Trump helps the New York Times list things he's done differently from Obama

(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

published 15 October 2017

President Trump responded on Twitter Sunday morning to a Saturday New York Times story on his efforts to undo former President Obama's policy legacy. As Trump sees it, the article did not adequately detail actions he has taken that run counter to Obama's approach:

The Times piece makes the case that Trump's attempt to erase Obama's impact has been more bark than bite. As "much as he has set his sights" on Obama hallmarks like the Iran deal and the Affordable Care Act, "Mr. Trump after nearly nine months in office has not actually gotten rid of either," the Times' Peter Baker writes. "Instead, in the past few days, he took partial steps to undercut both initiatives and then left it to Congress to figure out what to do next."

Still, as Baker quotes former Utah Gov. Michael O. Leavitt (R), "Presidential campaigns are won with big, simple, directional promises that rarely align well with the complexity confronted in the Oval Office," so the disparity between Trump's rhetoric and record is significant but not unprecedented. Obama himself "made lofty and ambitious heal-the-planet, close-Guantánamo promises only to fall short in some instances," Baker notes.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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