Donald Trump‘s presidency has hit the 100 day mark, and as a milestone in failure, it’s hard to beat. Even though Republicans now control Congress and the White House, Trump has little to show legislatively for his honeymoon period. If anything, most of energy has gone into tweets that manage at once to grab attention and underscore how loony he is.
It’s easy to comfort yourself with the idea that Trump is a just a bloviating incompetent, in large part because it’s true. Because Trump has shifted the goal posts for normalcy so down the field and out of the stadium altogether, we’re relieved that he seems so inept at the job.
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That’s okay as far as it goes. But it falls into the trap of keeping the focus on Trump. And when you shift your gaze to the people who are actually running government agency, there’s far more reason to be worried. In fact, if you took Trump out of the equation, there’s very little about the Trump Administration that a President Ted Cruz would have done differently.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Start with Jeff Sessions. Thirty years ago, Sessions was deemed too racist to be a federal judge. Now he oversees all of the nation’s laws. Sessions is doing his best to erode LGBTQ protections. There are high-profile acts, like withdrawing the government from the suit challenging North Carolina’s bathroom law or rescinding protections for gay students.
There are plenty of other examples from other parts of Trump’s administration. For one thing, he’s given a whole bunch of homophobes, like Rick Perry and Ben Carson, power to impose their stamp on government agencies. There are also the appointments of lower-level folks, like James Renne, who led a purge of gay employees in the George H.W. Bush administration.
Many of the biggest battle are still to come. The religious right has not relinquished its hope of enshrining a religious liberty exemption in law, and Republicans in Congress are pushing Trump to carve out a right to discriminate. Trump punted on this once before, but in selecting Neil Gorsuch, Trump chose a Supreme Court nominee who can do the job for him.
Trump has a feeble grasp at best on policy. He can’t bother his pretty orange head about the details of governing. But he’s surrounded himself with plenty of people who are more than willing to use the levers of power to implement their world view. No wonder the religious right is celebrating.
So as we cross the 100-day barrier, don’t look at what Trump has failed to do. Keep an eye on his henchmen who are carrying out their own right-wing agenda. In their quiet way, they’re achieving the kind of change that the commander-in-chief is finding so elusive.
President Cruz would have been proud.
1EqualityUSA
Animus, fine examples of animus. Keep your eyes on Russia.
Kangol
100 days of incompetence and failure, except for installing Gorsuch on the court. Comey and the FBI are steadily closing the net on Trump’s alleged coordination with Russia, so it’s not looking good for him and his incompetent gang. The best part of all of it, though, is that everything he and the GOP projected onto Hillary Clinton–lying, corruption, etc.–is coming back to bite them in the *ss, because Trump does all of it times 1,000!
1EqualityUSA
I see “going nuclear” is a huge failure for the GOP. Their reputations are toast.
natekerchel
One thing is for sure – we are not fed up with winning yet! His one big victory, the SC nominee – was only achieved by changing the rules – which otherwise would have been another defeat for trump – – and destroying any chance of compromise on other important issues. That is the trump hallmark – if you dont like the existing rules or law just change it to suit your agenda, regardless of the consequences. There are two other big achievements though – he leads the most incompetent and corrupt ‘administration’ for a century.
mhoffman953
Hang on a second. You’ve complained for months about the electoral college not being fair and the rules needing to be changed because “whoever gets the most votes should win”. Regarding the selection of a Supreme Court justice, they changed the rules in regards to SCOTUS nominees, so that if the SCOTUS nominee gets the most votes then he is the new justice yet you’re still complaining. You need to be more consistent in your arguments.
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natekerchel
mhoffman – there is a difference between using a democratic system designed to elect a leader of a nation and deliberately altering the rules to favor your candidate as happened here. There is nothing inconsistent in my points. One person one vote democracy does not favor any one candidate – it is a neutral position. The problem with the SC nomination was that the rules were only altered to allow that man in – a situation that should never have existed in the first place because Obamas nominee should have been voted on first. Therefore, this nomination was undemocratic right from the start. They then changed the rules to get him in. You also cant have it both ways – if you accept that a majority candidate should be elected hen how do you defend trump and the popular vote? In every democratic country one person one vote is recognised as the basis for democracy. We have a 250 year old system that is no longer fit for purpose and is anti-democratic. If you present the usual misleading claim about the small States not having a fair ‘weighted’ vote then you introduce a system of proportional representation to ensure that every vote has the same value. There is no argument you can use against PR that will stand up to the reality test. Trump lost the vote – pure and simple and he would still have lost using PR. Only using an outdated biased undemocratic system was he able to get into the White House. So mhoffman – which is it it be – majority vote or not? You cant have both ways.
jckfmsincty
The entire trump administration is dangerously corrupt and incompetent.