President Donald Trump celebrated the completion of his first 100 days during a rally in Pennsylvania on April 30.
Trump used the opportunity to once again slam the media as the White House Correspondents Dinner was being held stating it was nothing more than celebrities and Washington media “consoling” one another in a ballroom party.
Trumps first 100 had a few massive successes such as the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, once again swinging the Supreme Court to the Republicans with a 5-4 majority.
However, this doesn’t mean the time period has been a constant stream of achievements.
Trump failed to meet the goal he set at the start of his 100 days, which revolved around keeping campaign promises such as: getting the wheel turning in regards to the border wall, enacting a travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries and repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.
All of these promises came with vicious political fights.
The Republicans refused to fund the wall, the “Muslim Ban”kept getting tangled up legally and the government narrowly avoided a shutdown over repealing and replacing the ACA.
This is only the first hundred days, only three months, we still got nine months, let’s say healthcare goes down a second time… that’s why Paul Ryan said ‘no, we don’t have anything yet’ attempting to slow down the White House. This is all Trumps doing… once he was elected he didn’t have to continue the 100 day campaign… He could’ve tempered the rhetoric and he would be in much better shape politically,” said Delta Political Science Professor Joel Blank.
Trumps first 100 days have seen a noticeable amount of pivots from his promises during the presidential campaign, such as naming China a currency manipulator and even pivoting on Syria within the same week that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated on March 30 “”I think the… longer term status of president Assad will be decided by the Syrian people,” on March 30 during a press conference with the Foreign Minister of Turkey.
“When he (Trump) ran, he had a very good platform: the nationalist-populist rhetoric,” said Delta Political Science professor Cirian Villavicencio. “But this idea of putting America first, making America great again, from what I’ve seen in his last hundred days really hasn’t been consistent with that,”
Trump’s campaign painted the image of an isolationist country that avoided a conservative foreign policy of intervention and regime change and would try to reimagine various trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“He is ultimately governing and learning at the same time,” said Villavicencio. “We saw this clearly when Xi Jinping started teaching him that what’s happening in North Korea is more complex than how he’s framing it. It tells me he may not necessarily understand how complex domestic and foreign policy is, and maybe lacks understanding of what his role and responsibilities are as president,”
Trump has begun the process of setting up tariffs with Canada and it’s softwood lumber industry being his first victims.
“Is this an overarching policy for over the next four years?” said Blank rhetorically. “I don’t think so. I think there’s limitations by a Republican Congress… for massed tariffs he would need congress on board and I just don’t see a Republican congress joining him on that,”
Blank also noted tariffs were unlikely to help Trump core base, most of whom benefit from the cheap imports untouched by tariffs also noting that small businesses would have to increase rates on their merchandise.
Blank and Villavicencio were both asked if they would give the president a grade during his first hundred days.
Both professors agreed that they would give him a C for his first 100 days.
