Bearing Witness to Trump Week 11

Week of April 2 – 8, 2017

 

Twitter has been summoned by the federal government to reveal the owner of an account that has been critical of the Trump Administration. Why is no one surprised by this un-American behavior of our President?

Trump shows his support of Fox news host Bill O’Reilly who has been accused by numerous women of sexual harassment.  Of course Trump would. What more can we say in the new norm for our highest office of the land.

The Senate goes nuclear with their rules to allow the seat that should have been Merrick Garland to be awarded to Gorsuch. And how typical of the Republicans and abusers all over the world that they blame the victim for making them do this.  But thankfully, the Dems showed some backbone and hung together.

AG Jeff Sessions has started rolling back reform and consent decrees with troubled police departments all around the country. He claims they need less oversight and more support. What country has this man been living in not to see how different poor young black males are treated and ever so often killed by police even though many were unarmed who posed little immediate threat to anyone.

Another Trump ally is reported to have been the focus of Russian intermediaries and spies. It is becoming ever so clear that Trump, along with Putin and their cronies, are part of a growing global oligarchy of wealth and power.

Trump bombs Syria after spending much of his campaign convinced that we needed to stay out of this quagmire. This comes just days after the administration said that it basically had no position on whether al-Assad should stay or go. Then al-Assad believes he has been greenlighted and promptly gasses his own people against all international law. And to no surprise, our U.S. Congress remains in hiding, abdicating its constitutional responsibility, like cowards refusing to take any action of support of or in opposition to the use of military action around the world.

Trump donates his 1Q federal salary of $76K to the National Park Service, the day after a story appears that privatization of our treasured national parks may be needed to compensate for lack of funding over $1B to maintain them that will only get worse under the new budget.

Over the weekend Trump tweets out more attacks on the news media. He blames them for not chasing the leakers instead of those who may have committed treason.

The Egyptian President el-Sissi visits Trump this week. Will human rights come up in these discussions with a dictator who overthrew a dutifully elected president? We are talking about dictator el-Sissi, not Trump.

The United Nations has warned that American’s rights to protest their grievances are under broad attack across the nations. More states are making felonies out of simple acts of civil disobedience.

American democracy is being eroded from gerrymandering redistricting, loss of privacy, loss of news media, loss of right to protest, loss of voter rights, militarization of the police, and the list goes on and on. As the kettle heat gradually goes up to a boil, when do we jump out of the pot?

Trumps son-in-law Kushner, a young real estate developer, is now off to Iraq with the Joint Chief of Staff. Yes, Trump must be too busy flying to and from Florida to visit the battlefields where American have fought and died for someone else’s freedom, and our oil of course. So he sends in someone totally unqualified for the job. Maybe the family just thinks of the world as one big commercial development opportunity and the next deal. The irony of a family member visiting the country where we overthrew a cruel dictatorship run by a father-son pair.

The new administration is circulating policies among federal agencies to ban talking about certain things and certainly not using words like climate change or emission reductions. Yes, that will certainly make these problems go away. Just don’t talk about them.

The prohibition of lead in ammo is reversed by the EPA. Lead in ammunition is well known to harm the food chains of wildlife, included protected bald eagles.

The secret service is being strained providing security for so many Trump family members all living and working in different locations. At a huge cost to taxpayers, as well as pulling agents from around the country that would be working on other business important to the country.

The federal government issues RFPs for a 2,000 mile border wall that is estimated to cost $5B.

Steve Bannon has been pushed out of his role on the national security council. Maybe there is an adult in the White House after all? Ooops, they added Rick Perry. Perry at one time wanted to abolish the agency he now heads and has ownership of the nation’s nuclear weapon programs.

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The above news items have been taken from a number of international, national, regional, and local news media sources, both print and digital. Additional editorial opinions and comments about these news items are those of this author.