President Trump entered office on Jan. 20 with a vow to end "American carnage." Here’s a sampling of what he and his administration said and did in the 100 days after that — and what Post Opinions columnists and contributors have written about his record.
“Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.”
“One group voted for him; the other did not. On Friday, Trump promised to fight for them both.”
“We now know that Trump’s self-adoration is not a mere personality glitch. It is instead an engine of intimidation, a furiously dominant aspect of his personality, and when it gets challenged, as it was over the weekend, he responds irrationally.”
“Fear of a presidency willing to declare that up is down and down is up is why so many rallied to say a very loud ‘no.’”
“This disconnect from reality is my biggest fear about Trump, more than any one policy he has proposed. My worry is the president of the United States is barking mad.”
“What Trump gets from his trade crusade is a (false) rallying cry for more U.S. jobs. What the United States gets, if anything, is less clear.”
“If you lose an election by 80,000 votes when you have 5 million to play around with, you are too dumb to be president.”
“We do not spoil for a knife fight. Whatever comes at us over the next four years, what we should wield is our pens and our laptops, our facts and our fairness.”
“All Mexicans are behind President Peña Nieto when he tells President Trump that we will not pay for his extravagant, offensive and useless project.”
“When Ronald Reagan spoke on foreign policy, tyrants sat uneasy on their thrones and dissidents and refugees took heart. When Donald Trump speaks on foreign policy, tyrants rest easier and dissidents and refugees lose hope.”
“Stupid but legal.”
“The absurdity of Yates’s position is self-evident.”
“The White House ... could have worked with [Yates] to make changes that would satisfy her concerns about its legality. Instead, the president chose crisis and chaos.”
“It was far and away the most presidential performance we’ve thus far witnessed.”
“Ancestors weep.”
“Iran is among the toughest foreign policy challenges Trump will face, and he should be careful to avoid ill-planned early actions that would make it his Bay of Pigs.”
“The 9th Circuit ruling, suffused with bristling at the notion that courts should remain supine in the face of claims of unbridled executive power, offers an illustration of judicial willingness to provide a needed brake on Trumpian overreach.”
“This style reduces important issues, from gay rights to climate change, to girlish whims, as if family benefits and the fate of the planet are as trivial as the choice of centerpieces at a wedding.”
“What did our great dealmaker get in return? Nothing — or nothing public, anyway. Beijing must be pleased as punch.”
“We’ll see whether Trump will condemn the entire judiciary as ‘so-called,’ but thus far they have done their job: to provide a bulwark for liberty in the face of executive overreaching.”
“The process would work only if Israel and the Palestinians simultaneously reached agreement — which, for now, they can’t and won’t.”
“The Michael Flynn fiasco was the entirely predictable product of the indiscipline, deceit, incompetence and moral indifference that characterize Donald Trump’s approach to leadership.”
“The call may not necessarily be the smoking gun, the ultimate ‘proof’ that there was a quid pro quo: ‘You help us with the election, we help you by lifting sanctions.’ But it sure looks like it could be.”
“We have seen it all before, the early successes and stumbles, but what is new is the nearly ubiquitous, 24/7 breathlessness of many in the media. We are a bunch of alarmists generally, but the crying-wolf club has never been this numerous.”
“The checks have checked. The balances have balanced. In this scenario, it is good news that the Trump administration has been so inept.”
“Trump was wrong to call reporters enemies. And yes, the demonization of those who disagree with us is a deep problem in U.S. politics. But it did not start with Trump.”
“Actually, we all knew.”
“Trump delivered . . . And in so doing he also delivered a heartfelt appreciation for the ultimate sacrifice made by thousands since 9/11.”
“The question at this point is whether any Republican, especially one enlisted to help spin Trump’s defense, can be entrusted with this investigation.”
Above: An animated take on Trump’s Twitter use
“What’s clear is that President Trump and his supporters have the ‘repeal’ part down but not the ‘replace.’”
“It’s about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts — tax cuts that will quietly pave the way for more, and far larger, tax cuts.”
“Missing in action is a broader sense of what is at stake. Put aside that catastrophic climate changes could render the world uninhabitable.”
“Anyone who survives will be a gun covered in the fur of a rare mammal, capable of fighting disease with a single muscular flex. RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW! It will be great.”
“There are more suspicious reasons for Obama’s national security adviser to have sought to unmask the identities of Trump campaign aides than there are valid reasons.”
“Nunes is acting as though he’s trying to convince everyone he’s staging a coverup.”
“President Trump could actually use the legislative collapse to fix health care if he went back to basics and to his core convictions on the topic, which are surprisingly intelligent and consistent.”
Above: A cartoonist’s take on the nuclear option
“I urged Democrats to reconsider. I regret that they could not be dissuaded from their latest and most audacious attack on the norms and traditions of the Senate.”
“Either we’re on a slippery slope toward deeper military involvement, or we remain helpless witnesses to unspeakable carnage.”
“Even for a president who advertised his coldblooded pragmatism, the moral dimensions of leadership find a way of penetrating the Oval Office.”
“The halting, hard-to-follow speech patterns reflect an unflattering truth about the top spokesperson at the White House: He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“It was inevitable that a rookie president with no experience in government at any level, much less the highest, would have a ridiculously steep learning curve to climb.”
“These about-faces represent, in part, a Trump Tower-size version of the realities that confront any new president. Campaign trail proclamations yield to Oval Office sobriety.”
“The world is on notice: Eight years of sleepwalking is over. America is back.”
“The country’s citizens can prevail . . . if we insist on calling out a self-absorbed huckster who treats us all as easily bamboozled fools.”
“Just as all of Trump’s health-care promises proved impossible to square, so too will his tax populism collide with the plutocratic reality of his true priorities.”
“Yelling ‘fake news’ cannot mask a fake presidency.”
“Once again, a horribly and sloppily drafted executive order came back to haunt the White House.”
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