This is the the fifteenth article in The Events series.
Today I'm making a slight name change. The series will now be
called: The Presidential Events. The reason for the name change is I
plan to continue the series if a Democrat is elected in 2020.
I'm always trying to better explain my
reasoning for writing The Presidential Events.
Do I hope:
To show Trump supporters he didn't do
what they hoped he would do?
To show his supporters his cruelty?
As a record to show critics of future
presidents how much worse it was?
Or to collect records of Presidential
behavior to establish a baseline? (Boy did I choose the wrong one to
start with!)
All this and more.
Let's begin. Readers can find the The
Presidential Events here.
Immigration
The President maintained his strict
anti-immigration policies throughout the month of August. As of late
August, the White
House still hadn't built a single new mile of border wall.
But the President allegedly told
aides he would pardon them if they broke laws
to speed up construction of the wall. For immigrants already inside
the country an ICE
sting arrested 680 workers in Mississippi. The
President has a history
of employing undocumented immigrants, and watch
the former head of ICE, and current Acting Customs and Border
Protection Commissioner dissemble
when asked why the President's properties haven't been raided.
The President often, and untruthfully,
claims he supports legal immigration. Watch Last
Week Tonight, then consider some of the policy
decisions in the month of August. Seeking
asylum at the border became much more difficult
and the administration plans to deny
green cards to legal immigrants who use Medicaid, food stamps, or
other public assistance. When questioned
whether this policy conflicted with the famous Emma Lazarus Poem (The
New Colossus), Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of Citizenship and
Immigration Services, said the poem referred
to “people coming from Europe,” and then
amended its famous line to read, “Give me your tired and you poor
who can stand on their own two feet. Read
it yourself and see if Ken interpreted it
correctly.
Meanwhile, the White House wants to
detain
migrant families indefinitely, conduct
DNA testing on immigrants, and again attempt to
end
birthright citizenship. In over 2,000
Facebook ads, the President warned of an immigrant invasion,
language copied by the shooter
in El Paso who targeted immigrants. Another
man in Maryland, who
threatened to kill Hispanics in Florida, also
used the same vocabulary.
Environment
The Trump White House continued to roll
back environmental protections in their dedication to deregulation.
The
EPA reversed an Obama regulation to prevent toxic ash from spreading
due to flooding. Trump wanted to open
Alaska's Tongass National Forest to logging and mining,
while simultaneously saying Brazil
should reject aid to protect the Amazon rainforest.
The President also crusaded to increase pollution by relaxing
vehicle emission standards. And in spite of
the great success of the Endangered Species Act, and that the Earth
is facing a sixth mass extinction caused by humanity,
the White House wants to weaken
protections under the ESA. It's not that the
Republican administration is standing aside as the world heats up,
but that they are pouring fuel on hot coals.
Foreign Policy
With global warming, and an
international refugee crisis causing instability worldwide, the
Administration decided to withdraw assistance and aid. The United
States, formerly a bastion for refugees, continued to slash
acceptances, and considered
a 4.3 billion cut in foreign aid. With real
democracy threatened in Hong Kong, the President
took a hands off approach, afraid of angering
Xi and losing his unrealized China deal. In Venezuela, the
President, who supported a failed coup, froze
all government assets in the United States.
With regards to North Korea, the
President, who last year threatened them repeatedly with death and
destruction, can't utter a single criticism, even though they
launched six missiles, including a super
missile, in the space of a month. Kim Jong-un declared there would
be no
further talks until the United States cancels its joint exercises
with South Korea. The President seems to think
that is a reasonable demand.
The United States added a
ten percent tariff added to three hundred billion dollars
worth of imports from China. China retaliated by adding
tariffs to seventy-five billion dollars of
imports from the United States. The President
responded by increasing tariffs by five percent on five hundred and
fifty billion dollars of Chinese imports. The
White House took
a small step in easing tensions, but fulfilled
a campaign promise by labeling China a currency manipulator.
The trade war seems unbreakable, with China
vowing to fight “until the end.” Only two
days later, the President claimed
that China asked for new talks. But Beijing
denied the claim, and with this President's reputation for the truth,
¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Mueller's focus on his hearing about
the Report was to repeatedly remind American's about the danger of
election interference by Russia. The
President still doesn't' care. But he is
holding
up aid for the Ukrainian military to defend against Russian
aggression. Probably just coincidence (or
maybe something just as insidious).
Near the end of this article there is a
whole category of crazy, insane stuff the President did, but this one
is related to foreign policy. You can tell the series of events is
brainless, because I thought it was so stupid at the beginning I
didn't even log the original event that started it, when the
President offered (demanded?) to purchase Greenland from Denmark.
No, the first time I recorded an event was three days later when the
President
canceled his trip to Denmark because the Prime Minister of Denmark
said Greenland wasn't for sale. He
canceled his entire state visit! For good
measure, he deployed his favorite word to describe women who stand up
to him, calling
PM Mette Frederiksen “nasty”. The cycle
of the President's insane actions with an eventual meltdown wouldn't
be complete without some Republican officials defending him. Tom
Cotton wrote a whole NYT op-ed to explain how the President was a
visionary.
Economy
Back at home, the
deficit approached one trillion dollars a year,
thanks to the
Republican Tax Cut and the new
budget. While not being worried at all about
the state of the economy, the President is terrified about the state
of the economy, because he knows his hope of reelection reduces to
zero if a recession begins. Or maybe he wants to hand out as many
tax cuts to his wealth friends before he leaves office. Either way,
he kept floating
a payroll tax cut, or a reduction
in capital gains taxes, before backing
down. He didn't back down from criticizing the
Fed though. Fortunately Powell seems to have figured out his game.
The President won't try to oust the Federal Reserve Chair. Instead
he screams like a broken record: weaken
the dollar, cut
interest rates, and offer insults.
One would think the economy was in free fall by how often he
complains about its condition.
Other deregulations included allowing
employers
to discriminate against LGBTQ employees,
allowing government contractors
to ignore religious bias regulations, and
allowing
employers to deny unemployment to employees who failed drug tests.
And Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos made it more difficult for students to cancel
debt incurred by fraudulent colleges.
Tax Returns,
Corruption, Impeachment, Conspiracy
Finally we enter the section devoted to
the President's personal behaviors, issues, and problems. Though
Democrats have not asked for them, the President
sued New York over its new law which allows Congress to request the
state tax returns of any person. The President
also sued the State of California
over its new law that requires any one registering for the
presidential primary to turn over five years of tax returns.
And Deutsche
Bank confirmed that it has some of the President's tax returns,
which the courts and Congressional Democrats are trying to access.
On a similar topic, the President
continued to flaunt his corruption. The
Trump Organization was subpoenaed by Manhattan prosecutors over hush
money payments. Attorney General William Barr
reserved space for a holiday
party at his boss's Trump International Hotel for thirty thousand
dollars. And at this years G-7, the President
expressed interest at holding the next one at his hotel, the Doral in
Florida.
The House Judiciary Committee continued
to hold hearings on the President's behavior. Though Nancy Pelosi
has hamstrung any attempt to proceed with impeachment, Nadler
opened formal impeachment proceedings in his
committee. He also sued
Don McGahn who has refused to testify,
subpoenaed
Corey Lewandowski, and questioned whether Hope
Hicks lied to the committee in her June testimony regarding her
knowledge of hush money payments.
Then there were the conspiracies. The
President's, not mine. Infamous financier, Jeffery Epstein, arrested
in July, was found dead in his cell from an apparent suicide in
August. A cruel criminal justice system along with an underfunded
and overworked staff are the most likely culprits. The Department
of Justice is investigation how a suicidal prisoner
could be left alone so long. The President immediately tried to turn
this event to his advantage, retweeting
a prominent right wing Twitter conspiracy theorist,
Terrence K. Williams. Williams accused the Clintons of murdering
Epstein. When Trump was asked why he would retweet something so
stupid, the President defended himself by saying, “He's
a big Trump fan … he's a man who has half a million followers.”
Hate and Madness
This category includes lies, hate, mind
blowing decisions, mental decay, and ineptitude.
The least disturbing event was the
President's
rally in Cincinnati, only because we've already
seen this behavior before. In fact, this rally seemed calmer when
compared to some of his more recent events. But still, he lied about
homicide rates, comparing Baltimore to the most violent regions of
the globe. And he lied about the poverty and homeless in the state
of California.
He retweeted
a prominent UK xenophobe and praised
a New Hampshire Republican who had called for Hillary Clinton to be
shot by firing squad.
The
President also taunted Iran, tweeting a photo of a failed Iranian
rocket launch. Harmless fun? But experts say
the photo was probably classified, and that the President may have
revealed US intelligence capabilities to the world, for the childish
purpose of mocking an enemy.
The next story inspires awe, humor, and
terror. Reporters claimed
the President asked multiple times whether he could disrupt
hurricanes with nuclear bombs. Administration
officials defended the president by saying, “His objective is not
bad,” and “I love a president … who's willing to ask tough
questions.” A day later the President denied he had ever asked
the question!
Speaking of bombs, Cesar
Sayoc, Trump supporter and pipe bomber was sentenced to 20 years in
prison for threatening Biden, Booke, Brennan,
Clapper, Clinton, CNN, De Niro, Harris, Holder, Obama, Soros, Steyer,
and Walters with improvised explosive devices. Sayoc's defense
lawyer blamed the President's hateful ideas, conspiracy theories, and
rhetoric.
Did you know the religious
right is defending the President by claiming he is a modern day King
Cyrus? In August he embraced the idea fully,
claiming, he
was the King of Israel. He perpetuated a
Jewish stereotype, saying Jewish
Americans who vote Democratic are disloyal to their nation of Israel.
But the worst of his actions related to policy, instead of personal
instability. Two Democratic congresswomen who the President despises
were scheduled to visit Israel. The Israeli Foreign Minister had
already approved their visit, but the President wouldn't stand for
it. He
publicly and privately pressured Prime Minister Netanyahu to rescind
the approval. The President asked a foreign
nation to ban United State's Representatives from entering, because
they were in the opposition party. And Netanyahu agreed.
Challengers
The policies and behaviors above have
encouraged a tiny minority of Republicans to challenge the President.
One of the very smart people that the President hired, and who holds
the record for shortest time as the White House Director of
Communications, Anthony
Scaramucci, said the Republican party needs a new nominee for
2020. And a second challenger entered the race. Joe Walsh, a Tea
Partier, and former Republican
Representative, who has engaged in behavior just as inflammatory as
the President, declared his candidacy.
Imagine trading one racist blowhard for
another!
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