There’s still some uncertainty about how many executive orders Donald Trump will sign on his first day as president, and what policies those orders will cover, though NBC News reported that Americans should expect to see “more than 50 … and possibly more than 100.”
It wasn’t that long ago, however, when the Republican presented voters with a very different perspective.
In November 2015, in reference to Barack Obama, Trump said, “He doesn’t work the system. That is why he signs executive orders all the time.” A month earlier, the future president said, “Look at Obama. He doesn’t get anything done. … You’ve got to close the door and get things done without signing your executive orders all the time. That’s the easy way out.”
This quickly became a staple of his campaign rhetoric. As regular readers may recall, in January 2016, then-candidate Trump told Fox News, “[T]he problem with Washington, they don’t make deals. It’s all gridlock. And then you have a president that signs executive orders because he can’t get anything done. I’ll get everybody together.”
In March 2016, with his hold on the GOP nomination nearly complete, Trump went so far as to declare, “I want to not use too many executive orders, folks. Executive orders sort of came about more recently. Nobody ever heard of an executive order. Then all of a sudden Obama, because he couldn’t get anybody to agree with him, he starts signing them like they’re butter. So I want to do away with executive orders for the most part.”
In September 2016, Trump added, “Right now, we have an executive-order president. He just keeps signing.” Perhaps the best line of them all was delivered in January 2016, when Trump told CNN his thoughts on the “executive-order concept.” The future president explained, “You know, it’s supposed to be negotiated. You’re supposed to cajole, get people in a room, you have Republicans, Democrats, you’re supposed to get together and pass a law. [Obama] doesn’t want to do that because it’s too much work. So he doesn’t want to work too hard. He wants to go back and play golf.” That, of course, was before Trump took office, failed to negotiate any major bipartisan deals, played an enormous amount of golf, and overhauled his perspective on the “executive-order concept.” This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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