Trump’s 100-Day Boasts

Summary

President Donald Trump did a flurry of TV interviews and held a campaign-style rally to mark his first 100 days, and he left a trail of false, misleading and sometimes puzzling statements in his wake:

• Trump, who is seeking to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, falsely claimed that the U.S. has a “$17 billion trade deficit with Canada.” In fact, the U.S. last year had an $8.1 billion trade surplus with Canada.
• Trump said President Andrew Jackson was “really angry” at “what was happening with regard to the Civil War,” and he claimed “people don’t ask the question, but why was there the Civil War?” Jackson died 16 years before the war started and, as one historian told us, “you could fill a library with books” on the Civil War.
• Trump speculated that negative media coverage of his administration is because “96 percent of journalists who made donations in the last election gave them to our opponent.” Only a fraction of journalists contributed to any presidential campaign, and none who covers the White House or national politics did so.
• Trump said that under his tax plan, he will “end up paying more than I pay right now.” There is no way to know that. Trump has not released his tax returns, and his one-page tax plan lacks the details needed to analyze its impact.
• Trump said that “the last time a new Supreme Court justice was confirmed in the first 100 days was 136 years ago in 1881.” That’s correct, but lacks context. Trump is the only president since 1900 who took office with a vacancy on the high court.

The president also repeated several false claims on job creation, the Affordable Care Act, Russia and China. For example, Trump claimed that China stopped manipulating its currency because of him, when in fact economists — including those at his own Treasury Department — have said China stopped doing so three years ago.

Analysis

Trump marked his 100th day in office on April 29. A day earlier, Trump gave an interview to Fox News as part of a media blitz to mark the occasion. On April 29, he gave an interview to CBS’ “Face the Nation,” and spoke at a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He also gave an interview May 1 to the Washington Examiner, among others.

North American Trade

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