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President Donald Trump’s second "100 days" ends April 30. It has already been a roller coaster and with almost two weeks to go, this column jumps the gun. But it isn’t about judgment on his fast start off the blocks. Rather, it is about the judges.
The legacy media’s collective sunk costs when it comes to President Trump are so enormous as to defy adequate description. ChatGPT tells me that a "sunk cost is a past expenditure that cannot be recovered, regardless of future actions."
"It's a cost that has already been incurred and is irrelevant to future decisions," my artificial mind helper tells me. "In essence, a sunk cost is money, time, or effort that's already been spent and can't be gotten back."
PRESIDENT TRUMP REVEALS HIS PROUDEST ACCOMPLISHMENT OF HIS HISTORIC FIRST 100 DAYS
When it comes to journalism, that is an inadequate description. A sunk cost for any sort of journalist is present in every judgment rendered about every public figure or controversy on which the journalist has reported, opined or both.
Just about anyone in the world of journalism who is 30 and older has been pumping out "takes" on Donald Trump since he came down the escalator on June 16, 2015. I certainly have. So has every reporter for print and broadcast, every columnist on every platform, every podcaster and every poster on X, Instagram or any other social media conveyor belt. Hundreds of millions of takes have been taken, predictions made and conclusions rendered. The "sunk costs" of having been wrong on any or most of all of them are, as noted, enormous.
The effects of everyone being so wrong for so long vary. I’ve been just as wrong as some, not half or a quarter as wrong as most. I thought he was certain to lose in 2016, that he should have stepped aside a week before Election Day that year, that the GOP might have had to replace him before the convention in Cleveland, that he had no chance of winning again in 2024 until after Butler.
For me, one effect of my sunk costs is, I hope, sustained humility about predicting what Trump will do or not do, succeed with or fail miserably to accomplish. I got out of the prediction business early in the last cycle as the naked partisanship of the lawfare directed at Trump had a wholly unforeseen effect of making him unbeatable. I didn’t see that coming. I certainly didn’t see him winning all seven swing states, or the popular vote, or achieving the greatest political comeback in American history. So when I routinely tell people they might want to hold on to their early assessments for at least six months, it is because I am chastened and we are dealing with something wholly new and wholly unique in American political history.
Trump is a party of one. He has completely taken over the GOP and dominated the Democrats. His past opponents are either his allies now or irrelevant for the next two years and perhaps four. The tidal charts of politics tell us his party should lose seats in 2026, but sometimes those charts are way off. Way, way off. If the GOP holds it together in Congress, revises and extends the tax cuts Trump pioneered and does so soon, rebuilds the American arsenal or at least gets a good start on doing so, gets the Wall finished and keeps the border closed while opening up America’s vast energy resources, well then, who knows? Not me.
If Iran capitulates and demolishes its nuclear program, or Trump plus Netanyahu orders it done from the skies above, the consequences will be world history changing. The alliance of tyrants in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela have to decide what to do in response to Trump and that will take at least half a year to discern and probably much longer. Richard Nixon —the president whose unlikely career path and governing style most resembles Trump’s— took office in 1969 and didn’t get to China until 1972 or secure the Paris Peace Accords until 1973. And Trump is moving in his second term far faster than Nixon did in his first.
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So there is simply no rational guess to be made about how Trump’s story will turn out. But what isn’t rational —and what is actually the opposite of journalism— are the hundreds of "journalists" of whatever stripe or self-described category or ideology who profess to know what Trump is thinking or what is motivating him.
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t hear more than a few takes on what Trump is planning, thinking, about to do or undo, or a "4-D chess" explanation of why he did what he did.
Journalists of all sorts and shades of bias have cast off from the solid ground of telling you what Trump did and said, and what others did and said, in favor of sailing far out into the waters of psychology or some bizarre offshoot closer to phrenology than psychology and certainly it is not the world of journalism. It is bizarre. It is everywhere. It is also a product of sunk costs.
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So many have been so wrong about so much that they are shattered in many ways. They can’t piece together the shards of their past "reporting" into a coherent story, or reconcile their confident assertions that collided with reality. So vast is the burden of their being so wrong so often that they have given up taking account of their past errors. Not for them any vow of humility. Perhaps the journalism market can’t bear much humility, but I think it can. It certainly can and does reward objectivity and calm assessment.
A presidential term is 1,461 days long. When President Trump passes the much-watched mark on the 30th, he will have 1,361 days left in the White House. Assessments at 100 days are the fool’s gold of journalism. But that gold is about to tumble from every outlet. Unless it’s preceded by a candid disclaimer of the writer’s or speaker’s past record of error, pay for it what it’s worth.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
