TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN WAS A TRIUMPH, BUT “GOVERNING BY CHAOS” ISN’T QUITE WORKING OUT

…Retired Lt. General Mike Flynn

 

Disorder is the order of the day at the Trump White House

 

As positive as Trump’s campaign was for gaining the White House, the campaign never ran very smooth.  Some of those Trump instincts that served Trump so well in the campaign, are now coming back to bite him in the butt.

 

Many of his moves, even in this short three weeks have been marked by poor judgement, screwed up executions, internal conflicts amongst his advisers and basic chaos and disorder all around.

 

Not exactly a recipe for writing a book on how to win an election and properly govern the nation.

 

The difficulties of governing for a former real estate CEO have quickly caught up with the same novice politician that was determined to shake up Washington as quickly as possible.

 

Oh yes, the new president does get credit for trying to keep his campaign promises, but his “government by chaos” is not the appropriate way to achieve success. The result so far is an administration that begins its second month seriously weakened and totally on the defensive. What Trump takes away from all this will determine the future of his chaotic presidency.

 

Many observers have stated that they thought the retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, as the national security adviser, would be the first to leave the administration.  But I would suggest that no one expected it to be before Trump had finished one full month as president.  Flynn has now set a new record for an early exit by a top official in a new administration.

 

And we must all be clear that the general was an early, hand-picked choice, made well before most of the cabinet selections.

 

Flynn was a fierce Trump loyalist, but with major baggage for all to see. However, Trump overlooked all that and he is now paying a big price for that choice. Flynn’s bad decision to lie to Vice President Pence about the nature of his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was the final straw that led to his downfall.  But there is much more to know about Flynn’s conversations with the Russians than just that.

 

Removing Flynn from the White House is only the tip of the connection to the Russians.  We now know that not only did the general have dinner with Vladimir Putin before joining the Trump campaign, we now know he was actually paid by the Russians to attend that dinner.  And there were many more that just one phone conversations with the Russians.  Just what did they discuss in those calls???

 

Questions about Flynn’s and possibly other Trump team members’ possible communications with the Russians during the campaign and transition, still remain unanswered. And the swift elevation of a new national security adviser won’t make any of this go away. The Russian issue will continue to dog Trump’s presidency until more answers are forthcoming.  Even though they don’t want to do it, the Congress is required to dig deeper into this issue.

 

We are just now learning that the Justice Department had a full transcript of the Flynn/Russian conversations.  That required them to warn the White House some weeks ago that Flynn had left himself susceptible to blackmail by the Russians.  Trump has known this for weeks, and now that The Post has reported this to the American public, it even more urgent for the president to explain what he and others knew and when.  (Yes, isn’t it starting to sound a lot like an old replay of the early days of the Watergate scandal?)  We all now need to know what orders the president might have conveyed to Flynn about the signals he wanted sent to Putin before he took the oath of office.  As I had said, today, total disorder is the “order of the day” at the Trump White House

Little by little, Trump is finding out that nothing is as easy as he thought it would be while he was on the campaign trail.  I said many times that Trump just doesn’t understand that the US president has a lot of power, but it comes in line, “equally with the other two branches of government”.  Trump has always talked like he was going to be a president like Vladimir Putin, a virtual dictator.  That's not possible in America.

 

Trump has now come to face the checks and balances as stated in the US Constitution, and he is feeling the difficulty of commanding such a huge bureaucracy of federal workers who value their roles as public servants.

 

He is also seeing that even back almost 300 years ago, the forefathers realized the power of the “free press”.  It is the reporter’s “job” to “dig and report and hold those in power and in control accountable!”

 

Trump is feeling the power and sting of leaks from inside his own house in the government, and there is nothing new about any of this. It has been true for all past presidents. But with his over-blown ego, Trump is learning the lesson more painfully than any president since Richard Nixon.

 

In a democratic government, Trump is learning that business moves slowly and is usually not to a president’s liking.

 

As examples, Trump had ordered a travel ban on refugees and on citizens from seven majority-Muslim nations.  But do to his inexperience, he had the wrong individuals hastily and poorly draft his executive order.  The order was not subjected to the kind of thorough review such measures require, and its implementation was poorly rolled-out. Challenged in court, Trump as a US president, not a CEO or dictator, he could not force the judiciary to bow down and bless the order without an independent review.  This is all new to such an inexperienced politician.

 

In Trumps initial proposal as a candidate, yes he can order the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border.  But its completion is many years down the road.  In addition, it’s at a price to taxpayers that has caused the cost-conscious congressional Republicans to back off supporting it. And let’s not even discuss how Trump will be able to make good on his promise of getting Mexico to pay for it.  Probably not going to happen.

 

It’s taken some time, but the Hill Republicans are now finding it hard to defend Trump amid all his group’s stumbles and falls , and he’s only been the US President for less than 4 weeks.

 

Trump also promised that he would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) called “Obamacare” in his first days in office, but that he would keep the “good parts”. His party has had years to come up with an alternative, but they never expected to win against Hillary and they still struggle to find a way to fulfill that promise. 

 

Trump promised the release of his new health-care plan, but he was lying and he didn’t have a plan to offer.  And nothing so far has been seen or heard of in that area. Republicans are already beginning to feel the  blowback from angry citizens worried about what a repeal of the ACA would mean for them.  Yes, the current ACA is too expensive, but it’s better than nothing for millions of Americans that never had health care.

 

Trump’s White House lacks any structure and is in total chaos. Who has any real influence? It obviously isn’t Vice President Pence or his Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, the Senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Counselor Kellyanne Conway seem to have the most influence.  But the Press secretary Sean Spicer and Policy Adviser Miller are a total disaster.  The reality is, no one seems to know who’s really in charge other than the man himself…? (And some say that’s the way he wants it!)

 

The country is divided over Trump’s presidency, but many Americans still say they consider him a strong and decisive leader.  Trump is the most unpopular president ever elected, but there are no signs that his support base is souring on his presidency.  That is the only valuable Trump asset amid all the turbulence. The Trump Nation is still standing behind him…so far. The same is true, at least on the surface, for Republican elected officials, although their tolerance for mistakes is very limited.

 

Will Trump and his senior team be able to absorb the effects of what they are going through in these first weeks of the presidency as those before him have been forced to do?

 

That is today’s gold plated, billion dollar question.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017