Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
On 100th day, Trump points out successes
HARRISBURG, Pa. — President Donald Trump on Saturday marked his 100th day in office by claiming historic action on his agenda, renewing promises on health care and taxes and attacking the news media for misleading Americans.
In his weekly radio address Trump issued an assurance: “My only allegiance is to you, our wonderful citizens.” To supporters at an evening rally in Pennsylvania, he promoted American power and patriotism while emphasizing such priorities as American manufacturing, better trade deals for the U.S. and a still-to-be defined tax-cut plan.
“We are not going to let other countries take advantage of us anymore,” he said in Harrisburg at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center. “From now on it’s going to be America first.”
Trump’s 100th-day events were set in a politically important state that he won with 48 percent of the vote. It was the first time Pennsylvania had voted for a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988.
Trump visited the AMES Companies in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland County, a shovel manufacturer since 1774. With that backdrop he signed an executive order directing the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade representative to conduct a study of
U.S. trade agreements. The goal is to determine whether America is being treated fairly by its trading partners and the 164-nation World Trade Organization.
At his Saturday night rally, Trump spoke of his early successes, such as the appointment and confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Trump’s Cabinet choices and the approval of construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
But the president began the rally on a sour note, pointing out that he was not attending that night’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and issuing a scathing attack on the news media. To cheers, he accused the news media of “fake news” and said that if their job was to be honest and tell the truth, then they deserved “a big, fat failing grade.”
“There is another big gathering taking place tonight in Washington, D.C. Did you hear about it?” Trump asked the crowd. “A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now.”
“I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles way from Washington’s swamp,” he said, “spending my evening with all of you and with a much, much larger crowd and much better people, right?”
Meanwhile, North Korea’s missile launch Saturday signaled its continued defiance against the U.S., China and other nations, on which Trump tweeted: “Bad!” Asked during an interview for CBS’ Face the Nation if military action would follow a nuclear test by the North, Trump responded: “I don’t know. I mean, we’ll see.”
At the 100-day mark, polls show that Trump’s supporters during the campaign remain largely in his corner. Though the White House created a website touting its accomplishments of the first 100 days, Trump has tried to downplay the importance of the marker. Many of his campaign promises have gone unfulfilled.
“It’s a false standard, 100 days,” Trump said while signing an executive order Friday, “but I have to tell you, I don’t think anybody has done what we’ve been able to do in 100 days, so we’re very happy.”
In a tweet sent hours before his rally, Trump indicated his administration had much to be proud of.
“Mainstream (FAKE) media refuses to state our long list of achievements, including 28 legislative signings, strong borders & great optimism,” Trump told his 28.5 million Twitter followers.
In pointing out accomplishments during Trump’s first few months, White House officials pointed to efforts to roll back regulations implemented under former President Barack Obama and the president’s missile strike against Syria’s government in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons.
“What we’ve accomplished on immigration and criminal enforcement is nothing short of historic,” Trump wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post published Saturday. “The change on defense has been profound as well.”
“After decades of a shrinking middle class, open borders and the mass offshoring of American jobs and wealth, this government is working for the citizens of our country and no one else,” Trump wrote.
A failed effort to overhaul Obama’s health care law behind him, Trump is turning to what he’s billed as the nation’s biggest tax cut. Tax experts are skeptical that the plan would pay for itself, as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has claimed.
The economy, so far, has been Trump’s ally. Polls show that Americans feel slightly better about his job performance on that subject than his job performance overall.
Regarding foreign policy, however, his predecessor’s top national security adviser, Susan Rice, said longtime U.S. allies had been left off-balance.
The U.S. “is supposed to be the grown-up at the dinner table,” Rice said in an interview to air today on CNN. “We’re not supposed to be the crazy aunt in the attic that nobody knows what is going to do next.”
Rice chided Trump for, among other things, calling on South Korea — a key U.S. ally — to pay for a missile-defense system the U.S. is setting up in the country. “The deal was they provide the land and the installation, and we would provide the system in its operation,” she said.
Still, Trump maintained an optimistic tone as his 100th day came to pass.
“Together we are seeing that great achievements are possible when we put American people first,” Trump said in his weekly address. He added later: “In just 14 weeks, my administration has brought profound change to Washington.”
PERSISTENT PROTESTS
On several occasions, Trump’s first 100 days in office were marked by nationwide protests by activists on the left, from the women’s marches that saw hundreds of thousands of women protest the day after his inauguration to climate change marches that formed last week and were rekindled Saturday.
Opposition has been mounted on a number of fronts, by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. Many U.S. cities have pledged to remain “sanctuaries” for people living in the country illegally despite Trump’s threat to withhold federal grants from those cities, and states such as Hawaii and Maryland have filed lawsuits over his executive order seeking to ban travelers from some Muslim-majority countries.
Yet liberals seeking to build a power base similar to that of tea party conservatives, which came to fruition after Obama’s election, face different challenges. They remain fractured after the election, some still identifying as supporters of Hillary Clinton or her foe in the Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. They argue over ideological purity, such as whether there is space in the Democratic Party for opponents of abortion rights, for example.
Other challenges include their concentration in big cities and university towns rather than in more rural areas, and their tendency to mobilize more for presidential elections than state and local ones.
But the newly energized activists say they are aware of the hurdles. They say they hope to avoid them by remaining engaged beyond the presidential level and becoming well-versed in the minutiae of the democratic and political processes.
“We’re not in a position anymore where people of mild intelligence and reasonable interest in the political system … can just read the newspaper and vote and be done, figuring the people in charge will just take care of things,” said Elizabeth Juviler, the head of an activist group in the New Jersey suburbs of New York.