Trump’s Lawlessness & Failures Mount - Daily (#281)

The very public past life of Trump proved a number of things about the man: his obsession with public fame achieved through cringe-worthy and relentless self-promotion; his amoral ease with wrongdoing in personal and professional life; his need to lie blatantly, consistently and compulsively; his appalling hypocrisy in religious, political and patriotic idealism; and his complete disregard for the American Constitution, the rule-of-law, and the dignity of the Presidential Office.

In short, Trump was a man of very few principles and fewer traits that would endear him to any persons of average moral standing, let alone those of great strength of character; except of course to the Republican Party to whom he is the promised Messiah that will help them destroy the ‘America of the people’, and help them make it a land of phony religious fanaticism and greed driven moral hypocrisy.

A Republican America - where the value of life is more precious before birth than after birth, where guns are more precious than American lives, where the desire for racial purity now borders on the Far-Right-Fascism of pre-WWII Europe, and where the wealthy are owed all privileges, but the ordinary people are for simple exploitation in the soulless, relentless pursuit of ever greater wealth and profit.

In other words, a self-proclaimed Christian Country where Christ’s teachings are gutted to leave out the deep empathy and compassion for the downtrodden and those in need, for the pursuit of wealth as a lifelong goal, in spite of: ‘It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle’ Math. 19:24; and ‘Lay not up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, … Ye cannot serve God and mammon’ Math: 6:19-24.

In the quest to turn America into the land of the heartless, money pursuing 10%, like the countries of old from which every American originally came, the Republicans found the right man in Trump – a man with a personality and soul unencumbered by a conscience; a flawed man with no sense of right or wrong; a man with no empathy for the ordinary working stiff (which he regularly stiffed in his past life); and now as President, he did it with a tax cut primarily for the wealthy, the gutting of health care, and the gutting of regulations that were put in place to specifically protect the average consumer; a man with no moral compass.

Trump’s recent confession that he would collude with foreign governments to get ‘dirt’ on his political opponents twisted the Republicans into pretzels trying to explain what he really meant (considering how much he and his team were open to Russian help in the last election there were no convoluted explanations needed).

Trump meant exactly what he said - and it does not stop there:

He has, since being elected, repeatedly denigrated ALL American intelligence agencies in favour of the words of foreign dictators, who are adversaries of America.

He has repeatedly obstructed justice, to the point he really should be impeached, but as the Senate is controlled by the Republicans (his ‘enablers’ in crime), he won’t be. And, his daily blatant lying, and flaunting of the law, is simply stunning for a President of the United States. Yet, the Republican lawmakers turn a blind eye.

And now, he obstructs the recommendation of the Independent Office of Special Council (OSC), a US government watchdog agency that recommended that Senior White House Advisor, KellyAnne Conway, be fired because of ‘repeated’ violations of the ‘Hatch Act’, a 1939 law prohibiting executive branch employees from engaging in some forms of political activities, a recommendation he will ignore.

Many of the admonishments and actual charges of wrongful acts of Trump and his administration, come from the senior most officials that are, or were Republicans, like Robert Mueller and James Comey; or from Republican officials specifically appointed by Trump himself who refused to do his bidding. Trump and his administration’s actions were so blatantly wrong that even as Republicans they had no choice but to ignore them, condemn them, or recommend corrective action such as a firing of KellyAnne Conway, as in this case.

The recommendation that KellyAnne Conway be fired came with an explicit warning, that not taking action of firing her would ‘endanger the rule-of-law’ in the country. But to Trump and his enablers that is par-for-the-course. Just another day of flaunting and breaking the law.

In light of the clear and consistent breaking of the law by Trump and his administration, one wonders why the Republicans are willing to sell their souls to the devil in order to achieve their less than savory hypocritical agendas - of dysfunctional and exploitive healthcare; of ‘no abortions’ except when the Republican mistresses need them; of tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich; of unfair incarceration and shootings of black Americans; of deregulations that leave the consumers unprotected from the predatory practices of business; of deregulation that assists and protects big banks and corporations; of deregulation that destroys the environment, pollutes the water and air for ordinary people etc.

Is it for his tremendous self-proclaimed historic achievements? Let’s take a look:

For a President and an administration that constantly insists it is the one that has accomplished the most ‘in history’, and is the winningest of all times, we are hard pressed to find the amazing accomplishments that are fueling such hubris.

The legacy economy handed to Trump is being damaged by trade and tariff wars that are weakening the economy, and are not winning America any friends or ‘greatness-making’ concessions from any of the countries targeted so far.

In fact, the arbitrary trade and tariff wars are creating resentment among allies, and stiffening of resolve among adversaries such as China, to defy Trump’s heavy-handedness by their own countermeasures.

Trump’s arbitrary breaking of trade and other agreements has cost America its credibility in the international arena, and built distrust for all future agreements.

Internally, America is ripped apart on a whole host of issues, from healthcare, education, guns, abortions, minimum wages, gerrymandering and vote stacking, to foreign government interference in elections, to debt and taxes and the widening wealth gap. These ideological differences have created opposing camps filled with intense distrust of the other side, ramping up to fervent hatred as the next election approaches. To most of the Americans, and most of the World, Trump seldom does anything right, and to the Republican all his wrongs are mere misunderstandings.

Yet for Trump, consistently infected with the virus of self-promotion, delusions of grandeur, and permanent detachment from reality, his has been the greatest of all Presidency in American history, just littered with milestones of achievements and missions accomplished - mostly unacknowledged by the ‘fake media’, and the opposition, wherever it may come from, including the rare ‘woke’ Republican.

So, let’s briefly run down the list of the main campaign promises that endear him to his steadfast supporters, and those that believed his bold declarations.

Let’s start with, his ‘big beautiful Wall, that Mexico was going to pay for. Well, neither did the Wall get built nor did Mexico ever agree to pay for it. Keeping in mind the nine months or so that he and the Republicans controlled all three branches of government, he neither got the money from the Republicans nor from the Democrats (when they took majority in Congress in the mid-term elections).

Similarly, in spite of all tools at hand, neither he nor the controlling Republicans were able to scrap ‘ObamaCare’, nor did they ever produce even a rudimentary ‘Plan’ to revamp the existing healthcare, and replace it with something far better that would ‘cover everyone at a far cheaper cost’, as he had often proclaimed.

He did not bring back the ‘coal industry’ or the coal jobs either. But he and his administration did destroy a lot of the potential ‘renewable energy’ jobs with their neanderthal approach which focused on the development of fuels of the past.

In the main, in spite of all his boasts about bringing jobs back by the millions, American industry has been more hurt than helped by his shortsighted policies that not only made it more difficult for American companies to do business internationally, but by slapping on arbitrary tariffs on imports, he disrupted supply chains and made costly parts that the businesses depended on for their onshore manufacturing. For the American consumers his tariffs became additional taxes.

An economy that was emergency-rescued by Obama, and carefully nursed back to health over his two terms, and handed to Trump on a silver platter, has been steadily damaged by Trump to the point that there are definitive signs of a recession approaching, which will be confirmed soon by the need for the Federal Reserve to once again start lowering interest rates, as the economy loses strength.

With his assault on the ‘North American Free Trade Agreement’ (NAFTA), between the US, Canada & Mexico, that had created more wealth and stability than perhaps any other modern era trade agreement, all Trump did was disrupt the greatest trading block in the World, for paltry changes that could have been easily negotiated through regular channels between the three trading partners.

Instead his need for political posturing (which would make him look good to his lightly informed base), he created unnecessary angst and distrust among the strongest and largest of America’s trading partners and allies.

His trade war on China, quite justified by the years of unfair practices employed by China to seriously tilt the playing field in its favor, was initiated unilaterally and without the collective united front of all the Western allies, giving China the ability to defy America in its splendid isolation. And while Trump got the publicity he craved for, taking on China single-handedly, he was also unable to cow China and make it yield. China now promises to fight America ‘to the end’ in any trade war.

We could go on, like North Korea not moving an inch on its denuclearization in spite of Trump’s embarrassing fawning flattery and teenager like expressions of affection and love for one of the most brutal dictators in the World; or the fabled ‘deal of the century’ Middle East Peace Plan courtesy of his son-in-law that never was; or the much proclaimed defeat and death of ISIS which was also not quite accurate; or the re-industrialization of America with the return of jobs from the developing countries which never really happened; or we could highlight the gutting of the American farmers with his tariff wars; or the deep distrust of every major country that did business with or made an alliance or agreement with the US in the past, but are wary of trusting America, or …. on and on it can go.

But what’s the point. America is getting buried in Trump’s mountainous falsehoods, endless failures masquerading as successes, and tyrannical lawlessness. The Republicans deserve Trump, but no one else does.