TRUMP WANTS TO BE UNPREDICTABLE: HE IS!

…Trump saying he loves the Dreamers

 

What does the president really want? Nobody knows!

 

As many of you are aware, I am a big fan of the Washington Post’s editorial pundit, Dana Milbank.

 

Milbank has a tremendous knack for using his humor and his knowledge of Washington politics for offering well-structured information in a manner that is fun to read as well as being highly informative.

 

Unfortunately, in covering the current president, even though Dana continues to offer his info in a humorous manner, what he offers can be both ridiculous and frightening at the same time.

 

The reason for this is that it is becoming more and more evident that having Donald J. Trump as the person with his hands on the nuclear codes, that is not a reassuring situation.

 

Even those in the president’s party are continually shaking their heads about what the president is thinking at any given point.

 

For example, the House Speaker Paul Ryan could not have been more clear after he and the Senate Leader McConnell met with the president and the Democratic leadership at the White House.

After meeting on this, the first day back from their long summer break, Ryan declared at a news conference that the Democrats’ call for a three-month extension of the government’s borrowing limit was totally “ridiculous.”  “That’s ridiculous and disgraceful, that they want to play politics with the debt ceiling at this moment,” Ryan repeated. He also called it “unworkable,” and said it would jeopardize hurricane response and he called out Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer by name, for promoting what “I don’t think is a good idea.”

 

Then, about an hour later, Ryan and the other GOP leaders had to sit in the White House with President Trump, who told them that he wanted . . . a three-month increase of the debt ceiling, just as Democrats had proposed.  In fact, the president had called the Democratic leadership by their first names, “Nancy & Chuck”, when he didn’t even mention one name of his own party’s leadership that was in the same room. 

 

 

And it was the GOP leadership that was pushing for a long-term decision.  As it is now, because the President went with the Dems, the GOP members will now have to go at it again in another tough vote in early December.  This is all while the GOP has such a long list of issues that they want to get done before the 2018 mid-terms.

Such chaos and confusion at the highest level of American government hadn’t been seen since, well as Dana so properly put it…..just the day before.

 

Yes, it was just the day before, the administration had announced that it was ending protection from deportation for the 800,000 “Dreamers”.  These are the young immigrants who know no other country but America as their home.  As usual, it appeared that these were more signs that Trump had no idea what he was doing.

 

“As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would then change his mind,” This was what Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis of the New York Times reported, but they had cited an anonymous source from the White House.

 

Also as usual, the president later fired off a tweet that revised his position as he called on Congress to “legalize” the Dreamers program as he vowed to “revisit the issue” if Congress can’t get it done.

 

Even Trump’s close advisers seem to have little knowledge of, much less control over, what he says and does.

 

There are so many issues where Trump has signaled actions that make anyone that follows politics to just walk away shaking their head.  He has signaled that he wants to end a free-trade deal with South Korea, even though his national security adviser, his defense secretary and the director of the National Economic Council all totally object.

He and Defense Secretary James Mattis have contradicted each other about whether they should try to  talk with North Korea.

 

Chief of Staff John Kelly has attempted to tone down Trump and has reportedly led Trump to escalate his attacks, but the attacks are on CoS Kelly!  Trump has publicly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions and repeatedly contradicted Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

 

Daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have let it leak out that Trump ignored their advice on Charlottesville and a number of other matters.

 

It has gotten so bad, that Mr. Milbank has made up the following One Act Scene that might not be too far from the truth, being that Donald Trump is the US President:

 

SCENE LOCATION: The White House Situation Room:

 

The president: Why don’t we bomb Guam so the North Koreans can’t?

 

The secretary of state: That’s part of our country, sir.

 

The secretary of defense: We have thousands of troops there.

 

The national security adviser: And 150,000 innocent civilians.

 

The chief of staff: It would be a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.

 

Ivanka Trump: Please don’t do this, Dad.

 

Jared Kushner: [Total Silence.]

 

The president: Then it’s settled. We begin bombing in five minutes. Let’s hit Hawaii, too. But not my hotel in Waikiki.

 

The reality is that with Trump kicking the Dreamer issue down the road to the Congress, this has put an unusual burden on this particular Congress, which is totally unequipped to deal with it.

 

A perfect example was shown when the "piece-of-work" of a GOP representative from Iowa, the morning after Trump’s announcement about killing DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Rep. Steve King, the immigration hard-liner, he angrily opposed legislative action for the dreamers.  He said that the “Dreamers can go back to living in the shadows” as he demanded that “GOP leaders not divide our conference over an amnesty act.”

 

But only minutes later, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), took the opposite view, threatening to use a “discharge petition” along with the Democrats to force a vote on protecting the Dreamers if the House doesn’t act.

That shows you just how screwed up this US Congress is today.

 

To finish it all up, Ryan then put the responsibility right back on Trump for the DACA legislation. “We will not be advancing legislation that does not have the support of President Trump, because we’re going to work with the president on how to do this legislation,” Ryan stated. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) then urged Trump to take the lead.

 

But what the hell does Trump actually support?

 

“We love the dreamers. . . . We think the dreamers are terrific,” Trump said last week.  Then four days later he put all the Dreamer in jeopardy of deportation.

 

“I have a great heart for the folks we are talking about, a great love for them,” Trump said on the same day his administration announced the end of protection for the Dreamers.

 

So, what does the president really want?

 

As usual, nobody knows: not his advisers, not his fellow Republicans in Congress, and if you ask me, even Trump doesn’t know………………?

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017