Trump’s first seven days: A primer

Executive orders, alternative facts, and mass protests

Friday, Jan. 20
Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. His inaugural address is a populist fire-and-brimstone exhortation pitting America against the rest of the world. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump says. 

“The way that Trump spoke about the outside world was the most aggressive, most hyper-nationalist, and, in some ways, the most hostile of any inaugural address since the second World War,” conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer would later say of the speech. 

Reuters publishes side-by-side bird’s-eye photographs of the National Mall showing the crowd sizes at Trump’s inauguration versus Obama’s in 2009. Experts estimate that 160,000 people attended Trump’s, compared to 1.8 million at Obama’s. 

Saturday, Jan. 21
Standing in front of the CIA Memorial Wall, the president spends a good portion of a speech in Langley obsessing over inauguration crowd numbers, claiming his crowd was in fact closer to 1.5 million people. 

Newly minted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer holds his first press conference, which he spends lying to and berating reporters. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer says. 

Meanwhile, in D.C. and cities around the world, millions of people gather for the Women’s March in one of the largest displays of political protest in history. 

Sunday, Jan. 22
On “Meet the Press,” Chuck Todd asks Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to explain why Spicer would spend his first press conference lying about crowd numbers. 

“You’re saying it’s a falsehood,” Conway responds. “Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts.” 

A hashtag is born. 

Monday, Jan. 23
On his first full business day in office, the president signs three executive orders, withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans Pacific Partnership, reinstating the so-called Mexico City policy barring federal funds from being given to NGOs that perform or promote abortion overseas, and freezing federal workforce hiring. 

In a private meeting with congressional leaders, Trump once again claims widespread election fraud—3-5 million illegal votes—cost him the popular vote, with no evidence to back up his assertion. 

Tuesday, Jan. 24
Trump signs an executive order clearing the path for two controversial domestic pipelines: The Keystone XL and Dakota Access. He also signs an executive order essentially expediting the permitting and regulatory process for domestic manufacturing. 

Wednesday, Jan. 25
Trump signs an executive order calling for the construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. He promises that Mexico will pay for it. He also strips federal funding from “sanctuary cities” that allow undocumented immigrants to live and work without fear of deportation. 

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto denounces Trump’s order, stating that Mexico would absolutely not be paying for any wall. Nieto and Trump had been scheduled to meet in Washington at the end of January. 

Meanwhile, in an interview with ABC News, Trump again resolves to bring back torture in the war on terror. 

Thursday, Jan. 26
In response to President Nieto’s statement, Trump says, “If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.” Nieto calls his bluff and cancels the meeting. Press Secretary Spicer then says that Trump is considering a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports as a way to pay for the wall. This plan is quickly denounced far and wide as effectively putting the cost back on the American consumer. 

Later that night, Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon calls the media the “opposition party” and says it should “keep its mouth shut.” 

Friday, Jan. 27
In the name of national security, Trump signs an executive order barring citizens from seven Muslim countries (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen) from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days, suspending all refugee programs for 120 days, and indefinitely suspending the Syrian refugee program. Experts quickly note that there has never been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by a citizen of any of those countries. (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Turkey—the former three of which produced the 9/11 hijackers—are exempt from the ban, which some speculate is because Trump has business entanglements in all of them.) 

The effect is immediate and chaotic: dozens of people traveling when the order is signed land in the U.S. only to be detained or sent back, including some with green cards, NYU college students and an interpreter for the U.S. Army. Mass protests at major airports break out across the country. 

BOTTOM LINE: Some journalists have speculated that this first week was about creating chaos to consolidate power. Whether knowingly or unwittingly, Trump is conducting a stress test on our government’s system of checks and balances.  

Either way, it’s going to be a long four years.

For more from Joshua, read Bottom Line from our last issue, on District 70 Rep. Carol Bush.