Trump's 100-days vows: Hits, misses, unfinished business

<p>Sure enough, the big trans-Pacific trade deal is toast, climate change action is on the ropes and various regulations from the Obama era have been scrapped.</p>

News 12 Staff

Apr 29, 2017, 3:02 PM

Updated 2,687 days ago

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Trump's 100-days vows: Hits, misses, unfinished business
(AP) - Sure enough, the big trans-Pacific trade deal is toast, climate change action is on the ropes and various regulations from the Obama era have been scrapped. It's also a safe bet President Donald Trump hasn't raced a bicycle since Jan. 20, keeping his vow never to ride one in office.
    
Add a Supreme Court justice - no small feat - and call these promises kept.
    
But where's that wall? Or the promised trade punishment against China? Will the Chinese get off scot-free from "the greatest theft in the history of the world"? What about that "easy" replacement for President Barack Obama's health law? How about the trillion-dollar public works plan and huge tax cut that were supposed to be at the finish line by now?
    
Trump's road to the White House, paved in big, sometimes impossible pledges, has detoured onto a byway of promises deferred or left behind, an Associated Press analysis has found.
    
Of 38 specific promises Trump made in his 100-day "contract" with voters - "This is my pledge to you" - he's accomplished 10, mostly through executive orders that don't require legislation, such as withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
    
He's abandoned several and failed to deliver quickly on others, stymied at times by a divided Republican Party and resistant federal judges. Of 10 legislative promises that require Congress to act, none has been achieved and most have not been introduced.
    
"I've done more than any other president in the first 100 days," the president asserted in a recent AP interview, even as he criticized the marker as an "artificial barrier."
    
In truth, his 100-day plan remains mostly a to-do list, spilling over well beyond his 100th day Saturday.
    
Some Trump promises were obviously hyperbole to begin with.
    
Don't hold your breath waiting for alleged Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl to be dropped out of an airplane without a parachute, as Trump said he'd do at many of his campaign rallies.
    
China's leader got a fancy dinner, complete with "beautiful" chocolate cake at Trump's Florida resort in April, not the promised "McDonald's hamburger" and humble pie.
    
But many promises were meant to be taken seriously.
    
Trump clearly owes his supporters a Mexico border wall, even if it doesn't end up being a foot taller than the Great Wall of China.
    
One page of his 100-day manifesto is devoted to legislation he would fight to pass in 100 days. None of it has been achieved.
    
The other page lists 18 executive actions and intentions he promised to pursue - many on Day One. He has followed through on fewer than a dozen, largely through the use of executive orders.
    
Efforts to provide paid maternity leave, to make college more affordable and to invest in urban areas have been all but forgotten. That's despite the advantage of a Republican-controlled Congress, which the White House failed to pull together behind Trump's first attempt to repeal and replace Obama's Affordable Care Act.