THE TRUMP DIARIES:
WEEK FIVE
35 Days of Trump
By Jack Random
Through four weeks of the Trump presidency we have witnessed
a historic clash between fact-based reality and the power of willful
delusion. Like Queen Mab of
Shakespearean lore, the president spins his web of fantasy and challenges all
comers to prove him wrong.
We have entered the Twilight Zone of American politics.
This is the fifth installment of the Trump Diaries.
DAY 29: ON THE
ROAD AGAIN
Friday February 17, 2017
Trump makes an appearance at the Boeing plant in South
Carolina. He heads to Florida
tomorrow for a big rally. He
promises to bring America jobs and more jobs – good paying manufacturing
jobs. Can we assume most of those
jobs will be non-union?
Just as an Oklahoma court orders him to release thousands of
emails to the oil, gas and coal industries in compliance with state law, the
Senate confirms state attorney general Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental
Protection Agency. They could not
have selected a more antagonistic individual to the environmental cause if they
had chosen the CEO of Exxon Mobil – and he already has a job as Secretary of
State.
Any hope that Trump would moderate his anti-environment,
climate change denial policies seems to have vanished. The coal industry is once again free to
dump toxic waste into rivers and streams.
The fracking industry – a subsidiary of big oil – can proceed without
delay in contaminating the drinking water of millions of Americans.
If he survives his first term, Trump will be known as the
man most responsible for the climate catastrophe still to come.
In his ongoing war on the mainstream media, Trump
tweets: The media is the enemy of
the American people. Correction,
Donald: The media are the enemy of the American people. They are also our last best hope.
FBI Director James Comey briefs members of the Senate
Intelligence Committee concerning Russia’s interference in the presidential
election. Senator Marco Rubio –
AKA Little Marco – came out of the meeting certain that the committee would
conduct a thorough investigation.
DAY 30: THE BIG
RALLY
Saturday February 18, 2017
Thousands of Trump supporters pack an airport hangar in
Melbourne, Florida to hear the president proclaim the accomplishments of his
first thirty days in office and his projection of accomplishments to come.
The president counts among his accomplishments withdrawal
from the Trans Pacific Partnership but the TPP never took effect. He advocates one-to-one trade deals and
mentions NAFTA but he has not withdrawn from NAFTA or CAFTA. He defends his Muslim travel ban but it
has thus far stalled in the courts.
He proclaims that his deportations have made America safer but there is
no evidence that the ICE raids have swept up “bad hombres” and violent
criminals. There is a great deal
of evidence that his actions have divided families by indiscriminately
deporting undocumented workers who are guilty of nothing more than being
undocumented.
Trump promises a trillion dollar effort to rebuild the
nation’s infrastructure but there are no signs his own party supports the
effort. He continues to promise
that Obamacare will be repealed and replaced by something better but his own
party stands in the way. He says
he will take care of the veterans.
Does he really believe Obama didn’t want to fully fund the Veterans
Administration? The Republicans in
congress will insist – as they always have – on budgetary offsets. Where will the money come from?
The president must come to grips with the fact that his
party controls both houses of congress.
He is no longer a candidate; he is the president. He cannot continue to blame the
Democrats and the media for obstructing his policies. He will be judged by what he does and what he has
accomplished thus far is in fact very little and all of it divisive and
harmful. If he leaves it up to
congress to pass tax reform and healthcare reform we will all be disappointed
in the results.
DAY 31: WE ARE
ALL MUSLIMS
February 19, 2017
One day after Trump’s campaign rally, thousands gather at
Times Square in NYC to protest the ban on travelers from Syria, Iraq, Iran,
Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.
Hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons leads the protest in which
Christians, Jews, Muslims and others of all faiths and creeds proclaim their
solidarity with the Muslim community.
Mainstream media reports that
the president’s strange lament over what happened “last night” in Sweden never
happened. It turns out the
president has been absorbing his news from such credible news sources as
Breitbart, Human Events, the Drudge Report, Fox News, the Rush Limbaugh Show
and the Savage Nation.
(Update: A riot in
Stockholm two days after Trump’s pronouncement makes us wonder if the president
is psychic.)
Fake news has been going on a
very long time. The president is
not the creator of “alternative facts”; he is a consumer and purveyor of
rightwing propaganda. He and
millions of ordinary Americans sincerely believe that mainstream media have
created a reality that bears only a coincidental relationship with the
truth. Mainstream media are hardly
free of guilt in this development.
A corporate monolith with its own agenda now owns every mainstream media
outlet. Mainstream media have long
dismissed even the notion of a conspiracy to defraud our democracy though there
has often been compelling evidence of such conspiracies: Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, the
assassinations of the Kennedy’s, the Iran Hostage crisis, on and on. You can add FBI director James Comey’s
October surprise to the list.
Mainstream media were complicit
in supporting the Bush administration’s patently false case for war – most
notably the New York Times acting as a front for White House propaganda through
esteemed reporter Judy Miller. [1]
Who can forget Dan Rather
pledging his allegiance to the commander-in-chief soon after September 11,
2001? [2]
Mainstream media are not pure in
this battle for credibility but let us be clear: the alternative media that our president relies on
constitute a blatant propaganda machine whose primary interest is to capture a
growing audience. The Alt Right is what it preaches against: false news. The great shame is that Americans have
so lost trust in traditional news sources that large percentages believe in them. It has become a religion and religions
require no sources, no facts and no grounding in reality.
Shall we blame education for not
teaching our children to decipher truth from fiction? Or shall we blame the media for abandoning the principles of
journalism during times of war? It
is high time media reform became an issue again.
DAY 32: NOT MY
PRESIDENT’S DAY
February 20, 2017
Anti Trump protesters hit the streets across America from
New York to San Francisco and everywhere in between. Mass protests continue in London where Parliament is
considering an invitation to the new American president.
Chaos continues to rule the White House as institutions and
individuals compete for the president’s ear. Trump fires National Security Council senior director for
Western Hemisphere Affairs Craig Deare for critical comments at a private
roundtable at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
I suspect Mr. Deare dearly
wanted out of this sinking ship of state.
Trump continues to search for a replacement to General Flynn as National
Security Adviser. Traditionally
one of the most powerful positions in the executive branch, Trump’s first
choice was reportedly retired Vice Admiral Robert Harwood who rejected the job
as a “shit sandwich.” Now Trump is down to considering the likes of neocon John
Bolton who championed the “axis of evil” approach that led us down the rabbit
hole of foreign wars during the George W. Bush administration.
That Bolton is even being
interviewed is a measure of Trump’s desperation. The former ambassador to the United Nations favors stronger
sanctions on Russia for interfering in our presidential election. [3]
Trump announces his selection:
the relatively non-controversial Lt. General H.R. McMaster who will become the
administration’s leading advocate of increased military spending to modernize
our war machine. His latest
specialty is strategic preparations for future conflict with Russia. [4]
Interesting.
In yet another potential
blockbuster, the NY Times reports a backchannel deal to settle the conflict in
Ukraine and lift sanctions imposed by the Obama administration. [5] Moscow categorically denies the
report.
You can’t make this stuff
up.
Brain Drain: CIA analyst Edward Price resigns after
fifteen years of service rather than continue under President Trump.
DAY 33: BIGOTRY, INTOLERANCE & HATRED
February 21, 2017
Slow day in Trumpland: The president visits the National
Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian. He wants us to know despite rumors to
the contrary that he’s actually against “bigotry, intolerance and hatred.” He condemns recent attacks on the
Jewish community.
The question is: What took him so long? After neglecting to mention the Jews on
Holocaust Remembrance Day and dressing down a Jewish reporter who merely asked
him to take a stand against anti-Semitic terrorism, he finally complies.
I have a theory about this and
it comes from the Bannon playbook.
Recall that it took a day or two for candidate Trump to condemn the KKK
and disavow former Imperial Wizard David Duke. Recall that Trump swept the South in both the primaries and
the general election. Bannon has informed
Trump that he doesn’t have to talk the talk in order to maintain the support of
white supremacists. He only has to
appear reluctant to give the usual condemnations.
With a wink and a nod they all
fall in line.
DAY 34: CLEARING THE WAY FOR MASS DEPORTATION
February 22, 2017
The Department of Homeland
Security issues new and broader guidelines for deportation. After floating a rumor about calling up
the National Guard for deportation service, these guidelines make it clear that
ICE can deport any undocumented immigrant it wishes to deport. For now the dreamers (individuals who migrated
as children) are safe but who knows how long that will last?
Trump erases hope that he will
uphold the rights of the LGBT community by revoking former president Obama’s
landmark guideline to public schools.
It instructed schools to allow students to use the bathroom of their
sexual identity.
Trump went out of his way to
become the first Republican presidential candidate to stand up for the rights
of the LGBT community but President Trump went out of his way to denigrate
those rights in deference to states’ rights and the rights of individual
schools to discriminate. Sad!
DAY 35: BANNON VOWS DECONSTRUCTION
February 23, 2017
Steve Bannon makes a rare public
appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The man who traditionally looks like he
just came off a three-day bender is the dominant figure behind the Trump
presidency. He vows a policy of
government deconstruction and decries mainstream media for their corporate globalism. There is more than a grain of truth to
his media criticism and anyone who doubts that should take another look at Bill
Moyers’ critique during the Iraq War. [6] The difference is: Moyers wants to reform the media;
Bannon wants to replace it with his own rightwing propaganda machine.
Unlike his boss, Bannon seems to
understand trade policy. He does
not use the phrase “free and fair” trade.
He advocates bilateral fair trade.
We’ll see how that shakes out.
I’m guessing Bannon’s interpretation of fair trade does not include the
basic rights of labor.
CNN reports that chief of staff
Reince Preibus contacted the FBI to request a denial of published reports that
members of the Trump campaign were in constant contact with Russian
agents. The FBI refused. Reminiscent of Nixon’s articles of impeachment,
the move could be interpreted as an attempt to obstruct an ongoing
investigation. [7]
Incredible. This team of amateurs forgot the first
rule of post-Watergate government:
It’s not just the crime; it’s the
cover up.
After a month at a frenetic rate
the White House is finally settling down into something resembling a normal
operation. The president has
stirred controversy while holding to his rightwing agenda in a series of
executive actions. We are still
awaiting major legislative actions regarding health care, infrastructure and
military spending.
The Dow Jones Industrial reaches
a new high and the price of housing has reached the same inflated levels that
led to the great recession. Wall
Street loves Trump but, then again, Wall Street loved George W. And we all know how that turned
out.
The president has demonstrated
he can control the news cycle but he has yet to prove he can govern.
Jazz.
1. “Miller Time” by Jack Random. Counterpunch, July 15, 2005.
2. “Buying the War.” Bill Moyers, PBS, April 25, 2007.
3. “Bolton: Russian sanctions insufficient; U.S. must ‘make the Russians
feel pain’” by Louis Nelson.
Politico, December 30, 2016.
4. “The Secret U.S. Army Study That
Targets Moscow” by Bryan Bender. Politico,
April 14, 2016.
5. “A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and
Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates” by Megan Twohey and Scott Shane. NY Times, February 19, 2017.
6. “Bill Moyers Journal:
Media consolidation and the erosion of democracy.” Public Broadcasting System, August 24,
2007.
7. “FBI refused White House request to knock down recent
Trump-Russia stories” by Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez, Shimon Procupecz and Pamela
Brown. CNN, February 23, 2017.
JACK RANDOM IS THE
AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES, GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION, A PATRIOT DIRGE AND
WASICHU: THE KILLING SPIRIT (CROW DOG PRESS).
