There are an endless array of words that could describe the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency, depending on someone’s point of view: frenetic, controversial, transformative, chaotic, determined, outrageous, unprecedented, disorienting.
St. Louisan and Trump supporter Mark Comfort described the beginning of Trump’s second term in office as aggressive. “And whether his entire second term in the presidency is successful," he added, "depends on what happens in the weeks and months ahead.”
“He has to perform. He can't be all talk and all accusation, and he does not have the mainstream media behind him to convince the American people of how great the economy is when it isn't,” Comfort said. “He can't get away with that. He has to produce.”
Ben Brink, of St. Louis, voted for Trump three times even though the college professor and entrepreneur doesn’t agree with everything the president says or does. But Brink said there’s little doubt Trump is trying to follow through on his campaign promises around trade, foreign policy, immigration and government spending.
“Sometimes when people say they really don't like what he's doing, I'm saying: ‘Well, you know, that's what the people voted for,’” Brink said. “And this is an unusual guy. He actually does what people voted for him to do.”
Trump has sought to check off plenty of his campaign priorities — though some of them have been more well received than others among Republicans.
Since taking office, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection; instituted, rolled back and reinstituted tariffs; implemented much more restrictive immigration regulations; froze funding for a host of medical and higher education ventures, and laid off thousands of federal workers.
“I think Americans are ready for drastic measures in some cases, and untraditional approaches,” said Ryan Johnson, a former Cass County commissioner who has been involved in Republican politics and policy for nearly two decades. “Let's be honest, Donald Trump is a very nontraditional president in the almost 250 years of our history. But I think that's a good thing. I think that's a necessary thing right now. And sometimes creative or innovative disruption is not a bad thing. And I think the American government desperately needs that.”
Less enthusiasm about tariffs
Some Trump voters are less than thrilled that he followed through on his pledge to aggressively use tariffs.
That corresponds with polling data showing widespread dissatisfaction with how he’s handling economic issues, which is a major shift for Trump, since that was typically where he polled the highest.
Missouri farmer and rancher Bryant Kagay isn’t surprised that Trump would seek to implement tariffs, especially since that’s been one of his most consistent policy beliefs since his entry into American politics.
But Kagay, who co-owns a cow-calf beef operation and grows soybeans, corn and wheat near Maysville, hopes the public backlash over the tariffs will prompt Republicans to once again embrace free trade and free markets. That was the party’s general stance before Trump came on the scene.
“As a farmer, I'm really good at producing corn, soybeans and beef, and I want to be able to produce those as effectively as I can, and the best way I know how,” Kagay said. “You don't want me growing your carrots or your avocados because I'm not in the right spot. I don't know how to do it. I don't have any markets for it. Let us do what we do best, and let us have open markets that help facilitate me selling the product that I'm best at producing.”
Blake Hurst, a former president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, didn’t vote in the 2024 election but sees himself as conservative on most issues. Hurst, among other things, owns a greenhouse business in Tarkio. And he said the tariffs create a tremendous amount of uncertainty, pointing specifically to how it’s affected his ability to get specific types of pots from China.
“It would be much simpler if we had [the pots made in the] U.S., but we don't,” Hurst said. “So we don't know whether we can get pots for next year. We don't know what they're going to cost. We don't know if a U.S. producer will take up the slack. We don't know anything. We have no way to plan for next year's crop.”
Hurst isn’t sure Trump will pay a political price in places like rural Missouri — which voted for him by historically large margins.
“I would not want my picture taken with him. I would not want to appear on the same stage with him, at the same podium. I would be distancing myself,” Hurst said. “And yet, you know, if you watch the Missouri state Senate, for example, when they’re reacting to some of the bills that have been introduced on agricultural chemicals, they're tying themselves ever more closely to Robert F Kennedy Jr. And to me, that seems like a huge political risk, right? I mean, polio, measles, those are bad things.
“But nobody's worried about it,” he added. “So my guess would be, you're not going to see any shift in my part of the world.”
Democratic energy in St. Louis area
Missouri Democrats are not likely to regain the rural territory that they dominated for generations anytime soon. But in the St. Louis region at least, Democrats are more energized, and optimistic, about their prospects for 2026.
Last week, more than 1,000 people attended a town hall-style event in Chesterfield that the state and several local Democratic organizations helped organize. This was shortly after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced it was targeting Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District in next year’s election.
Brentwood resident Monica Zimmerman said she sees a lot of Democratic energy against U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin. And Zimmerman thinks Trump’s first 100 days made a district Wagner won in 2024 by 12 percentage points much more competitive.
“I think that our country has lost its way, and I think honesty has gone out the window,” Zimmerman said. “I want people to speak out, because what's happening now is not right, it's not moral, it's not ethical.”
Among the attendees who spoke at the event was DeMarco Fincher, a health care worker whose father is on Medicaid. Some Republicans have openly talked about making unspecified reductions to that program in a massive tax cut, immigration and energy bill that could move through Congress soon.
Fincher said that being on the health care program for the working poor, elderly and disabled was vital for his dad to get critical medical treatment.
“As a son, I am grateful that my dad can get the care that he needs,” Fincher said. “And Republicans ... shouldn’t be able to take that away from him.”
Wagner said in a statement that the town hall was “just another political stunt from the Democrats and shows just how disconnected from hardworking Americans they really are.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has been traveling all over the country to historically Republican-leaning districts like Wagner’s and spoke at the Chesterfield event. He said Democratic energy against Trump is about more than just policy disagreement – it’s a fear that the country is backsliding into an autocracy.
“What Donald Trump is doing every single day to try to destroy our democracy, to try to crush dissent in this country, to try to destroy the rule of law,” Murphy said.
Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Russ Carnahan said the 2nd District could be indicative of larger national trends against Trump.
“Whether you're a veteran or a retiree or an educator or in health care, you're being impacted by these policies of this administration in ways that are usually not good,” Carnahan said. “And so I think that's woken a lot of people up, and that's going to add on to what we would normally see in terms of pushback from the midterm, I think it could be even greater than normal.”
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
