Q: What one thing do the following all have in common? Pardoning Douchenesh D’Souza, scrapping the Iran Deal, separating asylum and refugee seekers from their children at the border, reversing government sanctions to bail out ZTE, and imposing punitive trade tariffs on the EU, Canada, and Mexico?
A:Â They are all things that Trump could, and did do on his own.
Get used to it my friends, this is what you can expect until at least January 21st, 2021. It has been no secret that Trump was disappointed in the Presidency. First of all, he didn’t realize it was so damn much work, he thought it was all ceremonial signings, and basking in applause everywhere he went. Second, in trump’s feral mind, being the President was like owning the Trump organization writ large. Trump snapped his fingers, and everybody fell all over themselves getting it done. This is exactly why he campaigned on “running the government like he runs his company.” He had absolutely no concept of the legislative process.
Forgetting the simple fact that a con man is the easiest one to con, because he believes in the infallibility of his own bullshit, he set about conning congress. First, he signed a couple of vapid Executive Orders with his trusty sharpie, just to let everybody know who was in charge around here. Then, Trump ordered McConnell and Ryan to finally repeal Obamacare. This should have been a no brainer, since they had allegedly been planning it for seven freakin’ years! This didn’t turn out so well, with John McCain giving him an upside down thumb, as a substitute for a straight up middle finger.Then he told them to build the wall. BUZZZ! Try again. Then he told them to get the whole DACA mess settled, and even gave them a shove by promising to give away the candy store to Pelosi and Schumer. But John Kelly and Steven Miller drove that one off of the cliff before Ryan and McConnell even had a chance to try. Then, when congress finally got it’s shit together and did its job, they gave him a budget that made him look like a gawdam librul. “Who knew that this whole ‘governing’ thing could be such a big pain in the ass?”
Clearly, something had to give. Having the attention span of dandelion fluff, all of these details was giving Trump a migraine. And so, in a desperation last ditch effort to save his Presidency, as well as what tatters remain of his sanity, an emergency Presidential edict went out to the staff, “Find me something, anything, that I can fucking do!Â
Actually, there are oodles of things Presidents can do without having to submit to the vague whims of those pissant congressmen and Senators. But of course, being a complete puddlehead, Trump even struggles with that. He couldn’t even get a lousy Muslim travel ban done, even on a reboot, and Jeff Sessions is having trouble closing the deal on starving sanctuary cities of federal funding without running afoul of existing budgetary laws. Even some of his cabinet heads are having trouble, mainly because their policies are driven by corrupt ideology, and not sane administrative principles, which make them ripe plums for constitutional lawsuits.
What you are now seeing is the fruits of the desperate search for Trump to be able to actually occupy himself between the hours that Fox and Friends ends and Hannity comes whining onto the screen. It doesn’t really matter if it’s logical or not, practical or not, or even legal or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s pardoning The Apprentice dropouts, or mandating that all comfort stations in national parks have Trump branded gift shops in them. He’s doing something.
And you had better get used to it. Because this whole “governing by consensus” thingy just wasn’t working for him. It had the potential of making him look like a part of the solution instead of part of the problem, and besides, he couldn’t glom all of the credit for it. Being part of a “process” didn’t get his name up in lights.
Now this is what Trump always thought that being President was supposed to be like. Riling up his base, rewarding his supporters, and screwing with everybody else. Give an order, and everybody else makes it so. And it has the extra added bonus of being something he can keep right on doing even if the Democrats retake the House in November. “Oversight? Yeah, I got your oversight right here Pelosi!”
Welcome to the Trump Presidency. For the rest of this term, Trump will not be looking for things that need to be done, he’ll be looking exclusively for things that can be done. By him, and him alone. Trump is laying the groundwork for the next level of authoritarianism. You watch, before you know it, Trump will be thundering to his supporters that he has no choice but to step up and do these important things, because congress and the system are too broken to get them done. We are headed for a very dark place as a nation if we’re not careful.
