OPINION:
For anyone who thought that President Trump would promise one thing on the campaign trail and then do another in the Oval Office, you were sorely mistaken.
In his fifth full day in the White House, Mr. Trump is off to the races, expected to sign national security and immigration executive orders.
According to a report from Reuters, Mr. Trump will issue a temporary ban on most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries, until a more thorough vetting process is in place.
It’s a more focused ban on countries where terrorism is rampant, a smarter refinement of his original proposal.
Mr. Trump’s also readying a plan to build a border wall with Mexico and to punish sanctuary cities where mayors and law enforcement don’t carry out all federal immigration laws. In addition, he’s preparing to add 5,000 border agents.
The border wall was always a key component at his campaign rallies, with the promise that Mexico would pay for it. Many D.C. establishment types doubted he would deliver on such a promise, but guess what — he is.
Mr. Trump has approached his job as president at a dizzying pace.
On Tuesday, he approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, asking his team to try to maximize the amount of American-made goods in their construction, most importantly steel. It was a pro-business move that will surely ensure more jobs — another key promise he made on the campaign trail.
The State Department estimates Keystone alone will add 42,000 temporary jobs over two years, and that estimates doesn’t include the building of those pipelines with American products.
Many of Mr. Trump’s plans are lacking in specifics — but those will come. Rather than waiting for the bureaucracy to approve and start initiatives, he is, with the details falling in line later. It’s aggressive, bold governing — something you might expect from a chief executive officer.
Mr. Trump also said he would name a Supreme Court nominee next week. The front-runners — Neil Gorsuch of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia, Raymond Kethledge of the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati and William Pryor of the 11th Circuit in Atlanta — are all from his original list of 21 candidates he proposed on the campaign trail.
On Monday, Mr. Trump abandoned the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he long said he was going to do. He also met with union leaders, who left the meeting in awe of the new president and his commitment to blue-collar workers.
“He intends to do the work on the issues he discussed on the campaign trail,” Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, said later on a conference call. “It was by far the best meeting I’ve had [in Washington].”
The manufacturing sector has shed about 5 million jobs in the past 20 years, and Mr. Trump has pledged to reverse that trend by challenging the nation’s automotive makers, aerospace industry and technology giants.
On Tuesday, he met with a dozen top CEOs to flesh out his plan for a corporate border tax/tariff if they decide to make products abroad and then ship them back into the U.S., rather than making those products at home.
According to a report from Fortune, Dow CEO Andrew Liveris acknowledged that the executives discussed “at length” the proposal to tax U.S. companies that manufacture goods in other countries and then import them back into the U.S., but all left the meeting feeling optimistic.
Mr. Trump pledged it would be “America first” when he was sworn into office, and that he would work tirelessly for us, the American people.
Five days into his presidency, he’s shown us exactly what “America first” looks like, and the fact that he doesn’t sleep.
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