President Trump’s administration turns 100 days old on Saturday, and the White House is furiously trying to spin his first months as a success — even as it downplays the importance of what is, in fact, a pretty arbitrary marker.
Where did the notion of a first 100 days come from? Blame Franklin Roosevelt, and the incredible legislative spree he and the Democratic-led Congress went on in 1933, when they laid the foundations of the New Deal in a matter of months.
Roosevelt used one of his fireside chats to run through the accomplishments of that special session of Congress, unintentionally setting a marker by which all other presidents would be measured.
And while every new administration chafes at the idea that it has to get the wheels of bureaucracy churning even as its members are figuring out how to turn the lights on and off, all have that 100-day marker circled on their calendars.
In this week’s episode, we sit down with a veteran of President Obama’s first 100 days, and an expert on the breakneck pace FDR set when he took office more than 80 years ago. And we check on how the Trump administration has done in its first three-plus months in office, including that crucial piece of legislation the president signed to rename a Veterans Affairs facility in American Samoa.