Trump closes WH event to highlight deregulation
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has set out to upend some of President Barack Obama’s regulations, which the White House says circumvented Congress in the first place and cost American businesses and the economy billions of dollars.
Without any major legislative accomplishments to point to despite the advantage of a Republican-controlled Congress, Trump on Monday was to give a speech in the White House East Room highlighting his own directives to agencies. The White House said the president is no longer attending the event following the mass killing of at least 50 people Sunday in Las Vegas. Vice-President Mike Pence will lead it, but the White House closed the event to press coverage, an official there said.
There was no sign whether Pence will talk about gun regulations. During the presidential campaign, Trump cast himself as an ardent protector of the Second Amendment and proclaimed that if more “good guys” were armed with firearms there would be fewer gun tragedies. After the Orlando nightclub shooting, he suggested that if the club hadn’t been a gun-free zone, someone would have been able to stop the bloodshed.
Executive orders are less enduring than legislation because a president can overturn a predecessor’s policy. Obama reversed some of President George W. Bush’s executive orders, and Trump’s will be reviewed by his successor.