Trump's first two weeks center on executive orders and twitter

ROANOKE (WSLS 10)- It's been just over two weeks since Donald Trump took the Oath of Office, becoming the 45th President of the United States.

Since moving into the White House, President Trump has embraced his authority to issue executive orders. It's something presidents have done since the beginning-- starting with George Washington. A president bypassing congress to issue an executive order is not rare, but the kind of outcry and legal pushback we've seen in these first two weeks are.

So far, President Trump has signed eight executive orders-- a number that may seem high, but experts say is relatively consistent with what we see in the opening weeks of a new administration. WSLS10 Political Analyst, Dr. Ed Lynch, says many times those first few executive orders are more ceremonial, without the immediate impact and fallout that the temporary travel ban brought.

Here's how some of our most memorable presidents stack up when it comes to executive orders:

-Franklin D. Roosevelt signed 3,522 executive orders during his time in office

-Woodrow Wilson signed 1,803 executive orders in just eight years

-George W. Bush issued 291 executive orders

- Barack Obama issued 276

Dr. Lynch says there's a difference in what we've seen so far from President Trump and the orders we saw signed by President Obama.

"President Obama signed executive orders after, in his wording, Congress failed to act," explains Lynch. "He contradicted what Congress wanted with his executive orders. There's no sign that Congress, at least the majority in Congress, is opposed to what President Trump is doing. They haven't opined on it or passed it one way or the other, so these are very different sorts of executive orders than what we saw in the last presidency."

Notable executive orders include Abraham Lincoln's 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves free in rebel states during the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt used an executive order to authorize the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in 1942.

Meanwhile, President Trump is also making headlines for his use of social media, specifically Twitter. While President Obama was the first Commander in Chief to ever send a tweet-- Donald Trump is using an updated approach, putting twitter at the center of his strategy. Since being sworn into office, the President has tweeted about everything from his controversial travel ban to the Patriots' Super Bowl win.

In his first two weeks in office, President Trump has already sent out more than 100 tweets. That 100th tweet, addressing Homeland Security, came Sunday afternoon:

A president who tweets about his policies and opinions is something very new to the United States, as Barack Obama was the first president to create a Twitter account. The constant stream of tweets is something experts believe we'll continue to see within the Trump Administration, as even his least popular tweets still see tens of thousands of shares and likes.

"Donald Trump has gotten where he is by breaking the rules," says Lynch. "He broke every rule imaginable during the campaign. Every time he did and people like me said, 'This is the beginning of the end,' he came out stronger. Why should he start following the rules now, when if he had followed the rules he'd still be hustling real estate and wouldn't be President of the United States?"

President Trump is not the first president to take this case directly to the public. Back in the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt turned to radio-- a new form of media at the time. Now, eight decades later, FDR's Fireside Chats have been replaced with a new form of direct contact-- one that we can expect to remain in place for at least the next four years.