Grading Trump — Has it only been 100 days?: Opinionline

A+ Not Hillary: President Trump was elected in no small part because he was not Hillary Clinton, and he's done an A+ job of not being Hillary Clinton during his first 100 days. And as additional news about Hillary's shambolic presidential campaign has come out — including revelations that she combed through staff emails from her previous campaign and assigned people "loyalty scores" — the importance of having a president who is not Hillary Clinton seems even greater than it did in November. And, I'm happy to say, I expect President Trump to go on not being Hillary Clinton for the next four (or eight!) years. A+ job, Mr. President!

— Glenn Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor. @instapundit 

F- Divider: As a president who took office following a stunningly polarizing campaign — lacking a voter majority and after interference by both the FBI director and a foreign government — Trump’s first move should have been to unify and reassure a nervous and divided nation. Instead, he played to his base by trying to prohibit Muslim travelers (whom he arbitrarily labeled as terrorists) who represented no credible threat; then he compounded that outrage with a failed effort to eviscerate the insurance many of his own supporters depend on. Trump refuses to learn that tweeting or signing an ill-drawn executive order is not the same as effective governance — or that whacking away at his predecessor’s legacy is not the same as logging achievements of his own. Add to that Trump’s allergy to honesty and blindness to ethics, and the only real question his tenure so far raises is whether anyone could conceivably have accomplished less — or done more damage — in 100 days.

— Ellis Cose, senior fellow in residence at the American Civil Liberties Union. 

D Uncivil: It could be worse. I could have young sons and have to become a full-time counterprogrammer. I’d have to teach them about respect and kindness and the diversity that is a treasure and a gift as well as our core American identity; about what’s appropriate on social media, the importance of telling the truth and keeping your word, how to disagree and debate and stay open to different types of ideas and people. I’d have to teach them how a bill becomes a law; about civic responsibilities and working hard to achieve your goals — learning all you can about what you want to do and become — because our country rewards that kind of dedication and enterprise. Or at least it did. The good news for me is that my sons are grown-up. I feel for today’s parents, especially those with tweens and teens. As the Obama-era campaign to help gay teens used to say, “It gets better.” We can hope.

— Jill Lawrence, commentary editor of USA TODAY. @JillDLawrence 

B+ Best to come: Trump gets an A+ for nominating Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, cheering up the economy, putting the fear of God into would-be illegal immigrants, and reducing his liberal opponents to screeching Hitler-steriacs wearing vagina symbols on their heads and pushing the hapless Chelsea Clinton to become 46th president of the United States. But I have to ding him seriously for those Tomahawks over Syria. The last thing we need is to get involved in more fruitless "regime change" operations in the Islamic world that mostly breed chaos, persecution of Christians, slaughter of brave Americans and, in Libya, slave markets. Still, Trump has proved he can turn in A work, so here's hoping for more of it (hint: getting that wall built, repealing Obamacare).

— Charlotte Allen, writer in Washington, D.C. @MeanCharlotte

D-.Cozying up: He avoided dying of pneumonia and/or nuclear war, thus far. More and more, 2017 is turning out to be as predictable as 2016 was freakish and unimaginable. As his critics expected, the president is cozying up to his conflicts of interests rather than resolving them, bumbling legislation he doesn’t even attempt to comprehend and veering us, tweet-by-tweet, closer than we’ve been to a nuclear war since the fall of the USSR. Then there’s all the golf. Meanwhile, our allies have been needlessly jolted and corporations set free to sell our Internet browsing histories or dump coal ash into rivers as law-abiding undocumented immigrants attempt to keep paying taxes in unrelenting terror. And this appears to be just enough for Trump to hold on to his base, for at least as long as he can coast on Barack Obama’s economy.

— Jason Sattler, columnist for The National Memo. @LOLGOP

C+ Mixed record: Trump had some foreign policy successes, including the Syrian strike and keeping Russia guessing. But Trump also had a major misstep in domestic policy by trying to reform health care and now taxes instead of focusing on the issue that got him elected: jobs. When grading Trump’s first 100 days, one must disregard both the A’s from those who support him and believe he can do no wrong and the F’s from those who despise him and think he can’t do anything right. The truth is in between, with a + for tireless effort.

— Ruben Navarrette, columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group and The Daily Beast. @RubenNavarrette

D Bad leader: In my scoring system, this stands for demeaning. He has demeaned the presidency by being boorish. That's what the conservative website RedState.com called him after he compared the ratings during his Sunday talk show appearances to 9/11. Ratings aren't a metric about which presidents need to obsess. Republican or Democrat, America needs a leader in the White House who understands this.

— David Person, radio talk-show host in Huntsville, Ala. @DavidTPerson

B+ Media maven: This is for Trump's mastery of using Twitter to bypass the mainstream media and keep them on their toes working 24/7 and, at the same time, keep his base motivated. The net effect of that mastery and his calling the press "the enemy of the people," however, has only served to foster division and confusion and done little to help democracy.

— Alicia Shepard, media writer and former NPR ombudsman. @Ombudsman

D We're still here: Our singularly ill-equipped pilot is publicly boasting about his flying skills while privately relying on his similarly unqualified children for instructions and Fox News commentators for approval. It is impossible to quarrel with Ohio Gov. John Kasich when he said, "You want to root for the pilot if you're on the airplane with the pilot. You don't want the pilot to screw up." But it is also impossible to give a grade of distinction to a lying, self-dealing, subliterate fraudster of a president whose principal accomplishment is that our country's robust institutions have survived his first 100 days.

— Gabriel Schoenfeld, author ofNecessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law. @gabeschoenfeld 

C- Not normal: On a positive note, Trump has not yet started a major shooting war, a trade war, defaulted on the national debt or triggered a financial crisis. He has also found significant time to work on his golf game. On a negative note, Trump has violated norms regarding nepotism and conflicts of interest, his first executive order on immigration was arguably racist and certainly implemented in an incompetent manner. His party controls the Congress and the White House, but they can't pass any significant legislation. And, he continues to politicize our judicial system by making unfounded allegations and attacking the independence of the judiciary. Has it only been 100 days?

— Steven Strauss, visiting professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. @Steven_Strauss 

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