HAF2
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https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.thestar.com/amp/news/world/2017/04/29/donald-trumps-100-day-gong-show-mostly-plays-by-the-rules.html
Good article. Too long to post all of it but here are some highlights.
WASHINGTON—The president of the United States would not stop talking about the fraudulence of the election he had just won.
It was only three days into Donald Trump’s presidency, the very beginning of what should have been his honeymoon, but he was still consumed by his inconsequential loss in November’s popular vote. In interviews, on Twitter, in private meetings, Trump kept repeating the lie that more than three million people had voted illegally. Not only that, he announced he was launching a “major investigation.”
Here was a troubling breach of democratic tradition. The president was casting doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process. The president was sending the federal government on a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition because he believed nonsense from conspiracy websites.
And then the whole thing disappeared.
No investigation ever materialized. The president got distracted by other grievances. That was that.
He has not a single legislative accomplishment of significance. He has been oddly slow to fill senior positions. His first budget included such cartoonish cuts that it was dead on arrival in Congress. Though he has busied himself issuing executive orders, many have been more like press releases than immediate acts.
His most important order, an incompetently written travel ban targeting Muslim countries, was blocked by the courts. His 100-day “Contract with the American Voter,” a commitment list to which he affixed his black-Sharpie signature, remains mostly unfulfilled.
One by one, he has discarded pledges to revolutionize U.S. foreign policy, shifting in almost every case to the status quo. Ripping up the nuclear deal with Iran? He’s not doing it. Taking on Cuba’s Castro regime? He has shown no interest whatsoever. Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem? “Not an easy decision,” he says now. Designating China as a currency manipulator? “They’re not a currency manipulator.”
“I think the problem is that the president speaks to his general-election audience,” Sullivan said. “The election is over. And he doesn’t seem to have understood that.
“He needs to be speaking to the audience of Washington decision-makers. And that audience is sophisticated.”
There is no talking about Trump without talking about his unwavering base. A hundred days in, almost everybody who voted for him would do so again.
John Orr, a grain trader and Republican county chair in Nebraska, knows Trump hasn’t been able to achieve everything he wanted. But he does not blame Trump. In his view, the leading culprits include obstructionist “establishment types” and a biased media.
Trump voters, Orr said, know it will take time for the president to overcome such entrenched interests. And they are pleased with his successes to date.
No Trump triumph was as momentous as his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Even if Trump’s presidency is a four-year disaster, the 49-year-old conservative could well be shaping the nation’s laws for 30 years.
“A lot of folks were fearful of who Hillary [Clinton] would appoint for the Supreme Court. So Gorsuch getting confirmed — a lot of the other things don’t even matter to a lot of people,” Orr said. “Given the circumstances, I think he’s done all he can, basically.”
He is averaging 2.2 false statements per day in office, telling lies about subjects as irrelevant as his television ratings. A couple of them have caused international incidents. When Trump falsely told a crowd that something terrible related to terrorism happened in Sweden the night before, or falsely told an interviewer that Korea used to be part of China, he did real damage to his country’s reputation.
What’s most striking in transcripts of his remarks is not the mendacity. It is the incoherence. Stripped of his vocal flourishes, the words of his first three months reveal a president out of his depth, alternating between petty fixations and buzzwords he is sounding out without any evident understanding of what they mean.
Gripping soap opera, yes, but this is also the presidency as hard-to-watch amateur improv act — its star a man playing some barely recognizable version of the part without control of his own tics.
“I can be more presidential than anybody, if I want to be,” Trump insisted late in the 2016 Republican primary. “I can be more presidential than anybody.” The inescapable conclusion from his first 100 days is that this was a lie, too.
Good article. Too long to post all of it but here are some highlights.
WASHINGTON—The president of the United States would not stop talking about the fraudulence of the election he had just won.
It was only three days into Donald Trump’s presidency, the very beginning of what should have been his honeymoon, but he was still consumed by his inconsequential loss in November’s popular vote. In interviews, on Twitter, in private meetings, Trump kept repeating the lie that more than three million people had voted illegally. Not only that, he announced he was launching a “major investigation.”
Here was a troubling breach of democratic tradition. The president was casting doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process. The president was sending the federal government on a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition because he believed nonsense from conspiracy websites.
And then the whole thing disappeared.
No investigation ever materialized. The president got distracted by other grievances. That was that.
He has not a single legislative accomplishment of significance. He has been oddly slow to fill senior positions. His first budget included such cartoonish cuts that it was dead on arrival in Congress. Though he has busied himself issuing executive orders, many have been more like press releases than immediate acts.
His most important order, an incompetently written travel ban targeting Muslim countries, was blocked by the courts. His 100-day “Contract with the American Voter,” a commitment list to which he affixed his black-Sharpie signature, remains mostly unfulfilled.
One by one, he has discarded pledges to revolutionize U.S. foreign policy, shifting in almost every case to the status quo. Ripping up the nuclear deal with Iran? He’s not doing it. Taking on Cuba’s Castro regime? He has shown no interest whatsoever. Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem? “Not an easy decision,” he says now. Designating China as a currency manipulator? “They’re not a currency manipulator.”
“I think the problem is that the president speaks to his general-election audience,” Sullivan said. “The election is over. And he doesn’t seem to have understood that.
“He needs to be speaking to the audience of Washington decision-makers. And that audience is sophisticated.”
There is no talking about Trump without talking about his unwavering base. A hundred days in, almost everybody who voted for him would do so again.
John Orr, a grain trader and Republican county chair in Nebraska, knows Trump hasn’t been able to achieve everything he wanted. But he does not blame Trump. In his view, the leading culprits include obstructionist “establishment types” and a biased media.
Trump voters, Orr said, know it will take time for the president to overcome such entrenched interests. And they are pleased with his successes to date.
No Trump triumph was as momentous as his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. Even if Trump’s presidency is a four-year disaster, the 49-year-old conservative could well be shaping the nation’s laws for 30 years.
“A lot of folks were fearful of who Hillary [Clinton] would appoint for the Supreme Court. So Gorsuch getting confirmed — a lot of the other things don’t even matter to a lot of people,” Orr said. “Given the circumstances, I think he’s done all he can, basically.”
He is averaging 2.2 false statements per day in office, telling lies about subjects as irrelevant as his television ratings. A couple of them have caused international incidents. When Trump falsely told a crowd that something terrible related to terrorism happened in Sweden the night before, or falsely told an interviewer that Korea used to be part of China, he did real damage to his country’s reputation.
What’s most striking in transcripts of his remarks is not the mendacity. It is the incoherence. Stripped of his vocal flourishes, the words of his first three months reveal a president out of his depth, alternating between petty fixations and buzzwords he is sounding out without any evident understanding of what they mean.
Gripping soap opera, yes, but this is also the presidency as hard-to-watch amateur improv act — its star a man playing some barely recognizable version of the part without control of his own tics.
“I can be more presidential than anybody, if I want to be,” Trump insisted late in the 2016 Republican primary. “I can be more presidential than anybody.” The inescapable conclusion from his first 100 days is that this was a lie, too.
