Sea change. An enormous one. That’s the only way to understand President Trump’s first 100 days — as a breaking from and often a breaking of the Obama presidency, one every bit as turbulent as what’s encountered by a sailing ship going from calm seas into a hurricane.
Trump’s first 50 days were a jumble of ups and downs, mostly downs. But beginning with the flawless testimony of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Senate Judiciary Committee and his subsequent confirmation under rules that will speed the way for future Supreme Court nominees, the Trump turnaround began and gained an almost uninterrupted momentum. The president’s directive to strike Syria after it apparently rained sarin poison on babies and toddlers was a defining moment, reinforced by using the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan and dispatching an armada of weaponry toward North Korea (no matter how indirect a route the ships took to arrive there).
All along, a legislative legacy was passing beneath the noses of Manhattan-Beltway media elites who could not be bothered to learn the wide-ranging implications of the baker’s dozen of Congressional Review Act measures that passed the House and Senate by simple majorities and were signed into law by Easter. This is a legislative outpouring not exceeded in substantive impact by any modern president except Franklin Roosevelt, though others have seen more statutes passed. Yet because regulatory rollback bores or confounds journalists, these new laws were discounted or simply dismissed.
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