Promise made, promise broken: New analysis finds Trump is losing more often than he’s winning

One of the main arguments that President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has been making in favor of giving him a second term is that he has been keeping his 2016 campaign promises. Trump, at a MAGA rally in Toledo, Ohio on January 9, nonsensically told the crowd, “I’ve completed more promises than I’ve made.”

But according to analysis from the Washington Post, Trump has actually been breaking his promises more often than he has kept them.

The Post’s Glenn Kessler notes that the publication debuted its Trump Promise Tracker in December 2016, and according to the most recent Promise Tracker update, Trump “has broken about 43% of 60 key promises and kept about 35%. He settled for a compromise on 12%.”

Kessler lists specific promises, noting which ones Trump has kept and which ones he hasn’t. The promises that Trump has kept range from U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to changing visa rules to “enhance penalties for overstaying.” But Kessler goes on to list a variety of broken promises — for example, the Mexican government hasn’t agreed to pay for a U.S./Mexico border wall, and the Affordable Care Act hasn’t been repealed.

“Trump’s promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act backfired spectacularly in his first year in office, and the backlash over repeal votes taken by Republicans helped Democrats retake control of the House in the midterm elections,” Kessler explains. “Trump had made other promises on health care, including letting states manage Medicaid funds and allowing for the purchase of health insurance across state lines, that also failed to be realized.”

Other broken promises, Kessler observes, range from a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to reducing the number of tax brackets in the U.S. from seven to three to ending the Common Core program.

Kessler also cites some “compromises” Trump has made. Trump, for example, promised to reduce corporate taxes from 35% to 15%, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the corporate tax rate to 21% — not 15%.

“That’s still a big cut,” Kessler acknowledges, “but less than what Trump had promised.”