the center ring is the vote happening in the Senate on the continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year.

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While the biggest political spectacle of the week was the president's big speech to Congress, the biggest political news of the week was actually the American economy reacting to Donald Trump's on-again-off-again, now-you-see-them-now-you-don't tariffs. The whiplash began at the start of the week and hasn't fully subsided yet. Taken together with all of Trump's other disruptive wrecking balls, economists are now starting to talk about the possibility of an upcoming "Trump recession."

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I have to begin this review with the mandatory bit of pedantry which is required every four years. Last night, President Donald Trump gave a speech to a joint session of Congress. However, it was not technically a "State Of The Union" speech, since tradition dictates you have to have been in office for a whole year before giving one of those.

Nitpickery aside, let's do a quick review of how things went last night, shall we?

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Remember when the Republican Party, as a whole, absolutely revered the memory of Ronald Reagan? It really wasn't that long ago. Their devotion was so pronounced that we even took to using the term "Saint Ronald of Reagan" whenever we wrote about Republicans lauding him to the skies, just to poke fun at their deification (or at the least, canonization or beatification) of a politician that, in our humble opinion, really didn't deserve such devotion.

Jumping forward to the present, each incoming president gets to choose how to decorate the White House, which includes the art on the walls of the Oval Office. We have to say it was somewhat of a surprise to learn that Donald Trump in his second presidency chose to hang a painting of Reagan on the wall overlooking the same desk Ronnie used to sit behind. We learned this fact from the following article, which (please note) was written before what just happened in the Oval Office today:

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I start today with a bit of mineralogical history. The Washington Monument on the National Mall was built both before and after the Civil War, and was finally finished in 1884. At the top of America's obelisk sits a pyramid, with observation windows visitors can look out of. The very tippy-top of this stone pyramid (roughly 555 feet above ground -- at the time, the tallest building in the world) was capped with a small pyramid made out of metal (which doubles as the contact point for the monument's lightning rod). The metal used was one of the rarest available at the time -- so rare that it was as expensive as silver. This small pyramid weighs 100 ounces, and at the time was the largest cast piece of this metal in the world. So what was this extremely rare metal?

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The first month of the second presidency of Donald Trump is now over. Only forty-seven more to go!

That, of course, is a daunting prospect, but we can at least open with some good news this week: Trump is already wearing out his welcome with the public. The presidential "honeymoon" period is apparently over (almost before it began). Trump started off his second term with historically dismal ratings, although they did best one previous president -- himself, in his first term. His job approval numbers were actually at 50 percent or just above when he was sworn in this time around (which, as mentioned, every other modern president has beaten), so he could at least claim a majority of the public was behind him. Not any more.

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