Bearing Witness to Trump Week 12

Week of April 9 – 15, 2016

So far Trump has done a turnaround on a majority of his campaign pledges. NATO is all the sudden now important to U.S. interests. The border wall will be paid for by Americans, not Mexico. Medicare will not have authority to negotiate drug prices after all. Intervention in civil wars around the world, like Syria, is good not bad. More military investment and bombing of Afghanistan is needed. The Russians are now not so good. Health care reform can come later if at all. Presidents travelling to resorts to play golf is ok, as long as their name is not Obama. Who needs to drain the swamp when we have so many rich cronies to run DC. It seems that China is not a currency manipulator after all, despite what Trump said dozens of time in the fall. The export-import bank is a good thing, not bad. Pro-immigration economists are good, not bad. Border taxes are bad, not good. And the flip-flopping list goes on so fast it makes you dizzy.

The President claims immunity from civil or criminal actions that occurred before he was elected president. Just like countless other autocrats throughout history. He also decides to keep the visitor logs a state secret for both the White House and Mar-a-Lago, breaking with tradition for transparency in our executive branch government.

Trump spends yet another weekend in Mar-a-Lago. While Trump relaxes, over 478 of 533 executive vacancies await nominees to make government function. Oh, I forgot, they don’t want government to function for the American people, so they only need a smaller staff to make it function only for them and their self-interests.

The Secret Service is stressed having to support so much unnecessary travel by Trump and all his family members. And for the first time more cabinet officials are receiving protection in the Trump administration than ever before.

Another Trump adviser, Carter Page, is under investigation for being a foreign agent for Russia.

Trump refuses to release his tax records despite thousands of American protesting for such on April 15.

The military uses the mother of all bombs, the largest conventional bomb just short of nuclear, but the President says it was not his decision as be cedes those decisions to “my military.” Yes, right, he will take credit for all their successes, but the minute something goes wrong, he had nothing to do with it. Someone pointed out this week that Trump routinely uses the words “my military” when describing the American armed forces.

it is reported that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort received millions of dollars of loans the day he stepped down from the campaign last fall. This on top of money from Russian-friendly Ukrainians he had previously been found to have accepted.

Planned Parenthood is defunded by Trump. But he threw women under the bus only after he did his own adviser, Steve Bannon.  Then he misled us as to the historic nature of their relationship with more lies.

Trump threatens to defund ACA subsidies to insurance companies. Yes, of course, that is right, use millions of low-income Americans who get their insurance from the ACA as hostages to blow up Obamacare for good.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer makes a blunder by claiming Hitler never used gas on his own people. Oh, what about all those Jews in the Holocaust? Never mind.

In an appropriate presidential remark for a change, Trump displays shock and sadness at the death of children in the recent Syrian chemical gas attack on their own people. If he could just have that same empathy for so many thousands of these Syrian children and their parents who have escaped this horror and seek refugee status around the world including in the US.

The combined net worth of the Trump administration cabinet appointees is reported to exceed $12B, the richest in the history of the country. Yes, these wealthy plutocrats who are coddled and cajoled at every turn certainly can speak for and defend the needs of the working poor. What a great con and coup they have pulled off on America.

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.