TRUMP: 'I think we've had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency'
President Donald Trump doesn't only think his presidency is off to a great start - he thinks it's off to one of the greatest in history.
"I think we've had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency," he told reporters aboard Air Force One Thursday, as he was en route to a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump, who's been in office for just short of 11 weeks, has faced a number of challenges at setbacks in his early weeks in office. The Russia-related cloud of controversy hanging over his administration led to the ouster of national security adviser Michael Flynn in February, after Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
The cloud is showing no signs of dissipating, as FBI Director James Comey announced earlier this month that his agency was looking into potential collusion between Trump associates and Russian government officials to interfere in last year's presidential election.
The president is also nearly assured of having no signature legislative achievement to tout over his first 100 days, after the American Health Care Act was pulled from the House floor earlier this month. His highly controversial travel ban looks to be tied up in the court system and for the indefinite future.
Rampant infighting among diverging factions of his administration has added to the perception that Trump has struggled to gain traction in the first weeks of his presidency.
It hasn't been all bad news for Trump, however. He received praise from conservatives, and even some Democrats, for his selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat. On the economic front, Trump's been the beneficiary of a pair of positive jobs reports since taking office.
The stock market made impressive gains since his election last fall, and the monthly trade deficit decreased in a report announced earlier this week. The Department of Homeland Security also announced recently that illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border have dramatically dropped.