Category Archives: US Presidency

Amidst the turmoil, Trump can count major successes

From Dan Balz in the Washington Post today, this assessment of the credit side of President Trump's ledger makes for encouraging reading if you're a conservative, and should give you pause for thought if you're a liberal who thought that Trump's bizarre, maverick style might spell his doom:

"That’s not to say the president hasn’t had successes or made progress in changing the course of policy in the aftermath of the administration of President Barack Obama. He signed a huge tax cut. The economy is in good shape, unemployment is at a low level, and the stock market, despite some recent downs and ups, is well above what it was when he came into office.

He has changed the enforcement of immigration laws, as he promised during the campaign. He has softened or reduced regulations on businesses. He has facilitated a conservative shift in the makeup of the federal judiciary. He has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement and sought to shift U.S. trade policy away from the free-trade consensus of past administrations.

President Trump attends a bipartisan meeting Wednesday with members of Congress to discuss gun control and school and community safety in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Those changes cannot be underestimated, and to the degree that he has been stymied or unsuccessful elsewhere, many of his supporters blame the Democrats, congressional Republicans or the federal bureaucracy, a.k.a. the deep state. The core of his support remains intact, and he is the most popular person in his party by a mile."

Amidst the turmoil, Trump can count major successes

Firing Comey won’t hurt Trump

President Trump's sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, just after a former fired Justice Dept official, Sally Yates, had been giving damning evidence to Congress, is an extraordinary event. But not unprecedented in style.

Trump has fired Comey while Comey is overseeing an investigation into Trump's links with Russia. Back in 1973, Republican president Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox while Cox was investigating Nixon's links to the Watergate break-in. Reports have not been slow to raise the links, and Democrats on the Hill have quickly referred to the Comey firing as "Nixonian".

Nixon's actions led to his eventual impeachment. But enemies of Mr. Trump shouldn't be too keen to expect significant retaliatory action against him. Here's why.

1. Nixon's actions came after a slow-burning revelation of the internal paranoia of his presidency through initially unregarded reports in the Washington Post. By the time Cox was fired, the Nixon White House was already in a state of siege.

2. Nixon faced a Democrat controlled House and Senate ready to use their significant constitutional power to investigate him.

3. Trump faces a House and Senate controlled by virtually supine Republican leaders utterly in thrall to his presidency. Ryan, McConnell, Nunes, Grassley and others have all shown their willingness to roll over in front of Trump if it furthers their judicial or economic agenda.

4. Trump still retains a strong support from his voting core. This won't budge. He has already faced down public protest over a range of other unorthodox or unethical moves in his frist 100 days; this is simply one more.

5. The presidency was still regarded as having to work by understood ethical and political standards under Nixon. He breached those, and thus began his downfall.

6. There has never been an understanding that Trump will use the presidency in a dignified or ethical way. Media and political opposition have failed to shift this narrative, due to Trump's continuing hard-line support from his activists and an extraordinary abdication by Republicans of any thought that they will offer independent scrutiny of the president.

7. Popular pressure is all, but it has to be seen to be large and widespread. After Nixon's firing telegrams and messages poured into Congress and the White House from concerned citizens. It suggested a general shift in the public mood away from the president. Trump can remain secure in the knowledge that the base which put him into office still would so again. Millions of opponents in Calfifornia or New York will have no impact on him.

8. The Democrats have colluded in undermining Comey, notably Hillary Clinton herself. She has consistently blamed him for her own election defeat and been supported in this view by supporters such as Chuck Schumer. This makes any opposition they now express to Comey's firing extremely suspect. They should have kept quiet and understood the need to coalesce around an independnet minded Director who was, after all, appointed by a Democratic president.

No-one can tell how this latest abuse of presidential power will run. Trump is still at the beginning of his presidency, he enjoys support where it matters, and neither the media nor Democrats have yet found a way of seriously challenging him. They may still not have managed to do so in four years' time.

Is Trump treading Reagan’s path?

Republicans consistently rave about Ronald Reagan as one of the twentieth century's greatest presidents. There is more than a little yearning for Reagan in their attitudes to Donald Trump. Trump himself is an admirer of the 40th president and sees himself treading the same path.

And Trump may well be right. I was struck, when reading William Leuchtenburg's chapter on Reagan in his "The American President", just how much there was a similarity between them. Forget the traditional smiling picture of Reagan, and consider this:

"If the casual observer thinks that Trump’s presidency is headed for the rocks, then reflect for a moment on the actuality of Reagan’s presidency. His swingeing budget cuts condemned millions to poverty and wretchedness, cutting off millions more from any realistic chance of health care. His tax cuts benefitted primarily the very wealthy. He sought to weaken the Voting Rights Act and became the first president to veto a civil rights act; in both his elections he received the smallest share of African American votes ever given to a presidential candidate. He appointed an anti-environmentalist to the Environmental Protection Agency who proceeded to halve the EPA’s budget, urged drastic weakening of the Clean Air Act and refused to enforce most of the congressional regulations on the environment. Her name, incidentally, was Anne Gorsuch, and her son became President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee.

In foreign affairs, Reagan actively connived with a hostile power (Iran), selling them arms in a trade that his administration banned as aiding terror when undertaken by other countries. He went to great lengths to deceive Congress on this, and when he could evade responsibility no longer he threw those of his aides who had done his bidding under the proverbial bus, sacking them without a backward glance. His consistent defence was that he couldn’t remember authorising such sales. He also supported some of the most brutal and dictatorial leaders in the world, including the murderous presidents of El Salvador and Guatemala. Early in his presidency he sent several marine divisions to Lebanon against the advice of his military chief. Over 260 marines were eventually killed, mainly in suicide attacks, before Reagan recalled them, having gained nothing.

For all the mishaps, for all his political ignorance and his utter disdain for the poor, working class victims of his domestic policies, Reagan is somehow remembered as a great president."

There are some extraordinary parallels between Trump and Reagan, even down to the reason why so many people voted for them. The above extract is part of my longer article on Reagan as Trump's curtain-raiser, and even when writing it I felt increasingly pessimistic about the chances of anyone really dislodging Trump before his time is up.

The full piece is here.

The certifiable lunacy of the Trump White House

Has the White House had a certifiable lunatic as its resident in previous years? Here we are in the second day of the Trump presidency and the most important thing on the mind of the most powerful individual in the world is how big his crowds were at the inauguration.

As he addressed his intelligence community - or part of it - you might have thought he could have come up with slightly more pressing topics of consideration for his speech. But nope. Crowd numbers and the mendacity of the press were his highlights.

We know Trump cares about his ratings. During his bizarre transitional period he found time to lambast Arnold Schwarzenegger for his low ratings as the new host of the "Apprentice". He even gave himself a nickname. "Ratings Machine DJT". So this stuff is important.

The two picture above have had wide circulation. The top one shows the crowd for Barack Obama's first inauguration in 2009. The second shows the crowd for Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017. There is a bit of a difference. Even a casual observer can see that. Whatever the numbers were in 2009, they were considerably lower by the looks of it the other day.

This would normally be a matter of inconsequential comment before moving on. But partly because Trump bigs himself up so much, the photos received wide publicity across various media. Cue the statesmanlike White House response.

Not only does Trump major on this to the intelligence officers, but his new press secretary, Sean Spicer, indulges himself in an extraordinary rant at the media in his first press conference. Both Trump and Spicer show-cased their infrequent relationship with the truth. Trump could apparently see that there were around 2 million people in the crowds from his perch at the podium. Spicer ranted first that there were no official numbers available and then, without batting an eyelid, announced that this had been the largest inauguration crowd ever. Period. So there. He also misrepresented a comparison of DC metro numbers, claiming that there were over 500,000 journeys on Friday compared to a mere 3000,000 on the day of Barack Obama's second inauguration. Washington Metro actually reported 193,000 metro rides just after 11am on Friday, compared to 513,000 on Obama's first inaugural. The figures for Friday seemed to be the lowest of any inuagural travel since 2005.

Spicer- surely the most comic figure to ever stand in that press room - then had to go further. When Trump addressed the intelligence officers, so the press were told, there over 500 people there, and over 1,000 had applied to be present. The officers were ecstatic in their joy at having Trump as their new president. They love him and he's got their back.

The problem is I'm not actually sure they were lying. There is a serious danger that they actually believed their own nonsense. Trump is delusional enough to convince himself that he can accurately assess 2 million people standing in front of him. The raging Spicer could not even maintain a basic consistency for two sentences.

Pathological liars or delusional maniacs. Either way, the lunacy in the White House became more palpably certifiable just two days in to the administration.

The New York Times report of the press conference is here. The opening part of the press conference from old loony-bag Spicer is below.

Slate fact-checked the lies in Spicer's statement - 4 in 5 minutes.