The Trump team also appears to have begun to worry that there will not be enough done by April 29, which also happens to be the day that current funding for the federal government runs out. President Trump has himself expressed frustration with this “fake anniversary” in recent tweets, though critics have noted that Candidate Trump had released an ambitious list of promised actions within his hundred days. I’d say those would count as worse than a few political setbacks, but I’m not a political journalist. Not to mention that in their first hundred days, William Henry Harrison managed to die of pneumonia, and Ronald Reagan was nearly killed by an assassin.Bill Clinton had to sort through two failed nominees for Attorney General and one failed CIA nominee as he assembled his team.Bush had to endure the embarrassing unraveling of his nominee for Secretary of Defense, Senator John Tower, whose personal peccadilloes cost him what had originally been considered automatic Senate confirmation. John Kennedy’s first hundred days were marked by the debacle at the Bay of Pigs.It is generally better to get off to a good start than to a bad one, but history is full of examples of presidents who started slowly, for any number of reasons, and there is no direct connection between slow starts and what came later, for example: Nevertheless, we should still be careful about making predictions about the future based on the first three months. In that sense, the hundred days can matter quite a bit. It is true that presidents have surprisingly little time to push through significant programs before the luster of their election fades, but that can be even more difficult if the president in question is not able to provide a clear and early logic to the administration to come. We can blame Franklin Roosevelt for this fixation his inauguration in March 1933 (the last such long interregnum) came after such a period of economic crisis, existential worry, and political stagnation that he was compelled by circumstance as well as his temperament to burst onto the political stage with a welter of programs that became the foundation for the New Deal.Įvery president since (as well as many chiefs of other organizations) has been held hostage to that arbitrary timetable, even though different presidents have entered office with different imperatives and expectations. Gail Collins of the New York Times has even added to the glut of think pieces with a quiz about the most important events and statements of Trump’s first hundred days. ![]() One Obama official referred to the 100 day mark as “the journalistic equivalent of a Hallmark holiday,” an excuse for journalists and policy analysts and smart-aleck lecturers to comment on the administration’s relative success or failure. ![]() A presidential term is roughly 1461 days, so there is much time to accomplish things, or to disappoint. There is nothing magical about one hundred days, outside of our fixation on round numbers. In honor of the man we will be discussing tonight, who has often railed against (and, some might say, profited from) “fake news,” allow me to begin by reminding us all that we are celebrating a fake anniversary. ![]() I myself have been trying to make sense of the Trump Phenomenon in various forms for going on two years now-and have earned my share of criticism for being insufficiently enthusiastic. Politicians often lie for a reason, but it’s clear that some presidents show an early taste for deception more than others.Īt the time of this writing, President Trump was a more deceptive president than President Biden or President Obama in their first 100 days.The following article is adapted from a talk, The First 100 Days: A New Presidency in Review, presented at FPRI’s Main Line Briefings on April 25, 2017.ĭonald Trump continues to fascinate, infuriate, and confuse. Finally, Obama’s false statement concerned US math education trends. Trump, on the other hand, falsely discussed US murder rates, immigration and refugees, and that he didn’t know Steve Bannon before his presidential campaign. In other words, President Biden might simply be an uncontroversial speaker.įinally, what did each president lie about during their first 100 days as president? Biden’s false statements discussed the minimum wage and immigration patterns in the US. Biden’s statement count might be low because many claims did not meet PolitiFact’s criteria for fact-checking. President Biden’s deception rate might still appear high, but the number of fact-checked statements is small (4). Percent of False and Truthful Statements During the First 100 Days as President.
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