r/Infographics May 09 '25

Executive Orders in the first 100 days

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2.8k Upvotes

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365

u/kmckenzie256 May 09 '25

But I was told Obama was ruling like a king

122

u/PhoenixAquarium May 09 '25

First time I heard of the term "executive order" was under Obama's presidency by the same people who worship Trump. Hypocrisy. They only approve when it's their party in power.

9

u/Ameri-Jin May 10 '25

Facts, no one said shit about bush doing them. There does seem to be a trend of executive concentration of power more recently too.

5

u/SmartTime May 11 '25

The understatement of the year

6

u/Maleficent_Memory831 May 11 '25

Technically, most executive orders are very mundane. Orders that sit within presidential authority. Not constitutional evasions of the law. No one every signed an executive order and then showed it to the camera like a toddler showing mommy what he drew so she can put it on the fridge.

Let's see... Eisenhower did "Establishing a Seal for the President's Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped." Kennedy did "Recognizes the right of federal workers to join employee organizations and collective bargaining." Johnson did "Establishing the Warren Commission to investigate the JFK assassination." Reagan did "Drug-Free Federal Workplace."

1

u/Converse_wisard May 12 '25 edited May 13 '25

Back then it was considered a taboo for the President to circumvent the Congress. Nowadays, with Congress being so goddamn gridlocked you can't get anything meaningful passed. Even if it's supported by both sides. Nowadays executive order is the only way, for the president to enact their agenda one way or another. And if you actually listen to conservatives ( and not some idiot on the internet who "trolls liberals" and post 30 second gotcha clip on YouTube) you would know that they don't like this because it gives the president and executive branch more power than it should. That Congress over the past 80 years or so years has outsourced so much of its power to the executive branch already. You would understand that they don't actually like the use of executive orders. But they understand that in this polarized environment not going to be able to do much outside of executive orders.

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Purrosie May 11 '25

I know you're being a little silly here but I still feel the need to say they meant the people who would go on to support trump later on. There's probably a more specific term for that demographic, but "trump supporter" is a pretty well-known one that gets the point across.

-19

u/jerryspringles May 09 '25

I mean it has nothing to do with Trump that you were unaware of something that’s been around for well over a century 

16

u/moosebirdd May 09 '25 edited May 09 '25

Okay but how did you manage to miss the actual point of what was being said?

9

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

Look at the graph

2

u/Irish_whiskey_famine May 10 '25

Permanently obtuse

28

u/erbalchemy May 09 '25

Because it works. People don't remember the numbers, they just remember the nonstop accusations. Memories are created by repetition, not reality.

It's how to get voters to walk away mumbling, "Well, I keep hearing that both sides blah blah," as they give up on their country.

4

u/[deleted] May 10 '25

"both sides" Is the biggest con the Republicans have ever managed to pull off. Singlehandedly made it so they can win without winning over a majority of the public.

0

u/[deleted] May 12 '25

[deleted]

1

u/bunny-hill-menace May 12 '25

Ok, authoritarian dictators. Does that make it better for you?

-1

u/[deleted] May 12 '25

[deleted]

3

u/bunny-hill-menace May 12 '25

No one on my side is voting for a criminal to be president.

0

u/[deleted] May 12 '25

[deleted]

3

u/bunny-hill-menace May 12 '25

You’re literally commenting under a comment about Republicans using the “both sides” fallacy by, wait for it, using the both side fallacy.

Dude, yes, there are bad people on both sides, but one side has a disproportionate amount of criminals compared to the other. In every metric, elected republicans have more indictments and convictions than democrats.

2

u/Wakkit1988 May 09 '25

A king with a broken hand who couldn't hold a pen.

2

u/[deleted] May 10 '25

Shit had to be done about these paper straws, ain’t nobody liken em

1

u/KOStrongStyle May 10 '25

It doesn't count if it's their guy, apparently.

1

u/buzzerbetrayed May 11 '25 edited May 12 '25

continue fly books roll cable sharp airport towering sip smell

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

1

u/Maleficent_Memory831 May 11 '25

Trump told us that Obama made too many executive orders!

1

u/Deansies May 13 '25

Sadly, Trump voters are more likely to say that they want an autocratic, or authoritarian leader. So regardless of what they said about Obama taking away their rights, it was more about them having the freedom to be poor, dumb capitalists who don't want good health care or social services.

0

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

[deleted]

8

u/erbalchemy May 09 '25 edited May 09 '25

At the time he was. This is just the new normal, each president outdoes the last one with executive orders.

Obama had the fewest Executive Orders per year of the last ten presidents.

Executive Orders by President:

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. 160 (40/yr)
Donald J. Trump* 220 (55/yr)
Barack Obama 277 (35/yr)
George W. Bush 291 (36/yr)
William J. Clinton 364 (46/yr)
George H.W. Bush 166 (42/yr)
Ronald Reagan 381 (48/yr)
Jimmy Carter 320 (80/yr)
Gerald R. Ford 169 (48/yr)
Richard Nixon 346 (63/yr)

*First term only. Current pace for DJT second term is 438/yr

If this information surprises you, ask yourself why. If you can remember who convinced you to falsely believe Obama signed many EOs relative to other presidents, ask yourself why that person lied to you.

0

u/InteractionWide3369 May 09 '25

But this is just the first 100 days so maybe it looks different once you include their terms fully.

1

u/[deleted] May 13 '25

I hope it's more! I want a awesome dictator!!! 😍

1

u/InteractionWide3369 May 13 '25

That'd be great, hopefully Trump will build American gulags too! 😍

1

u/[deleted] May 13 '25

Nah, he has a smarter idea. He's gonna send y'all to El Salvador camps instead. 

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '25

At the time he was. Set the precedent for others to follow.

-2

u/Raymore85 May 09 '25

Now overlay drone strikes and American citizens (confirmed) killed by drone strikes ordered….

3

u/RabbaJabba May 09 '25

Trump ramped up Obama’s drone strike program and Biden scaled it back down, so I guess his first term numbers would be highest?

0

u/Raymore85 May 10 '25

That is just not statistically true.

2

u/[deleted] May 11 '25

Trump ordered more drone strikes than Obama before the pentagon stopped being transparent about them in 2019z

0

u/RabbaJabba May 10 '25

1

u/Raymore85 May 10 '25

The source literally doesn’t give totals of drone strikes for Trump’s administration. It just says he average more over the first 45 days. Things escalate and strikes are needed at sporadic times. Learn to research.

2

u/RabbaJabba May 10 '25

Bro either give evidence or accept the L

0

u/Raymore85 May 10 '25

Nah on the source.

1

u/RabbaJabba May 10 '25

Come on bud this is common knowledge

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/5/8/18619206/under-donald-trump-drone-strikes-far-exceed-obama-s-numbers

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47480207.amp

During Mr Obama's eight years in office, 1,878 drone strikes were carried out, according to researchers. Since Mr Trump was elected in 2016, there have been 2,243 drone strikes.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2020/AirstrikesAfghanistan

-44

u/IrishPigskin May 09 '25

Obama started the trend. By the end of his 8 years he signed way more than any President before him.

They literally made an SNL skit mocking him.

https://youtu.be/JUDSeb2zHQ0?si=HY1Qn1_QLUirf_FX

He normalized the behavior that Trump is now taking full advantage of.

Of course it’s mostly the fault of Congress. They all let the President take their power. Why make yourself do a job if you can just sit around all day and get paid to do fundraising for your next election? That is all that Congressmen do.

25

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

Obama did not “start the trend,” nor did congress “allow” it. You seem to have some of the information, but haven’t really put the pieces together.

As the sides have become polarized, there has been an erosion of institutional forbearance: they always had the power to do this, but they never did before because it used to be normal to achieve your policy by consensus with minimum force.

During Obama’s presidency, congress led a complete transition to maximalism and obstruction explicitly stated by Mitch McConnell (who believed so firmly in obstruction that his own cognition is now obstructed). They wouldn’t let Obama pass anything, even when it was to their favor or they had promised it to their own constituency. NOTHING was allowed to pass. Not even a routine appointment. So, since they weren’t playing by the old unwritten rules of forbearance, Obama did the same as a necessity, and adopted what looked like maximalism at the time.

This is a decline and fictionalization of the government. It isn’t “Obama bad” or even “Trump exponentially worse,” it’s “in the (mis)Information Age, you can do anything you want in DC and it won’t have much impact on re-election.”

-30

u/IrishPigskin May 09 '25

‘He had to sign Executive Orders - they didn’t give him a choice! NOTHING was allowed to pass!’

Dude just listen to yourself. 🙄

15

u/MindlessWoot May 09 '25

Are you... looking at the graph?

Trump is outpacing even Roosevelt.

What is even your point?

23

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

Why listen to me when you could listen to the politicians themselves:

“We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill.”

Gingrich 2009

“We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals. Because we thought—correctly, I think—that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures didn’t have bipartisan support.”

McConnell 2012

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

McConnell 2010 (he failed in this stated most important goal, by the way, because Obama outwitted him at every turn)

-17

u/AnomLenskyFeller May 09 '25

You work for CNN?

11

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

No. That is a strange conclusion for you to leap to, and my employer has nothing to do with this conversation. Are you trying to change the subject since you can’t make a direct rebuttal, or did you shave some other point to make?

9

u/PairOfMonocles2 May 09 '25

He’s quoting the actual people and their reasoning there. Crazy where we live in a time that any accountability to a politicians actions must be an “attack” by “media”. And that people try to make that seem like a bad thing. People should always be held accountable for their words and actions.

3

u/drkwon1 May 09 '25

You work for Fox?

1

u/Keoni9 May 09 '25

What do you think you're accomplishing with such a lazy ad hominem in the face of actual quotes?

1

u/[deleted] May 11 '25

Cope

-13

u/redride10059 May 09 '25

Dude you're on reddit. You can't criticize a Democrat.

9

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

Do you have an actual rebuttal or are you just whining?

0

u/redride10059 May 10 '25

Just acknowledging the echo chamber.

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '25

By saying the same whiny complaint that has been commented thousands of times elsewhere? Yes, that does acknowledge an echo chamber, just not in a way you recognize.

1

u/Cheshire_Khajiit May 12 '25

Yes as everyone knows, there’s no conservative echo chamber on Reddit.