Donald Trump has been President of the United States for one week now.
Just typing that feels strange. Like a different reality.
I’ve been re-watching episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine lately, and I’ve recently gotten to one of the “Mirror Universe” episodes that peppered the series. Following up on a classic Original Series episode, our heroes find themselves transported to a twisted version of their own timeline, where the political and military balance of power has shifted, and by the DS9 era, humans are all scrappy rebels, and pretty much every mirror version of the main characters are … well, jerks. It’s entertaining enough (although each subsequent foray into that universe diminished in quality), but also clearly meant to be something of a nightmare world.
All this week, a small part of me is hoping I’ll figure out how to reverse the transporter accident that dragged us into this bizarre hellscape, and return to boring reality.
But anyway, enough of my flights of nerdy solipsism. This is real life, unfortunately. And since we can’t fix this problem using phasers or technobabble, I’m forced to use the most powerful weapon at my disposal.
Information.
Facts matter, even while the new leadership is working overtime to pretend otherwise.
Impeachment may or may not be possible. Unless a bombshell hits, proving Trump’s collusion with the Russian government, it will likely be near impossible to get Republicans to join in on impeachment before the midterms. So for now, we need to assume we have 207 more weeks with this guy in the White House.
And while we as citizens may not ever be able to force him to be honest, we can at least observe and record every terrible decision, every sickening lie. We can make sure that we understand what is happening to our country. Maybe it could eventually be used to kick Trump out of office early. Maybe we’ll have to suffer for three years and fifty one more weeks.
Whatever happens, we can make sure we have a record of everything Trump says and does. I probably won’t do this every single week, but expect regular updates of the new President’s actions. It’s important to have documentation.
I have an extensive list of major reasons why he shouldn’t have been elected in the first place, and have devoted plenty of writing to his absurd and dangerous cabinet appointments, his anti-establishment hypocrisy, as well as his constant lies about voter fraud.
I will include this piece in the “Elected yet unelectable” category, though the sheer scope of his flaws and failings will make it different in format from my other “Unelectable” articles. More of a continuing adventure than a one-off piece.
So, with that lengthy (and meandering) preface complete, let’s talk about Trump’s first week:
Right off the bat, within hours of taking the oath of office (somehow avoiding combustion of Abraham Lincoln’s Bible), Trump suspended a recent Obama executive order reducing insurance premiums on FHA loans. The basic upshot is that low income homeowners will end up paying upwards of $900 more per year on home insurance premiums. Straight out of the gate, Trump’s first significant action is to intentionally hurt low-income homeowners.
Wait, let me backtrack just a little and talk about the speech itself. Other than the rain and the low turnout (more on that later), Donald Trump’s inaugural speech was… well, mercifully short and to the point. But what exactly was that point?
Paranoid fear-mongering is an apt description. Lies about the state of the nation, about the state of the world. It was similar to his RNC speech, except edited for brevity. He told America that they lived in an economically depressed, crime-ridden dystopia, beset on all sides by the spectre of immigration run amok, of terrorism at our doors.
I’ve discussed this before, but it bears repeating – none of what Trump says about the state of the nation is true. Quick facts:
- Trade deals had relatively little to do with the loss of jobs in manufacturing. Automation, technological advancement, and shifting economic priorities take most of the credit/blame there.
- The American economy, by and large, is doing pretty well. There are definitely sluggish aspects and weak points, but employment is quite strong, wages are finally rising again, and the US came through the global recession stronger than pretty much every other advanced nation.
- The United States is actually near a historic low point for crime. Despite a marginal recent uptick in a handful of urban areas, we now live in arguably the safest era of American history.
- Net immigration, especially from Mexico, is essentially zero. Immigrants, both legal and otherwise, commit less crime than native-born citizens, and even undocumented workers actually act as a benefit to the economy, not a burden.
- Terrorism is a real problem, but ISIS itself is gradually declining, and death by Islamic terror ranks quite low on the list of things that harm Americans. Just remember that deer, bees, furniture, stairs, and armed toddlers are all significantly greater threats to American lives.
Meanwhile, after the inauguration, Trump immediately took offense to comparisons of the size of the crowd at the event itself to Obama’s inauguration 8 years prior. Aerial photos on the moment Trump was sworn in seem to show a significantly smaller crowd than what President Obama enjoyed in 2009. Numbers from local transit authorities bear this out as well.
It really shouldn’t be much of an issue. And yet, the Guinness world record holder for thinnest skin seems to be obsessing about it. He actually pressured the US Park Service to release favorable information about the crowd size. His press secretary and notable gum enthusiast, Sean Spicer, devoted a ridiculous amount of time at an early press conference arguing that the obviously scant crowd was the largest in history.
Days later, Spicer, Trump, and Kellyanne Conway were all still arguing about the size of the crowds at the inauguration, despite the twin blows of reality, and most people having long moved on.
Meanwhile, as Trump attempted to distract the world with frivolous issues, he started off his administration in violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the US Constitution – the Emoluments Clause. Basically, by remaining invested and connected with his businesses after taking office, he is accepting “reward,” meaning profit, from foreign interests, as he has many businesses around the world.
It is not completely clear how effective invoking the Clause will be for Trump opponents, but there is certainly reason to think multiple lawsuits will follow the first one.
While Trump is taking advantage of his new position to further enrich himself, he’s also doing his best to make life more difficult for others, including women around the world. On his third full day in office, Trump signed an executive order banning foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from mentioning abortion when counseling women on reproductive health issues. It’s the “global gag rule” pushed by Ronald Reagan in 1984, but now greatly expanded. Under Reagan, it ordered foreign organizations that receive funding from the U.S. for family planning services can’t discuss abortion. Doing so could result in a loss of funding – as of 2016 was about $600 million. Now, that includes any organization that provides any medical services, including AIDS medications, malaria treatment, or anything else. So now nearly $10 billion worth of funding is affected. Since abortion is mentioned by multiple health organizations as a reasonable procedure in certain scenarios, this could lead to an enormous amount of suffering and death. It will also hurt women disproportionately, and likely lead to an increase in back-alley abortions around the world.
Trump also ordered a hiring freeze on the federal workforce. This is not actually totally abnormal for an incoming president. It can take a bit of time to sort out priorities and directions, and pausing everything can be useful. But he also ordered the hiring of 5000 border patrol agents… which would be the opposite of a hiring freeze. So who knows what he actually wants?
What else? Did he do more? Oh yes…
Trump’s first public address after the inauguration was at the CIA headquarters, where he rambled about inauguration crowd size, suggested stealing oil from other countries, proclaimed his distrust of “the media,” and lied about never having a beef with the intelligence community. It was a disastrous event, to say the least.
Trump’s pick to chair the FCC is an opponent of net neutrality. Prepare for a vastly more restrictive internet over the next few years.
How about the environment? Noted climate change denier surrounded himself with a cabinet full of climate change deniers (and a few lukewarm climate changers who won’t be much help). For starters, Trump put every government body with a scientific mandate under a gag order. The EPA, the National Park Service, NASA, and so on. The NPS decided to to directly defy Trump, but the others are all now being represented by private allies with new Twitter accounts. But in the meantime, Trump appears to be preparing for massive changes in science policy, especially regarding environmental regulations. Trump has also decided that all new environmental policies will be required to undergo Congressional review to ensure they fit the political preferences of the GOP. Protecting clean air and water is out. Providing false information about the cleanliness of coal is in. Working to reduce carbon emissions will be a thing of the past. Withdrawing from the Paris accord seems likely. The potential environmental damage caused by Trump policies may take decades to reverse.
Trump also dealt another blow to both environmental concerns and civil liberties, when he decided to restart the DAPL, and reopen the Keystone XL pipeline.
But while we deal with that, back in Washington, the US Supreme Court will soon get a new conservative justice. Trump has apparently narrowed his choices down to two right-wing extremists of the Scalia ilk, and a third – William Pryor – who is an outright reactionary bigot. My personal cynicism leads me to think Pryor will be the likely choice, as he is by far the worst option, occupying a spot on the ideological spectrum between Robert Bork and Mussolini.
Throughout the week, Trump has also come back to a pre-inauguration claim that he was the victim of widespread voter fraud. In an election he officially won.
Yeah.
Trump has repeatedly (and falsely) asserted that his 2.9 million vote deficit to Hillary Clinton was entirely due to “illegals voting,” on the order of 3 to 5 million. Of course, he has provided no citations, no evidence. He briefly referenced a 2012 Pew survey that said nothing about voter fraud. It merely discussed issues with states taking time to clean up voter rolls. As people move, die, and re-register elsewhere, irregularities occur which forces states to periodically purge and clean their voter rolls. Multiple investigations have occurred over the years which showed that actual cases of fraud were less common than lightning strikes. It’s a topic I’ve discussed previously on this blog. But Trump recklessly stated that the largest case of voter fraud in world history has occurred – in an election he won – and every single one of “3-5 million” illegal votes were cast for his opponent. If this were real, it would require pretty much a freeze of all government activities, and an investigation on an unheard-of scale. But of course, that’s not happening, because no such fraud occurred. But Trump gets away with such slander with no more consequence than people like me preaching to the choir.
Trump and his team continued to lie throughout the first week. Trump told a massive falsehood about ACA registration, falsely claiming that estimates of insured people didn’t include those who lost insurance during implementation of the plan. He’s wrong. They do. And the ACA has resulted in a net increase of at least 20 million insured people over the last few years.
Trump continued ranting about voter fraud and crowd sizes throughout the week, even several days after the inauguration. By the way, it turns out much of Trump’s family, and many on his staff are registered to vote in two states.
Trump lied about people being killed during President Obama’s farewell address.
His chief of staff, Steve Bannon, lambasted the media for… well, basically just reporting on the new president’s actions. Sean Spicer declared the media as “the opposition party.” Kellyanne Conway mostly just rambles and changes the subject.
Further hypocrisy happened when it was revealed that multiple people within Trump’s staff have been using private email accounts. You know, the one topic that hurt Trump’s election opponent more than anything else. The topic that Trump ranted about at almost every opportunity for months. Yep, he did it too. Trump also turns out to be tweeting from an unsecured Android phone.
Trump pledged to cut all government funding of the arts. The NEA andthe Corporation for Public Broadcasting are on the chopping block. PBS gets 15 percent of its funding from the government, and NPR 2 percent, so while both will be affected, neither should be wrecked.
Supposedly, Trump hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. While not a big deal in the same way as some of the others listed here, it is amusingly (and sadly) appropriate. Jackson was one of the most bloodthirsty presidents in American history (and there have been plenty of those), was fiercely nationalistic, ran on a populist platform, happily owned slaves, fought multiple duels, and badly mismanaged the economy. Really does make sense.
Trump officially authorized construction of his southern border wall, claiming that he would pay for it with tariffs, then drastically underselling the likely cost of the project.
Trump continued to make a case for bringing back torture and reopening black sites, despite condemnation from many in Congress, and even disagreement from his new Secretary of Defense.
While all this nonsense occurred, something bigger happened. Proving irony to be long dead and buried, Donald Trump officially ordered his promised “Muslim ban” on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Seriously.
The actual details of the ban are scaled back slightly from his original campaign rhetoric, but are still extensive. Trump officially ordered a ban on Muslims from 7 countries: Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and Sudan. All of which are majority Muslim. And none of which were the birthplaces of anybody who has successfully carried out a terrorist attack on American soil in decades. The countries he didn’t include in the ban? Countries like Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, Afghanistan, Egypt, the UAE, Lebanon, and Russia. All of which contain people who have killed Americans in the name of terror. It should also be noted that most of those countries spared banning contain Trump business interests.
The ban doesn’t just include new immigration. It also includes existing legal visitors and residents with valid green cards. And it includes refugees. Yes, including the millions still stuck in Syria, and somewhere in between here and there, fleeing the worst catastrophe of the last few decades. Trump has happily shut them out, incoherently ranting about the need for “extreme vetting,” not understanding just how lengthy and extensive the current vetting process is for refugees.
Among the refugees that Trump has stated he will accept – the priority will go to Christian refugees, in blatant defiance of the US Constitution.
As a further attack on immigrants, Trump vowed to shame sanctuary cities by compiling and releasing a database of crimes specifically committed by immigrants.
So, to summarize – in just a week, Donald Trump has lied about what would be record-breaking voter fraud, lied about his own popularity, ordered a shutdown on information from science organizations, banned Muslims from seven countries that aren’t threats to the US, stepped all over the establishment clause of the constitution, makes profit on from foreign investment, celebrates Manifest Destiny, pledged to strip 20-30 million Americans of their healthcare, while claiming he was doing the opposite, ordered construction on a massive “bridge to nowhere” style infrastructure project that will fail to prevent illegal immigration, but will likely damage the local environment and economy.
Whew!
Well, at least he’s keeping busy.
In all seriousness, this has been a spectacularly scary start to a new administration that appears to actively want to harm Americans. This is going to be a rough ride, everyone. As long as we remain vigilant, we should endure. But that vigilance is going to be required of pretty much everyone. Don’t get complacent, don’t get comfortable. Because we can’t afford to let Trump get comfortable.
As always, much of what I wrote has been summarized better. Check out some of the links below:
https://newrepublic.com/article/140175/just-happened-review-president-trumps-first-week
https://nytimes.com/2017/01/20/opinion/what-president-trump-doesnt-get-about-america.html
http://www.vox.com/2017/1/21/14347812/trump-press-briefing-sean-spicer
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-us-russia-20170123-story.html
http://www.vox.com/2017/1/24/14371256/trump-freeze-epa-grants
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38734450
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2017/01/25/trump_issues_gag_orders_on_science_agencies.html
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/trump-science-epa-review
http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/25/14370712/trump-science-gagging-explained
A Skewed Perspective 