David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief strategist, tried to downplay interest in the president’s first “100 days”.
He said it is just a “hallmark holiday”, meaning that the date is of little interest to those who make a point of remembering milestones such as greeting card manufacturers.
That did not prevent a reluctant Obama from having to join the media in assessing what he had achieved in his first few months in the White House.
He used early 2009 to reboot the American economy after the credit crunch and to promote social issues such as equal pay, healthcare for children and gender rights. He also ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Many of this president’s executive orders aim to reverse the spirit of what Obama and his Democratic successor, Joe Biden, tried to do.
Rather than a greeting card, the assessment at one hundred days has become an important report card for US presidents.
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That’s why Sky News is carrying on with the TRUMP100 podcast by its US correspondents and why I was sent in 2008/9 to cover the first hundred days of Barack Obama, America’s first black president.
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Donald Trump is keen to celebrate his first 14 and a half weeks back in office.
He is planning to hold his first MAGA rally since the election in one of the key swing states which helped him to victory.
“President Trump is excited to return to the great state of Michigan next Tuesday, where he will rally in Macomb County to celebrate the FIRST 100 DAYS!” his press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced in capital letters on social media.
There is something magic about 100, 10 x 10, the first number in three figures. In politics, “100 days” has assumed a talismanic status, defining both good and bad fortune for those it encompasses.
The phrase was coined in French in 1815 by the Comte de Chabrol de Volvic as a polite euphemism when he welcomed the restoration of Louis VIII following Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempt to take back power.
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Les Cents Jours – Hundred Days – covered the period from Napoleon’s arrival in Paris after his escape from exile on the island of Elba, through the military campaign which culminated in his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June, to the King’s return to the capital on 8 July.
Since then, many books have been written entitled The Hundred Days, which has come to symbolise sometimes deluded heroism.
The novelist Patrick O’Brien used it as the title for one of his “Master and Commander” books covering the activities of his British Navy Captain Jack Aubrey during Napoleon’s final campaign.
Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward, the commander of the Falkland Islands’ Task Force in 1982, called his memoirs of that UK triumph One Hundred Days.
In American politics, the one hundred days report card began with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. The DemocratFDR hit the ground running, like Obama, to turn round economic catastrophe.
In one of the first “fireside chats” on the radio, which he innovated, he reported back on “the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal”.
Image: Franklin Delano Roosevelt during a ‘fireside chat’ on 12 November, 1937. Pic: AP
Ninety years later, the British cabinet minister James Purnell began Leading A Government Department – the First 100 Days, a report he co-wrote for the Institute for Government, by quoting the presidential historian Godfrey Hodgson on FDR’s start.
“These were the famous ‘hundred days’, in the course of which Roosevelt saved American capitalism and – some would say – saved American democracy as well,” he wrote.
“The period set a standard by which the wisdom and effectiveness of future presidents was to be judged.”
By the yardsticks on democracy and the economy, the 47th President of the United States faces an awkward reckoning 100 days into the job.
His critics accuse Trump of undermining America’s democratic norms.
He has exploited his position for personal profit, directed the federal justice system to persecute his opponents, pardoned the January 6th US Capitol insurrectionists, unleashed the unelected Elon Musk to slash the federal government through his unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, and launched the “Trump 2028” campaign to stand for a third term as president, in defiance of the US Constitution.
Trump resumed the presidency determined not to be held back as he was in his first term.
He started signing executive orders within hours of being sworn in. So far, he has issued 124, more than half the 220 he got through in the full four years between 2017 and 2021.
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Some of these orders may be rejected in the courts. But Trump has also been helped by a supine US Congress, where his Republican Party has control of both Houses. This is in marked contrast to the resistance from lawmakers that Obama faced from his first day.
Doug Sosnik, who was President Clinton’s White House policy director, wrote in the New York Times last week: “It is safe to say that the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency will be considered the most consequential of any in modern history.
“Since taking office, Mr Trump has consolidated extraordinary power in the executive branch, dismantled large portions of the federal government, undone the military and economic alliances that were formed following World War Two and torn up the policy consensus that has governed global trade for just as long.”
Trump’s notable failures have been in foreign policy. He did not bring peace to Ukraineon “day one”. Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza continues.
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Trump: ‘I think we’re going to get peace’
Threats to make Canada “the 51st State” have transformed the anti-Trump Liberal Mark Carney into the favourite to win this weekend’s election. His aim to “get Greenland one way or another” has alienated Greenland, Denmarkand their allies and made no progress.
Trump will doubtless outline his achievements and his further ambitions at his 100-day rally in Michigan. His envoys are desperately trying to strong-arm Ukraine into a peace “deal” before then.
Obama waited several months before commenting that “the first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference”.
Next Tuesday, Trump will still have 1,360 days left to serve legally, notwithstanding his dreams of crowning himself King of America for life.
A survivor of the October 7 attacks has died, two years after his girlfriend was shot dead by Hamas gunmen at Nova Festival.
Roei Shalev, 29, has been found dead shortly after the second anniversary of the death of his 27-year-old girlfriend Mapal Adam, who was killed by Hamas gunmen when they attacked Nova Festival.
The couple had been dancing with their friend Hilly Solomon, 26, on 7 October 2023 when the sound of rocket fire drowned out the music, causing them to flee the festival grounds in their car.
As Hamas fighters closed in from all directions, the trio hid under a car, but they were spotted by gunmen and shot several times.
Image: Roei Shalev and Mapal Adam. Pic: Instagram/@roeishalev
Mr Shalev said he waited seven “agonising” hours with two bullets in his back – with his girlfriend and his friend lying dead beside him – until the Israeli army came.
A week later, his mother took her own life.
“In just one week, I lost three of the most important women to me in the world,” Mr Shalev wrote on a fundraising page for festival survivors and their families.
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“That day was the darkest I’ve ever known. In the months that followed, I struggled to cope. Flashbacks and anxiety consumed me, and sleep became a distant memory,” he added.
Now, two years after the horrifying attack, Mr Shalev was found dead in a burning car near Poleg Beach in Netanya, Israel.
Police have opened an investigation, Israeli media reports.
Shortly before his body was found, Mr Shalev had posted a note on his Instagram account, saying he “can’t go on anymore”.
“I’ve never felt such deep and burning pain and suffering in my life. It’s eating me up inside,” Mr Shavel wrote.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Israel and Hamas have agreed to a first phase of a peace deal brokered by the US president, with a ceasefire taking effect on Friday.
Dr Naim said the ceasefire would not have been possible without President Trump, but insisted he needed to continue to apply pressure to Israel to stick to the agreement.
He added that Hamas would be willing to step aside for a Palestinian body to govern a post-war Gaza, but that they would remain “on the ground” and would not be disarmed.
Dr Naim said in the interview: “Without the personal interference of President Trump in this case, I don’t think that it would have happened to have reached the end of the war.
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“Therefore, yes, we thank President Trump and his personal efforts to interfere and to pressure Israel to bring an end to this massacre and slaughtering.”
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He added: “We believe and we hope that President Trump will continue to interfere personally and to exercise the maximum pressure on [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to fulfil its obligation.
“First, as according to the deal, and second, according to the international law as an occupying power, because I think without this pressure, without this personal interference from President Trump, this will not happen.
“We have already seen Netanyahu speaking to the media, threatening to go to war again if this doesn’t happen, if that doesn’t happen.”
Image: Donald Trump has been thanked for his role in securing a peace deal in Gaza. Pic: AP
Questions remain over the next phases of the peace plan, including who will govern Gaza as Israeli troops gradually pull back and whether Hamas will disarm – as called for in Mr Trump’s ceasefire plan.
Mr Netanyahu has hinted that Israel might renew its offensive if Hamas does not give up its weapons.
However, Dr Naim said Hamas would not completely disarm and that weapons would only be handed over to the Palestinian state, with fighters integrated into the Palestinian National Army.
“No one has the right to deny us the right to resist the occupation of armies,” he said.
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Thousands of Gazans are heading north as Israeli troops pull back.
On future governance, Dr Naim criticised plans for Sir Tony to play any role in overseeing the future of Gaza, saying that Hamas and Palestinians were angered by his role in previous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Dr Naim added: “When it comes to Tony Blair, unfortunately, we Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe others around the world have bad memories of him.
“We can still remember his role in killing, causing thousands or millions of deaths to innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We can still remember him very well after destroying Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Under Mr Trump’s plans, Sir Tony would form part of an international supervisory body.
The international body, the Council of Peace or Board of Peace, would govern under plans approved by Mr Netanyahu.
In the exhibition room of Berlin’s old Tempelhof Airport, three burned-out cars lie on their sides.
The windows, interiors and paintwork are gone; all that remains are lumps of twisted and rusted metal. Next to them is a rough circle of tents and scattered mats.
A picnic chair has toppled over on one, others are strewn with abandoned bags, camping equipment and discarded fairy lights.
“Everything you see here is original from the festival on October 7th,” Ofir Amir explains.
He’s referring to the Nova Music Festival, where around 400 people were murdered on 7 October 2023.
All around us are tables of abandoned items left behind in the panic. One displays clothes; another is filled with shoes.
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Image: Shoes form part of the tributes to those who died on 7 October 2023
All of them are reminders of a day, Ofir, who was a co-founder of the festival, nearly didn’t survive.
“When the terrorists came to the festival area, we saw them just shooting into the crowd that was running away from them,” he tells me.
Ofir and his friends managed to jump into a car and started to drive away, but they were cornered by Hamas militants who opened fire.
One of their friends died, and Ofir was shot in both legs. He remembers he was on the phone to his wife, who was nine months pregnant at the time.
‘How will my wife raise a child alone’
“This was all I could ever think about,” he says, “that I might not come home, and how will my wife raise a child alone.”
Ofir’s friends used what they could to stop the bleeding and managed to keep him alive until help came.
The memorial exhibition was created in memory of those who died.
It’s already opened in cities including New York and Toronto, but on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks, the exhibition began its first European show in Berlin.
“With so much hate going on, so much antisemitism everywhere on the streets, all over the world, it’s important to show the world and give them a reminder when you go so blindly and follow hate, what the outcome can be,” Ofir says.
Omri Sasi, also a co-founder and DJ at the Nova Music Festival, was in the car with Ofir when they were hit.
He picks out faces from a long line of photos which cover one wall.
Image: Ofir Amir was shot in both legs as he escaped the festival
‘They were murdered together’
“This is my uncle, Avi Sasi. This is Alex Luke, my friend from Montreal… they were murdered together,” he says.
Beside them are the photos of Omri’s pregnant cousin and her husband, who were also killed.
Despite their losses, Omri and Ofir say they don’t want the exhibition to focus on religion or politics but to help spread peace.
However, the memorial event has faced some opposition; for example, several hundred demonstrators protested against Israel at the exhibit in New York.
In Los Angeles, Omri says a pro-Palestinian group also gathered outside the show. He invited them in, and they talked about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Image: Omri Sasi was also in the car with Ofir, when they were hit by Hamas gunmen
‘We cried together’
“We cried together, we hugged each other and we understood that the best way to deal with this war is to talk,” he says. “Not to fight and not hit people.”
More than 60,000 Gazans have died in the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
Omri tells me he has friends in Gaza, that he wants the ceasefire to hold, and Gazans “to have a good life” – but he’s also deeply concerned by the rise in antisemitism he’s seen in the last two years.
“People are scared,” he says. “Even when I go out here in Berlin, I look around myself and I try to not speak in Hebrew, and this is sad.
“It doesn’t need to be like this.”
Image: Liora Furema says she is worried about her safety at Jewish events
Authorities across Europe have warned about growing hate and violence against Jewish people since the October 7 attack.
This week, Germany’s domestic intelligence chief said antisemitism had increased with sometimes open calls for attacks on Jewish institutions, while the country’s chancellor denounced the trend as “shameful”.
At the Berlin exhibition, Liora Furema says she’s worried about her safety as a Jewish student when she goes to university or to the synagogue.
“At any Jewish event, I think about my security,” she explained.
Image: Omri says he is deeply concerned by the rise in antisemitism
It’s hoped the ceasefire will be the beginning of the end of the war in Gaza, but the fear of antisemitism remains.
Rather than deepening the divisions, the organisers say the show is a reminder of the dangers of allowing hate to flourish. They now are focusing on healing.
“Our message is, we will dance again,” says Omri. “Whatever happened to us, we are standing and dancing again. Terror cannot beat us.”