Trump's first 100 days: 6 reasons why it will turn into a nightmare

No incoming president has had a greater capacity to foster corruption than Trump

It has long been possible to pick up the phone and vent your frustrations or heap praise on an actual person at the White House via a public comment line (Getty)

The transition process has been bumpy, but for Donald Trump this is the easy part. In less than two months, the moment will come for him actually to govern. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. That explains the U-turns he has been signalling on a raft of pledges that were at the core of his campaign for US President, from pretending that climate change is a hoax to his appetite for sending Ms Clinton to jail for her email violations. Some of those positions that so energised voters are suddenly looking less doable – or desirable – as he prepares to assume power.

There are other elements to the Trump brand that helped him get elected that threaten to trip him up as President. The largest among them: how to handle all and any conflicts of interest between the presidency and the fortunes of his business empire, the Trump Organisation.

As he rests at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida this Thanksgiving weekend, he may want to ponder these six areas that could turn his post-inaugural honeymoon into a nightmare.

Undeliverable promises

Mr Trump has vowed to get busy in his first 100 days altering the political landscape in Washington with changes he can make by executive order. He outlined what he had in mind in a video statement earlier this week.

Steps will include withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that was meant to lower barriers between 12 Pacific rim nations. He vowed to curtail environmental regulations introduced by President Barack Obama, eliminate other regulations on businesses and banks and enact a new lobbying ban in Washington.

Those who supported him will relish the impression of action. But many, especially the more ardent among conservatives, will question what is missing. In his video, Mr Trump made no mention of building his wall along the US-Mexico border. Nor did he say anything about repealing Obamacare, another key promise he made to voters. On Tuesday, he indicated further that he is no longer interested in pursuing Ms Clinton and suggested that on second thoughts there may be “connectivity” between global warming and human activity.

Mr Trump’s mandate is already shaky. Ms Clinton reaped 2 million more actual votes than him nationally. Even if a small segment of the coalition that gave him his Electoral College victory rebel at his ditching some of their most treasured priorities and a real backlash takes shape, he will see his approval ratings dip to dangerous levels almost before he has started.

Republican suspicions

Mr Trump may have about as much use for Republicans on Capitol Hill as he does Democrats. They all belong to the “swamp” he says he wants to drain. But it’s not his disdain for them that will cause him problems. Rather it is that he has made some promises that run directly counter to what some in his own party have cherished for years.

Do not expect Republicans who have made cutting the US deficit the first priority of their political careers – the deficit hawks – to play ball when Mr Trump comes to Congress and asks it to pass the massive infrastructure spending programme he keeps talking about. Mr Trump appears to be eyeing roughly $1 trillion to mend bridges, roads, hospitals and airports. At the same time he has promised not to cut funding of social programs like social security and Medicare. All this will make many Republicans, including House speaker Paul Ryan, see red.

Two things may happen. The builder extraordinaire may be given no money to build anything very much. Or he will have to seek Democrat support for his programme, a step that he will consider quite practical but which will surely further dismay the voters who elected him.

Drama trap

The slogan adopted when the current administration took over eight years ago was pithy and held good to the end. No Drama Obama. The outgoing President has not been fouled by scandal or the infighting that afflicted many of his predecessors. How long before Mr Trump’s White House is seen in a quite different light. Drama is oxygen to Mr Trump. It’s what gets him attention. As a business titan, he never shied away from pitting his top lieutenants against one another. The survival of the fittest was good for the bottom line.

This would not be a good thing for the White House. Voters chose Mr Trump in part because they are tired of dysfunction in Washington. Dysfunction in the executive mansion – and the media would lap it up – is not what they want to see. Being President and presiding over a reality contest television show are different things. One demands calm, the other conflict. Already he has installed two people at the heart of his inner circle – Stephen Bannon and Reince Priebus as top strategist and chief of staff – who might have been born to clash with one another.

Conflicts of interest

Mr Trump has been blasé about this problem as if his getting away with– ignoring the issue on the campaign trail – and refusing to release his tax records along the way – means he will be able to do the same as President. “The law's totally on my side, the President can't have a conflict of interest,” he blithely told The New York Times on Tuesday.

The fact remains no incoming President has been better placed to bring corruption to the office than this one. Not only has he shown no interest in putting his assets into a blind trust, he has also said that he expects his adult children to look after them while he is in public office. Still more troubling, he has also been including them in meetings with representatives from other nations, including Japan and India. As far as anyone can tell, there will be no line dividing his running of the nation from what might be best for his business. Where will overseas visitors to the White House opt to spend money for accommodation? Mr Trump’s new hotel across the road.

Amateur hour

When Republicans fought to deny Mr Obama a second term in 2012, their favourite line was that the country had made a grievous mistake electing a man with so little experience of Washington. He had spent just one term in the Senate, after all. Mr Trump was elected in part because he has zero experience. But how will that ignorance serve him now?

The areas of his fogginess are almost limitless. On international affairs he is about as versed as Nikki Haley, the Governor of South Carolina, whom he has picked as ambassador to the UN. Allies in Nato are waiting anxiously to see if he had any idea what he was talking about when he spoke of weakening its mutual defense provisions. Japan wants to know if he was joking when he implied it might want nuclear weapons. Has he actually thought through if he wants to embrace Vladimir Putin and even the Assad regime in Syria?

Freedom of the press

Mr Trump continues to make a monkey of the mainstream media, with no little success. And his supporters love him for it. He dressed down the country’s TV executives and best-known news anchors atop Trump Tower on Monday. On Tuesday, he cancelled a meeting with The New York Times only then to reinstate it. At least when he got there he was more or less civil, even if he moaned it had been “rough” in his coverage of him.

That Mr Trump represents a threat to freedom of speech in America is becoming more clear by the day. He has already departed from the usual traditions of allowing a pool of reporters to travel with him wherever he goes - the ‘death-watch’ pool - preferring to keep up a shield of privacy. His repeated assaults and insults towards the press, sometimes to individual outlets and even reporters, are clearly designed to cow and disarm them.

Mr Trump and his supporters give a good impression of caring nothing about what the media establishment thinks of him. But he knows better than that. Approval ratings determine what a president can get done. A united media front against him is not something he can afford.