 "What pen is Trump using to sign executive orders? It is sharp, elegant and expensive")
Since taking office as President of the United States, Donald Trump has signed several executive orders.
These range from pardoning individuals involved in the January 6 Capitol attack to temporarily lifting a ban on TikTok in the US.
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After addressing a crowd of a thousand supporters in Washington, where he signed the first orders of his second term, Trump did something out of the ordinary.
He threw the pens used to sign the orders and directives into the crowd. The audience erupted in cheers and scrambled to catch the pens.
What makes these pens so special? And what do we know about the pens Trump uses to sign executive orders?
What is an executive order?
Executive orders are official directives that outline how the president wants the federal government to operate. They often provide instructions to federal agencies or request specific reports.
Some orders are straightforward and unobjectionable, such as granting federal employees a holiday the day after Christmas. Others establish important policies. For example, former President Joe Biden issued an order to develop a framework for regulating artificial intelligence. However, executive orders are also tools for advancing presidential agendas that might not pass through Congress.
As the American Bar Association explains, executive orders do not require congressional approval and cannot be directly overturned by lawmakers. Nonetheless, Congress can obstruct an order’s implementation by cutting funding or introducing other obstacles.
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Trump’s pen: A black Sharpie marker
Observers have seen that Trump uses a black Sharpie marker to sign executive orders.
Videos and photos from the Oval Office show Trump using the markers, leaving bold, black signatures. In one picture, he holds up a document with his broad, distinctive signature visible on the line.
The thick strokes appear on everything from executive orders to speech drafts and even allegedly altered hurricane maps.
Trump’s fondness for Sharpies is well known. During his first term, he frequently used Sharpies to sign official documents and make notes.
The stationery company even created a custom pen for him, embossed with his signature in gold, according to The New York Times and Business Insider. It is unclear whether he used these custom pens to sign the recent orders.
Trump and his love for Sharpies
In a four-part HBO series made with Axios in 2018, Trump expressed his dislike for the traditional pens used by presidents, Business Insider reported.
“I was signing documents with a very expensive pen, and it didn’t write well,” Trump said in the documentary.
“It was a horrible pen, and it was extremely expensive. And then I started using just a Sharpie, and I said to myself, ‘Well wait a minute, this writes much better and this costs almost nothing.’”
He added that he later contacted Sharpie and asked, “‘Do me a favour, can you make the pen in black? Make it look rich?’”
However, Trump’s relationship with Sharpies predates his presidency. According to The New York Times, he often used the pens to “sign autographs, write notes, and mark up printed news articles.”
One of the key promises of Trump’s first presidential campaign was building a border wall, a project partially completed during his initial term.
In September 2019, Trump visited a border wall construction site in Otay Mesa, a neighbourhood in San Diego County, California. “You can fry an egg on that wall,” he told the media, referencing its heat-absorbing design.
Unsurprisingly, Trump used a Sharpie to sign one of the slats on the wall at the request of border patrol agents present.
“I autographed one of the bollards,” he said. “There are a lot of bollards. That’s a lot of bollards.”
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When people took selfies with Trump’s Sharpies
Shortly after being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump flung the pens he used to sign his first executive orders into the crowd at Capitol One Arena.
Moments after signing the orders, he tossed the pens into the audience. The unusual gesture triggered a photo frenzy, as people scrambled to catch the pens, hoping to keep them as souvenirs of the historic day.
#WATCH | Washington, DC: US President #DonaldTrump flings his pens into the crowd after signing Executive Orders, at Capitol One Arena. People seen clicking selfies with the pens.
— ANI (@ANI) January 21, 2025
(Source: US Network Pool via Reuters) pic.twitter.com/XU4Xk3DHHC
A video of Trump throwing the pens went viral on social media. In the clip, shared by ANI and sourced from Reuters, cheers erupted as Trump tossed the first pen. With each throw, the crowd’s cheers grew louder from various sections of the arena.
At one point, security officials were seen urging people to remain calm. Meanwhile, many who managed to grab the pens immediately began taking selfies with them or photographing the stationery item.
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What we know about the executive orders signed by Trump
The executive orders signed by Trump address a range of issues, including trade, immigration, US foreign aid, demographic diversity, civil rights, and the hiring of federal workers.
Some orders have an immediate policy effect, while others are more symbolic. A number of them are already being challenged in federal court.
Collectively, these sweeping actions reflect Trump’s campaign promises and his aim to centralise executive power in the West Wing
In his first official order, Trump pardoned nearly 1,500 of his supporters who were charged with storming the Capitol and assaulting police officers during the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, an event that led to riots.
With inputs from agencies
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