WASHINGTON (AP) — He’s broken his pledge never to take a vacation or play golf for pleasure. His plan to update the nation’s infrastructure has become a running punchline and he&#…
By JILL COLVIN WASHINGTON (AP) — He’s broken his pledge never to take a vacation or play golf for pleasure. His plan to update the nation’s infrastructure has become a running punchline and he’s dropped his threat to throw Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl out of a plane without a parachute. But behind the drama, chaos and tumult that has defined President Donald Trump’s administration, the president has fulfilled a wide range of promises he made during his 2016 campaign. It’s a theme that will play a major role in the upcoming Republican National Convention, as the president tries to convince a weary nation that he deserves a second term, even when millions of Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, the economy is in tatters and racial tensions are boiling over. “I’m the only candidate that gave you more than I promised in the campaign. It’s true. I’m the only one ever, maybe ever,” Trump said at a rally in battleground Arizona last week. Back in 2016, Trump was criticized for failing to release detailed policy plans akin to those of his rival,Hillary Clinton. What Trump did do was lay out a vision for a new America — one driven by a nationalist self-interest and disregard for Democratic norms. In the years since, Trump has acted on that vision, making good on his nativist immigration rhetoric, tearing back regulations on business and transforming America’s role in the world by abandoning multilateral agreements and upending decades-old alliances, cheered on by many of his most loyal supporters and generating great alarm among his critics. But will that matter when more than 175,000 Americans have died and more than 5.5 million have been infected by a virus that has hit the U. S. far harder than other industrialized nations? “I think the golden egg of Trump’s reelection effort is going to be the promises kept, such as getting two Supreme Court justices in power and keeping America out of foreign wars like Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian at Rice University. “The problem he has is that his COVID response wasn’t on the ballot in 2016 and he’s gotten poor marks on how he’s handled the pandemic. So that’s put a wrinkle in his promises kept talking points.” Arguably Trump’s biggest impact has been on immigration. While Mexico never did pay for the “big, beautiful wall” Trump pledged to build along the 2,000-mile southern border — the signature promise of his 2016 campaign — the project is now underway, with 450 miles expected to be completed by the end of December. (Only a sliver of that, however — just 4 miles — has been built along stretches where no barrier stood before.) And Trump has succeeded in fundamentally transforming the nation’s immigration system, despite resistance from the courts and little cooperation from Congress. Using more than 400 executive actions, according to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, Trump has effectively shut down the asylum system at the southwest border and slashed refugee admissions.
