It’s hard to believe that we’ve only been through 10 days of this.
Ever since Trump took the oath of office, it’s been one executive order, tweet, fight and protest after another. It’s been a week of scathing headlines and mass confusion, from the obvious lack of a plan on how to repeal Obamacare to the threat of a trade war with Mexico over the funding of a border wall and now the chaos at airports worldwide stemming from a hastily executed order dealing with immigration.
I can only imagine where we’ll be by Day 30.
With every Trump move, statement or order, I keep wondering what’s constitutional, what has a secret business motive, what is being done out of spite and whether something is really making us safer or instead putting us at greater risk. Each day, I’m hopeful that Trump will start coming down from the post-inauguration power binge he’s been on since Day One and start settling into the job already, spending the day in briefings with advisers and experts — not that Bannon guy — and meeting with legislators to start developing some common sense legislation for the good of the country.
But let’s be real. Trump is not going to change. He’s a 70-year-old billionaire who refused to release his taxes or fully divest himself from his business interests and believes that presidents can’t have conflicts of interest. In his world, he’s doing a great job and everyone else is dishonest or just doesn’t get it. In Trump’s alternate reality, the crowds are huge, Mexico will pay and the protests at airports around the world were because of a Delta Airlines computer outage. (Seriously! He told that lie on Monday.) He’s the boss and whatever he says, goes — no matter how unreasonable, unverifiable or untrue it may be.
At this point, it’s important to remember that the President of the United States is not a CEO. There’s a 240-year-old system of checks-and-balances to ensure that no one person in this country has ultimate power — and even though that system is tested from time to time, it still works. Congress — despite being plagued with a cowardice that seems to be most evident when it matters most — has a big say in deciding what becomes law and what doesn’t. Judges also have a way of throwing wrenches into the system, issuing stays and reversing decisions that force the wheels of government to slow down. And then there’s the press and the people — one that won’t stop poking around and asking questions and the other that won’t quit shouting in the streets.
Trump is not making many friends — not in Washington, not across America and not around the world. His public approval rating numbers, which were not kind to him on Inauguration Day, have actually gotten worse. He’s declared an all-our war on the news media, calling it “the opposition party.” And, even with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress, members of the GOP are trying to distance themselves from Trump as quickly as Democrats are trying to push them toward him.
In the U.K on Monday, a petition to ban Trump from Britain for an official state visit topped 1 million signatures, saying that his visit would “cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.”
Wow. Talk about embarrassing.
It’s actually a shame that Trump is sabotaging his own presidency so early in the term. Had he moved a bit slower, gone off the radar while he settled into the job and allowed the sting of a bitter election to soften, people might have resumed the normalcy of their lives and given him the chance that so many of his followers are asking their fellow Americans to give. Though I’ve never been a Trump fan, I was never of the mindset that everything Trump proposed should be blocked just because he’s Trump, the way Republicans did with Obama for eight years.
At the end of the day, immigration continues to be in dire need of reform, the fight against terrorism rages on and well, perhaps there is something to be said for revisiting some trade agreements. But Trump is flushing what little political capital he had in Washington and chipping away at what little credibility he had across the nation. How can he get any “deals” done in Congress or with the public when he’s lost the trust and the faith of the majority of the people and, frankly, isn’t working very hard to get it back?
Because Trump won’t sit down and shut up already and because he’s injecting himself into the news cycle with every tweet, statement and order, some people out there who might have otherwise tuned out already, are taking notice. In my own social media feeds, I’ve noticed some political posts from people who normally wouldn’t chime in on these issues. But now, they know all about Trump — the Trump that’s constantly in the news, constantly under scrutiny, constantly insulting one group of people or another.
They can’t avoid him and they can’t tune him out. As such, they’re forming opinions. And they’re joining protest marches. And they’re sharing — and arguing — across social media.
It may not be good for him but thanks to an ugly election, a joke of a transition and a rocky start to the presidency, the masses are exercising their rights again, uniting with people of all ages, colors and beliefs to express their mutual disdain for the new Trump Administration or how it’s handling the country’s business. With so much dissent from such a diverse group of people, the chatter about Trump’s eventual demise is starting to get louder.
I suspect things will get uglier before they get better — but that’s the price we have to pay for allowing a guy like Trump to be elected in the first place. We the voters — no matter which way we voted — have to share the blame for this one.
But when it all comes crashing down, potentially ending in calamity for the president and the nation, Trump will only have himself to blame.
