Donald Trump made lots of big promises on the campaign trail about what he would do as president.
But in the weeks since he won the election, Trump and his transition team have been quietly walking back some of his most significant commitments — a reflection of how unrealistic they were to begin with.
Ukraine
Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly bragged that he was uniquely positioned to resolve Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In March 2023, he said he could “fix” the war before he was even inaugurated.
“I would fix that within 24 hours, and if I win, before I get into the office, I will have that war settled,” the president-elect said in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity. “100% sure.”
Trump said the same thing in May 2023 during a CNN town hall — “If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours” — and again in June 2024.
But on Wednesday, two of his advisers conceded that isn’t going to happen.
It will take months or even longer to resolve the war, which has been going on since February 2022, Trump’s associates told Reuters. They chalked up Trump’s promises to quickly end the war to “campaign bluster” and “a lack of appreciation of the intractability of the conflict and the time it takes to staff up a new administration,” per Reuters.
Trump himself backpedaled on this promise last week, saying during a Mar-a-Lago news conference that his “hope” is to try to get a deal in six months.
Lowering Grocery Prices
In another vow that was central to his campaign, Trump said he would magically halt inflation and bring down the costs of everyone’s groceries.
“We will end inflation and make America affordable again, and we’re going to get the prices down, we have to get them down,” he said at a rally in September. “It’s too much. Groceries, cars, everything. We’re going to get the prices down.”
Trump said the same thing a month later at another rally: “We will cut your taxes and inflation, slash your prices, raise your wages and bring thousands of factories back to America.”
But shortly after the election, Trump was already moving the goal posts, conceding it would be impossible for him to single-handedly lower the costs of consumer goods.
“It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” the president-elect said in a November interview with Time. “You know, it’s very hard.”
Jan. 6 Pardons
Vice President-elect JD Vance is lowering expectations for Trump’s repeated but vague plans to release his supporters from prison who were convicted for their roles in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which Trump infamously egged on in an effort to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as president.
In March, Trump promised he would “free” Jan. 6 rioters in one of his first acts as president if reelected. He didn’t say how many people he would pardon, but suggested it would be hundreds. More than 1,000 rioters have been sentenced since the violent attack, with more than 700 of them spending at least some time in prison.
“I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” Trump declared at a CNN town hall in May 2023. He added later, “I would say it will be a large portion of them, and it would be early on.”
On Sunday, Vance drew the ire of some of Trump’s most diehard backers by saying in a Fox News interview that the president-elect would not be issuing blanket pardons to everyone charged in the riot.
“If you protested peacefully on Jan. 6 … you should be pardoned,” Vance said. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
“There’s a little bit of a gray area there,” he added.
Slashing Government Spending
Some of Trump’s high-profile associates are walking back their grand plans too, now that the election is over. Billionaire Elon Musk, who Trump tapped to lead a non-government advisory panel called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, previously talked a big game about using the panel to cut “at least” $2 trillion in government spending.
Not anymore.
Musk admitted last week that the dollar amount was aspirational. Slashing $2 trillion from the $6.8 trillion federal budget would be a “best-case outcome,” he said in an interview on his social media platform, X, formerly called Twitter, and added that the reality is DOGE has a “good shot” at cutting maybe half of that amount.
A Trump transition spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about all these campaign promises being scaled back before the president-elect has even taken office.