Donald Trump has signed the fewest number of bills into law of any first-year president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower. | Saul Loeb/Getty Images Trump falsely claims he broke a legislative record

President Donald Trump falsely claimed on Wednesday that he had signed more legislation than any of his predecessors at this point in their terms.

“You know, one of the things that people don’t understand — we have signed more legislation than anybody,” the president said in remarks to roughly four dozen first responders at a firehouse in West Palm Beach, Florida. “We broke the record of Harry Truman.”


It is true that Trump had signed more bills in his first 100 days than any president since Truman, but as Trump nears the anniversary of his Jan. 20 inauguration, he is far removed from his 100th day. And he has now signed the fewest number of bills into law of any first-year president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower, according to a recent report from the website GovTrack .

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The report was published last Thursday, a day before the president signed a $1.5 trillion tax-cut bill and headed to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach for the holidays.

Trump called the tax bill, which includes provisions mandating the federal government to hold oil-lease sales in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and repealing Obamacare’s unpopular individual mandate, “the legislation of all legislation” and “the biggest there is.”

Trump repeated his claim to first responders that his administration had passed a lot of legislation, though last week’s tax bill was the first and only major legislative achievement of his presidency thus far. And, according to GovTrack, Trump has signed fewer bills at this point in his presidency than George W. Bush had — and less than half as many bills as Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush had at this point.

“I believe we have — and you’ll have to ask those folks, but I think they know the real answer,” Trump said, apparently referring to the media. “We have more legislation passed, including — the record was Harry Truman. That’s a long time ago. And we broke that record. So we have a lot done.”

At the firehouse, the president thanked first responders for their service.

“I just want to thank everybody for the fantastic job you’ve done and are doing,” he said. “What you do, in terms of paramedics and fire and all of the other things you do that people don’t appreciate like they should. But we appreciate it.”

Trump’s visit had not previously been announced — the president’s schedule had no public events listed. He spent about five hours at Trump International Golf Club, where he presumably hit the links on Wednesday. The White House, however, refused to say what the president did there.

On Tuesday, Trump spent about four hours playing golf with Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau and former pro golfer Dana Quigley.

Trump had tweeted Monday night that he hopes “everyone is having a great Christmas,” adding that “tomorrow it’s back to work in order to Make America Great Again (which is happening faster than anyone anticipated)!”

