Addressing workers from the North America’s Building Trades Unions in early April, Trump presented himself not in his usual persona of a dealmaker, but as a builder. “I’ve spent my life working side by side with American builders,” Trump said. “And now, you have a builder as your president. We are a nation of builders, and it was about time we had a builder in the White House, right? We have a builder.”



Trump’s harping on the word “builder” is a prime example of his rudimentary but effective populist rhetoric. He projects himself as a pragmatic leader who will deliver tangible outcomes to voters, not someone caught up in arcane ideological debates. It’s no accident that some of Trump’s key promises were tangible, physical structures: the border wall with Mexico, and a massive infrastructure bill to repair and to construct roads, bridges, airports, hospitals. Nor was the claim of being a builder president completely implausible. Prior to being president, Trump’s brand was very much tied to the imposing structures he made his name constructing (even if many of the structures gaudily bearing his name weren’t constructed by him at all).

But Trump hasn’t been a builder president. He’s been a demolition man. He is a leader who finds it easier to sabotage existing programs and alliances than to create new ones. Many of the positive achievements he campaigned on are log-jammed. The border wall remains a distant promise, not a near-term reality. Not only is Mexico not going to pay for it, but Trump hasn’t even been able to get Congress to cough up the necessary money. The grand infrastructure bill that Steve Bannon, chief ideologue of Trumpism, saw as central to creating a permanent political realignment is nowhere to be seen. (He’s expected to unveil his plan this week, one Democrats are almost certain to resist.) A version of healthcare reform passed the House of Representatives, but it was radically at odds with Trump’s campaign pledge that Americans wouldn’t lose coverage. Moreover, this version of Trumpcare is unlikely to pass in its current form, or indeed in any form, in the Senate. Trump’s attempts to impose a de facto version of his Muslim ban via executive order have been quashed by the courts. The one positive achievement Trump can point to is the successful confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a staunch conservative in the mold of Antonin Scalia—but this is something Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would’ve done if they had been the president, so it’s hardly a signature victory for Trump.

This is not to say that Trump’s first few months in power have been insignificant. Rather, they’ve been marked by what he has not done, and what he has damaged, rather than what he has created. His decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement is the latest in a string of acts that don’t build, but negate. Other examples include his abandoning of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and refusing to clearly say he stands by Article Five, the mutual defense clause of the NATO treaty, thereby engendering a crisis with the Western alliance. Meanwhile, Trump has found that he can effectively hamstring agencies simply by not filling positions. This includes, not only health and environmental agencies, but also the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control. Trump has also failed to put forward 442 nominees for the 559 key positions that require Senate confirmation. He himself claims that not filling these jobs is a deliberate strategy on his part. “A lot of those jobs, I don’t want to appoint someone because they’re unnecessary to have,” Trump told Fox News in February. “In government, we have too many people.” Finally, Trump’s constant threats to sabotage Obamacare have been turning into an effective self-fulfilling prophesy, with insurers using uncertainty as an excuse to hike rates.