Stress testing the Trump Presidency

How will the least organised administration in history weather a storm?

Jack
Jack
Aug 27, 2017 · 6 min read
Hurricane Harvey (source)

It is trite but true that it takes a crisis to truly test a leader’s mettle. The Trump administration has had countless crises, the magnitude of which regularly surpass that of a ‘normal’ presidential crisis, but these crises all share one factor: they are of the Trump Administration’s own making. This can make it hard to discern what is crisis and what is response. Trump’s damage control often does more damage than the initial incident.

For instance, take North Korea. The country has a lengthy history of bellicose rhetoric, but usually acts rationally. Trump, instead of rising above the DPRK’s words as his predecessors did, decided to engage the dictator on his own level. Trump replied to Kim in kind, with promises that that North Korea would be met with ‘fire and fury like the world has never seen’. Rather than maintain a statesmanlike poker-face and rise above, Trump sunk to the level of slinging threats with a dictator.

A similar case is that of Charlottesville. Trump says something foolish, and then doubles down and stacks missteps on mistakes until the initial incident looks minor. This is not only a pattern of the Trump administration, it’s a pathology: Michael Flynn, Firing Comey, ‘Mexican’ Judge Curiel, Obama’s ‘wiretap’, conflicts of interest, ethics violations, inciting violence, Sally Yates, manufacturing council, technology council, transgender ban, the Veselnitskaya meeting, the Bowling Green Massacre, the Mooch, Kushner’s hundreds of lies about meeting foreign officials, attacking his own Attorney General, attacking Mitch McConnell, millions of illegal voters, and these are just a small handful of examples.

What separates Hurricane Harvey from almost all of Trump’s prior scandals is that it isn’t of his own making, or the incompetence of the people he chooses to surround himself with. This crisis gives us a chance to truly separate crisis from response, and the things that have been revealed already are fascinating.

One of the longest term and most severe weakpoints of Trump’s administration is the incredible lack of personnel. First is the issue of appointments made with the express intent of damaging government agencies, as covered in this excellent articles in New York Magazine article on Carson’s HUD, and — more disturbingly — Vanity Fair piece on Perry’s DOE and the nuclear threat his ineptitude creates. This aside, the Administration has failed to staff hundreds of important cabinet-level posts as this New York Times interactive graphic shows:

Trump’s reshuffle of his staff to place General Kelly as Chief of Staff leaves the seat at the head of the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of FEMA, empty. Until recently, both NOAA and Fema were without leaders. In addition, dozens of fundamental roles in national security and other key agencies remain unfilled. Trump’s incompetence and lack of basic leadership skills have proven to be the exact opposite of the ‘competent CEO’ persona he cultivated during the campaign: he can’t staff the most important organisations in America which should have countless qualified applicants. This is just the first of many issues this crisis brings further to light.

The next issue is Trump’s cynical use of a natural disaster to pardon Joe Arpaio. This is indefensible. Arpaio is a racist who perpetrated inhumane crimes. This Justice Department report found Arpaio to have engaged in discriminatory policing and jail practices, such as additional punishment for prisoners who did not understand English commands. Arpaio also set up tent cities for prisoners and those awaiting trial, which he referred to as ‘concentration camps’, in weather of 145º Farenheit / 63º Celsius. Arpaio also ignored hundreds of alleged sex crimes which fell under his jurisdiction, and touted the lie that President Obama was not born in America. Further information on Arpaio’s behaviour can be found in this Slate article.

Regardless of your opinion on illegal immigration, prisoners in America are guaranteed basic rights by the 4th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution (In court, Arpaio acknowledged that he was unfamiliar with the latter). Depriving any person of these rights is unacceptable and un-American. Nonetheless, Trump has chosen to exercise his power as president to pardon Arpaio. In doing so — and unsurprisingly — Trump flouted legal norms and safeguards, as this New York Times piece articulates:

Pardoning Arpaio is a gift to Trump’s xenophobic, other-fearing base, and it telegraphs to other law-enforcement officials that this behaviour is condoned by the White House.

Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, most Republicans remain silent and implicitly condone the President’s actions. Some have had the basic decency to denounce Trump’s behaviour, such as John McCain:

However, McCain is nearing the end of his political career and so has more leeway to speak his mind. Other Republicans are beholden to their base for re-election, and ultimately a majority of Republican voters approve of racism. Finally, the Arpaio pardon is nakedly political, as demonstrated by its announcement during Trump’s ego-boosting rally earlier in the week.

Trump using the cover afforded by a natural disaster and a Friday to dump a politically costly story is cowardly and pathetic. Pardoning Arpaio is an immoral, unjust, and unacceptable action for a president to take. It undermines the rule of law and implies that Arpaio’s behaviour is acceptable for others to emulate. Trump’s flirtation with the racist far-right continues.

Similarly, Trump is using this chaotic news cycle to legitimise his off-the-cuff twitter legislating on transgender people in the military. The facts do not support this ban, but Trump is not a rational person. The ban is also similar to the Arpaio pardon in that it is clear pandering to his base: Trump is making no effort to expand his support, choosing instead to double down over and over again on the small bloc of voters he already has.

Trump’s fomenting of distrust in the media is also problematic: the media is where most people get their information on the weather. The exact impact of this is impossible to measure, but it may be significant that the number of people who evacuated from the path of Hurrican Katrina was almost 60% while only 40% have fled the path of Harvey. Immediately prior to the storm, when the President should have been amplifying the voices of the relevant authorities, was engaging in petty quarrels on twitter. Trump was attacking Bob Corker and issuing the oxymoronic pair of statements that the ‘Filibuster Rule’ will mean that ‘few bills will be passed’ and that ‘few administrations have done more in 7 months’ than his. Now that the storm has arrived, Trump has shifted to anodyne tweets in support of the federal, state, and local governments responsible for dealing with Harvey — further indication that the President completely lacks foresight and addresses only what is currently on Fox News.

The final issue I will cover is Trump’s defunding of climate research. Extreme weather is the vanguard of climate change — it’s the first effect that most people will experience, and a sign that change has already begun. Trump has repeatedly equivocated about whether he believes in anthropogenic climate change, and earlier this year withdrew from the relatively weak Paris Climate Accords. Trump wants to cut NASA’s ‘Earth Science’ budget, the money allotted to study the earth from space and satellites which are currently being used to track this storm. Just yesterday, officials requested that researchers from the DOE remove references to ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ from their projects.

Overall, the stress of an incoming natural disaster shows systemic problems in the Trump administration in clear detail: lack of qualified staff in some of the most important seats in the government, playing the media to pardon the unforgivable behaviour of Joe Arpaio and legitimise his unacceptable transgender service ban, delegitimising the news sources that provide key information, and defunding the agencies responsible for understanding and predicting events like extreme weather. This administration is undoubtedly the worst in history, with so many crises it is hard to see the forest for the trees. That’s why it’s useful to use an opportunity like this as a lens through which to view the chaos: to see what matters when the leadership is put to the test by a crisis not of its own making.

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Jack

Written by

Jack

I'm a student at LSE and this is where I practice my writing.

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