The Slow Schooling of Trump (#162)

Donald Trump, now the U.S. President (yes it’s still hard to believe), is like the new student in school who improbably got elected as the President of the class by a bunch of fellow students who thought that it would be fun to elect a mad disruptor because they were tired of staid steady progress, and wanted to blow things up to bring in real speedy change. The impetus towards a radically different (goonish) type of leadership that would blow-up convention was helped by some outlandish promises made during the campaign by then Candidate Trump, which now as President, he is having great difficulty in keeping, regardless of his insistence he is keeping them, and his less than successful efforts in bringing these promises to actual fruition.  

In spite of revelations (tapes) showing him in his most shallow and crass self, enough Americans voted for him, helped by the Electoral College system, Russia, WikiLeaks, and FBI Head James Comey, to make him President of the United States, in spite of a record loss in popular votes, and a record low in popularity numbers for an incoming President. His supporters were willing to overlook his obvious and perhaps dangerous flaws in character to allow him the chance to ‘shake things up’ in Washington for their benefit. With their aspirations bordering on the naive, they blew things up alright, because the U.S. and the World have not been the same since Donald Trump became President.  

The changes being triggered by the Trump administration are not due to some form of brilliance or extraordinary competence coming to power and transforming the World, but more from the kind of change that only a class disruptor can bring, with goonish delight, to bring about destruction of existing order, to assuage his sense of inferiority and deep sense of insecurity. No person with a normal self image needs to so constantly stroke his or her own ego, with ever present pronouncements of self congratulations for every action, proposed or actual.

On becoming the President, Trump, along with his little gang of inciters, bullies, disruptors and haters, gleefully set about over-turning everything the previous President had so carefully done, precisely because the other guy was intelligent, a bit nerdy, classy, universally popular, and a do-gooder; exactly the kind of ‘perfect’ guy all the trouble makers in school love to hate.

With Obama having inherited from day one, the biggest economic and foreign policy disasters in recent American history, and having wrestled them under control to a more manageable degree, to general global appreciation and applause (and a Noble Prize to boot), Donald Trump’s fragile ego couldn’t handle the perceived comparison and threat, resulting in an obsessive and consistent belligerence towards Obama, which brought to our mind the refrain from the iconic Nina Simone song ‘Put a Spell on You’ – ‘Because all Glory MUST be mine!’ (Paraphrased of course).

No President has felt so impelled to constantly attack and insult the previous President as Donald Trump has in attacking President Obama. The malevolence in his statements towards Obama speaks of a seriously insecure personality, feeling inadequate.  

With nothing much in mind but to get elected and feel additionally important, Trump became President not because of developed political or social ideology (many Republicans still don’t consider him a ‘real conservative’, and he used to be a Democrat, but ran as a Republican, considering the field of Republican Nominees as much weaker than the Democrat Nominees, and therefore his chances better), but as the ultimate ego and ‘Trump brand’ boost, being an insufferable narcissist, purely commercial, and generally dishonest, and certainly no friend of the common-man, in spite of his many declarations to the cause of the ‘American People’. His business record speaks to a checkered past to say the least.

Donald Trump chose to run for the Presidency because for his love and obsession of self-aggrandizement, constant effort to build his namesake trade mark, and not for public service, and certainly not for the love of country, and it shows in his many policy initiatives and appointments.

As Donald Trump has demonstrated throughout the campaign and his Presidency so far, he will say what his radical alt-Right, mostly Republican voter base wants to hear, but will do what suits him and his cronies best. When pushed back, he folds like a paper doll as with: the China and Taiwan “One China Policy”; the obsolete NATO; the Japan - South Korea - North Korea - Nukes for everyone policy; the breaking-up of the EU; the Mexico paying for the Wall; the claims of massive voter fraud; the unstable National Security Advisor Flynn; the ‘Muslim Ban’; and the contacts with Russia, etc., etc. In all of these stated ‘strong’ positions he has been forced to give serious ground. The failures and step-backs in the first 40 days have been inordinate in number, and stunning in frequency.  

These serious foreign and national policy failures and stumbles are indicative of the fact he was not ready, and more importantly, showed that temperamentally he wasn’t fit to be President of the United States. His Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; his Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; and his Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, have all been forced to contradict Trump’s policy statements publicly, abroad, in international press meetings (which has been extraordinary in-itself). His Vice President Mike Pence, in Europe recently, has had to recant his boss’s statements about the obsolescence of NATO and the EU, to mollify their disturbed and concerned leaders. No President in recent history has had his senior most administration officials contradict him so openly just to keep international relations stable.  

The fact that he managed to become the President, probably stunned him as much as anybody else, because he certainly was not prepared for the role, and every day he proves it. But as a normal troublemaker would do, who finds himself out of his depth, Trump reverted to bravado, nonsensical statements and positions, personal attacks, and outright lies, to bluff his way through the most important job in the World. Unfortunately, as is predictable in such circumstances, he stumbled repeatedly out of the gate, creating costly tensions with allies and enemies, enacting actions and policies that immediately ran into legal roadblocks, and public and opposition push-backs for being ill conceived.

His only hastily taken military decision for a ‘commando’ raid into Yemen, resulted in a Navy Seal death, a military aircraft lost, and numerous Yemeni civilian deaths, especially women and children, and an investigation. Trump has disavowed responsibility for the raid, even though by all accounts he and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, made the decision over dinner. But after it turned into a disaster, he, as is the character of all shallow men, blamed everyone but himself, from the previous administration (Obama of course being his favourite invective target), to his Generals, to the ‘Fake Press’, and anyone else he could pin it on, except himself, the supposed ‘Commander-in-Chief’, at whose desk the buck is supposed to stop, ultimately.

Upon getting into the Oval Office, Trump and the gang thought they could do whatever the heck they wanted to, and started with electing other no-good-doers, and by issuing self important edicts banning others they didn’t like. That’s when they found out, they couldn’t have it all their own way, as there were forces still present that were powerful enough to stop them dead in their tracks.  

The dramatically announced and even more dramatically rolled-out, the alt-Right, Republican inspired, much touted during the campaign Trump favourite - a ‘Muslim Ban’ being a case-in-point.

Well he and his gang rolled out the ‘Muslim Ban’ alright, even inserting a protective ‘Christian clause’ to further please the fundamentalist Christian support base (largely hypocritical, whatever happened to Christ’s admonishment ‘Love thy enemy – do good to those that hate you…etc.’) and underscore the ‘Muslim’ aspect of it, in case someone didn’t get it how much they really disliked Muslims, and upon doing such a brilliant thing, they ran straight into a brick wall of shocking and unanticipated public backlash - total chaos emanating from shocking ill preparedness - as well as the un-amused forces that are more powerful than them, the ‘Law of the Land’ as administered by the courts of the country.

The Law not only stopped them dead in their tracks but sent them grumbling back to the drawing board, with Trump threatening: ‘See you in Court’ - to the Courts.  

Lesson #1, don’t do anything half-cocked, it will blow-up in your face. Painful and embarrassing! This Lesson was slowly, painfully and very reluctantly learned.  

In trying to keep the other big promise, Trump and the Republicans had guaranteed upon being elected, that they would immediately ‘Repeal and Replace ObamaCare’. Well they promised what they could not conceivably deliver on, because they seemed to forget that once you ‘Repeal’ you have to ‘Replace’; and they had nothing ready to replace ObamaCare with; underscoring the obvious, it is so easy to criticize others but so hard to do it yourself.

So the ‘Repeal and Replace’ had become a series of comical delays as Trump’s team and the Republicans scrambled to come up with something, anything, to try and fulfill their asinine promise to immediately ‘Repeal and Replace ObamaCare’, a promise made without any homework done at all, and it showed.  

In the meantime, in ‘Town Halls’ across the Nation the public let the Republicans know of their extreme displeasure at the sloppiness of the whole ‘Immigration and Refugee Ban’ construct and roll-out, and the ‘Repeal and Replace ObamaCare’ fiasco.

Trump, in trying to buy more time, came up with the most embarrassing excuse, stating that Healthcare is very complicated: “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated”. He said this without the slightest notion as to the ridiculousness of that statement, or how foolish it made him seem. Everybody, but him, was aware of how complicated healthcare issues were, and for him to state no one knew, just confirmed the truth that this man was a cut below every other previous President in his unsuitability for the job.

The Republican ‘Leadership’, under severe pressure to deliver, has put forward a ‘TrumpCare Plan’. That Plan has derisively been called ‘ObamaCare Lite’ or ‘ObamaCare 2.0’, and has immediately run into fierce opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike. The President has embraced it calling it “wonderful”, without having read it, one can bet, because it got trashed unanimously by almost everyone.

The ‘TrumpCare Plan’ is considered un-passable in the current form, and will draw a long hard battle between the Republican Leadership that drafted it, and the rest of the Republican lawmakers and the Democrats who oppose it. Again such ill-preparedness underscores the fact that Trump and the Republicans are good at attacking Obama and the Democrats but are completely and absurdly incapable of delivering meaningful and plaudit worthy results themselves, even though they have had years to prepare. Trying desperately to out-shine the previous valedictorian Obama, Trump and the Republicans, so far, have just highlighted their clumsy incompetence and foolishness. That became Lesson #2. There is no way to bluff and BS your way through serious and complicated policy issues without having done some real homework.  

And then there were all the lies about the contacts with the Russian officials.  

Everyone’s suspicions were raised when candidate Trump kept praising and admiring the leadership qualities of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S. President Barack Obama of course, throughout the campaign. And, when asked about the reason for the veneration of a person America considers a competitor, at the very least and an enemy at best, Trump was vague and unconvincing in his answers.  

Sensing that there may be more to it than Trump was letting on, the free American press went to work and started digging up lists of Trump’s campaign team members who had allegedly been meeting with Russian officials during and after the campaign, multiple times.

Upon being questioned, Trump denied the allegations that he himself, or his team members had met Russian Officials, and in fact denied any contacts. Those untruthful denials led to the resignation of Trump’s handpicked National Security Advisor, former General, Mike Flynn, and also got his newly appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions into hot water for having lied under oath, not recalling that he had personally met with the Russian Ambassador, twice.  

‘Russia-Gate’ has grown into a major problem for Trump as it has spawned a number of investigations into the role Russia may have played in the 2016 Election, and Russia’s ties, if any, with Trump and his Team. In order to deflect the growing attention to Russia’s ties with him and his team members, Trump levelled serious charge against his predecessor President Obama for having wiretapped him during the election. That charge in itself has triggered another investigation into the Trump’s affairs by the Congress, which may uncover other interesting abnormalities in this most abnormal President’s behaviour.  

Having difficulties in pushing through quickly and effectively almost all his prominent promises – the Mexico Wall and its Mexico payment; the quick ‘Repeal and Replace ObamaCare’ guarantee; the Immigration and Refugee ‘Muslim Ban’; the comprehensive ‘Tax Reform’; Trump has had to be satisfied with rolling back protective legislation on environment, banking, financial industry practices, women and gender, LGBT rights, and a host of other regulations designed to protect the ordinary people from damage from unethical practices.  

Since his ‘bull in a china shop’ entrance into U.S. politics, and his subsequent, albeit improbable Presidential victory, Trump has tried to bulldoze his way to radical change to the American political, economic and social landscape. With scant consideration for protocol, tradition, truthfulness and compromise, Trump thought he and his team could bully everyone into cowering acceptance. But immediately the system has pushed back, and on all major promises halted Trump and his team in their tracks, and sent them back to the drawing board, forcing retractions and modifications.

School is open and Trump is having to repeatedly step back and pay closer attention, to merely pass.