We look at what the Trump White House did in early 2017 and what might be different this time around.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
You know the saying history repeats itself and a revision to that saying that holds that history may not repeat itself, but it can rhyme. Hard not to notice that in the U.S., we can also say that history may not repeat itself, but sometimes you do get the same president twice. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith is looking for clues to the start of Donald Trump’s second term, so she recalled what happened last time.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: The first Trump administration came in aiming for shock and awe. And it delivered, starting with President Trump’s inaugural address.
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DONALD TRUMP: This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
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KEITH: It was a message about delivering on his campaign promises about crime, immigration and industrial decay. And he got to work right away, announcing executive actions just about every day. And then, at the end of his seventh day in office, Trump signed Executive Order 13769. It banned travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.
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TRUMP: I’m establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We don’t want them here.
KEITH: It was a Friday night and immediately affected unsuspecting travelers. Lee Gelernt is a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.
LEE GELERNT: Then we started getting calls saying people are actually being stopped in the airports, and it’s happening.
KEITH: Chaos erupted.
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MICHAEL SMERCONISH: Week 1 of Donald Trump’s presidency has ended with a ban heard round the world.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Protests across the country, namely at airports – this one at Dallas Fort Worth Airport. People…
KEITH: It all happened so fast. Homeland Security employees at the airports didn’t know what they were supposed to do. By Saturday night, Gelernt and other attorneys were in court, trying to at least temporarily halt the ban.
GELERNT: At one point, someone came running up to me and handed me a piece of paper and said, my client is about to be sent back. in about a half hour. They’re putting her on the plane. And so I said, Your Honor, I’ve just been given this note – I mean, it was sort of TV movie-ish – and we need an order immediately. And so it all played out very dramatically.
KEITH: They got that order. And later, the travel ban was thrown out by the courts. A scaled-back second version didn’t take effect until five months later.
SEAN SPICER: There was a blur during those first few days. We were fast and furious.
KEITH: Sean Spicer was White House press secretary at the time. He says the desire to effect change fast meant there were some growing pains. He says he thinks this time it will be different – more professionalism, more coordination and four years of planning to get ready.
SPICER: They’ve seen the plays before. They know how they’re going to react to certain moves.
KEITH: He says it’s like a football team playing an opponent in the regular season and then meeting them again in the playoffs.
SPICER: Because so many of the people have a better understanding of the process, how to implement policies, the procedures, it’s going to make for a much, much better and stronger kickoff.
KEITH: In an interview on Fox News last month, Stephen Miller used even more colorful language.
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STEPHEN MILLER: The first day, the first week, the first a hundred days will be a bolt of lightning.
KEITH: Miller is set to serve as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy.
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MILLER: He’s assembled a world-class policy team behind the scenes that’s working every day to put together the Day 1 executive actions and executive orders that are going to implement every single one of his campaign promises.
KEITH: Actions on everything from the border and mass deportations to getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Gelernt at the ACLU says they’ve been preparing for nearly a year to get ready for a second Trump term.
GELERNT: We saw that time and again where they had a policy but maybe hadn’t thought through all the legal aspects of it. I think this time around, they will have thought through all of that, and it’ll make our job much more difficult.
KEITH: And so while Trump is preparing to sign executive orders on Day 1, Gelernt says the ACLU is preparing to file lawsuits on Day 1 as well.
Tamara Keith, NPR News.
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