Community Chatter: Students share what they think of President Trump’s first 100 days

The 100th day of Donald Trump’s presidency will be Saturday, April 29. The first 100 days of a presidency can represent the structure of an administration, and many voters expect key issues to be addressed within this time. The Daily Wildcat took to the streets to find out the UA community’s thoughts on Trump’s first 100 days.

What do you think about Trump’s first 100 days?

“I don’t think it’s been going very well, but I’m not super knowledgeable in politics.”

“From all the things that I’ve seen it’s not the greatest.” “I’d say the immigration policy that he tried to do within the first two weeks, because I have a French teacher and she was even afraid of being sent back to France because of the immigration policy.” “So that’s my biggest thing, people not feeling safe about being in this country, when they’ve been here for more than they have to be.”

–Tamryn King, junior majoring in English

How has the Trump presidency affected you so far, if at all?

TK: “It hasn’t yet, but I’d say one of the things would probably be like the Planned Parenthood aspect of it. Because I know a lot of my friends are trying to get birth control but then he’s trying to shut down Planned Parenthood and all of the things that it offers.” “That’s the biggest thing that would affect me in the near future.”

–Tamryn King, junior majoring in English

What do you think about Trump’s first 100 days?

“Frankly I’m disappointed. To a degree it was expected, because he wasn’t my candidate and I really disagreed with his policies coming in to his presidency, and his platform issues. But I think it’s exceeded what I anticipated for the first hundred days. In a bad way.”

–Nancy Freitas, graduate student with an environmental science degree

*She did not say she is a graduate student IN EVS

How has the Trump presidency affected you so far, if at all?

NF: “I went to school for environmental science, and my goal is to be in a research-related discipline. And right now we’re talking about major, major cuts to the EPA and really defunding it as an organization, which directly affects environmental policy in this country. But, they’re also discussing cutting research grants and funding to NASA and these huge organizations that support smaller but super important research at the university level around the country, and that directly affects what I want to do.”

*–Nancy Freitas, graduate student with an environmental science degree

What do you think about Trumps first 100 days?

“My opinion is it’s gone very poorly.”

–John Patinella, first-year pharmacy student (graduate student)

How has the Trump presidency affected you so far, if at all?

JP: “As a pharmacy student and someone who works at a hospital, in a pharmacy, we get people coming in every day wondering what their health care situation is going to be, moving forward. So not only with the new plan that they have been trying to pass, but with the cuts that they’re anticipating with Medicare and Medicaid everyone is very concerned about how they’re going to afford their medication without the ACA. So it’s not gone very well. And as the health care professional that they’re trusting, we can’t give them any answers. It puts a big burden on us and it’s really bad for the patients as well.”

–John Patinella, first-year pharmacy student (graduate student)

What do you think about Trump’s first 100 days?

“It’s shown a degree of, not knowledge of depth about the infrastructure about government, so his acts with the immigration policy in regard to whether or not it would be constitutional, as it was struck down with the Supreme Court, or, it was found that the executive order was not legal. He’s done stuff that’s been recurring for Republican presidents, getting rid of sanctuary cities, things of that nature. In terms of [a] more recent subject, using the largest non-nuclear bomb in Syria, it’s difficult to say about the distribution of bombings relative to other presidents given the fact that he’s only been in office, of course for the first hundred days. But it has to be considered that, while there wasn’t a lot of media coverage about Obama’s bombings in these different regions they were also quite substantial, and there’s a bit of irony to that fact, because Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize, if I’m not mistaken. In terms of policy, I think he’s tried to be as faithful as he could to the promises he’s made to these individuals. In regard to the healthcare plan he wanted to implement, there’s really no effective way to do that. In hindsight all of the people who voted for Trump, all they were asking for is higher subsidies on the Obamacare premiums. They pass the bill [on] whether or not they could sell the information about your online searches, I’m surprised that he approved that. I mean, I guess in a business sense it is useful, but I feel like it’s a large intrusion upon people’s privacies. If you look at who voted which way, it was Republicans who voted for the plan, Democrats who didn’t vote for the plan. I understand that, I think media might have polarized the parties. I think you have more traction from the most polar ends. Because they seem to be more extreme, and more lucrative in terms of producing something in the press. And it’s just gnawing away the moderates, so it’s problematic. I think the reason why we have a Trump presidency, it’s because we are not really trying to incorporate bipartisanship, we want a singular way; we’re not trying to understand the division of these different groups. We have to understand that people that are conservative, liberals, it’s more about upbringing than actual intelligence or systematic process of elimination or anything like that. If you look at the numbers it just tends to be from where you live.”

–Srinivasan Venkatesh, a junior majoring in physiology

How has the Trump presidency affected you so far, if at all?

SV: “Of course the internet policies are going to affect me. I plan to go into education so there’s going to be problems with students dealing with immigration under a Trump presidency. A lot of people are just joking about World War III, but it’s possible that there might be escalations in various foreign countries. Hopefully he doesn’t cut education; the budget has been proposed, I don’t know if it’s already been approved. I think there is going to be major cuts to national public programs, so NPR is also going to be cut I think. There’s such a distance between what’s regulated on Capitol Hill, and then change comes over time it’s difficult to say what exactly is going to have a major impact on my life. Whether his actions right now are going to have an impact on who I am a couple years from now. As it stands I think I am fine, but it has affected other individuals. People who are Muslim, people who are coming here from Mexico because of drug problems or the war on drugs, coming here as illegal refugees. I’ve been fortunate enough that I haven’t been.”

–Srinivasan Venkatesh, a junior majoring in physiology

What do you think about Trump’s first 100 days?

“I was coming into this kind of a little unsure of what he would initially kind of promise and do. I remain to be a little optimistic still. A lot of it is still kind of strange, he hasn’t done a lot of stuff he’s promised, like he said in the campaign. A lot of the rhetoric he used was kind of scary to a lot of people. But again, I think it’s kind of smart to stay on the more moderate side, to kind of remain optimistic, because it could turn out great or it still could [not].”

–Shane Blum, pre-business freshman

How has the Trump presidency affected you so far, if at all?

SB: “I’m an entrepreneur myself actually, so I run my own internet business. He’s kind of, again, set this more populist nationalist tone of less global business, more of America first, so that’s kind of an issue on that. But I’m still kind of promoting my brand and what I’m doing online. It could be indirect definitely, we’ll just have to see the long term effects I guess.”

–Shane Blum, pre-business freshman

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