USA 2025 (eBook)

PRESIDENT TRUMP 1.0

Donald J. Trump appeared to be surprised as anyone by his unexpected victory on November 8, 2016. The GOP won the “trifecta” and in 2017 would control the White House and both branches of Congress. In the House and Senate Republicans were eager to repeal Obamacare, reduce taxes on corporations, as well as on higher income individuals. Federal environmental, health, and safety regulations which they said harmed economic growth, could be ended, or at least curtailed.

Perhaps most importantly, control of the Senate and Presidency meant that Republicans would nominate and confirm conservative Supreme Court justices. The unfilled chair of the late Justice Antonin Scalia would be occupied by a new GOP justice, not a Democrat. Two of the four sitting Democratic appointees (Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer) were over 80 years old. Might one, or both, retire or expire?

Many Republicans who held Trump at arms-length during the campaign now warmly embraced him, seeking cabinet posts or other major appointments. Notably Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, interviewed for (although failed to get) the prestigious Secretary of State position.

The transition from the outgoing Obama administration to Trump’s new one proved challenging. Little transition planning was done by Trump, or his campaign staff before the election. Meeting with Barack Obama for first time, and in the White House, Donald Trump seemed genuinely awed by the responsibilities he would assume on January 20, 2017.

Trump had another handicap. Unlike his predecessors, Trump had never worked before in government. His knowledge of what a president legally could do, or not do, was limited. Trump had decades of experience running a privately held business (the Trump Organization) with family members and a tight-knit circle of personal loyalists. Becoming the CEO of the USA would be quite different.

Now as President Trump, he would have to contend with the US Constitution’s separation of powers. Congressmen and senators are elected by voters in their respective states. He could not compel any to vote one way or another. Supreme Justices are tenured for life and cannot be fired. However, the heads of some federal agencies (FBI Director for example) are appointed and dismissed at will by the president. Other appointees, like the Federal Reserve Board Governors, have fixed terms of office. Most higher-level appointees require the “advice and consent” of the Senate for confirmation.

But a President does have considerable independent discretionary powers:

• As the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, he or she can direct military action, which includes the use of nuclear weapons.
• Make treaties with foreign governments, but subject to Senate approval.
• Issue clemency, whereby someone convicted of a criminal act can be pardoned, or his or her prison sentence commuted.
• Issue “Executive Orders”, which had been by every past president in US history save one. The most famous was Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. But these orders are subject to review both by Congress and the courts. They can be overturned, but seldom are. In January 2022, there was an outlier, when President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine testing mandate for larger companies was vacated.
• Use “Emergency Powers” which are not explicitly granted in the Constitution. This power was first invoked by Lincoln in 1861 to suspend habeas corpus and to arrest prominent pro-Confederates in slave-holding border states under Union control. His action was overturned by Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision. But the President ignored him, and the rebel sympathizers stayed in jail. It was said that Taney commanded no troops, while Lincoln did. In 1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt began the internment of over 100,000 people of Japanese descent by using the same powers. His legal right to do so was upheld by the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump often issued executive orders, including ones imposing additional tariffs on the importation of foreign products. Mostly affected were products manufactured in China. Goods from other countries were impacted as well, including some from Europe, Canada, and Mexico. He also issued an executive order, upheld by the Supreme Court, barring travel to the US by citizens of five Muslim countries.

Critics derided Trump’s tariffs as a tax on the American consumer. They, not foreigners, would foot the bill when US importers passed along the tariffs by way of price increases. Tariffs, critics maintained, would be of little help in adding new American manufacturing jobs.

The order barring travel from those five Muslim countries was condemned as xenophobic and religiously prejudiced. If travelers from them were a terrorist threat, why wasn’t Saudi Arabia on the list? Fifteen of the nineteen of the “9-11” suicide bombers had been Saudi nationals. Over 100,000 Saudi students now studied in American colleges and universities, paid for by Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarch, King Salman. And how many of those were fanatical Wahhabis, like the “9-11” terrorists, just waiting for an opportunity to strike again at the great satanic infidel?

Ready or not, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as America’s 45th President on January 20, 2017. His inauguration day speech reiterated most of the 2016 campaign pledges: restoration of US jobs taken by foreign competitors, building back a decayed infrastructure, fighting Muslim terrorism and above all, always putting America first.

The mainstream media hated the speech. Trump’s assessment of “American carnage” seemed especially wrong. Wasn’t crime in the US going down, not up, as he suggested? Wasn’t Trump’s vision of the general condition of America far too negative? And what about all those references to God? Wasn’t Trump, never a regular church goer, just playing to his Evangelical Protestant voter base and not speaking to all Americans?

Trump claimed that his inauguration attracted the biggest in-person audience ever. Photographs comparing past inaugurations with Trump’s indicated this was a far-fetched assertion at best. The comment also launched a four-year long tracking of “lies, exaggerations or misstatements” made by Trump. Those included ones made on Trump’s Twitter account, now his favored means of mass communication. Media outlets in the US, Canada and many other countries kept daily lists of the mounting tally. Some said Trump couldn’t talk for two or three minutes without telling a lie.

Donald Trump never had a new President’s “honeymoon” polling boost. Except briefly around the Inauguration, more Americans disapproved of Trump than approved. After January 2017 his favorability ratings quickly dipped into the low 40s. They remained there, rarely budging, over the next four years.

Popularity might have been more important if the Republican legislative agenda needed the votes of Democrats in the House, or Senate to pass bills. But that seemed not to matter. GOP congressional leaders were principally focused on their version of tax reform called the “Tax Cuts and Job Act.” It passed and was signed into law on December 22, 2017. The greatest beneficiaries were large corporations, smaller “pass-through” companies (including those in the real estate and energy sectors), along with high-income taxpayers.

The GOP’s next move was the repeal of the 2010 Affordable Health Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). In 2009-10 Republicans claimed Obamacare would gravely disrupt the healthcare system. It was a budget buster, they said. Its huge cost might even destroy Medicare. During the 2016 campaign Trump promised, if elected, to enact a new healthcare plan which would replace Obamacare. The new plan would be both cheaper and better than his predecessor’s.

A GOP “repeal and replace” healthcare bill was narrowly passed by the House. Opponents argued there was nothing in the replace part that was better than Obamacare. All it would do, they said, was end federally subsidized health coverage for millions of Americans who could otherwise not get affordable insurance.

The Senate vote was on a knife-edge. Two Republican Senators, Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) had joined all Democrats in opposition. John McCain of Arizona, the Republicans’ 2008 presidential nominee and a Vietnam-era war hero, would cast the final, deciding vote. Senator McCain, ill with cancer, dramatically appeared at the well of the Senate. He raised an arm and pointed his thumb down. Obamacare was not repealed, at least not for now.

Trump had feuded with McCain for years. Trump suggested that being captured by the enemy, as John McCain had been after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam, shouldn’t make anyone special. Being a tortured P.O.W. for five and a half years didn’t count for all that much either. To show his disapproval of Trump, McCain did not attend the 2016 GOP convention. John McCain, who voted against Obamacare in 2010, now repaid Donald Trump in full.

In March 2017, FBI Director James Comey unexpectedly reappeared in the national political spotlight. Mr. Comey, it will be recalled, was a key actor at the end of the 2016 campaign. His announcement that the FBI was re-opening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, sparked an immediate dip in her poll numbers.

Many Democrats were bitter, asserting that Comey’s actions near the end of the campaign, had caused Clinton’s defeat. Most neutral observers felt...