Trump Is Already Walking Back His Campaign Promises

From lowering prices to disavowing Project 2025 to vaccine policy, Trump’s promises are looking hollow

US President-elect Donald Trump looks on during a meeting with France's President at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on December 7, 2024. Photo by SARAH MEYSSONNIER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.

One of the more brazen slogans Donald Trump trotted out during his campaign was “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” a quippy way of claiming that when he makes a promise, he keeps it.

But does he though?

We know during his first term, Trump’s promise to “build the wall and have Mexico pay for it” was a fail.

We know his promise to scrap Obamacare was an absolutely epic fail.

Then there was his promise to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. Also: fail.

Infrastructure bill? Fail. A balanced budget? Fail. How about his famous Muslim ban? That ultimately failed as well, although a watered-down version that didn’t exclusively target Muslims did survive a Supreme Court challenge.

Politifact broke down how his various 2016 campaign promises fared during his first term and found that while he kept just 23% of his promises, he fully broke 53% of them.

Yes, his laughable “Promises Made Promises Kept” slogan is a classic example of Trump saying something often enough that people believe it. The practice defines most of what comes out of his mouth. And when something doesn’t pan out, Trump either doubles down on it, relying on his sheer confidence in the false thing to overcome people’s perception of reality, or he simply pretends he never said it.

So it’s been interesting to see Trump now, just over a month before he takes office for the second time, actually walking back several of his most prominent campaign promises. In today’s piece, I’ll take a look at what he originally said versus what he’s saying now on several key issues from the 2024 campaign.

Cue Politifact’s 2028 Broken Promises list!

Lowering Prices

As Peter Baker noted in the New York Times, among Trump’s more outlandish promises of the 2024 campaign was a pledge to end the Ukraine-Russia war “in 24 hours” but also, somehow, to do it before he even takes office. He also pledged to deport 11 million immigrants who are in the country illegally (by contrast, he deported fewer than one million during his first term.)

No one seriously thinks he will be able to do these things, but in the past, that’s never seemed to matter for Trump. He rarely pays a price for his avalanche of lies and failed promises. His supporters either give him credit for trying or they pass the blame onto some convenient scapegoat when he fails.

Could that rare superpower be fading?

As Baker’s article put it, “Some supporters fear that his bravado could undermine his ambitions.”

Baker went on:

as [Donald Trump] prepares to move back into the White House, his penchant for extravagant ungrounded claims will challenge his ability to translate bravado into reality.

Which may explain why we saw a somewhat different Donald Trump during his recent Meet The Press interview. After a year plus of promising the moon and guaranteeing success, Trump made a remarkable admission to host Kristen Welker when she asked him if he could guarantee that his tariffs won’t raise costs for consumers.

Trump responded:

“I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”

Say what now? Fantastically guaranteeing success is literally what he does.

But it’s what he said in his interview with Time magazine about lowering grocery prices that really raised eyebrows.

As Time’s Eric Cortellessa put it:

Yet already, the President-elect is moving the goalposts on some of his pledges, like lowering the price of groceries. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” Trump says. “You know, it’s very hard.”

According to the transcript, this was the exchange:

If the prices of groceries don't come down, will your presidency be a failure?

I don't think so. Look, they got them up. I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard. But I think that they will. I think that energy is going to bring them down. I think a better supply chain is going to bring them down.

A rare acknowledgment of reality by Trump, but it’s not just moving the goalposts, it’s a 180 from his campaign promise that electing him would directly lead to a reduction in the cost of groceries.

As he wrote on Truth Social on October 3:

You can watch a damning supercut of various times this year when he promised to reduce the cost of groceries, including a speech in August when he…ahem…guaranteed

“We’re going to bring the prices of groceries way down and we’re going to get it done fast.”

X user Tim pretty much sums it up.

But groceries are hardly the only issue where Trump is shifting on his promises.

Project 2025

Remember Project 2025? It’s the 1000-page manifesto published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation essentially laying out Trump’s second term agenda, including lowering taxes for the wealthy, installing loyalists into government to dismantle the “administrative state,” and doing away with the Department of Education. The architects of the plan included many Trump White House alumni and loyalists, and the overlap with Trump’s own Agenda 47 was substantial.

The rollout did not quite go as planned. After news of its existence went viral, Project 2025 plummeted in popularity, dropping to 12% approval and 52% disapproval as recently as September.

The backlash was fierce, which led Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and primary architect of the plan, to delay until after Election Day the publishing of a related book, whose foreword was written by none other than JD Vance.

It also led Trump to try to desperately distance himself from Project 2025, saying he had “nothing to do with” it, had “no idea who is behind it” and even called the plan and its architects “radical” and “extreme.”

This clip shows what he said about the Project 2025 writers before and then after it gained all the negative attention.

“I’m a person with great common sense, I’m not an extremist at all. Like some on the right, the severe right…You read some of the things [in Project 2025], they are extreme, they are seriously extreme. I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it.”

The backlash even led Trump’s top advisors to release a statement saying “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed” and led a top Trump transition official to declare Project 2025 “radioactive,” pledging that anyone involved would be “blacklisted” from Trump’s administration. Project 2025’s director Paul Dans even stepped down amid all the criticism from the Trump team.

If this sounds to you like Trump and his campaign were protesting a bit too much, you’d be right. Since winning reelection, while Trump has maintained he didn’t read the plan, he has done an about-face, essentially confirming the left’s accusations about his alignment with the agenda.

Trump has since appointed several Project 2025 architects and contributors to his second term administration, including Russ Vought to head up the Office of Management and Budget, Paul Atkins to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, Brendan Carr to chair the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Homan to be his “border czar”, John Ratcliffe to head up the CIA, and the list goes on.

Time’s Eric Cortellessa called Trump out over this during his recent interview:

“During the campaign, you disavowed Project 2025, but so far at least five people you’ve appointed to top positions in your cabinet have ties to it. Doesn’t that undermine what you told Americans on the campaign trail?”

Ding ding ding.

In response, Trump reiterated that he “had nothing to do with Project 2025” but also gave some insight as to why he and his campaign felt the need to throw them under the bus after it became toxic:

I thought it was inappropriate that they came out with it just before the election, to be honest with you.

Why would they do that? They complicated my election by doing it because people tried to tie me and I didn't agree with everything in there, and some things I vehemently disagreed with, and I thought it was inappropriate that they would come out with a document like that prior to my election.

I thought it was a very foolish thing for them to do.

But now having won, Newsweek has documented Trump’s post-election shift on the agenda, making clear that Trump’s second term will overlap with Project 2025, particularly on “dismantling federal bureaucracy, sharply restricting immigration, and taking a tougher stance with China.” Trump has also tasked Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with recommending how to gut the federal bureaucracy in keeping with Project 2025’s goals.

“Not an extremist at all.” Right.

Ukraine

As for Trump’s bizarre insistence, time and time again this year, that he will be able to end the war in Ukraine, not as President mind you, but as President-elect, that got a walkback just yesterday during his Mar-a-Lago press conference.

As USA Today’s Chris Brennan recalls Trump’s campaign promises on the subject, first from back in June:

"Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after we win the presidency," Trump said. "I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled."

Then during his September debate with VP Harris:

"That is a war that is dying to be settled," Trump said then. "I will get it settled before I even become president."

And yet again during his October 17 speech at the Alfred E. Smith dinner::

"So sad to see so many people have been killed in Ukraine and we’re going to get it settled up if we win," Trump said. "As president-elect, I’m going to get that done."

But yesterday, as his Mar-a-Lago presser was wrapping up, Trump was confronted with his prior statements, and had the weakest answer, completely at odds with his pledges of decisive action:

Reporter1: Sir, you said that you could make that deal-

Reporter2: Will you ask-

Reporter1: ...before you take office, do you still think you could make that deal?

Trump: I'm going to try.

Of course, we’ve seen what it means for him to “try” to make a deal. Take his December 8th Truth Social post in which he stated:

There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin…

I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act.

You mean that didn’t stop the war?

As Brennan rightly points out:

The countries are still shooting missiles at each other. I guess a social media post isn't a sure-fire fix for a complicated diplomatic endeavor.

Ya don’t say.

Vaccines

During Donald Trump’s October Madison Square Garden rally, he promised to let Robert F. Kennedy “go wild on health.”

His full quote was:

“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”

This understandably caused concern. Kennedy, a lawyer without any medical or healthcare training, has spread wild misinformation about health policy, particularly on the topic of vaccines.

Kennedy recently lied about the safety of vaccines, claiming they are “not safety-tested prior to licensure” and despite repeatedly claiming not to be anti-vaxx, as The AP reports, his statements on the subject paint a different picture:

Again and again, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. In July, Kennedy said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told FOX News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism. In a 2021 podcast he urged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines.

“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy said.

That same year, in a video promoting an anti-vaccine sticker campaign by his nonprofit, Kennedy appeared onscreen next to one sticker that declared “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.”

While Trump never expressly promised to protect all vaccines, his successful courtship of Kennedy this summer, which shifted Kennedy from an independent spoiler candidate into a Trump endorser, clearly influenced his thinking on the subject.

As president, Trump famously presided over the fast-tracking of the Covid vaccine. Then in 2021, he urged Americans to get vaccinated and called vaccines “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”

But in 2024, not only has Trump vowed to defund schools with vaccine requirements, but since winning reelection he has refused to rule out banning certain vaccines.

“I’ll make a decision,” Donald Trump said about whether to ban certain vaccines—before winning the presidential election Tuesday. He said he would do so after talking to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the prominent anti-vaccine activist. The comment was only one of many that have given experts in public health and related fields heartburn.

And just yesterday, he opened the door to the debunked notion that autism is caused by vaccines, clearly reflecting the influence his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has had on his thinking.

Trump did confirm this week that at least one vaccine appears safe from Kennedy’s clutches: the polio vaccine, which Trump assured Americans would not be banned on his watch. But getting rid of mandates that assure Americans take life-saving vaccines, as Trump appears willing to do under Kennedy’s leadership, is the real danger to public health.

Retaliation

Another recent example of Trump backtracking on a campaign promise is on the question of retaliation. When the Harris campaign warned that Trump would wield unchecked presidential power against his perceived enemies, Trump denied this, pledging that “My revenge will be success.”

Yeah, that’s out the window already, as his war on the media already demonstrates.

Trump recently forced ABC News to settle a bogus defamation case he had brought over George Stephanopoulos’ statement that Trump was found liable for “rape.” Flush from that victory, per Axios, Trump intends to launch a wave of suits against the media, including just yesterday against Des Moines Register over a poll he didn’t like.

Trump's victory over ABC prompted him to consider more legal action against news outlets he claims defamed him.

• On Monday, Trump filed suit against the Des Moines Register over a poll it ran showing him possibly losing the presidential race.

• He vowed to continue suing new outlets and influencers for defamation. "It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press," he said at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.

This is precisely the kind of authoritarian move that students of modern fascism warned voters about throughout the 2024 cycle. Trump’s first term was a point-by-point vindication of Hillary Clinton’s warnings about Trump, and the next four years will likely follow a similar pattern of dire warnings unheeded.

A majority of the U.S. electorate didn’t believe the worst of the warnings, but after f-cking around with Trump for a second time, U.S. voters are about to find out what his many broken promises will lead to.