Bearing Witness to Trump Week 22

Trump Week 22: June 18 – 24

Trump begins the week by denying Russian meddling in the election that he won. He ends the week by blaming the Obama administration for not doing more to obstruct Russian meddling in the election that Trump previously said never happened. As more details come out about Putin’s direct involvement in disrupting the past election, Trump remains indifferent on punishing the Russians. Instead he wants to punish those who leaked the story.

Under Trump’s administration, which has given the military broader decision-making authority to fight in all the places we have combat troops around the world, we are killing more and more civilians. Watchdogs have reported that over 4,000 civilians have been killed by coalition airstrikes, which are mostly American led. U.S. forces think the number is closer to 500.  Either way, you have to ask why the American public is so detached from the results of our foreign interventions. Maybe they think it is just another far-off reality TV show on making America Great Again – at the expense of everyone else. We are too busy shopping and tweeting to care about the rest of the world it seems.

The Senate releases their plan to make American Healthcare Great Again. Not. It’s a huge tax cut ($900M) for the rich disguised as a program to reduce if not end Medicaid ($800M) for the poor as we know it. That is a redistribution of both wealth and health from the poor to the rich. Medicaid is a lifeline that helps over 20% of all Americans, 30% of all disabled adults, 40% of all children, and 64% of all nursing home residents. It stinks so bad that not even all Republican senators can support it.

The White House continues to restrict press briefings and live TV coverage, least it embarrass an administration that can’t help but not tripping over its own messaging day after day.

The Trump administration begins to dismantle the labor-friendly policies of previous administrations, right after they have just done to environmental protections. Next are financial regulations like Dodd Frank. Hooray – this is certainly going to help the poor working class of America.

During the week Trump claimed that he did not, after all, previously make or now possess tapes of his conversations with Comey, that he once said he might have. What a weasel. I suppose that we need to dissect and parse each element of that statement as physical tapes are old media and no one makes them anymore, then Trump would have had someone else make the recordings anyway, and if he did of course someone else would now have them in their possession. How does the man keep so many versions of the truth straight in his mind?

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.