Donald Trump’s absurd 100th day week was his presidency in miniature

[homersapien 10,954]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/1/15493088/donald-trumps-absurd-100th-day-week-was-his-presidency-in-miniature

“I can’t wait for the 100-day s*** to be over,” an exhausted senior administration official told Politico. Well, it’s over now, and nothing is on fire — that’s worth some celebration, at least. Donald Trump’s madcap milestone week proved to be his presidency in miniature: packed with controversy and aggravation and effort and fear, but ultimately amounting to little.

Trump said he would pull out of NAFTA, but after being talked down by aides and foreign leaders, didn’t. He tried to pass his health care bill — which had been amended to make it easier for insurers to discriminate against the sick — but failed. He demanded a tax reform plan only to learn his staff didn’t yet have one, so he made them release one anyway, with ridiculous results. He saw a cruel immigration order stopped by the courts, and responded by musing publicly about breaking up a different court. (He appears to have gotten confused.) Even the routine procession of PR emails and boasts turned into farce, as when Trump’s staff miscounted the number of executive orders FDR signed during his first 100 days, and claimed Trump had signed more. (He hasn’t, not even close.)

The president himself was behind the spasms of abortive policymaking. Obsessed with cable news coverage of his first 100 days, he was desperate for a huge accomplishment of some sort, and indifferent to what it was, or what it did. He wanted to be on stage in a suit with a crowd and a desk and a pen and applause, and then he wanted to board Air Force One and turn on the television and see himself being praised. Trump wants to be president in the way children want to be astronauts: He likes the look of the job, but has no more interest in the actual work of it than 7-year-olds have in astrophysics.

Of Trump’s term so far, the best that can be said is that the president’s incompetence has blunted his danger. “It could be worse,” wrote Ross Douthat, and he’s right. With apologies to Woody Allen, Trump’s presidency has been awful, but at least the portions have been small.

This is a thin reed with which to secure the republic, however. America built the greatest superpower the world has ever known and handed it to a man whose own associates saytheir job is “to talk him out of doing crazy things.” To be pleased that the Trump presidency has not yet ended in disaster is to set too low a bar for American democracy. Three cheers for electing a leader too easily distracted to be a successful authoritarian!

Trump’s 100th day was much like his 10th day because this is who he is, and who he continues to be. Throughout the campaign and now inside the White House, Trump has proven himself curiously incapable of learning, growing, or changing. He is an excellent showman but an inattentive, impulsive leader. When Trump promised, two Fridays ago, to deliver a tax plan in five days, the promise came as a surprise to Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s National Economics Council, whose job it is to write the plan. The rushed release was a laughable squib — among other things, it did not reveal the income levels the tax brackets would apply to, a central question a harried Cohn dismissed to reporters as “microdetails.”

The president so badly burned by the specifics of health care reform had not learned to care about them on tax reform. And so Trump’s tax plan was greeted with the same confusion and dismay as his health care plan. “We’re kind of in a perpetual campaign, and as a result, there’s no policy,” Alan Cole, an economist at the conservative Tax Foundation, told Vox.

Trump would be an excellent head of state. He enjoys greeting dignitaries and throwing galas and posing for photos. The trappings of the office become him. But he is exactly as unsuited to the job of the presidency as his critics — and, in truth, many of his supporters — feared. “This is more work than my previous life,” Trump said on Friday. “I thought it would be easier." His 100th day week played out as a comedy, but lurking behind it is tragedy.

One hundred days isn’t even 7 percent of Trump’s term. The next 1,350 days will carry crises that need to be solved, opportunities that need to be seized, work that needs to be done. It is a long time to hope that our president will simply fail to do too much damage. In recent conversations with both Democrats and Republicans, I’ve heard cautious optimism that this will be as bad as it gets, and the country will escape this administration embarrassed, but mostly unscathed. Perhaps some other language has a word to describe when hope has been so diminished that it transforms into a kind of despair, but that is where we are.

The irony of Trump is that though he was elected because America truly does face big problems, he is singularly unsuited to solving any of them. There is nothing in his presidency thus far that will lift stagnating wages, revitalize struggling rural communities, cut health care costs, modernize the federal government, curb the opioid crisis, or strengthen American leadership in the face of a rising China and an aggressive Russia. These are hard problems that require patience, study, and steady leadership. Yes, it could be worse, but we needed it to be so much better.

[AUFAN78 3,780]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/an_apology_to_donald_trump.html

[AU64 10,122]

9 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/an_apology_to_donald_trump.html

Interesting...and more interesting are the complaints about Trump's lack of action in his first 100 days....which makes me wonder .  If we could look at an alternate universe what would HC's first 100 days be like?.   And would  any of the DT critics truly have expectations that she had initiated programs .....

" that will lift stagnating wages, revitalize struggling rural communities, cut health care costs, modernize the federal government, curb the opioid crisis, or strengthen American leadership in the face of a rising China and an aggressive Russia "

What is confusing is that Dems wanted 4 more years of the policies that brought all of those conditions about....and yet now they are downright livid because DT has not resolved them all in his first 3 months.   Apparently none of them saw the need to even identify these "problems" back when BO was president and HC was running for office...and now it's a crisis that these issues have not been solved immediately ?   

Just surprises me that all of these college educated HC voters don't seem to grasp the absurdity of their actions and arguments.

[homersapien 10,954]

13 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/an_apology_to_donald_trump.html

"It will take decades to reverse the ratchet to the left that weak Republicans have permitted for so long.  As one of the most important examples, the systematic brainwashing of students from kindergarten to college is a problem whose roots run all the way back to the Wilson administration, a century ago.  A nationwide school voucher program would help but is insufficient because many if not most parents are themselves victims of the pervasive ideological indoctrination and therefore do not realize how the schools are injuring their children."

 

[PUB78 1,235]

He needs to get more of his appointees in place so he can really make more progress in implementing his agenda.

However, it is great to have a President who loves and  believes in America again. Certainly didn't have this the previous 8 years.

[SaltyTiger 7,365]

Powerful man that President Trump. He has changed the climate. Brilliant man, 

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/peoples-climate-march-2017-21399

[homersapien 10,954]

13 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

Powerful man that President Trump. He has changed the climate. Brilliant man, 

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/peoples-climate-march-2017-21399

Idiotic post.

[SaltyTiger 7,365]

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

Idiotic post.

lot of idiots running around homie

[ArgoEagle 1,596]

13 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

Powerful man that President Trump. He has changed the climate. Brilliant man, 

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/peoples-climate-march-2017-21399

Did he say abara-cadabara or alakazam?

[SaltyTiger 7,365]

3 minutes ago, ArgoEagle said:

Did he say abara-cadabara or alakazam?

said something to change the landscape Argo. Short time period.brilliant man.

The climate action landscape has changed a lot since then, most notably by the election of President Trump.

[ArgoEagle 1,596]

2 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

said something to change the landscape Argo. Short time period.brilliant man.

The climate action landscape has changed a lot since then, most notably by the election of President Trump.

I know Salty. Just amused at how much credit the extremely over the top protestors are giving Trump. He is making changes in the right direction for sure, but he does not have God's power to change the climate. People need to get a grip. And when homer says you have made an idiotic post, you have actually made a brilliant one.

[homersapien 10,954]

14 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

lot of idiots running around homie

Yeah, but I'll be damned if I am going to join you.

[homersapien 10,954]

11 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

said something to change the landscape Argo. Short time period.brilliant man.

The climate action landscape has changed a lot since then, most notably by the election of President Trump.

Did you read that link Salty?

[homersapien 10,954]

6 minutes ago, ArgoEagle said:

I know Salty. Just amused at how much credit the extremely over the top protestors are giving Trump. He is making changes in the right direction for sure, but he does not have God's power to change the climate. People need to get a grip. And when homer says you have made an idiotic post, you have actually made a brilliant one.

Shouldn't you get back to work crawling out of that "financial hole" Obama threw you in?

[ArgoEagle 1,596]

8 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Shouldn't you get back to work crawling out of that "financial hole" Obama threw you in?

I'm at work goofball.

[homersapien 10,954]

16 minutes ago, ArgoEagle said:

I'm at work goofball.

You get paid for playing on an internet forum??!!

Can't be much.

Maybe you're problem is you need to find a job that pays you for something more productive.

[SaltyTiger 7,365]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

Did you read that link Salty?

[SaltyTiger 7,365]

45 minutes ago, homersapien said:

You get paid for playing on an internet forum??!!

Can't be much.

Maybe you're problem is you need to find a job that pays you for something more productive.

Argo is honest and fair. He works late if he has been playing on the net. 

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

15 hours ago, PUB78 said:

 it is great to have a President who loves and  believes in America again. Certainly didn't have this the previous 8 years.

Amen!!

[ArgoEagle 1,596]

25 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

Argo is honest and fair. He works late if he has been playing on the net. 

Is that a back door compliment or a jab. I can't tell Salty.

[homersapien 10,954]

7 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

I'll take that evasion as a "no".

[homersapien 10,954]

7 hours ago, Proud Tiger said:

Amen!!

Trump loves and believes in himself.   Period.

[SaltyTiger 7,365]

46 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Trump loves and believes in himself.   Period.

I understand sir.

[AUFAN78 3,780]

46 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Trump loves and believes in himself.   Period.

Are you sure you aren't reading too many bedtime stories from Huffpo? 

[homersapien 10,954]

14 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

Are you sure you aren't reading too many bedtime stories from Huffpo? 

Seriously, you really don't recognize Trump's narcissism?  It's rather obvious.