The Trumpian Chronicles — week 14- the 100 wasted days
A pessimist-realist’s take on our changing world
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The benefit of writing these chronicles with some geographic and time distance is that it provides much needed perspective on events in DC which seem to obsess the US national media in the 24/7 news cycle.
Week 14 (April 22 to 29) of the Trumpian presidency marked 100 days since a NYC pseudo billionaire pledged to defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It’s now agreed by most analysts that these first 100 days have been thoroughly wasted and nothing was accomplished, aside from his outsourced nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
This week was replete with approximations and falsehoods peddled by Trump and his sycophants, let’s isolate 2 key events:
1- Trump’s self-delusion and total misconception of the role of President, as evidenced in his interview that week
2- His Administration’s 1 page “tax plan”
Let’s go into the detail:
1- Trump’s self-delusion and total misconception of the role of President, as evidenced in his 100 day interviews that week: Trump has turned out to be the unlikely saviour of the so-called mainstream media and major outlets marked Trump’s 100 days with interviews which he clearly did not prepare for. In a FoxNews interview marking his 100 days, Trump said he was: ““disappointed” with congressional Republicans, despite his many “great relationships” with them. He blamed the constitutional checks and balances built in to US governance. “It’s a very rough system,” he said. “It’s an archaic system … It’s really a bad thing for the country.”
In his interview with Reuters, Trump showed the massive self-delusion he operates under by saying “‘I thought being president would be easier’”. This will be a quote for the ages, as dumbfounding as when he said that “no one knew healthcare was so complicated” and that “peace in the Middle East” is within reach, via his factotum son-in-law Jared Kushner.
My take: Trump has been operating for most of his 70 years with what John Podhoretz called a “Borscht Belt” style and no one seems to be able to tell him that such a brash tone doesn’t work in the White House. Trump feels that this style and tone are what got him elected in the first place and he doesn’t want to switch to a more subdued Presidential “voice”. He also displays a warped sense of self when he says things like “I thought being president would be easier”. Almost anyone who has studied US history knows the hyper-Presidency since FDR has been an office with a particularly crushing weight, which strains and Presidents at a rapid pace (see Clinton, Obama). Remember when Trump thought he could run the Trump Organization AND be President ? The reality is that Trump has been “acting” like an international businessman for decades but he’s been a running a fairly modest organization, in an autocratic 19th century capitalist-style. No one seems to have explained that as Eisenhower coined it, the Presidency is just a desk and a phone, and that, by design, the US government doesn’t react at a push of a button at every whim of a President.
2- His Administration’s 1 page “tax plan”
Mainstream, conventional GOPers backed Trump because they thought he could be useful to push their tax cut agenda. Trump has been one of the least effective Presidents in the legislative realm, both because his team is supremely incompetent in handling Congress and because, like Obama before him, Trump is an avid signer of Executive Orders, which he thinks have an immediate effect (they don’t). Trump had promised in his 100 day plan to reform the tax code and true to form, released this:
My take: Calling a 1-page press release a “tax plan” is like saying a Harlequin novel is literature. This demonstrates the un-seriousness of the Trump team, even with supposed Wall St “heavy hitters” like Cohn and Mnuchin on board. Mnuchin must have felt foolish selling this as a plan when it’s anything but a gross attempt at yet another huge tax cut which will grow US deficits in a “yuge” way. Yet again the GOP demonstrates it’s not a fiscally responsible party and that it will put the interests of its backers before the country’s. In a rare display of unanimity, 37 economists warned the tax plan would not pay for itself. Should it pass, it could lead to a short term uptick in economic activity, to be followed by more tensions on the US currency and more hand wringing from the Chinese who will worry about the trillions of T-bills they hold. The GOP’s disregard for reality, famously encapsulated by Cheney’s “Reagan showed deficits don’t matter”, is dangerous because it’s rooted in a 1980s vision of the world, now defunct. Trump’s team seems to be oblivious to facts and logic, and the country will pay dearly for it.
TWEETS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
LINKS TO GO BEYOND THE HEADLINES:
Voices to listen to/follow:
