President Donald Trump wants to hedge his bets about how his first 100 days should be judged, claiming great victories while also suggesting—with his customary scorn for consistency—that the 100-day metric is artificial and should be disregarded. “I’ve done more than any other president in the first 100 days and I think the first 100 days is an artificial barrier,” Trump told the Associated Press in an interview released Sunday, ahead of a momentous week when Republicans will try (again) to pass the American Health Care Act while also funding the government (and perhaps a border wall) by Friday’s deadline. It’s entirely possible that come Saturday, Trump’s 100th day in office, he will have shut down his own government.

But even if that doesn’t come to pass, Trump’s first months in office have been unquestionably rocky. He kept his promise to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat with an equally conservative justice (Neil Gorsuch), but otherwise his agenda has stalled. The first attempt to “repeal and replace” Obamacare failed to secure enough Republican support to even get a vote in the House, while nine other promised pieces of legislation (ranging from the Middle Class Tax Relief and Simplification Act to the Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act) are nowhere to be seen. With the administration rocked by internal divisions, and cabinet appointees at times hostile to his stated policies, Trump has been forced to cede ground on major planks of his “America First” agenda: NATO is no longer obsolete, Trump admits, nor is China a currency manipulator.

Yet Trump’s critics would be foolish to crow over his defeats. For he has been able to advance his vision of the world through his very incompetence, which will fulfill his goal of radically transforming America while also leaving a permanent stain on the nation’s reputation.

“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too,” Steve Bannon, who helped shape Trump’s ethno-nationalist campaign and now serves as his chief strategist, once said. “I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” If bringing everything “crashing down” is not just Bannon’s goal, but also Trump’s, then his first 100 days have been as consequential as that of any president in history.

Consider immigration. It’s true that the federal courts have struck down Trump’s executive order limiting immigration from seven predominately Muslim countries. Yet this policy defeat has to be contrasted with the real-world impact of Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric. “Generations of Indians have admired the United States for almost everything. But many are infuriated and unnerved by what they see as a wave of racist violence under President Trump, souring America’s allure,” The New York Times reported on Sunday, noting that “undergraduate applications from India fell at 26 percent of United States educational institutions, and 15 percent of graduate programs.”