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.”








