His supporters say he's keeping campaign promises and improving the nation's business climate. His detractors say he's endorsed racism, governed vindictively, alienated allies and taunted the North Korean regime. A look at the good, the bad and the in-between.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In the year since Donald Trump's inauguration as the 45th president of the United States, opinions of him have not changed. They've hardened.
Rhode Islanders who cheered his election feel vindicated by the actions taken on his watch, from "tax reform" to the elimination of the Obamacare individual mandate to the opening up of the Arctic to drilling.
"You know, I am amazed how the media and his critics still try to paint his first year as anything but a success," says Joseph Trillo, the former GOP lawmaker, now running for governor as an independent, who co-chaired Trump's Rhode Island campaign for president.
But those who were horrified by the election of a reality TV star with an impulsive Twitter finger remain horrified.
"He is actually worse than I expected, and I did not have high hopes," says the Rev. Donald Anderson, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches. "I never imagined that a president of the United States would say that there were 'good people' marching with Nazis in the U.S."
James Vincent, president of the Providence NAACP branch, says Trump's "constant race baiting," made him "the most racist president in any of our lifetimes."
State Democratic Party Chairman Joseph McNamara says: "He has been frighteningly worse.
"Internationally, Donald Trump has made enemies of our friends and friends of our enemies; he's played silly and dangerous 'head fakes' with his adolescent tweets about the North Korean president; he's unilaterally moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he's insulted some of America's greatest allies, stripped America's diplomatic corps worldwide, and shamelessly played up to Putin as some kind of hero."
Trillo disagrees. "I think the administration has done much to restore American leadership in the world with our allies as well as our foes, something that has been largely absent in the last eight years," he says. "ISIS is defeated. He has worked hard to enforce our existing immigration laws and empower law enforcement, making our country safer — illegal border crossings are at their lowest in 20 years."
Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, a Republican candidate for governor, tries to walk a middle line. His only response to a series of questions posed to him by The Journal about Trump: "Washington DC still faces many challenges but I am hopeful the administration is successful just as every American should be." He then pivoted to criticism of the administration of Gov. Gina Raimondo.
Tax accountant Grafton "Cap" H. Willey IV says "Trump has been about what I expected."
"He has been opposed by the greatest resistance movement that I have witnessed in my lifetime, one that refuses to concede that they lost the election," Willey says. "There is a real attempt for a coup d'état; that is a real threat to our democracy that worries me. "
The managing director of the Providence office of CBIZ MHM, Willey credits Trump with many accomplishments, including "tax reform." Businesses will be helped by "lower tax rates," but "the critics claiming this is a bonanza for the wealthy are not correct. Most taxpayers will get some reduction in their tax liabilities. Many wealthy taxpayers that have high state and local taxes, miscellaneous deductions, multiple homes and large mortgages are going to be paying more in taxes and sometimes significantly more in taxes," Willey says.
Gary Sasse — the founder of Bryant University's Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership, the chairman of Marco Rubio's presidential campaign in Rhode Island and later New England policy adviser to Kasich for America — acknowledges "mixed" feelings.
"If you judge the president on specific accomplishments, he has been better than hoped for," Sasse says. "If you judge the president based on the quality of leadership, the Trump presidency has been worse than I feared."
Trump's harshest critics in Rhode Island see an upside.
"Outrage at the Trump administration agenda — cutting health care, the deeply unfair tax bill, the endorsement of racism, the Muslim ban — brought thousands of people out to march, protest, and organize," says Georgia Hollister Isman, state director of the progressive advocacy organization known as Rhode Island Working Families. She credits the rallying power of the resistance for passage, at the state level, of a new paid sick-time mandate.
McNamara predicts a wave of Democratic victories across the nation in 2018.
His Republican counterpart, state GOP Chairman Brandon Bell, doubts it.
"With lower taxes, and a strong economy, I do not expect the midterm elections to be a significant anti-Trump wave," Bell says. "Nationally, the Republican Party must focus on the things that matter to the middle class and it doesn't matter how much 'resistance' there is to our president. People will not want to see his policies reversed with Democratic majorities in the Senate or House."
But Brown University Political Science Prof. Wendy Schiller sees potential risk for Republicans.
"Trump's first year is from a GOP policy viewpoint what you would have expected in terms of trying to undo as much of the Obama agenda as possible," she said. "But even policy differences aside, it seems more personal to Trump to undo Obama's legacy than it does to longstanding GOP members in Congress.
"The problem for Trump and the GOP is that some of what Obama did has worked well and is popular with voters, so unraveling all of it has proven more difficult than they thought. The midterm elections of 2018 will show just how far voters want the GOP to go in that direction."
Schiller is hesitant to make a prediction about the midterms, but she notes: "So far there are record numbers of Democrats running for Congress and state legislatures, challenging seats that used to be ceded to Republicans. And lots of women are running for office as well. The more candidates a party has on the ballot across the country, the better its chances."