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| - As U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term in the White House by signing dozens of executive orders one after another in January 2025, online users claimed that in 2012, he criticized then-President Barack Obama for issuing a large number of executive orders himself.
Users discussed this matter in February 2025, at around the same time that Trump, who began his second term by signing 59 executive orders (as of this writing) after issuing 220 in his first, surpassed Obama's 276 total executive orders over two full terms.
According to users' posts sharing the supposed quote, Trump originally tweeted, "Why is Barack Obama constantly issuing executive orders that are major power grabs of authority? This is the latest."
For example, on Feb. 9, 2025, a Reddit user on the r/therewasanattempt subreddit posted an old Twitter screenshot, prior to tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's takeover of the platform and its transformation to X, about Trump's attempt "to smear Barack Obama by calling executive orders power grabs."
to smear Barack Obama by calling executive orders power grabs
byu/ChampionshipComplex intherewasanattempt
In our research, we concluded Trump truly tweeted the message criticizing Obama's use of executive orders on his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account on July 10, 2012. Although numerous saves and reposts had pixelated the old Twitter screenshot image file displayed in the Reddit post, no one had manipulated it. The message still appeared as a post (archived) on Trump's X account nearly 13 years later, although in present-day with a different linked website destination compared to the original.
Trump's mention of "this is the latest" referenced his disagreement with an originally-linked executive order dated July 6, 2012. The order concerned ensuring the survivability of "resilient, enduring and effective communications" in order to "ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies and improve national resilience."
More Trump executive-order contradictions
Trump's 2012 tweet circulated again in February 2025, possibly in large part thanks to Facebook users copying and pasting a list of numerous other times Trump criticized Obama's use of executive orders. The National Memo hosted an August 2020 article (archived) displaying the list, including featuring sources for each of the Trump quotes.
In one of the quotes from March 29, 2016, a C-SPAN video showed Trump telling a person asking a question in the crowd at a town hall meeting in Janesville, Wisconsin, "I want to not use too many executive orders, folks. You know? Because, you know, executive orders sort of came about more recently. Nobody ever heard of an executive order. Then all of a sudden, Obama, because he couldn't get anybody to agree with him, he starts signing them like they're butter. So, I want to do away with executive orders for the most part."
Trump's assertion of "nobody ever heard of an executive order" was false, seeing as U.S. presidents exercised the power in previous administrations.
According to The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara, former President Joe Biden signed 162 executive orders during his one and only term, wedged between Trump's two terms.
Other recent totals included former Presidents Ronald Reagan (381), George H.W. Bush (166 in one term), Bill Clinton (364) and George W. Bush (291).
The U.S. president who signed the most-ever executive orders was Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, with 3,721 in total.
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