The "Trumpiest" Week Yet! A White House In Chaos And A Nation Looking For Stability
Wow! Was this the "Trumpiest" week ever? It seems that the President has made a conscious decision that governing in the traditional way that a chief executive has normally governed has not worked very well for him. His job approval ratings are still in the tank and are sinking like one of his enemies thrown into the Potomac with an anvil tied around his waist. Doing the right thing never appears to work for Mr. Trump. All you have to do to realize that isn't a promising strategy for this President is to see his response to the students from Parkland, Florida and then to the jointly invited bipartisan group that was invited to meet with him. In those meetings the President agreed that changes were needed in both background checks and in restricting the sale of certain weapons. The great majority of Americans thought for a few moments that the President was really listening. America was wrong. All it took was a visit from the NRA and President Waffle and Cave went right back to his immutable NRA stance.
So what does the President do? Since meeting with people and listening to them doesn't work, perhaps going back to the pre-election Trump would serve him well. After all, the "I am the only one who can fix it" Trump only lost the popular vote by 3,000.000 votes but won enough electoral votes to elect him President. In his mind, this was the greatest landslide in electoral history and led to the largest inaugural crowd ever.
How did he get there? A few things were evident in the pre-electoral Trump. Facts were useless and were invariably "fake news". Mr. Trump went off script more often than not and relied on his gut and impulsivity rather than any well advised policy. Whenever Mr. Trump got into trouble politically, the credo of the campaign seemed to be the public loves a good sex scandal, and knows that Mr. Trump is an inveterate scoundrel. Let those women come forth and accuse him of sexual misconduct. He would deny it even if the proof was there. People would accept it and soon it would all go away, the sex scandal and the other political problems that Mr. Trump was having.
Thus started the "Trumpiest" week yet. Two impulsive policy decisions rocked the nation. First, the President decided to announce that he was going to impart a 25% tariff on imported steel and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum. This was done without consultation with his chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn and his own party leadership in Congress. This led to Cohn joining a long list of advisers and key white house personnel resigning from office. This was a particularly serious resignation since it leaves the nationalist alt-right in charge of economic policy. In addition, it flies in the face of Republican orthodoxy. Though Trump has a history of being a protectionist on trade, the Republican party is almost exclusively made up of free trade advocates. The proposed tariffs have found allies only in the most liberal wing of the Democratic party. Of course, since Mr. Trump made his announcement, there have been some changes made in the intuitive policy. Canada and Mexico are at least temporarily exempt from the tariffs, ostensibly because we are in the process of renegotiating NAFTA with them. What hasn't changed, however, is that these tariffs attack our allies and hardly touch those countries that are our economic enemies. For example, China only accounts for less than 2% of American imported steel and aluminum. There is a demand for that 2% in other places in the world.
As an example of how this impulsive action may affect our economy, one only has to look as far as one of President Trump's favorite business's, Harley Davidson. Right after the announcement, Harley announced that they were closing their Kansas City plant, leaving over 800 employees out of work. Concurrently, they announced that they were going to open a plant in Thailand making the same motorcycles as the Kansas City plant in an environment where, not only would the labor be cheaper, but they can use as much foreign steel and aluminum as they wish. They would then sell those Asian made products throughout the rest of the world at lower prices than American made cycles. So much for an All-American company.
Then without consulting with the Secretary of State, the Director of National Security, the Homeland Security Director, or his military advisers, President Trump announced that he would take up the invitation of Kim Jung Un and meet with the North Korean dictator in May. While many might welcome an opportunity to lower the temperature of the Korean peninsula, meetings with foreign heads of state, especially mentally unstable heads of state that may have ulterior motives must be meticulously prepared for in advance. One only has to remember the embarrassment that Presidents Clinton and Bush endured when the North Koreans played them in prior meetings. Here was another impulse move that wasn't well thought through. Of course, it has been pulled back, modified, remodified, re-presented, and pulled back again as cooler heads in the foreign service begin to imput. This is no small problem. We are seriously lacking in expertise in this administration as it concerns the Korean peninsula. We have been unable to get an ambassador to South Korea and our North Korea expert has resigned. Neither President Trump or Secretary Tillerson has any real expertise in this area.
Of course, this administration has also had a terrible week on almost every other potential scandal front. The Mueller investigation has picked up steam with new indictments and new revelations almost every day. The evidence trail is getting closer and closer to the white house and to the President's family and the President himself. More and more associates of the President are turning state's evidence and cooperating with Mr. Mueller and his staff. The President's drain the swamp initiative has become a fill the sewer joke. In addition to Ben Carson's $31,000 furniture order for his office, we found out this week that Secretary of the Interior Zinke has ordered a $130,000 door for his office. This, in addition to the flip flop in opening up Indian lands to oil drilling.
The people needed a distraction. Back to sex. The Stormy Daniels scandal hadn't made much of a dent with the American public up until this week when the President's attorney's story began to crumble and Ms. Daniels filed suit against the President. This became paired with the White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders making a faux pas by stating that the President had already won an arbitration against Ms. Daniels. What Ms. Sanders didn't realize was that she was admitting that the President had an affair with Ms. Daniels and therefore may have placed both the President and his attorney in an untenable position.
Thus it seemed that Trump being Trump wasn't working too well. The word coming out of the west wing was that the President was angry, depressed, and close to non-functional over the events of the week. This has become a White House in chaos with few avenues of remediation open to the President. His administration is falling apart and competent replacements do not appear to be on the horizon. The President is beginning to act like a mafia don who sees his criminal empire crashing around him. He no longer knows how to fix the problem. This is a frightening time. We have an unstable President trying to deal with an unstable world. Robert Mueller may be this President's Elliot Ness, a dogged prosecutor who doesn't appear to be willing to allow the President to get away with anything. Even the President's closest confidants, his daughter and son-in-law, and even his son appear to be directly in Mueller's sights.
Maybe weeks that Trump is at his "Trumpiest" will no longer be foisted upon the American people. We need government that is rational and co-operative. After all, our elected officials represent us all and not just their core constituencies. "Trumpy" government has to be trashed and American government has to be restored. It is the only way that this nation survives.
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Hilarious article! Thanks for the Sunday laughs!