As President Donald Trump closes in on his first
100 days in office he is scrambling to defend his inept performance so far in
office. Perhaps this is best illustrated by his
announcement last week that
he was sending an armada toward North Korea, only to find out Monday that it was on its way to
Australia.
Candidate
Trump made big promises on the campaign trail. His promises were targeted
at key voting blocks in order to mobilize them to vote last November. A crackdown on illegal immigration, a border
wall with Mexico, tax reform, repeal and replacement of Obamacare, better trade
deals, a ban on Muslims, extreme vetting, and a stronger military are among the
issues Trump ran on. The strategy gave the GOP control of the White House
and both houses of Congress in a bitterly fought election, which included an
assist from Russia.
On Tuesday
President Trump told a rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, "No administration has
accomplished more in the first 90 days." Never one to let the truth get in
the way of a good story, it appeared that the president was trying out
his talking points in advance of the 100-day mark. But the truth is President Trump has failed
to truly deliver on most of his promises. And a recent Gallup
Poll shows that just 45% of
Americans believe Trump keeps his promises, a sharp decline in two months.
For seven
years Republicans demonized President Barack Obama and this eponymous health
care bill. Candidate Trump promised to
repeal and replace Obamacare on his first day in office. But Republicans
could not bridge the deep divisions within their own party, especially with the
conservative House Freedom Caucus. In February, a frustrated President
Trump told a meeting of governors, "Nobody knew health care could be so
complicated."
House Speaker
Paul Ryan had to withdraw his healthcare bill, even following heavy lobbying
from the president, in large part because polls showed it had the support of
about 17% of Americans. The GOP alternative would have kicked 24 million people
off of heath insurance. This is in sharp
contrast to what Trump told 60
Minutes in 2015.
"I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it
costs me votes or not," he said, adding, "Everybody is going to be
taken care of much better than they're taken care of now."
The GOP healthcare
bill is linked by party leadership to tax reform. A repeal of Obamacare
would mean a $1 trillion cut in taxes for the wealthy. Republicans would then
have an easier task of finding savings in the budget to secure further tax
cuts. The fate of tax reform is now uncertain.
The wall
along the U.S. border with Mexico became a battle cry for Trump supporters
during the campaign. And candidate Trump insisted that Mexico would pay
for the wall, which he estimated would cost $8 to $12 billion. Mexican
officials have been consistently adamant that they will not pay for the wall,
which Democratic Senator
Claire McCaskill, who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, now
estimates could "soar" to $70 billion in construction costs. And
to what end, since a majority of immigrants in the U.S. illegally either
overstayed their visas or came on a ship?
With much
fanfare the president signed a controversial executive order in late January which
suspended the U.S. Refugee Program and denied entry to citizens of Iraq, Iran,
Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen. The EO led to chaos at airports
around the world, and international denunciations. A federal judge
blocked the order because it unfairly targeted Muslims, as thousands of
protestors jammed airports around the country to oppose the order. The
EO was poorly conceived and executed, and led to internal finger pointing.
A new updated EO was issued in March, but it is subject to an indefinite
preliminary injunction. So much for Trump's Muslim ban.
The president
campaigned passionately against the North American Free Trade Agreement, or
NAFTA, which he has promised to renegotiate. He said it was taking away
American jobs. But Trump will have great difficulty redoing this complex
trade deal, and he knows it. And now the president has reversed himself
on his campaign charge that China is a currency manipulator. Given the
need to enlist China's support in dealing with North Korea, and following a
meeting with the Chinese leader, Trump has flip-flopped. Perhaps not so
coincidentally, China approved three trademarks for Ivanka Trump's company on
the same day she dined with her father and the Chinese president at Mar-a-Lago.
The president
has signed executive orders undoing some of President Obama's regulation,
including related to the environment. He was also able successfully
appoint Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court with an assist from the Senate
Republicans. But Trump has had the worst first 100-days of any modern era
president. To exacerbate his problems, the probes continue into whether
the Russians had any ties to members of the Trump campaign. Infighting
between chief strategist Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jerod Kushner has broken
into the open and spawned unprecedented leaks to the media. Trump
continues his attacks on the "fake" media while tweeting reckless and
untrue comments, like President Obama wiretapped him. And Trump has
decided to keep the White House visitor logs secret, which now raises questions
about transparency.
With Trump's
popularity low and a rocky start of his presidency, Republicans are beginning
to speak out. Senator Joni Ernst distanced herself in comments
at a town hall in Iowa
yesterday. "I think we have a president that has a number of
flaws," she stated with unusual candor. "I support a majority
of his policies, versus the actual person, but I decry any time a person is
ugly towards another person, I don't think that's appropriate." She also said Trump should release his taxes.
Republicans
control the White House and both houses of Congress, so President Trump should
have had an easy time achieving much of his agenda. But governing takes a
different set of skills than campaigning. Trump's lying, personal
attacks, distortion and distraction have worn thin on the very people he needs
to support him. So too, thankfully, has the list of unfulfilled promises,
many of which would severely impact the very people who voted for Donald Trump
because they mistakenly believed he alone could fix it.
