The Circus Comes to Town

 

The first two weeks of the Trump Presidency

Being President is hard. That’s probably a huge understatement, but on Jan 19th you’re just a guy, then on Jan 20th you’re the leader of the free world. The press scrutinizes your every action hoping to glean what it means for the next 4 years. Not only are you new on the job, but everyone in your administration is also new. So, it’s not really surprising that nearly all new administrations stumble a few times out of the gate. Bill Clinton’s Presidency famously got off to a rocky start. A scandal involving his Attorney General nominee, Clinton’s wildly unpopular decision to appoint his wife to manage healthcare reform, the travel-gate scandal and a series of other gaffs by Clinton and his staff had even supporters questioning the new President. Yet he was able to turn it around and have a generally successful Presidency.

In that light, this time four years ago maybe we could be forgiven for thinking the circus that was the first two weeks of the Trump Presidency were the growing pains of a new administration. That surely, as his staff became more experienced, they would learn the ins and outs of the Presidency. Of course, now we know that was the highlight of his administration’s long descent into lawlessness and corruption. However, now a little over two weeks into the Biden administration and with four years separating us from those early days of the Trump presidency, I think it’s worth going back to write history’s first draft of those days from January 2017.

The first and most memorable craziness of the first days of the Trump administration was the fiasco surrounding the crowd size at the inauguration. I mean it was just so bizarre. We could all see that it was a much smaller crowd than 8 years earlier when Barack Obama was sworn in. It was a cold and rainy day, and frankly he was never going to have a crowd as large as the first African American President. There wasn’t any shame in that, it was completely understandable. Yet Trump insisted on claiming between one and one and a half million people attended. He went on to state that people packed the national mall all the way to the Washington monument. He repeated these claims on multiple occasions, even after photos clearly showed it wasn’t true.

Not only did Trump make these claims, but he forced his staff to echo his obvious lies. His press secretary’s credibility was permanently compromised when he lied about the crowd size in his first press briefing. The President’s Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway coined the term that in many ways came to define the Trump Presidency when she referred to Trump’s “alternative facts” regarding the crowd size. She made this comment in an interview on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. Todd correctly pointed out that “alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods.” (USA Today Fact Check)

The inauguration crowd size wasn’t the only whopper Trump told right out of the gate. In a claim that has taken an even more ominous tone four years later, Trump claimed there were 3 to 5 million illegal votes cast. Despite winning the Electoral College, Trump tried to make the case he won the popular vote as well. It’s interesting that despite being President for 4 years he claimed twice as many illegal votes in 2020. I would have expected him to take care of that problem. Of course there was never any evidence to support any of this. Eventually he formed a commission to uncover this alleged fraud. One of the commissioners described it as “a dishonest effort from the very beginning. . . It was meant to backfill an unprovable thesis that there’s voter fraud, then to issue a fake report.” Once forced to release all their documents, it was revealed the commission found no evidence of voter fraud. (AP News)

While campaigning for the Presidency in 2015 Trump made one of his most incendiary statements when he called for the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” After becoming President his advisors knew that would never pass legal muster. Instead Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) banning individuals from seven Muslim majority countries from entering the country. This EO was vaguely worded and was made effective immediately. The result was chaos at airports around the world as people who were already enroute were turned away.

The imprecise wording of the order resulted in a haphazard implementation. The courts suspended enforcement of the rule before eventually striking it down. The saga of Trump’s Muslim travel ban continued to play out over the next year and a half. Eventually, the third version of it was upheld by the Supreme Court and the travel restriction went into effect. One of the casualties of Trump’s ill-conceived Muslim ban was Sally Yates. As acting Attorney General she saw the policy was illegal and refused to defend it in court. She became the first of many public officials to be rewarded for doing her job by being fired. (Travel Ban Timeline)

To the delight of his evangelical supporters, Trump reinstated the anti-abortion “Mexico City policy” for foreign organizations receiving American assistance. It’s been illegal to use American foreign aid for abortions since 1973. However, this rule prevents foreign organizations receiving U.S. assistance from using any funds to provide, council or advocate for abortion services. This move is expected from any Republican President, however Trump’s policy went much further than other Presidents. Past Republicans only applied this rule to family planning assistance. Trump expanded it to all U.S. global health assistance funding. That meant an organization could lose U.S. funding for fighting malaria if they separately mentioned abortions.

Unlike Trump’s “Mexico City policy,” his decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement was at odds with traditional Republican free trade policies. This agreement would have created a free-trade zone for 12 countries bordering on the Pacific. There’s still disagreement between economists if the TPP was good or bad for America’s economy. However, it’s clear that Trump’s withdrawal left America more economically isolated as the other 11 countries moved forward without America. It also weakened America’s leverage over China in trade talks by pursuing an America only plan instead of a coordinated international effort. (The Hill – Mexico City policy)

True to his campaign pledge, Trump signed an EO directing the building of a wall along the Mexican border. However it quickly became clear that his promise that Mexico would pay for it was all hot air. The move also caused Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a planned trip to America. Later in the week the two Presidents had a tense phone conversation in which Trump begged, pleaded and threatened Nieto to make some public statement that they would pay for the wall. Trump floated the idea of a 20% import tax to pay for the wall. Trump’s advisers convinced him American consumers would bear the brunt of the tax and he dropped the idea. In the end, Trump spent billions of dollars to expand the existing border wall 47 miles. (WaPo – Call Transcripts)

Trump had another heated phone call in this first week on the job, this time with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The purpose of the call was to discuss the agreement President Obama made with Australia to accept 1,250 refugees they had in immigration holding centers. Trump became belligerent and kept misstating the facts of the agreement. These refugees were primarily economic refugees from mostly Islamic countries. Trump kept stating that he was being asked to let in 2 to 5 thousand Muslims when it was only 1,250. He also said they were bad people because they were in prison. In reality Australia had a policy of putting all refugees in detention facilities. The truth was the agreement allowed vetting all the refugees prior to settlement in America. Trump had no reason to believe any of them were criminals. In the end, like with the call with the Mexican President, Trump was unable to get any concessions from Turnbull. (Call Transcripts)

One of Trump’s most alarming moves was his elevation of alt-right website publisher Steve Bannon to a permanent seat on the National Security Council. This put him on the same level as cabinet secretaries without going through a Senate

confirmation process. At the same time Trump demoted the Director of National Security and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from permanent seats at the council. Bannon was a purely political advisor with no national security expertise. Even worse, he had a long history of promoting white nationalists ideology. Bannon’s flamboyant and combative nature doomed his position, by the end of the year Trump removed him from the council, then from the administration completely. (NPR Story)

In an attempt to add weight to his claim he would drain the swamp, Trump signed an EO banning administration appointees from ever lobbying foreign governments. It also included a ban lobbying the Federal government for five years after leaving office. Trump promised to close loopholes in Obama’s EO on the revolving door of lobbyists working for the Federal Government. Trump’s EO strengthened some provisions, but weakened others by creating new loopholes. However, it appears Trump often violated his own EO by hiring lobbyists to work in his administration. One of Trump’s last acts as president was to rescind this EO. This act freed his administration’s employees to immediately become lobbyists. (NPR – Trump Revokes Ethics Rule)

Here’s a potpourri of other news stories from Trump’s first two weeks in office. He approved the Keystone XL oil pipeline, despite objections from environmentalists and Native Americans who’s tribal lands it passed through. Federal courts blocked the permit to build the pipeline and it’s now been canceled by President Biden. The President was also sued for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. The basis of this lawsuit was his ongoing acceptance of foreign payments at his Washington Hotel. In a failure of the American legal system, Trump was able to run out the clock on this case before a legal decision was made. The plaintiffs won some preliminary decisions, but the Supreme Court dismissed the case as moot after Trump left office. As expected, Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch as successor for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. This came after Senate Republicans refused to have hearings on President Obama’s nominee for nearly a year. President Trump also promised to repeal the Johnson Amendment that prevents nonprofit organizations from participating in elections. Despite his efforts, Trump was unable to repeal this law. He also stated in a FoxNews interview that he supported bringing back waterboarding as a means of integrating suspected terrorists. This prompted the Secretary of Defense to publicly state that waterboarding was both an illegal form of torture and ineffective. Finally, Trump issued an EO repealing a rule that mandated financial advisers act in the best interest of their clients. This resulted in an increase in questionable investment products sold to consumers.

As damning as all this is, two of the most impactful events of Trump’s first two weeks in office didn’t become public until later. The day after Trump’s inauguration the FBI questioned the National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn lied stating he had not discussed the sanctions President Obama enacted with the Russians prior to the inauguration. The public revelation of this forced Trump to fire Flynn on 10 February. Eventually Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but received a Presidential pardon late in Trump’s term. (NBC News – Flynn Timeline)

In a related matter, Trump learned of Flynn’s possible liability several days after his questioning by the FBI. On the 27th of January, the Attorney General briefed President Trump that Flynn could be subject to Russian blackmail. That same day Trump asked for a private dinner with the FBI Director James Comey. During the meal the President asked if he was personally under investigation and requested a personal pledge of loyalty from the director. Understanding his duty was to the country, not Trump, Comey could only pledge his honesty to the President. Trump’s firing of the FBI Director a couple months later led to the Mueller investigation and eventually his impeachment. (CBS News)

Having lived through the whirlwind of scandal and corruption of the Trump administration, this all seems routine now. However, at the time it seemed unimaginable that the continual sinking to new lows could continue at that pace. I’m writing this because there was so much scandal in the Trump administration that much of it avoided scrutiny because of the continual deluge of outrage. The term outrage fatigue predated the Trump administration, but seemed custom designed to describe it. Trump packed more scandal into his first two weeks than most Presidents achieve in eight years. Nothing about the Trump Presidency was normal and it’s important that we reflect on just how abnormal it really was. Trump might be gone, but the precedent he set remains. Democracy is a fragile thing. This is the time to address the excesses of the Trump administration before it fades from memory and we’re left open to another demagogue President who has learned the lessons of what a President unbound by decency can do.