Here's your update on some of the stuff in the
last two and a half weeks in DC...
Remember
when Trump said he would probably be the first president to ever make
money off being president? That wasn't a simple musing, it was a
promise and one of the ways he is doing it is by being granted
trademarks for his businesses by foreign governments, trademarks they
kept declining before he was elected.
As
another example, over $500K of campaign funds for Trump's 2020
campaign has already gone into his pocket.
The generals, given leave to do whatever they want by Trump, have just dropped one of the biggest bombs there is, 22,000 pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, short of going nuclear, a bomb that is not designed to penetrate hardened targets like bunkers or cave complexes, on ISIS in Afghanistan and killed 92 ISIS militants. Trump just spent $16 million to kill 92 militants.
In another act of incompetence, Trump announced a warship was heading for the Korean peninsula Easter weekend with orders to act aggressively towards N. Korea when, in fact, it was headed in the opposite direction to participate in war games with Australia, sparking fears of an imminent outbreak of hostilities with both sides putting nuclear bombs on the table.
Mar A Lago, Trump's weekend getaway, had 13 health violations right before the Japanese Prime Minister was to visit.
Trump signed a bill that would allow states to withhold federal funding from health care organizations that provide abortions, including PP where only 3% of it's services are abortion, even though it is already against the law to use federal funds for abortions thereby decreasing funding for health services to women who don't want an abortion, reversing yet another of Obama's protections for the population at large.
Trump's White House refuses to make the visitor logs public.
House Republicans voted once again to keep Trump's taxes secret.
The Republican Congress passed a bill to allow a person's private browser history to be sold to whoever is interested in buying it.
While Trump undoes all the progress Obama and the US made towards renewable energy, thereby reducing carbon pollution in the atmosphere, by rescinding all the regulations and enticements put in place to slow global warming, China and other countries are taking the lead.
Trump crashed a Purple Heart award ceremony, “when I heard about this I wanted to do it myself”, and then told the man who just lost his leg “congratulations, tremendous”.
Trump appointee AG Jeff Sessions doesn't think a federal judge in Hawaii should have the right to stop Trump from doing something unconstitutional.
Trump has offered the Democrats a deal...support funding for his border wall and he won't cut payments to the ACA thereby holding hostage the health insurance for millions of low income Americans.
On another day, Trump threatens to refuse to sign a stop gap spending bill and shut down the government if it doesn't include funding for his wall with plans to blame it on the Democrats while Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, accuses the Democrats of 'stunning' obstructionism in a Congress in which Republicans have a majority in both houses.
The state department and US embassies are promoting Trump's Mar A Lago resort. See the first entry on this list. (They have since removed the article from their websites.)
Republican legislators would, in another hypocritical move through their new replacement health care bill, exempt themselves and their aides from losing the very popular protections the ACA provides while they are giving the states the right to rescind these protections for their constituents.
In an attempt to open national lands to drilling, mining, and logging, Trump signed an EO requiring the Interior Department to review the designation of two national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, opening the door to reviewing all our national lands.
Trump admits he doesn't read the EOs he signs, admits he doesn't really read, finds it boring, has instructed his staff to present information in charts and graphs, pictures, instead of words, and no longer than a page or two and is basically functionally illiterate.
Trump responds with insults and applied a 20% tariff on soft wood imports from Canada, once again damaging our relationship with an ally and causing American consumers to have to pay more for building materials, in response to Canada's recent lowering of their prices on dairy ingredients to make them more competitive with American dairy imports.
Trump had his lawyers file a motion that it is illegal for the American people to protest him at his rallies citing his 1st amendment right to free speech and trampling everyone else's right to free speech in the process in response to the civil suit brought by the victims of the violence he incited at one of his rallies.
Trump once again exhorts companies and consumers to 'buy American and hire American' while he and daughter Ivanka continue to have their merchandise made overseas in sweatshops and Trump companies continue to import workers from outside the US so they can pay them less.
In another act of hypocrisy, Trump constantly criticized the Clinton Foundation for accepting money from foreign governments while HRC was Secretary of State but has no problem with daughter Ivanka's foundation accepting money from governments while Ivanka holds her position in the US government whatever the hell that is.
As more and more evidence piles up via various investigations supporting the allegations concerning the Trump campaign's, and Trump's, collusion with Russia prior to the election and certain political figures' ties to Russia including but not limited to money laundering, digital espionage, payments, political promises, and blackmail, the Republican controlled congress continues to refuse to appoint an independent investigation while they drag their feet on the congressional investigation.
As usual, everything Trump does is to benefit himself and other millionaires and billionaires and his tax plan goes a long way to making them richer. Us peons? Not so much.
Remember when Trump, during his campaign and earlier, condemned President Obama for his Executive Orders and that he wouldn't need to rely on EOs to get things done, that he was going to basically do away with them? Yeah, that. He will have signed 32 EOs in his first 100 days according to WH aides, more than any president in 74 years, along with 24 memorandums and 20 proclamations.
Because the 9th Circuit Court judges continue to strike down Trump's unconstitutional decrees and EOs, Trump wants to break up the 9th Circuit.
Trump, on his 98th day in office, admits in an interview with Reuters that 'I thought it would be easier' and hands out maps with the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map with the areas he won marked in red still finding it necessary to remind himself and everyone else that he won the election.
In line with Trump's promise to be the 'jobs president', Secretary of State Tillerson plans to cut 2,300 state department jobs because who needs diplomacy when you can just drop a nuclear bomb on them.