WASHINGTON (AP) – Words are important. But numbers also tell stories.
Presidential historians and others will gauge them as they assess President Donald Trump’s legacy,
Trump’s presidency is reflected in a wide variety of numbers representing everything from the US death toll during the coronavirus pandemic to the miles of his ‘great, beautiful wall’ along the border with Mexico to the tens of thousands of tweets he has over four years sent office.
Some of the numbers that make up Trump’s legacy:
—322,000 and more: Number of US deaths attributed to COVID-19.
—6: Coronavirus vaccines are being developed and / or distributed under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed program.
—2: Coronavirus vaccines – by Pfizer and BioNTech, and a separate one by Moderna – that US regulators have approved for emergency use in 2020.
0: Extensive plans for the health care overhaul Trump introduced despite repeated promises to replace the Obama-era Affordable Care Act with a plan that would cover everyone at a lower cost.
3: Judges added to the Supreme Court and established a solid 6-3 Conservative majority.
221: Federal judges at trial level and in appeal courts added to the judiciary.
$ 3.1 trillion: 2020 budget deficit, largest in dollar terms in US history. Trump had pledged during the 2016 campaign to close the gap between federal spending and revenue. Tax cuts Trump enacted in 2017 added to the imbalance, and it increased further after Congress passed $ 2.4 trillion in economic aid earlier this year to help unemployed workers, business owners and others cope with the financial impact of the coronavirus- pandemic.
3: Face-to-face meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (in Singapore, Vietnam and the Korean Demilitarized Zone).
$ 21 trillion: Federal debt in December, when it exceeded the size of the economy for the first time in history outside of World War II.
82: The number of Trump administration environmental and public health rollbacks tracked on Harvard University’s rollback tracker.
4: Men who served as Acting Secretary of Defense, most in any administration.
203: Days when the Pentagon operated without a Senate-confirmed Secretary of Defense, the longest period in the office’s history.
450: Miles of Trump’s “great, beautiful” steel wall along the US-Mexico border is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
39%: Trump’s mean approval score among American adults in AP-NORC polls over the course of his presidency. Ratings of Trump’s performance have been remarkably stable, compared to his recent predecessors, ranging from a 32% low to a 43% high in AP-NORC polls.
1 billion: Barrels of oil and gas pumped from federally managed lands in 2019 as the administration accelerated permits and opened up wilderness and other areas to industry.
$ 135 billion: Expected defense budget growth under Trump. President Barack Obama’s final defense budget for 2017 totaled $ 605 billion; Trump’s final defense budget for 2021, approved by Congress in December, totaled $ 740 billion. Trump said he planned to veto the bill for unrelated reasons, but Congress had enough votes to override a veto and pass the bill over his objections.
4: International Agreements Trump withdrew the US: the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate agreement, the Open Skies treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.
13: Federal executions have been planned since July, when the government resumed killing prisoners after a 17-year hiatus, making Trump the most prolific execution chairman in more than 130 years. Federal executions will continue until just before the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
315: Days Trump visited a golf course as president, according to Factba.se, a data analytics company.
418: Days Trump has visited a property he owns, according to Factba.se.
1: New branch of the US military: the Space Force.
15%: Fall in the trade deficit with China between January-September 2020 and a year earlier. This followed a 19% drop in 2019 to $ 308 billion, the lowest level since 2013.
25,000 and counting: tweets, including original messages and retweets, sent by Trump since taking office on Jan. 20, 2017, according to Factba.se.
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Associated Press writers Martin Crutsinger, Paul Wiseman, Andrew Taylor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Deb Riechmann, Ben Fox, Robert Burns, Hannah Fingerhut, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.