Trump's Promises and Claims
Yep, I'm taking him literally.
***[Updated May 2 including Scorecard below; note that I’ve moved to simply updating this post rather than reposting it for the time being. If either substantial changes occur or we get to the end of the year, I will repost.]
As we start Trump 2.0, I think it is a good idea to track the impactful things Trump himself or his campaign or administration promised in the campaign and have claimed otherwise. I will try hard to limit this to the actual things said rather than other’s interpretation much less mischaracterization of them—I hope to avoid any “very fine people” mistakes/lies. Trump is bad enough on his own without a need to spin his words.
Note that I am not opposed to all of these. Many I support in part (e.g., ending wars) or in whole (e.g., freeing Ross Ulbricht). This is more about tracking rhetoric versus reality.
I expect to both update this with additions and (if necessary) edits as well as repost occasionally with updates on progress. These will be in no particular order other than the obvious groupings. On to the list.
He will . . .
End the war in the Ukraine before he takes office [Arguably he claimed to end it within 24 hours of being elected] - Status: FAILED TO DO
Lower energy bills by 50% as the method to reduce grocery prices - Status: FAILED TO MAKE PROGRESS I will count this as fulfilled simply if the CPI level for the category energy is ever below 141.24 (1/2 of the level it was at as of the January 31, 2025 update). Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean energy bills will be 50% lower—they likely would still not be.
[Stemming from his first campaign] Eliminate the national debt over eight years [It was $20T upon taking office in his first term; since he gave himself 8 years, I’m including it in this list.] - Status: FAILED TO MAKE PROGRESS Debt was $27.7T at the end of his first term with $3.2T of the addition coming before COVID. It is approaching $36T as he takes office the second time. I will count this as fulfilled if debt is simply below $16T (36T - 20T) by the time he leaves office.
On Day One
Free Ross Ulbricht - Status: FULFILLED* (on day two in office)
Delay a ban on TikTok - Status: FULFILLED
End birthright citizenship - Status: ATTEMPTED Currently halted by the courts, I will count this as fulfilled if he prevails.
Impose 25% tariffs on ALL products coming from Mexico and Canada [These are to stay into place “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”] - Status: FAILED TO DO He promised instead to being a research process and may install these tariffs by February 1. Update March 1: The tariffs have been on/off several times as of today. They are currently set to take effect March 4th. Regardless, this one will stay as a failure since he did not accomplish it on day one.
Repeal Biden's tailpipe emissions rule, which effectively mandates that the majority of new cars sold in America by 2032 will have to be electric vehicles [Originally a Day One imitative, but he admitted it could take two days.] - Status: FULFILLED at least in part through executive orders signed within the first two days in office.
Get the federal government out of education including ending the Department of Education - Status: NOT YET COMPLETED I am upgrading this given the recent progress. For this to end fulfilled both the department will have to formally be closed (I will accept a de facto closing) and the federal government will need to have ended the programs the DoEd was doing—not simply transfer them to another area of the federal government.
End taxes on tips and overtime and Social Security [To be fair he may have only said seniors should not pay tax on SS. Updated: He reiterated this at a rally in Las Vegas on 1/25/25.] - Status: SLIGHT PROGRESS This is where it stands as of early March in that the initial house budget plan includes an opening for negotiations on taxes.
Put a temporary cap on consumer credit card interest rates at 10% - Status: LITTLE TO NO PROGRESS Although talk of this continues, it is not yet close to reality.
Impose at least a 60% tariff on all Chinese imports - Status: FULFILLED He has imposed a 10% across-the-board tariff and is threatening another 10% (I’m assuming this is an addition to make the tariff 20%). [Updated 3/30/2025] Based on SupplyChainDive we are still at a 20% added tariff with China. [Updated 05/02/2025] Whether they remain in place or not, I do think he has fulfilled this promise as the tariff rate today stands at 145%.
Deport all illegal immigrants [Updated: He reiterated during his inauguration speech, “All illegal entry will be immediately halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places they came.”] - Status: SLIGHT PROGRESS He has had some sensational photo ops, highly-publicized one-offs, and other ugly moments, but it seems the deportation volume is fairly low at this point. [Updated 3/30/2025] Tom Cartwright’s X account and the NYTimes are good sources for tracking this one. [Updated 05/02/2025] Deportations continue but at a pace that cannot live up to the promise.
Appoint a libertarian to his cabinet and many libertarians to senior posts - Status: FAILED TO DO For this to be completed, the appointee must have libertarian credentials as judged by me. The only two that I can find are Elon Musk (arguably) at DOGE and Jay Bhattacharya as NIH Director. Neither are cabinet level.
Pardon at least some of the January 6 rioters - Status: FULFILLED
[Updated following inauguration to add]
Make public the remaining classified documents pertaining to the assignations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Jr. - Status: NOT YET COMPLETED His EO directs the Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) and Attorney General (Pam Bondi) to present a plan within 15 days for JFK and 45 days for RFK & MLK, Jr. for public release. Highly redacted documents will not qualify for fulfillment. The JFK portion is in progress it seems. [Updated 3/19/2025] The administration released about 2,200 files pertaining to JFK. It is unclear if anything remains classified, but I will count this portion as fulfilled with the other two still pending. [Updated 05/02/2025] After releasing about 10,000 RFK documents, about 50,000 more classified ones were discovered. At least 14,000 appear to have not yet been released. The MLK, Jr. files seem to remain classified as of now.
[Updated after first address to Congress to add]
“[W]e’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty, by slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft. And theft we can find. We will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors and put more money in the pockets of American families.” [This was at the end of him describing the supposed fraud discovered by DOGE whereby millions of people marked as aged 100-360 are still collecting SS payments. Hard to score this one as it is so vague and so unclearly related to those ostensible goals. And since it is very likely not what he says it is, he is bound to fail at this. I’ll count it as fulfilled if there is in aggregate over $1 billion of fraudulent SS payments made annually connected with these ~20.5 million records.] - Status: NOT YET COMPLETED
“And in the near future I want to do what has not been done in 24 years — balance the federal budget, we're gonna balance it.” [I’ll give him all four years to do it even once.] - Status: FAILED TO MAKE PROGRESS since through the end of March spending is tracking higher than the prior year.
Throughout his campaign and during the lead up to the inauguration, he has promised, threatened, and claimed more or less that a trade war would be pursued. While he hasn’t come through on the tariff items listed above, I feel compelled to give him some credit for having actually done as much as he has done on a trade war vis-a-vis tariffs. - Status: FULFILLED
The Trump Gold Card: “We are going to be doing something else that's going to be very good. We're going to be selling a gold card. You have a green card; this is a gold card. We're going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million and that's going to give you green card privileges plus it's going to be a route to citizenship and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They will be wealthy, they will be successful and they will be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people and we think it's going to be extremely successful. Never been done before, anything like this, but it's something that we're going to be putting out over the next, would you say, two weeks?” - Status: SLIGHT PROGRESS I’m being generous on this at the moment since it is still in the works. It has not passed Congress as of the end of March, and I do not want to hold Commerce Secretary Lutnick to his claim (or give credit yet) that he has sold 1,000 such cards. [Updated 05/02/2025] I don’t yet see progress on this including it yet being made legal.
Will he come through? We shall see . . .
PS: You can check out the more extensive Agenda 47 on Wikipedia to see what the more formal campaign promises were. There is a lot of overlap with the above. Agenda 47 has some things I could but probably won’t add, but much of it is loose, vague, and indeterminant.