Professor Ray Schneider: List of 59 Trump Accomplishments-Incorrect Attribution!
Summary of eRumor:
A list of 59 accomplishments by President Trump in the first seven months of his presidency that has been attributed to Ray Schneider, an associate professor emeritus at Bridgewater College, has been marking the rounds in forwarded emails and on discussion forums.
The Truth:
This list of President Trump’s accomplishments in the opening months of his presidency has been incorrectly attributed to Ray Schneider, an associate professor emeritus at Bridgewater College in Virginia.
Ray Schneider told us via email that he posted the “What Has President Donald Trump Done” commentary on his personal Facebook account on July 22, 2017. He said he doesn’t know its original source, and his email signature was incorrectly copied to the bottom of the commentary.
The commentary begins by stating that people who get their news from the main stream media only talk about “the phony Russia investigation” and goes on to say that “it’s time we fight back” by spreading a list of the president’s accomplishments.
The commentary lists President Trump’s legislative accomplishments, executive actions (like pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Paris Agreement), his appointment of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, as well as favorable economic indicators like median income, job creation numbers and consumer confidence.
We’re not going to fact check each of the 59 accomplishments listed. At first glance, many of them appear to be truthful. Others could be considered false or misleading, and others are disputable.
Claims about economic indicators, for example, are difficult to judge because they don’t provide specific time periods, or take into account economic trends when Trump took office. Trump’s critics would note that in October 2016, economists forecasted a stronger economy in 2017 in terms of wage growth, retail sales and manufacturing growth. It’s difficult to say how much Trump’s policies have swayed those projections one way or the other.
Other claims, like the one that President Trump had “reversed Dodd-Frank,” aren’t entirely accurate. The House had approved bills that would remove some banking rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, but these bills hadn’t been approved by the Senate or signed into law by President Trump. Trump also signed an executive order in April 2017 to end the ability of financial regulators to label financial institutions as “risky” without the president’s consent. Still, these actions only address certain provisions of Dodd-Frank, they don’t “reverse” the bill.
But the list of Trump’s accomplishments also includes plenty of accurate claims, like the one that “President Trump has worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any President since Truman.” Franklin Roosevelt signed 78 bills into law in his first 100 days in office, and Harry Truman signed 53 bills. Trump, who signed 28 bills into law in the first 100 days, was in fact the most productive since Truman.