A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
As the week came to a close, the Daily Caller reported that a GOP-affiliated group planned “to invest in a new ad campaign devoted to promoting President Donald Trump’s first 100 days.” Meanwhile, conservative media outlets offered appraisals of their own, with almost all giving him high marks. Where they did discuss his failures, they tended to attribute them to outside forces—typically opposition from the left. In a few cases, though, some commentators did suggest that the president had gone wrong, mostly by not going far enough.
National Review, which has sometimes criticized the president’s missteps, was largely affirmative in its assessment, writing, “[Trump] has stopped and reversed Obama’s eight-year slouch toward socialism.” It did ding him for some ongoing frustrations, including his failure to push more aggressively for appointments in the Justice Department, which has allowed Obama appointees to continue the previous administration’s policies. The article reserved its greatest scorn, however, for the president’s opponents, claiming, “Worst of all is the assassination chic that has gripped Trumpophobes who openly entertain the idea of murdering the president of the United States.”
In Breitbart, Joel B. Pollak likewise offered a sweeping appraisal of the president’s performance, asserting, “President Trump has generally fulfilled his promises. Even those who don’t like his promises seem to acknowledge that.” While he hasn’t achieved goals such as repealing Obamacare or instituting tax reform, Pollak wrote, “he made progress towards both.” Pollak made similar claims about the administration’s other activities: “One could argue, from a left-wing viewpoint, that Trump is a bad president. But no serious observer could claim he has been an ineffective one.”
Breitbart also interviewed White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, who “told Breitbart News exclusively that he believes that President Donald Trump has been ‘going big league’ on trade policy in his first 100 days in office.” Priebus also praised Trump’s first address to a joint session of congress, which “has appeared in virtually no media roundups of Trump’s first 100 days.” Fox News’ website likewise featured some insider praise with an opinion piece from Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, in which McDaniel declared, “Since taking the oath of office—and in the months leading up to his inauguration—President Trump has worked tirelessly to make [his] promises a reality.”
Many publications also looked at where Trump stood on specific issues. Citing the National Association of Manufacturers’ support for the president, a Daily Caller headline declared, “American Manufacturing High on Trump as he Approaches 100th Day.” LifeZette looked at the president’s record on immigration, with “report-card grades offered by experts and activists who favor tougher enforcement against illegal immigration and reforms in the legal immigration system.” Though a few gave the president A’s, one went as low as a D, mostly due to Trump’s handling of DACA and his failure to take a tougher line on refugees.
A popular Facebook post also riffed on the 100-day milestone:
In other news:
Conservative media’s clear villain of the week was Bill Nye, who several publications covered with scorn after the release of his Netflix show Bill Nye Saves the World, which features segments on gender, vaccination, and other hot button topics. Fox News’ Todd Starnes attacked the science educator for asking, as Starnes put it, “[S]hould people be penalized for having extra kids[?]” Worrying that “families like the Brady Bunch and the Walton’s could one day be outlawed” if this policy were enacted, Starnes wrote, “It’s frightening to imagine a nation where parents are punished for having what the left considers too many babies.”
In “Bill Nye’s View of Humanity Is Repulsive,” National Review also criticized Nye’s inquiry before moving to a broader critique of recent pro-science discourse as a whole. The publication argued that “science” has been weaponized by the left: “Just look at the coverage of the March for Science last week. The biggest clue that it was nothing more than another political event is that Nye was a speaker.”
