If Trump says to expect a big announcement soon, take it with a grain of salt

Are you expecting a big announcement in two to three weeks? If President Trump is behind the promise, then don't. "From overhauling the tax code to releasing an infrastructure package to making decisions on NAFTA and the Paris climate agreement, Trump has a common refrain: A big announcement is coming in just 'two weeks,'" Bloomberg Politics writes. "It rarely does."

Trump has dodged criticism of his administration's hesitant and slow policy rollouts by promising a big announcement is just around the bend. "We've got the [$1 trillion infrastructure] plan largely completed and we'll be filing over the next two or three weeks — maybe sooner," Trump said in April, although no legislation has yet been filed. Or when Trump promised an announcement "over the next two or three weeks that will be phenomenal in terms of tax and developing our aviation infrastructure" in February, it took 11 weeks for the White House to actually produce a one-page outline.

Trump's confident exaggerations are a familiar strategy to anyone who has read his book, The Art of the Deal. But "you can't con people, at least not for long," he warned in 1987. "You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."

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It might already be too late for that, though. "For someone who bills himself as the master of the art of the deal, well, where's the art and where's the deal?" said presidential historian Barbara Perry. "Trump continues to be in campaign mode with a lot of promises that he’s not fulfilling." Read a catalog of Trump's "two week" promises at Bloomberg Politics.