“The First Hundred Days” was the iconic phrase for Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid-fire acts as the new president. Donald Trump intends to top that with “The First Hundred Hours.” Three months is far too slow for the new president. He made that clear by signing some 200 executive orders on his first day back in office.

The media has focused on the substance of those orders, and understandably so. But their substantive content, on the border, birthright citizenship, DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion) and more, is only half the story. The other half is the swift, decisive process. Trump had those orders prepared during the weeks between his election in early November and his inauguration in late January. He means to act and to act fast.

The next Democratic president can reverse all his orders, a point Trump demonstrated when he did just that to Biden’s orders

Trump’s readiness to make specific policy decisions serves several purposes. It shows America and the entrenched powers in Washington that Trump knows exactly what he wants to accomplish, not just in broad terms but in detail. It shows he is determined to act swiftly and that he’s the new sheriff in town. The days of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their arteriosclerotic party are dead and gone, replaced by a new administration, filled with senior aides at the White House and federal agencies who will back Trump’s agenda, not their own. Trump is hell bent on jerking back control of the government from the unelected bureaucrats who have run it for decades and are closely aligned with the Democratic Party. He ran on that platform, so he can claim a popular mandate for it.

Trump’s agenda isn’t new. He had the same one in this first term. What’s different this time is that he knows a lot more about how to achieve it. He showed it with his rapid selection of cabinet picks and their key subordinates, as well as the detailed executive orders ready for his signature.

Trump learned the hard way that he needs loyalty from his aides and cabinet picks. He cannot enact his policies without it. That’s a crucial lesson from the first term, perhaps the crucial one. His first term agenda was blocked by congressional Democrats, legacy media, his aides and appointees with their own separate agendas (and media contacts to help them), anonymous bureaucrats and stealthy opponents in the CIA, FBI and Department of Justice. Many continued to harass him with lawfare after he left office.

Those days are over. Trump has staged the biggest comeback in American political history, and he is determined to capitalise on it. That is the message Trump is sending with his avalanche of executive orders. “I’m back. I’m in charge. I know what I want to do. I know who will try to stop me, and I’m determined to expose and defeat them. And I know I need to act quickly if I want to accomplish big things.”

Fast action is essential because Trump’s political capital is limited in two crucial ways. First, it won’t last long. In Washington, political capital fades quickly. Use it or lose it. Second, although Trump won the Electoral College, all the swing states and the popular vote, he has only a tiny, fragile majority in the House of Representatives. That narrow margin gives any small group of Republican holdouts enormous negotiating leverage. That’s one reason Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson moved quickly to strip libertarian Representative Thomas Massie from all committee assignments and Representative Mike Turner from his powerful chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee. They didn’t just want to eliminate any internal opposition from those two. They wanted to signal to all other Republicans that it is very costly to oppose the president and that Mike Johnson will do his bidding in the House.

What about congressional Democrats? Can Trump and Johnson count on help from them? Not much. They will receive sporadic support on popular issues, mostly from centrist Democrats in districts Trump carried. Republicans will be helped by the Democrats’ disunity, too. The party is torn over whether to adhere to progressive policies or move back to the center. They have no coherent leadership to steer them.

The Democrats are in shambles but Trump cannot count on their divisions for success

The Democrats’ lack of leadership was apparent in the scattershot questioning of Trump’s cabinet picks before Senate committee. The smart move would have been to focus on areas that already divide Republicans. Instead, they tossed out questions on whatever interested them, only to be squashed by tough-minded nominees like Pam Bondi (for attorney general).

Of course, Democrats do have congressional leaders: Hakeem Jeffries in the House, Chuck Schumer in the Senate. But those are “inside-Washington leaders” without national heft. (The same is true for Republican leaders in Congress.)

Democrats won’t have a true national leader until they choose a presidential candidate in 2028. The old leadership — Obama, Pelosi, Bill and Hillary — have been discredited and cannot lead the party forward. No one even mentions Kamala Harris. As for Joe Biden, his dismal poll numbers crashed to new lows after his disgraceful pardons for family members and imprisoned cop killers. He leaves office with Spiro Agnew’s reputation for integrity and Mr. Magoo’s for mental sharpness.

These problems in the Democratic Party are a major reason Trump was elected. He received a lot of votes for his own agenda and charisma, of course, but he received plenty because he was not Joe Biden and not Kamala Harris. He was not seen as leading a party that had few new ideas beyond spending lots of money, backing public-sector unions, telling the country to buy electric cars, appeasing Iran, and spending billions in Ukraine.

True, the fading remnants of the Mainstream Media still loved that world and reviled Trump’s populism, but they are a dying remnant, like the politicians and policies they supported. Their party had run out of ideas and lost its electoral foundation among the middle class, especially industrial workers. The legacy media lost out to new technologies, which Trump embraced in his winning campaign. The Democrats misread that technological change and, in any case, lacked a candidate who could last three hours on Joe Rogan. Joe Biden could hardly read his brief valedictory address from the Oval Office. Kamala Harris couldn’t improvise the greeting on a Hallmark card.

The Democrats are in shambles, then, but Trump cannot count on their divisions for success. He has to act fast and choose his legislative priorities carefully. His executive orders, important as they are, are not enough. They can’t be used to pass the budget, raise the debt ceiling or lock-in policies beyond his tenure in office. The next Democratic president can reverse all his orders, a point Trump demonstrated when he did just that to Biden’s orders.

Buckle up for a fast, bumpy ride. Trump knows how rapidly his political capital will fade. That’s why he is acting even more rapidly and decisively than Roosevelt did during his first 100 days. That’s the message he sent by signing all those executive orders. That’s the message of Trump’s “First 100 Hours.”