And then there were the lingering questions about links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government that implicated several high-ranking administration officials and prompted several congressional investigations. Even before Trump took office, the Intelligence Community had released its verdict that Russia had sought to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.72 This prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee to begin investigating Russian meddling. Then, on February 13, 2017, Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after less than a month on the job. He did so amid revelations that he had lied to Vice President Pence about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States in December 2016—before Trump entered office—about U.S. sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration.73
The next day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer revealed that the president had known for more than two weeks that Flynn had lied about his contact with the Russians, and the New York Times reported that Trump campaign aides and other associates “had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”74 The controversy went on to implicate Attorney General Jeff Sessions. After Sessions denied under oath during his confirmation hearings that he had communications with the Russians while working for the Trump campaign, the Washington Post revealed on March 1, 2017, that Sessions had, in fact, twice met with the Russian ambassador during that period of time (though while still a U.S. senator).75 That led many leading Democrats to accuse Sessions of perjury, and call for his resignation; the controversy prompted Sessions to recuse himself from any investigation of Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election.76
President Trump tried to deflect coverage of his campaign’s ties to Russia by accusing the media at a press conference on February 16 of disseminating “fake news”77 and describing the media as “the enemy of the people” in a February 24 speech—a charge that prompted Republican senator John McCain to retort, “That’s how dictators get started.”78 Trump doubled down, tweeting unfounded claims on March 5 that President Obama (whom Trump described as a “Bad (or sick) guy!”) had wiretapped his phones during the election.79 But such efforts to deflect attention from the Russia allegations did nothing to impede the investigations. By March 22—Day 62 of the Trump administration—there were already four congressional committees investigating not only Russian meddling in the 2016 election but the ties of Flynn and other Trump associates to Russian officials: The Senate Intelligence Committee, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, the House Intelligence Committee, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.80
Nor was that all. On March 20, FBI director James Comey confirmed in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and said that there was “no information” to support Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped his phones.81 The independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO)—a government agency that monitors the accountability of government through audits and other forms of oversight—also announced an investigation on April 5 of Trump’s transition operation, including its spending, fundraising, and communications with foreign governments.82 Thus, even before the end of the first hundred days, an unprecedented range of divergent investigations—congressional and otherwise—distracted attention from the president’s legislative agenda.
In short, Trump did little to heal the wounds of the campaign during the first hundred days, and he suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds that undermined his chances for legislative success. Given the stark polarization between the parties mentioned previously and the divisions within the majority Republicans, building legislative majorities would have been difficult even for a president with extensive Washington experience, deep policy expertise, and longstanding relationships within his party. Trump, with none of that, allowed his frustrations with the lack of legislative success to boil over in a string of tweets attacking the right-wing Freedom Caucus (“we must fight them, and Dems, in 2018!”), the congressional opposition (“Democrats jeopardizing the safety of our troops to bail out their donors”), and Senate rules allowing legislation to be delayed indefinitely unless sixty senators agreed to end a filibuster (“… change the rules now to 51%”).83
The Administrative Presidency
Presidents are not limited to taking action exclusively by working through Congress. From the first days of his administration, President Trump embraced a unilateral exercise of executive power through the use of executive orders and other administrative directives, many of which he dramatically unveiled at televised signing ceremonies. Six days after taking office, Trump issued an executive order that directed the Department of Homeland Security to begin immediate construction of a 1,900-mile wall along the border with Mexico and to assign an additional 5,000 border protection agents to the area. Doing so, Trump declared “We do not need new laws.”84 But despite the power of some executive orders to achieve significant results, laws are, in fact, needed to accomplish many goals, such as appropriating funds to build a wall—which a Department of Homeland Security internal report said could cost $21.6 billion—or to hire additional border patrol forces.85
Executive orders must also be able to survive legal challenges, as Trump discovered when courts struck down his early order to ban travel from a series of predominantly Muslim countries and his plan to punish “sanctuary cities” for not enforcing federal immigration laws. In response, Trump repeatedly lashed out at the judicial branch. In February, he dismissed the “so-called judge” who temporarily blocked enforcement of the travel ban and called the decision “ridiculous.” Later, when a federal judge blocked a revised version of the travel ban, Trump called the ruling “terrible.” In April, he similarly denounced a federal judge who struck down his plan to punish sanctuary cities, calling the ruling “one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge” and claiming that the “erroneous ruling” was “a gift to the criminal gang and cartel element in our country, empowering the worst kind of human trafficking and sex trafficking, and putting thousands of innocent lives at risk.”86
Photo 6 President Trump holds aloft an executive order at a signing ceremony on January 28, 2017—one of over thirty such orders issued in his first hundred days.
Pete Marovich – Pool/Getty Images
The travel ban saga extended well beyond the ninety-day delay that the administration had originally sought. After two circuit courts also blocked the order, the Supreme Court agreed in June 2017 to take up the merits of the case in its fall term. In the meantime, the Court allowed parts of the ban to go into effect, while exempting those travelers with “formal, documented” business connections or “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”87 The government quickly held that