With colossal incompetence and a severe shortage of integrity.
That is how best to describe Donald Trump’s presidency in his first 23 days as the most powerful man in the world, a man who holds the trigger on some 4,500 nuclear warheads and $9 trillion worth of nuclear weapons. The real estate billionaire is the first president to be elected by the electoral college without having served in government. Trump has had no single day of experience as a public servant.
Just before Trump’s inaugural, his press secretary, Sean Spicer, told media that “business as usual is over,” that Trump’s war with media would continue. In his first press conference, Spicer smirked: “There’s been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable, and I’m here to tell you that it goes two ways. We’re going to hold the press accountable as well.”
Well, the world’s most influential and best media organizations were just too happy to oblige. The elite of US media led by The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time Warner CNN, monitored daily the Trump White House with laser focus not seen since the days of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. After 23 days, Trump has been found wanting as the kind of president Americans deserve and the world desires. After nearly a month, the betting is on how long the Trump presidency will last. Spicer assures, however, his boss will run for reelection in 2020.
Trump has divided the world. He quarreled with China. He imposed a ban on Muslims from seven Muslim countries but exempted Muslims from nations where he has had business interests. Unhappily, among the Muslim countries exempted from the ban were those which have a record of having harbored anti-American terrorists and terrorists who actually committed acts of terrorism against America – Saudi Arabia (15 of 18 9/11 bombers were Saudi citizens; Bin Laden was a son of a Saudi billionaire), Egypt, and Pakistan. A US Appeals Court has upheld a temporary restraining order on the Muslim ban.
The new American president decided to proceed with building a wall on the US border with Mexico, a wall that could easily cost $10 billion. Trump had the gall to say Mexico should pay for it. At the same time, he showed little liking for the NATO security alliance and told its members to beef up spending for their own self defense.
Chic retailer Nordstrom stopped selling the clothing, shoes and handbags carrying the name of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, claiming sales of her fashion brand were down. The President denounced Nordstrom from the White House, a serious violation of presidential ethics. Trump tweeted his daughter had been treated unfairly.
“With the world in turmoil, his three-week-old administration is consumed by a self-inflicted crisis, marked by a pattern of recurrent lying and incompetence, and perhaps worse,” concludes a stinging New York Times editorial on Feb. 14, 2017.
On Monday, Feb, 14 (Feb. 15 in Manila), the Washington Post disclosed that Michael Flynn, a retired marine general, had had discussions with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, during the campaign and after President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia on Dec. 29, for hacking the Democratic National Committee’s campaign computers, allegedly to benefit Trump in the election.
The Post said Flynn suggested that Moscow not respond in kind to the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats ordered by Obama—advice that Russian President Vladimir Putin heeded in declining to take retaliatory action.
Unfortunately, Kislyak’s communications had been monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation which apparently leaked the information. Under US law, it is a felony for a private citizen, who was Flynn before he became Trump’s national security adviser, to interfere in such US sanctions. To many observers, Flynn’s dalliance with the Russian ambassador was an act of treason.
Accordingly, the US Justice Department told the White House in January that Flynn had misled senior officials about a phone call with the Russian ambassador. Justice told the White House that, contrary to Flynn’s claims, he had discussed American sanctions against Russia with Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.
When the Flynn-Kislyak call discussing the sanctions was leaked on Jan. 12, Flynn denied it. Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer, also denied it on Jan. 13. Vice President Mike Pence similarly denied it on Jan. 15. On Jan. 23, three days after Trump’s inaugural, Spicer again denied it. However, the then-acting attorney general, Sally Yates, whom Trump later fired, revealed on Jan. 23 to Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, that indeed sanctions were discussed.
Flynn’s lying made him open to Russian blackmail.
On Feb. 14, said the New York Times, the White House admitted that Trump had been told on Jan. 26, about Flynn’s deception, even though the president told reporters on Friday, Feb. 10, that he was unaware of a news report to that effect.
Flynn, sneered that The Times, “a hothead and an ideologue, was not fit to be national security adviser in the first place. That Mr. Trump clung to such a compromised person in such a sensitive position is at best an abysmal failure of judgment. As late as Monday, Mr. Flynn was in security briefings and had access to the president.”
After Flynn resigned, Trump’s labor secretary-designate fastfood tycoon Andrew Puzder abruptly withdrew his nomination Feb. 15, after Senate Republicans refused to support him after discovery he belatedly paid taxes on his housekeeper whom he fired. Puzder, in any case, had showed tendencies to be anti-labor refusing benefits due workers.
AP said what troubled majority Republicans most of all was Puzder’s acknowledgment that he had not paid taxes on the housekeeper until after Trump nominated him to Labor post Dec. 9 — five years after he had fired the worker.
