Competence questions pose risk to Trump’s political image

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/11/trump-competence-questions-second-term/

President Donald Trump regained the White House in large part by trumpeting his ability to get things done, accusing his opponents of ineptitude and senility and promising that on Day 1 he would restore basic competence to government.

But 2½ months in, agencies such as the Social Security Administration have struggled to provide basic services. Trump’s team issues edicts, then reverses them. A leaked Signal chat suggests top security officials were unfamiliar with the basics of protecting military secrets.

Crucial government workers have been fired, then rehired. A much-ballyhooed immigration detention center at Guantánamo Bay has faced logistical problems. Trump’s team told laid-off workers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to contact a particular individual if they felt they were being discriminated against; she turned out to be dead.

These and other missteps are now being compounded in dramatic fashion by a roiling stock market and bond sell-off prompted by Trump’s tariff policies, raising fears of a collapsing economy. Trump’s formula for calculating the tariffs has been widely panned by economists. And on Wednesday, he paused many of the levies just hours after they took effect, even while leaving a 10 percent blanket tariff in place and further hiking duties on imports from China.

Many Americans who disliked Trump’s bluster and bombast, polls suggest, voted for him in 2024 in the belief that at least he could get results. They saw him as a highly successful businessman, and they remembered a booming economy in Trump’s first term before the coronavirus pandemic.