BY JOHN HARPER PUBLISHED ON MARCH 12, 2017
So-called President Donald J. Trump is in the spotlight an awful lot these days. He says a lot of strange things on twitter. His cabinet staffers constantly leak things to the “fake news.” For all the press and hubub, though, has Mr. Trump actually gotten anything done as president?
MSNBC Commentator Rachel Maddow definitively answered that question “NO” on Sunday, labeling him an abject disaster. Looking at Trump’s agenda items, it appears she’s right.
“If you just look at what they’ve done in terms of policy,” Maddow told Al Sharpton Sunday morning. “It’s interesting they haven’t been able to do anything successfully on any of the stuff they like to brag about, they like to talk about, that he campaigned on. [The] Muslim ban has been a disaster.”
Using much of the Trump lexicon to get across her point, Rachel Maddow drives home the reality that, as so-called president, Mr. Trump seems to have accomplished more on the golf course than in the White House.
Mr. Trump built his campaign on five major promises: build a wall on the Mexico border, stop companies from outsourcing jobs, repeal and replace Obamacare, spend trillions of dollars fixing the nation’s “failing” infrastructure, and subject Muslim immigrants to “extreme vetting.”
Watch her remarks here:
Mr. Trump has failed, to varying degrees, at all five. Let’s recap.
Build a wall, make Mexico pay for it
Not only have the Mexican people and their government totally stonewalled Trump’s braggadocios plan to finance the border wall, it appears a majority in the U.S. congress are gearing up to do the same. Last week, Democrats introduced legislation that would prevent federal funds from going into a border wall. It’s aimed directly at fiscal conservatives, and there’s widespread hope for bipartisan support.
Stop companies from outsourcing jobs
This was a failure right off the bat, as the company that manufactures Carrier heaters and air conditioners joined the so-called president in publicizing saved jobs, but in reality shipping nearly 1,000 of them to a factor in Mexico.
Trump’s empty threats to punish companies that outsource is belied by the fact that, A, he himself has used foreign labor to bolster his own companies, and B, he appointed a labor secretary known for outsourcing and killing jobs with robots. Well done.
Repeal and replace Obamacare
This initiative showed up dead-on-arrival last month, with a significant portion of Republican congressmen reluctant to touch the Affordable Care Act in any meaningful way. Democrats have succeeded, meanwhile, in stalling progress on revamping the bill. Trump has helped out by tweeting about fake news — from Florida. Enough said.
Voters themselves, faced with the prospect of losing health insurance and backsliding into the 2000s, also seem to be changing their position on Obamacare. Several recent polls show American voters liking Obamacare
more than ever before.
Spend trillions to fix the nation’s infrastructure
Trump wants to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure, including roads, highways, passenger railroads and airports. The problem is, Trump doesn’t seem to know where to find $1 trillion, per The Wall Street Journal. The conservative Journal wrote in an op-ed: “Donald Trump’s proposal for $1 trillion worth of new infrastructure construction relies entirely on private financing, which industry experts say is likely to fall far short of adequately funding improvements to roads, bridges and airports.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have proposed a legitimate trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. It is to-be-determined what Trump and/or congressional Republicans will do when presented legislation that actually works.
Ban Muslims and subject them to “extreme vetting”
Mr. Trump aimed high on this one- perhaps a bit too high. In all his machismo, Mr. Trump perhaps forgot that his actions, like the actions of anyone else in this country, are subject to court review.
It took less than a week for Mr. Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven Middle-Eastern countries to fall flat out of the sky. One Federal judge stayed the ban, and a panel of appeals judges refused to give the so-called president his Muslim ban back. Poor Donald.
Meanwhile…
While he’s getting nothing done, Mr. Trump seems to be losing cabinet members left and right to a growing investigation into Russian interference in his election as president. One of his highest-ranking appointees, former defense secretary Mike Flynn, was forced to step down amid inquiries into his contact with the Russian government and his status as a foreign agent.
At this rate, Mr. Trump does seem to be losing his presidency faster than he is making anything of it.
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