Donald J. Trump has been in the White House for 100 days, and his presidency has so far been anything but calm.
A billionaire businessman from New York, Trump stormed into the White House on Jan. 20, after he defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a stunning upset in the November election.
He’s rattled world leaders with his unpredictability and tough talk (or tweets), but won praise for an airstrike in Syria.
“I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump recently told Reuters. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”
READ MORE: Trump says he’s surprised being president is more difficult than his previous job
While some people have argued that the 100-day mark is an arbitrary milestone, including the president himself, Trump had previously emphasized its importance when he released his “Contract with the American voter,” while campaigning in October 2016.
An ambitious 38-point list, Trump has completed less than half of these pledges in the first 100 days of his administration. In addition, many points on the list that the president has attempted have been subsequently tied up in the court system.
Trump has signed more executive orders in his first 100 days than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, all the while, his administration continues to face ongoing investigations of Russia’s influence into last year’s election, and the White House’s relationship to Moscow.
WATCH: Trump releases commercial attacking ‘fake news,’ celebrating ‘bold actions’ taken in first 100 days
Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said that in the last few months, Trump has proven there’s no way to anticipate what’s coming next.
“He has had no experience in government. He had virtually no experience in politics except his run for the presidency. And that is big ‘except’ because he won — as he says, ‘I won. Why should I change? Why should I even try to learn about government because I didn’t need to know about it to be elected.’ And in his mind, he’s doing fine as president,” Perry says.
As Trump enters his 100-day benchmark, arriving here is a look at the campaign promises he’s broken during his time in the White House, and where the bloviating leader has found success.
Immigration
WATCH ABOVE: Courts halt Trump’s executive order on immigration
Throughout his campaign, one of Trump’s main rallying calls was cracking down on immigration. He pledged to build a wall, and then promised that Mexico would pay for it. He promised to implement “extreme vetting” for those attempting to immigrate to the United States from certain regions and promised to defund sanctuary cities.
To this day, Trump has not started construction on the border wall, and almost caused a government shutdown over the issue.
His attempts at a travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries have been tied up in the court system and were widely criticized as unconstitutional.
READ MORE: Federal judge puts emergency halt on Donald Trump’s new travel ban
“He signs this executive order — apparently without very much consultation with the rest of the executive branch of government — and it immediately gets tied up in court. It provokes these massive protests at airports around the country and elsewhere,” Peter Shulman, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University told Global News. “And then they release a second one which also gets tied up in the courts as well.”
He made one attempt to defund sanctuary cities, but faced legal backlash from that proposal, and has made no obvious moves to increase deportations.
However, Trump pledged during the campaign to crack down on companies that hire foreigners over Americans, and appears to be making good on that promise after U.S. Homeland Security announced greater scrutiny of the H-1B visa program.
Health Care
Throughout the campaign, and in his “Contract with the American Voter,” he promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the signature piece of legislation of former president Barack Obama — often referred to as Obamacare.
Trump’s replacement bill, the proposed American Health Care Plan, was widely criticized by Democrats who said it would leave millions of Americans without health-care coverage and hard-line Republicans who said it wasn’t conservative enough.
On March 24, GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan cancelled a vote on the bill rather than see it defeated.
“The attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act was an utter disaster,” said Perry. “It wasn’t just that it didn’t go through, but everything surrounding it was a disaster, including the president’s attempts to deal with members of his own party. It shows that he is having trouble pivoting from campaigning to governing.”
WATCH: President Trump attempting to move on from ‘Trumpcare’ debacle
Has Trump drained the ‘Swamp’?
Trump routinely criticized the “Washington establishment” during his campaign, and promised to enact several pieces of legislation that combat the voices of lobbyists, industry influences and others in the government.
Since forming his administration, Trump has not proposed a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress, and lifted his hiring freeze on federal employees. Trump has imposed a ban on political appointees lobbying the government for five years after serving in his administration, and also banned outgoing representatives from serving in foreign governments.
He also issued a waiver to his lobbying ban allowing a White House budget adviser to advocate for a business trade group.
However, Perry notes that giving his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump prominent portfolios have “added a whole other level of the muck and mire of the swamp to our politics and government.”
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“They are totally unaccountable to the American people as they are not elected and they are not confirmed,” she said.
Tax Reform Plan
At the beginning of April, Trump scrapped the tax plan he campaigned on and went back to the drawing board on several key components. On the week of Trump’s 100 days in office, the president issued a replacement tax reform plan that has Congress divided on several fronts.
With Trump’s latest proposal, Republicans are split on a border adjustment tax on imports, while Democrats have refused to co-operate until the President releases his own tax returns. It’s difficult to check this box on Trump’s to-do list because it’s not yet clear what this proposal will mean, or how much of it will be kept intact.
WATCH: President Trump unveils tax reform plan
Trump originally set a goal of passing the tax reform bill by August 2017, but pundits are doubtful he can meet this deadline.
“At least now, he has a proposal out in the last minute of the 100 days, and it will remain to be seen how he approaches that,” Perry said. “Unless he learns the lessons of the debacle over Obamacare, it is not clear that he will have a success on taxes because he doesn’t seem to be able to negotiate very well, an irony given that he said it was his strength as businessman.”
Trade
Trump has attempted to make multiple significant moves on trade, though many of them have fallen through.
The first successful action was withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The American president fulfilled this promise in the first few days of his administration with an executive order. The pact was negotiated by Obama between the U.S. and 12 other nations, but received criticism from some Democrats and Republicans from the beginning.
However, Trump also promised to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the agreement entirely. While word of these talks surfaced this week, the discussions were essentially deemed a negotiation tactic to get a better deal for Americans. It’s not clear yet how Trump plans to handle NAFTA negotiations going forward.
READ MORE: Trump’s NAFTA flip-flopping a classic negotiation ploy, trade experts say
Trump has also declined to label China a currency manipulator, and appears to have abandoned that proposal, in light of the economic power’s assistance with North Korean aggression. He’s also sidelined promises to implement tariffs on Chinese imports.
WATCH: Trump’s NAFTA turnaround; he now wants to renegotiate the deal
Lastly, Trump’s trillion-dollar effort to restore American infrastructure over 10 years has yet to be launched, and his pledge to establish tariffs on companies that ship production abroad remains unfulfilled.
Perry describes Trump’s infrastructure claims as “not in the failed category yet, or maybe ever, but not even underway.”
Military and Security
WATCH ABOVE: Trump orders strike on Syrian military targets in response to chemical attack
In addition to immigration, Trump made two legislative promises in his “Contract with the American Voter” to enforce national security. The first is the Restoring Community Act, which attempts to reduce violent crimes and drugs by creating a task force. Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions through an executive order in February to assemble such a task force, and signed a second executive order that day, ordering the government to review how it’s combating drugs. However, this initiative is still in progress, yet to be completed.
In regards to restoring the National Security Act — which aims to rebuild the military, enhance veteran assistance, defend against cyberattacks and establish new screening procedures for immigrants — Trump has taken some steps towards achieving this goal. Trump’s proposed budget would boost defence spending by $54 billion, which would restore the $52 billion in cuts previously imposed by Congress.
READ MORE: Donald Trump says ‘major, major conflict’ with North Korea possible
Trump has also signed a bill extending a program allowing veterans to seek care from private doctors until next January, and asked Congress to increase funding to that program. In January, Trump issued a memorandum directing the Department of Defense to “assess readiness conditions, including training, equipment maintenance, munitions, modernization, and infrastructure.”
However, the fiasco around his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn became one of the first scandals for the Trump administration. In February, Flynn resigned after it was revealed he discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador, and then, his contradictory conversations with Vice-President Mike Pence.
“This is safely in the failure category,” said Shulman. “I would put Flynn in the broader question of Russian influence in the election, and possibly in the campaign. It’s been a drag on the functioning of the administration, and a galvanizing issue for opponents.”
Energy and Environment
Trump has been fairly actively rolling back Obama’s climate initiatives.
He’s been successful in clearing the way for the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines. Trump has started the process of unravelling restrictions on production of “$50 trillion dollars worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.”
WATCH: Trump says rolling back climate change ‘overreach’ to create jobs
He started the process in January, with one executive order and recently signed an executive order to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. What remains to be completed, however, is the cancellation of payments to the United Nations to aid its efforts in decreasing emissions and helping countries adapt to climate change.
His Supreme Court nominee
WATCH ABOVE: Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s pick for Supreme Court confirmed
The president’s first 100 days have been a myriad of Washington infighting and unorthodox policy-making. There have however, been a few major accomplishments. Nominating and getting Neil Gorsuch approved as a Supreme Court Justice proves a major success for the president.
“Neil Gorsuch is a highly-qualified justice. There will be people who disagree with him… But still, Trump gets high marks for carrying out the campaign promise,” Perry said.
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