President Trump Reaches 100th Day in Office

President Trump Reaches 100^th Day in Office

Saturday, April 29, 2017 marks the 100^th day that President Trump has spent busying about The White House, Mar-a-Lago, and the Twitter-verse while representing the United States. 100 days is not a sufficient time frame to make final judgements on President Trumps decisions. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t look at the decisions President Trump has made in the first 100 days, and decide for ourselves what his choices may foreshadow.

There is a lot of data out there specific to detailing what each United States President has achieved in their first 100 days in office. Nobody is ever going to top Franklin D. Roosevelt, The New Deal President. The speed at which Franklin Roosevelt and Congress worked in their time dwarfed our modern day Legislative and Executive bodies. When the economy went into depression, Roosevelt and his men went to work, and within 100 days had laws written and passed that included: The Emergency Banking Relief Act (March,9, 1933), The Beer-Wine Revenue Act (March 22, 1933), The Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933 (May 12, 1933), and The Agricultural Adjustment Act (May 12, 1933), just to name of few laws passed within 100 days (livingnewdeal.org)). Notice how I said laws, meaning thoughtfully written bills that went through the House, and Senate, and were passed. Not sporadically offered executive orders that were predictably shot down during a vote. The laws Roosevelt passed saved the banking and agricultural industries, and helped poor Americans make ends meat, basic stuff.

Trump has flexed his political muscle since arriving in office. The 30 executive orders he has signed is more than his three predecessors had tried to pass in their first 100 days (Business Insider). Some of President Trump's orders have been beneficial to the American people. There was power given to the Fed. to more actively engage in battling the opioid crisis, there was money given to help people in the healthcare industry pass bureaucratic elements leading to fiscal burdens.

When the laws are bent in times of crisis, it can only be things that most people find sensible, practicable, and moral. Giving the government (temporarily) more power to battle addiction and alleviate healthcare costs seems to find majority acceptance. However, going against the 11^th amendment and forcing states to build a multi-million-dollar fence, and spend billions more on war, does not garner the same majority acceptance. I would guess this is due to the fact that many Americans understand we spent over 360 billion on war in 2016 alone (more than Russia, China, France, and Saudi Arabia combined) Nobody wants these terrible things in the world to happen, yet at the same time, Americans are done emptying their pocketbooks to pay over half of the worlds defense budget.

There is more to politicking then walking around telling everyone that things are going to be great, that much we have learned. Does it seem that The President is realizing that he has bit off more than he can chew? On Friday, he said that he thought, “Being President would be easier than my old life” (CNN). Some say we should continue to give him a chance because he won fair and square, and I agree; but it’s fair to question if President Trump even wants his chance.

Maybe the tensions in North Korea, or Syria are getting to him? If so, perhaps our President needs the help of Dennis Rodman. When Dennis left N. Korea after spectating a game alongside King Jon Un in 2014, King Jon Un said, “I hope that sports exchanges of this kind can help to promote understanding between the peoples of the two countries”. That was three years ago, and yet here we are ,only 100 days into a Trump Presidency, and I’m wondering the percentage of times our nuclear missile defense weapons have worked (hint: its’ not 100%).

Congress adjourned the Friday before The President’s 100^th day by lunch. There was no bill put forth by Trump to vote on. Did President Trump have any idea of what he was getting into upon taking his oath of office? Sometimes when you see things like, “North Korea vowing to strike if U.S. tries to disarm nuclear weapons”, followed by Trump saying, “We will have a new healthcare bill before Congress Wednesday”. You wonder where his head was at in the 3 hours between Tweets. I would prefer my President focus on calming an impending nuclear disaster, rather than stoke his ego and legacy by trying to force improvement upon a healthcare bill that is damaged, but functional. If nuclear missiles launch, we will not care about our price- per- script, I'm willing to face the angry emails on that one. How about advancing our renewable energy production, and what about our infrastructure, and bringing jobs back home? Can we do that while policing the world? Time will tell.

Here’s to another 100 prosperous days of The President helping to keep us productive and safe. It’s always five o’ clock somewhere folks. Cheers.

Dominic Costanzo

Freelance Journalist

dcostanzo5176@gmail.com