Five months into his second term, Donald Trump has already issued 164 Executive Orders, most of them in his first 100 days. At this rate, he could sign well over a thousand EO's by the time he retires.
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If you add the 220 EOs he signed in the four years of his first term, we have 384 Trump EOs in total.
Donald Trump owns the Senate. Donald Trump owns the subservient House who is doing whatever he orders them to do. He has a conservative Supreme Court which also ratifies most of his behaviors.
So why so many EO's?
To be fair, I think we should ask Trump his opinion about so many power grabs. Fortunately, he has left us a very long, very consistent record of his opinions about EOs.
Speaking on our system of checks and balances:
“I don’t think he (Obama) even tries anymore. I think he just signs executive actions. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. And then all of a sudden, I hear he tried, he can’t do it, and then, boom, and then another one, boom.”
At least Obama tried to get his agenda through Congress. Trump hasn't even tried, despite having Congress in a choke hold.
Trump in 2015: "Look at Obama. He doesn't get anything done. You have Democrats that have been there for years and they've hardly met him. You have got to get —
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."
2016: "You know, it's supposed to be negotiated; you're supposed to cajole, get people in a room; you're supposed to deal with them, you have Republicans, you have Democrats, you have all these people that get elected to do this stuff, and 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."
Trump signed a Covid EO while golfing at his Bedford, NJ golf club.
January 2016:
"We have a president that can't get anything done so
he just keeps signing executive orders all over the place."
February 2016:
"Obama goes around signing executive orders. He can't even get along with the Democrats.
He goes around signing all these executive orders. It's a basic disaster. You can't do it."
March 2016:
"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."
Trump doesn't want to use too many executive orders? Is that why he signed 142 EO's in his first 100 days???
I have no idea what signing EO's "like they're butter" means. An early sign of dementia?
So now we have an unequivocal record of how Trump feels about Executive Orders. He believes they are a power grab. He believes they are a sign of incompetence. He believes they are a sign of laziness.
Before he finished his first term, Trump had already shattered the number of Obama's EO's (277). He blew right past it. Now he' piling on more and is currently at 384.
So far.
www.federalregister.gov
