Trump Says First Day of His Administration Will Be Monday, Not Friday

(The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS) —
President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to roll back many of President Barack Obama’s policies on day one of his administration, some of which can be swept away with a simple stroke of the pen.

Trump will officially become president after he delivers the oath of office at his inauguration on Friday, but it appears the executive actions he planned to take on his first day in office will have to wait until the weekend is over.

During an interview with the Times of London, Trump clarified that “day one” of his new administration won’t begin Friday afternoon, it will start on Monday morning.

“ … (D)ay one — which I will consider to be Monday as opposed to Friday or Saturday. Right? I mean my day one is going to be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration,” Trump said in an interview with the Times of London.

In a video released a few weeks after the election, Trump outlined several executive actions he planned to take on his first day in office. They included issuing a notification of the United States’ intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, eliminating “job-killing restrictions” on shale energy and clean coal, and formulating “a rule which says that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated.”

One Republican close to the campaign referred to Trump’s first day in office as “The First Day Project.” “We want to identify maybe 25 executive orders that Trump could sign literally the first day in office,” adviser Stephen Moore told The New Yorker.

Trump is the first president since George H.W. Bush to have his inauguration fall on a Friday. George W. Bush’s first inauguration took place on Saturday, Jan. 20, 2001, and within two hours of his oath-taking he ordered a halt on the publication of all new regulations until they could be reviewed, according to The New York Times.

The 20th Amendment, ratified after the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, moved the start and end of the presidential term from March 4 to Jan. 20. Obama’s first and second inaugurations took place on a Tuesday and a Monday, respectively.

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