In a Saturday appearance on "PBS NewsHour," veteran journalist and author Jeff Greenfield scoffed at the idea that President Donald Trump has in his first 100 days than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
At best, the president's accomplishments thus far are a "mixed bag," Greenfield said.
"It's doublethink," he said. "On the one hand -- and I agree -- this is a ludicrous metric, but on the other hand, they have tried to cobble together this claim of a record set of achievements."
"The kindest way to describe that is overreach," Greenfield said, "and the less kind way is to channel John McEnroe and say, 'You cannot be serious.'"
"At this point, Barack Obama had his massive stimulus bill passed, Ronald Reagan's tax cuts were well on their way through the legislative process," he recounted. "George W. Bush's tax cuts and education plans were as well."
Greenfield said that the Trump administration would have done better to stick with its original tack of calling the 100 days marker a ridiculous standard and to tell the media, "Come back in a few months and let's see how we're doing."
Instead, Trump spent an enormous amount of political capital on a desperate, last-minute push to put some kind of accomplishments on the board -- and may have alienated key members of his party in the process.
Watch the video, embedded below:
