WASHINGTON — Here’s one genuine achievement of the Trump administration’s first 100 days: The president, it seems, has come to realize he is in over his head.
“This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier,” he told Reuters in an interview this week. “I do miss my old life. I like to work so that’s not a problem, but this is actually more work.”
I can empathize. Having Donald Trump as president has been hard on all of us.
A week earlier, he told the Associated Press of a related discovery he made during his first 100 days: The U.S. government is big.
“I never realized how big it was,” he said. “Every decision is much harder than you’d normally make. … So you know, I really just see the bigness of it all.”
So what does he do now that he is in a job that is so hard running a government that is so big? He pretends. He has developed an elaborate fantasyland in which everything goes according to plan. All of the following statements, which I have assembled with an assist from the work of Post fact-checkers Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, are Trump’s own words; none is entirely true.
This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine. No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days. [Rep.] Elijah Cummings [D-Md.] was in my office and he said, “You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.” He said “you will be the greatest president in the history of this country.”
I have great relationships with Congress. The Republican Party has various groups, all great people. And I have a great relationship with all of them. I like Ted Cruz, he’s a friend of mine. One of the best chemistries I had was with [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel. We had unbelievable chemistry. And people have given me credit for having great chemistry with all of the leaders.
We’ve only been here for a tiny speck of time, and what I’ve done with regulations … is amazing. I think we’ve done more than anybody for this short period of time. More has been done in the last six weeks than has been done in years with the previous administration. We have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Covers, nobody’s had more covers.
Despite what you hear in the press, health care is coming along great. We are making great progress with health care.
We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive — a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.
This wall is not going to be that expensive.
I don’t know Putin. I have nothing to do with Russia. The Russia story is a total hoax. I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election.
I didn’t know Steve [Bannon]. If there’s a shutdown. It’s the Democrats’ fault. I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Now, they own Obamacare. If something happens blame him [federal judge James Robart] and [the] court system.
I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden.
We are sending an armada, very powerful.
When you talk about currency manipulation, when you talk about devaluations, they [China] are world champions. They’re [China] not currency manipulators.
I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan. We ended up winning by a massive amount. No, no, you have to understand, I had a tremendous victory, one of the great victories ever. The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize. Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.
They say I had the biggest crowd in the history of inaugural speeches. It looked like a million, million and a half people. It was almost raining … but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech. And then it became really sunny.
The 100 days is just an artificial barrier. It’s not very meaningful. But we’ve done a lot. Somebody put out the concept of a 100-day plan. But yeah. Well, I’m mostly there on most items.
Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.
(c) 2017, Washington Post Writers Group
