Commentary

Trump has accomplished nothing in his first 100 days

Trump has accomplished nothing in his first 100 days
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
“No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days,” Trump boldly asserted to his rally audience in Kenosha, Wisconsin. But beneath this Trumpian hyperbole, what has he actually accomplished?

The White House website lists 28 bills signed by Trump. Though this is the highest since 1949, it stands well below the 76 signed by Roosevelt in 1933. As PolitiFact reports, however, many of Trump’s bills were “minor or housekeeping bills,” and “none met a longstanding political-science standard for ‘major bills’.”

After Senate leadership nuked the 60-vote threshold and effectively decimated the potential for cross-partisan consensus in the confirmation process for members of the highest and most impactful court in the land, the Senate confirmed Trump’s ultra-conservative nominee for the Supreme Court. This portends major consequences, not the least of which jeopardizes women’s reproductive freedoms, and the continued increases of corporate funding for political candidates and office holders.

What actions did Trump take to fulfill his campaign promise to restore the middle class? Well, for one thing, he eliminated the Obama era’s planned reduction of mortgage insurance premium rates, which Obama implemented to make home ownership more affordable. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which virtually ensures China a lock on trade in the Asian-Pacific region.

In addition, while he complained about some sort of conspiratorial voter fraud that deprived him of garnering the popular vote in the last election, he has done nothing to curb the real voter suppression efforts by the Republican Party nationwide, nor has he pushed to restore the Voting Rights Act to its once effective version before the Supreme Court gutted its chief provisions.

At press conferences, Trump disrespects reporters. He demands they “sit down” when they ask questions he doesn’t like, and he speaks of a “running war” with the media. He has even accused “freedom of the press” as the cause of terrorist bombings in the U.S. He labeled the venerable New York Times as “failing,” and BuzzFeed as “a failing pile of garbage.” He also demanded the cast of Hamilton to issue an apology to the vice president for being “rude.” So presidential!

Congressional oversight committees are investigating numerous scandals swirling throughout his administration placing Trump in a collision course with the Constitution regarding possible links to Russia in influencing the outcome of the past election and serious concerns over his business ventures and conflicts of interest.

Trump has consistently increased the portfolios of his daughter and son-in-law who have no actual experience in the positions they are expected to fill. And he reneged on a campaign promise by refusing to release his tax documents.

Since Trump’s inauguration, the White House website has removed reference to LGBT issues and policies and issues of climate change from the previous administration, and reversed an Obama-era executive order permitting trans students to use school facilities most closely aligning with their gender identities.

He has threatened to defund Planned Parenthood, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities (which includes Big Bird), the National Institutes of Health including cancer research and HIV/AIDS projects, Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food assistance program and global food assistance programs, student Pell Grants, Community Development Block Grants, which funds Meals on Wheels, Low Income Home Energy Assistance program, plus AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps.

Trump has further terrorized immigrant communities with the threat of mass deportations and warnings of stopping all federal funding to sanctuary cities. He was able to attain the firm and definitive commitment of Mexico never to fund a border wall.

He has cozied up to tyrannical autocrats in Russia, Egypt, and Turkey and expressed his admiration (while not actually endorsing) a crypto-fascist candidate in the French presidential elections, while offending longtime ally nations: Mexico, Australia, Sweden, France, and Britain. He supported Brexit, which could ultimately lead to the downfall of the European Union.

Trump continued his dedicated support for his fired alleged sexual predator friend at Fox News, and he is often seen in the close company of Wayne LaPierre and other officials of the National Rifle Association while he promises to roll back even the current meager regulations on firearms.

In his admission to “deconstruct the administrative state,” Trump’s chief political strategist, Steve Bannon, trumpeted the president’s strategy of placing into influential positions of power people intent on privatizing public education, eliminating environmental regulations, eradicating the Environmental Protection Agency, and deregulating hazardous and polluting fossil fuel industries like coal and oil.

Rather than “draining the swamp” as promised, Trump has restocked the deep and murky muck many times over.

Trump has given sway over the Department of Health and Human Services to someone with investment ties and potential conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies, medical devises, and health insurance companies. He appointed a person charged with administering public housing who has virtually no experience and initially no interest in serving. He chose an Attorney General whose background in the area of civil and human rights has been seriously questioned at the very least, and a Secretary of State with a long career connected to the oil and gas industry and with a track record of serving as an instrument of Vladimir Putin and Russian interests.

Trump has failed to nominate candidates for 85% of executive positions — literally hundreds of unfilled important government jobs that require Senate confirmation — leaving his administration seriously understaffed and the people of our country seriously under-served.

Trump’s pick for his first national security advisor, retired Army Lt. General Mike Flynn, in a 2010 military tribunal was convicted of having “inappropriately shared” classified information with foreign governments, and during the presidential campaign circulated false conspiracy theories. Flynn also served as a “foreign agent” to Turkey without declaring it until recently. Now he has been charged with breaking protocol and lying about it by negotiating with Russian government official on possible sanctions relief before Trump took office.

Federal courts halted Trump’s two executive order travel bans, the first on seven and the second on six majority-Muslim nations, from going into effect since the judges determined these orders represent unconstitutional injunctions on the basis of religion.

Without prior advice and consultation with his military commanders and intelligence officers, Trump went ahead with a raid on a suspected al-Qaida command in Yemen, resulting in the tragic death of a U.S. Navy SEAL and several innocent civilians, while killing few enemy combatants and unearthing little valid intelligence information.

Though he garnered some support from congressional representatives who had showed him little prior support after he launch and ineffective missile attack on a Syrian airbase, Trump has signaled no coherent international policies, and in particular, how his administration will handle the ever-growing and increasingly dangerous hotspots of North Korea, Syria and the entire Middle East, and Ukraine.

He brought the United States to the brink of nuclear war by sending a fleet of ships outside of North Korean waters, though it was later learned that Trump and his military leaders lost track of their ships, which were, in fact, over 3000 nautical miles away off the coast of Australia.

Trump has continued his saber rattling by asserting that he leaves open the option of declaring unilateral military action against North Korea. In this regard, he has proposed substantial increases in military spending while simultaneously making big slashes in funding to the U.S. Department of State, our chief diplomatic peace-making executive arm of government.

Throughout the brief process after Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, released a plan to keep Trump’s promise of “repealing and replacing” ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act), Trump showed neither knowledge of nor enthusiasm for the issue of health care reform, even though on the campaign stump he said this would be his first priority from “day one.”

For someone who published (though didn’t actually write) the best-selling book, The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump should have had at least one major legislative victory notch chiseled into his political belt by now. Unfortunately for him, but gratefully for the expected 24 million people who would have lost their health care benefits, the Trump/Ryan “American Health Care Act” failed to even make it to the floor of the House due to the turbulent Civil War raging in Trump’s own not-so-Grand Old Party.

Trump’s recent approval rating stands at just 40%, an historic low for any President this early into their tenure. A whopping 54% disapprove of his job performance.

All of Trump’s commotions might seem humorous had it simply been a “Saturday Night Live” parody, but it’s not very funny — actually hugely, greatly, big league dangerous — in real time.

So while Trump has indeed been very active, he has accomplished very little during his first 100 days sitting in the Oval Office signing meaningless or destructive executive orders and minor pieces of legislation (and primarily playing golf and hob-knobbing at his luxury Florida resort, Mira Lago).

So the question remains: What has Trump and his administration actually done to Make America Great Again?

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