People told me when I first panned our new president, give him a hundred days.
I’m sorry, I tried, but he has been so rash, so reckless, we don’t need a hundred days. Thirty has been enough. Thirty has felt like a hundred.
So where are we after just 30 days of President Donald Trump?
First, because he has shown such simplistic shortsightedness on overseas policy, he already has deepened the threats we face, not diminished them. Pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is sending hard-earned Pacific Rim allies flying from our economic embrace into China’s. Trade wars now in the works from China to Mexico can raise our prices, not reduce them. Signaling weaker support for NATO nations in Europe (while still inexplicably but consistently coddling Russian President Vladimir Putin) might increase Russian aggression against Western-leaning nations, not inhibit it. Irresponsible insults against long-established allies could discourage them from joining American campaigns when we need them, not draw them closer. And Trump’s still-likely Muslim travel ban? As a recruiting tool, itap God’s gift to terrorists.
Domestically, we already are on course to be more poorly protected from industrial pollution and financial manipulation and religious politicization and maybe even racial justice. Trump has endeavored to undermine the indispensable independence of the judiciary and demonize the irreplaceable role of the media. His autocratic approach to jobs ultimately might make industry more automated and less competitive. The “wall,” according to Homeland Security, is up to $21 billion and now we’re the ones who’ll pay for it. And so far at least, millions who finally have health insurance face a return to the ranks of the uninsured.
Already, after just 30 days, that is the presidentap legacy. As he himself might say, SAD.
But the problems with this president go beyond policy. Far beyond. They go to his personality. He promised he’d be presidential. That, too, proves to be an empty pledge. He still is petulant, pugnacious, petty and impetuous. Yes, the president of the United States. For whom the truth is a lie and a lie is the truth.
Releasing those tax returns to see if he’s really the bountiful benefactor he claims he is? Now he says, not gonna happen. Truly separating himself from the fate of his family’s fortune? One word: Nordstrom. Exhibiting esteem for federal law? Not from what Trump told us Thursday at his news conference, that Michael Flynn speaking about sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office “wasn’t wrong.” Yes it was.
He also declared, “This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.” Thatap especially scary against last week’s warning by the general running our military’s Special Ops Command that the government is in “unbelievable turmoil.” Our reality-TV president is divorced from reality, making his counterfeit claim in the wake of a week when his Muslim ban was rebuffed by four federal judges, and he had to fire his dishonest national security adviser, and his preferred successor for national security adviser turned him down, and he couldn’t get the votes to confirm his labor secretary-designate, and he resorted yet again to Twitter to trash American intelligence. Thatap some “fine-tuned machine.”
Which leads to Team Trump. Forget Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” (once defined as “fiction”) or Stephen Bannon’s mandate for the media to “keep its mouth shut” (once defined as “Russian”). Those almost pale next to senior adviser Stephen Miller’s proclamation on “Face the Nation” that “the powers of the president … will not be questioned.” As comedian Seth Meyers observed, “The only way that statement could be more terrifying is if he yelled it in German.”
After 30 days, we already know our president confuses his ego-fed feelings for facts. And still goes vindictively ballistic over small slights. And loves to shake things up without knowing where the pieces will fall. If we find ourselves in a real crisis and must rely on this presidentap word and judgment, how will we know that this time he’s got it right?
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen is an author, public speaker, and former foreign correspondent for ABC News.
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