100 WTF Moments From Trump’s First 100 Days
Saturday marks Donald Trump‘s 100th day in office, a milestone the president considers “ridiculous.” While he doesn’t have many achievements to tout – fewer even than William Henry Harrison, who died one month into his term, per one critic – Trump’s first 100 days have been a wild, and sometimes terrifying, ride. You might even call his short time in office… ridiculous.
Here, in chronological order, are just some of the completely absurd things that have happened since Trump’s swearing-in.
January 20th: Trump delivered a bizarrely dark inauguration speech, invoking the phrase “American carnage.” As George W. Bush reportedly noted at the time, it was “some weird shit.”
January 20th: The Trump administration locked down all Department of Interior social media accounts because the National Parks Service retweeted side-by-side comparisons of the crowds at Obama’s and Trump’s respective inaugurations.
January 20th: Five hours into his term, Trump filed paperwork for his 2020 re-election bid.
January 21st: Sean Spicer convened a news briefing to declare, falsely, that “this was the largest crowd to witness an inauguration, period.”
January 21st: Trump stood in front of the CIA Memorial Wall and accused the media of broadcasting “an empty field,” when, to his eyes, “it looked like a million, a million-and-a-half people” attended his inauguration. He also floated the idea that the U.S. might get “another chance” to seize Iraq’s oil, said torture “absolutely” works and spoke for us all when he described receiving the nuclear codes: “It’s very, very, very scary in a sense.”
January 22nd: Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts” to discuss Sean Spicer’s falsehoods.
January 23rd: Trump instated a radically expanded version of the so-called Global Gag Rule, prohibiting the recipients of any U.S. foreign aid to even acknowledge the concept of abortion.
January 23rd: Trump claimed, without evidence or explanation, that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in the November election. (It later emerged that the claim was based on an anecdote from “very famous” German golfer Bernhard Langer.)
January 24th: Trump issued a proclamation declaring his inauguration day a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.”
January 24th: Trump reversed Obama’s orders on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
January 24th: The Trump administration issued a gag order for all federal agencies, barring them from communicating directly with the press and members of Congress.
January 24th: The House voted to make the Hyde Amendment a law, rather than a rider, making it harder to potentially overturn it. The rule, which has been in place since the 1970s, bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortions – and therefore keeps poor women on Medicaid from being able to use insurance to pay for the procedure.
January 25th: Trump signed an executive order authorizing the deportation of as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants.
January 25th: Trump also signed an executive order codifying the “Muslim ban” he proposed as a candidate.
January 25th: It was reported that Trump had refused to give up his unsecured Android phone.
January 25th: Trump insisted in an interview that his January 21st speech at the CIA – widely criticized as insensitive and in poor taste – was “a home run” that got “the biggest standing ovation since Peyton Manning had won the Super Bowl.”
January 25th: It emerged that Trump staffers were using private email servers – not unlike the ones that inspired the campaign to yell endlessly that Hillary Clinton should be indicted and thrown behind bars.
January 26th: Trump declared on Twitter that Mexico’s president might as well cancel their planned meeting if he was not going to pay for a new border wall.
January 26th: The White House abruptly pulled ads – including those that were already paid for – reminding Americans to sign up for the Affordable Care Act before the enrollment deadline, a move that may have prevented as many as 500,000 people from gaining coverage.
January 26th: The entire senior staff of the State Department either resigned or were fired, and no one was sure exactly which.
January 27th: Trump began exploring various means of gutting funding for the United Nations.
January 27th: The White House’s Holocaust Memorial Day statement failed to mention Jews.
January 28th: Trump harangued, then hung up on, the prime minister of Australia, a longstanding U.S. ally.
January 29th: Steve Bannon was named to National Security Council – without Trump’s knowledge.
January 29th: Under pressure from members of Congress, Customs and Border Protection agents refused to enforce court orders temporarily halting Trump’s travel ban.
January 29th: Trump ordered a military raid on Yemen after a casual dinner discussion – and it was horribly botched.
January 30th: Trump claimed that only 109 people were affected by the travel ban; the State Department later clarified that closer to 60,000 people had their visas revoked.
January 30th: After acting Attorney General Sally Yates refused to defend the travel ban, Trump fired her.
February 2nd: Trump chose two dudes to advise him on women in the workforce.
February 2nd: Trump repealed a rule in order to allow coal companies dump their waste into rivers and streams.
February 2nd: Trump floated the idea of withholding federal funds from UC Berkeley over its decision to cancel Alt-Right troll Milo Yiannopoulos’ speaking engagement.
February 3rd: Kellyanne Conway referred to the fictional “Bowling Green Massacre” on national TV.
February 3rd: The leader of the free world picked a Twitter fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger over a reality TV show.
February 5th: Trump attacked the “so-called judge” who ruled against his travel ban on Twitter.
February 6th: Trump claimed that any negative polls were “fake news.”
February 6th: Melania Trump filed a libel suit against the owner of the Daily Mail alleging that one of the paper’s articles had “impugned her fitness to perform her duties as First Lady of the United States,” hurting her “unique, once in a lifetime opportunity” to “launch a broad-based commercial brand.”
February 7th: Mike Pence was forced to cast an unprecedented tie-breaking vote to confirm billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos (she of “guns for grizzlies” infamy) as education secretary.
February 8th: Trump picked a Twitter fight with Nordstrom over the department store’s decision to drop Ivanka’s clothing line.
February 8th: The official @POTUS Twitter account retweeted Trump on Nordstrom.
February 9th: Kellyanne Conway encouraged Americans to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.”
February 9th: After his travel ban was overturned, Trump tweeted, “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” – shortly before his administration dropped its legal challenge.
SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017
February 11th: Trump discussed his administration’s response to a North Korean ballistic missile launch on a terrace at Mar-a-Lago, in view of diners at the club.
February 13th: The White House granted press credentials to the conspiracy blog Gateway Pundit.
February 13th: It was first reported that Trump named a business associate and founding member of Mar-a-Lago ambassador to the Dominican Republic, where his company is considering building a luxury hotel.
February 14th: Michael Flynn resigned after just 23 days as Trump’s national security adviser amid revelations that he misled the administration about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the campaign.
February 14th: Trump forced Chris Christie to order meatloaf on a visit to the White House.
February 15th: The White House was forced to rescind Andy Puzder’s nomination for labor secretary after, among other things, allegations of spousal abuse surfaced.
February 15th: Trump responded to a question about anti-Semitism by bragging about the size of his election victory.
February 15th: Trump held what was described as a “campaign event” less than a month into his term.
February 16th: Trump rambled incoherently at a press conference that he’d ostensibly called to roll out his next labor secretary nominee, claiming that “Russia is fake news” and that he is “the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”
February 21st: Trump contemplated slavery on a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture: “Boy, that is just not good. That is not good. …That is bad.”
February 21st: Trump aide Stephen Miller touted a revised version of the travel ban that had previously been found to be unconstitutional, telling Fox News that the new order had “the same basic policy outcome” as the first.
February 22nd: The Justice Department withdrew Obama-era protections for transgender students.
February 24th: Trump used his prime speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference to rail against a free press.
February 26th: Trump asserted that the race for DNC chair was “rigged” to elect Tom Perez.
February 28th: Trump, who ordered the botched raid that killed Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, said Owens would be happy about how much applause he received during Trump’s joint address to Congress.
March 2nd: Congressional Republicans charged with drafting the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare refused to let Democrats, or even members of their own party, look at the bill.
March 2nd: Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from a congressional probe into the Trump campaign’s connections to the Russian government after it was revealed that Sessions lied about meeting with Russian ambassador (and presumed spy) Sergey Kislyak while serving as Trump’s campaign adviser.
March 4th: Citing no evidence, the president accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during Trump’s campaign – and misspelled the word “tap” in the process.
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
March 6th: The White House distributed a press release that contained a paragraph copied and pasted from ExxonMobil’s website.
March 7th: Every single U.S. senator – including every Republican – was compelled to sign a letter urging Trump to take action regarding the bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers around the country, which the president had mostly ignored.
March 10th: Without notice, Trump fired dozens of U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, whom he’d personally asked to stay on.
March 15th: A judge quoted Stephen Miller’s February 21st Fox News appearance in his decision blocking the revised travel ban.
March 16th: It emerged that Trump terrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka was a sworn member of the Nazi-allied Hungarian group Vitézi Rend.
March 16th: Trump proposed a budget that would defund Meals on Wheels, Habitat for Humanity and YouthBuild, among other safety-net programs for the most vulnerable Americans.
March 17th: Photographers asked for a picture of Trump shaking hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and seemed to pretend he couldn’t hear them.
March 17th: Trump joked about Merkel being wiretapped by President Obama at a joint press conference.
March 17th: A South Korean paper reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cut short a diplomatic visit to the country, citing “fatigue.” Tillerson, who denied the report, only brought one reporter – from a conservative news site – along on the trip.
March 20th: FBI Director James Comey told Congress that no evidence existed to support Trump’s claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
March 22nd: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes received a tip from the White House that members of the Trump campaign may have been incidentally surveilled during the transition, announced it to the media, then pretended he needed to go brief the White House… on the information the White House gave him.
March 22nd: Documents emerged showing Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, drafted a secret memo in 2005 outlining how he would seek to influence politics, business deals and media coverage in the U.S. and Europe to benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin.
March 23rd: Trump delightedly pretended to drive an 18-wheeler – while his health care bill was going up in flames.
March 30th: Michael Flynn, who previously said of Hillary Clinton’s aides, “When you are given immunity, that means you probably committed a crime,” asked for immunity in exchange for testimony regarding the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
March 31st: Trump – presumably the person with the most to lose if Flynn testified – encouraged lawmakers to give Flynn immunity.
March 31st: Trump was found liable for defrauding students at his scam university and ordered to pay them $25 million.
April 3rd: The Washington Post reported that Blackwater founder Eric Prince tried to establish backchannel relations with Russia via a clandestine meeting in the Seychelles.
April 5th: Trump suggested that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice may have committed a crime by requesting the identities of Trump campaign advisors mentioned in national security briefings. (Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence committees reviewed the same material and concluded Rice had done nothing wrong.)
April 5th: Steve Bannon was removed from the National Security Council.
April 6th: A Customs and Border Protection agent issued a summons demanding Twitter reveal the identity of the individual behind the parody @ALT_uscis account.
April 6th: After Democrats, upset that Republicans effectively stole a Supreme Court seat from President Obama, filibustered Neil Gorsuch’s nomination, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell deployed the so-called “nuclear option,” changing Senate rules to confirm Gorsuch to the Court.
April 6th: In an abrupt about-face on his stance toward Syria, Trump launched a missile strike on a Syrian airfield.
April 8th: Trump did an immediate about-face after his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, after blustering and threatening and provoking the country for months.
April 10th: Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department ended an advisory panel put in place by the previous administration that was intended to root out junk science in criminal investigations.
April 11th: On the second day of Passover, Sean Spicer said that even Hitler didn’t “sink” to using chemical weapons like Bashar al-Assad.
April 11th: Later in the same press briefing, when given the opportunity to clarify his Hitler remark, Spicer gave a long, convoluted response in which he said Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people” the way President “Ashad” did, and referred to concentration camps as “Holocaust centers.”
April 11th: In response to his remarks – and the ensuing public outcry – Spicer issued a statement noting he was “trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people.” The White House then issued not one but two corrections to that statement, at first omitting the phrase “innocent people” and then putting it back in to say, “Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”
April 12th: Trump remembers that he launched the Syrian airfield strike while eating “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen.”
April 12th: Trump had to be corrected about the country that was the target of the missile strike.
April 12th: Trump tried to intimidate North Korea by bragging that an “armada” was steaming toward the Korean peninsula – while the Navy was posting pictures that showed the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was actually on its way to Australia.
April 14th: The Trump administration reversed the Obama-era practice of making White House visitor logs public, citing “grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.”
April 20: Trump invited Sarah Palin, Kid Rock and Ted Nugent to the White House, where the trio posed, smirking, beneath a portrait of Hillary Clinton, whom Nugent once threatened on stage. (“Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these [guns] into the sunset, you worthless bitch,” he said at a concert in 2007.)
April 24th: It’s reported that the Trump administration floated the idea of slashing foreign aid by at least 30 percent and merging USAID with the State Department. (George W. Bush’s USAID administrator called the proposal “an unmitigated disaster.”)
April 25th: House Republicans slipped an amendment into their health care bill that would exempt members of Congress and their staffers from it.
April 25th: The White House issued an error-riddled press release claiming Trump accomplished more than any other president in his first 100 days in office.
April 26th: The White House established a hotline for people who had been victimized by “criminal aliens” to report their experiences – which activists immediately flooded with “reports” of alien abductions.
April 26th: The White House floated the idea of pulling out of NAFTA.
April 26th: A few hours later, the White House reversed course on NAFTA after outcry from the presidents of Mexico and Canada as well as members of Trump’s own party.
April 26th: Trump said he’s considering “breaking up” the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because it ruled against his travel ban and his executive order on sanctuary cities.
April 27th: Trump trumpeted a big announcement on taxes – only to unveil a one-page document nearly indistinguishable from the one he touted on the campaign trail in September.
April 27th: Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who’s been investigated for his alleged ties to Russia, said he was the “victim” of “one of the most horrendous civil rights violations in recent U.S. election history” – building on previous statements likening the investigation against him to surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.