Every
day the circus that is the Trump transition provides us with more news of its
ineptness, corruption and loose relationship with the truth. In fact, in the
wake of his victory, a new phrase has become popular – the “post truth” era.
After Obama won eight years ago, hopeful social critics and op ed writers
claimed a “post racial” era, just as a few claimed a “post irony” era after
9/11. The latter two were, of course, greatly exaggerated, but the newest “post”
seems a lot more realistic.
Since my
last post, there has been too much chaos and poor decision-making to catalog in
anything less than a novella, but I’ll try to hit some of the low lights here.
Before doing so, it is worth noting the general tenor of the transition so far.
While much of the mainstream media continues to normalize the burgeoning Trump
era, MSNBC and a few other outlets have tried to temper any temperance with the
reality that the President Elect seems intent on living up to our worst fears
about his having the levers of power at his disposal. The themes that have
emerged so far include a corporate takeover of the government at the Cabinet
level, a diverse array of conflicts of interest that border on the level of a
banana republic old CIA operatives might have covertly propped up, no coherent
economic of foreign affairs policy beyond serving Trump’s interests, lying as a
daily occurrence and hiring right wing ideologues and, pretty ironically, many
of those generals he excoriated throughout his campaign.
For those interested, my analysis of the election itself is
available here (a three-part
series).
1. The Bush
Administration Starting to Look Milquetoast in Retrospect: Right from the onset, with the hiring of Steve Bannon,
Trump announced that there was a place for white supremacists and the far edges
of right wing conspiracy theorists in his White House, but he hasn’t stopped
there. Next we got Michael Flynn for national security advisor, a fervent
anti-Muslim who has been connected with some of the most wacky right-wing
conspiracies, including the Sandy Hook truthers, through his son (Politico).
Of course, he looks downright pleasant in comparison to the racist,
anti-immigrant, anti-disability-rights Jeff Sessions, who was once turned down
for a judgeship by his own party, for his racist behavior (Salon).
We also
get the constant crazy of Ben Carson to deal with in HUD (Think
Progress). And these are but four examples of an administration that will
be packed with white men who seem to have little regard for anyone but other
white men (though only the wealthy variety), separation of merch and state, and
anything that gets in the way of their radical right-wing agenda. The Bush
Administration gave a huge windfall to the wealthy, deregulated industry and
markets, added two radically pro-business Supreme Court justices who gifted us Citizens United, got us involved in a
costly and unnecessary war, actually made the world less safe in the process
and, for fun, almost destroyed the global economy. But they look like a rather
sane, if iniquitous bunch, compared to this gang of right-wing, conspiracy
theory selling corporatist thugs.
2. Fear of Corporate White
House Intensify: There is plenty of crazy in this
administration, but there are also a number of choices that, while saner,
appear to be intent on serving the interests of corporations rather than the
people. This starts with Trump’s choice for the Department of Health and Human
Services, Tom Price, a strident opponent of Obamacare who wants to transform
Medicaid to block grants for the states Enacting these two reforms would be a
boon to the insurance and medical industries, but substantially less so for
consumers (USA
Today).
On the environmental
front, the new head of the EPA Scott Pruitt is a global warming doubter who
might as well be a paid lobbyist for the Oil and Gas industry (NYT).
The right-wing education policy plans of billionaire Betsy DeVos should be a
boon to business interests in education as well as anyone who think the poor
and minorities should be kept ignorant and fleeced (NEA).
And most recently, a Labor Secretary (Carl’s Jr. CEO Andrew Puzzler) who doesn’t
believe in the minimum wage, overtime rules, gender equality, common decency, unions
or, really, anything that might actually help labor in America (Common
Dreams). There are plenty of other examples here as well, but these few
serve to indicate that Trump has little interest in keeping the campaign
promises he made to get the white working class vote. Instead, he will be
paying back the corporate interests that helped underwrite his run to the White
House, as he has already with many of his cabinet choices (big donors to his
campaign themselves).
3. Conflicts of Interest, Schmonklicts of Interest: Donald Trump is the most dangerous of powerful figures – an
arrogant narcissist who is also ignorant. By ignorant, I don’t mean stupid or
even incurious, I mean that Trump’s arrogance is so pronounced that he simply
assumes whatever he believes is inherently correct. This unwillingness to even
hold his ideas up to the smallest scintilla of scrutiny means he believes he
knows more about ISIS than generals, more about the economy than Nobel Winning
economists, more about foreign policy than people who have spent decades
working in that complex field, more about climate change than Nobel Winning
scientists and more about governance than those who have, you know, ANY
experience within the political realm. A fascinating character study of Trump
appeared in the New Yorker in June, with the ghost writer of his bestselling
biography The Art of the Deal warning
that Trump was an egomaniac who believe truth was an inconvenient fact to be
avoided whenever possible, who cared for little else but power and money, who
had a fragile but relentless need for attention and positive reinforcement and
how dramatically exaggerated his own abilities and successes. He was portrayed
as a bully and sociopath who said or did whatever was necessary to serve his
own interests and seemed to have no interest in improving the life of anyone
but himself (TNY).
Much of
this is of little surprise to those who have been terrified by the prospect of
a Trump presidency from the beginning. But most assumed, rather naively it
appears, that the one campaign promise Trump would keep would be to extricate
himself from his business interests while in the Oval Office. That has turned
out to be the farthest thing from the truth, as Trump is now purportedly even
backing out of his post-election promise to create his rather shady “blind
trust” with his own family. Now he might openly keep his business interests,
claiming he can govern and run his vast empire at the same time (NYT).
As I mentioned last week, there is already all sort of conflicts of interest
that have emerged from real estate deals in Turkey, Scotland, Argentina and now
Taiwan to Ivanka Trump’s Japanese business ventures that made major inroads a
week after she sat in on a meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister. There are
also stories emerging every day of groups using the Trump Hotel in Washington
DC or elsewhere for huge events that funnel money directly into the Donald’s
pockets while arguably getting a seat at the table as latter decisions are made
(the very definition of pay to play). Finally, as if the endless array of
business interest that could affect both domestic and foreign policy aren’t
enough, Trump is apparently going to serve as the executive producer of a new
Celebrity Apprentice that is coming out early next year with Arnold Schwarzenegger
as the host. One just can’t make this stuff up …
4. Post-truth World by the Numbers: I will write a separate post on the culmination of a four-decade
assault on truth and science, but it is worth exploring the most recent polls
that exemplify the level of “truth” immunity that Trump supporters appear to
adhere to. In a PPP poll that will be released tomorrow morning, we learned
some startling facts about Trump voters. Overall, Obama has a favorability
level of 50% (to 45% unfavorable rating), but among Trump voters it stands at
5/90%. Under Obama, the Dow has risen from 7,946 to 19,615 and unemployment has
fallen from 7.8 to 4.6 percent. Most Americans know this, but not Trump voters.
Among them, 39 percent say the Dow has dropped under Obama and 67 percent
believe unemployment has risen. On top of this, 40 percent of Trump voters
believe he won the popular vote, 60 percent believe millions voted illegally,
73 percent believe George Soros is paying protestors against Trump and an
astounding 53 percent somehow believe California’s votes should not count in
the popular vote count.
Beyond
Trump voters, of course, the country is far less sanguine. Another poll for Pew
Research center found only 26 percent seeing Trump as a “good role model,” 31
percent “moral,” 37 percent “well qualified,” 62 percent say he has “poor
judgment” and 65 percent think he is “reckless.”
It is
worth considering, as you read these numbers, that those Trump voters do not
make up anywhere near half the country, but half of the half of eligible voters.
It was actually around 62.8 million voters who cast their choice for Donald J. Trump,
compared with 65.4 million for Clinton, which is approximately 26 percent of
eligible voters (versus the 28 percent or so for Clinton). This is not the
consensus that Trump is now pretending he has, nor is it reflective of the
demographics of the country at large. Yes, Trump won the election fair and
square, but he won it by a tight margin in a few swing states, largely along
the lines of race (whites), location (rural, suburbs and exurbs) and education
(the less educated, in general).
5. Recklessness and Fecklessness: Many hoped that Trump would soften the harsh rhetoric that
defined his long campaign for the presidency. And after the meeting with Obama
there was a sense that he might. Yeah, that hope is now all but gone. We have
the twitter fights with the Saturday Night Live crew, the Hamilton cast, the
CEO of Boeing (whose stock dipped rather precipitously before rebounding) and a
whole host of others. We have the petulance with which he has claimed he
actually won the popular vote, a fact that many of his supporters now blindly believe.
We have the absence of any news conferences as our new President, I mean
emperor, refuses to deign to actually speak to the media who he believes
wronged him. And we have him apparently tricked into taking a call from Taiwan
that could have easily started a global crisis (though it probably was good for
Trump Taiwan!). Trump is a vindictive, vain, a**hole who appears unwilling or
unable to actually act presidential and now stands a mere month and a half from
ascending to the most powerful position in the world. The potential for him to
do irreversible damage to the country and world is a very real threat and one
that many will be hoping he somehow avoids as they prepare for the worst. Many
of those people appear to be in his own transition team, sounding the alarm
bells at a particularly high pitch (NY
Magazine). The emperor truly is without clothes, but what does that mean
for the rest of us …
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