Donald
Trump's first week: carnage, both real and imagined
What
started with an ominous inauguration speech has ended with executive
orders on everything from immigration to banning refugees and
reigniting the fossil fuel industry. What does it mean for his
presidency?
Tom
McCarthy in New York
@TeeMcSee
Saturday
28 January 2017 15.38 GMT
The crowd was small,
the weather was bad and the speech, which described “American
carnage”, was dire. For the tens of millions who voted against him
and countless concerned others, Donald Trump’s inauguration as
president of the United States felt ominous, no matter how widely
Barack Obama smiled and no matter how gracefully he and Michelle
Obama made the transition from hosts to departing guests.
The feeling of
foreboding did not last. It was overtaken within hours by the
realization, at the arrival of the first of the new president’s
executive actions, that the most outrageous campaign promises Trump
had made to the smallest core of his supporters were now official US
policy, or about to be.
Within a week, the
rally chant “build the wall!” had morphed into a phrase published
on White House stationery: “impassable physical barrier”. A
proposed ban on Muslim immigrants took shape as a suspension of visa
programs from countries that, as Trump put it, “have tremendous
terror”. Grumbling about excessive government regulation had
become, in one document, an exhortation to bureaucrats to help an oil
company skip the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
“He’s delivering
the goods to his core constituency in a really visible way,” said
John T Woolley, head of the American presidency project at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. “But there are a lot of
things that he’s raising that may be above what he truly has the
ability to do.”
Seven days into his
presidency, the accumulation of Trump’s official actions, at the
rate of as many as five a day, has created a new national reality on
central policy concerns from the environment to voting rights to
international commitments to immigration, healthcare and trade.
“You have to
consider this a pretty aggressive use of executive power early on,”
said Julian E Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at
Princeton University. “Using it not only on one marquee issue,
which presidents often do, but on a series of major campaign issues,
all within just a few days.
“So it’s
rapid-fire, but more importantly, each one is a pretty significant
decision.”
More difficult to
assess than the new president’s official actions, but for many
Americans just as significant, has been the impact on the public of
Trump’s simple presence in office – the finally inescapable fact,
as it were, of Donald Trump as president.
During the campaign,
Trump’s lies about the fake scourge of voter fraud, his vain
obsession with the size of his crowds (and his hands), and his
explosions of bile and irrelevance on Twitter could be semi-ignored
as the faults of a mercurial political figure who was quite likely,
at least, to lose.
Now Trump is in the
Oval Office and his lies are voiced by a press secretary standing
behind the White House seal in the Brady briefing room. It was there
that Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, falsely declared on the day
after the swearing-in that “this was the largest audience to ever
witness an inauguration, period”. Trump’s audience was in fact
significantly smaller than Obama’s 2009 crowd, but members of the
media who tried to brandish evidence of the fact were shouted down.
Spicer rolled out
another whopper days later, informing the country that the president
still (wrongly) believed millions of votes had been illegally cast in
November. As supporting evidence, he pointed to a 2012 research
report on voter fraud, prompting the author of the report to
categorically deny that the report said any such thing.
“Of those votes
cast, none of them come to me,” Trump told ABC News a day later,
embroidering his fantasy. “They would all be for the other side.
None of them come to me.”
For Americans who
doubt his leadership, just as disturbing as Trump’s new freedom to
spout untruths with significantly inflated authority were early
reports on his conduct behind the scenes, as he made his first
decisions as the most powerful individual on Earth.
Repeatedly, Trump
threw thunderbolts from his Twitter account – threatening to “send
in the Feds!” to stop violence in Chicago and impugning Chelsea
Manning – immediately following negative coverage of those topics
on Fox News, which Trump told the New York Times he watches morning
and night.
It was TV coverage
of his small inauguration crowd that prompted Trump to trot out
Spicer. The bad press had not allowed the president to “enjoy”
his first weekend in the White House as he felt he deserved, the
Associated Press quoted “one person who has spoken with him” as
saying. Trump’s decision to act on voter fraud was inspired, Trump
told members of Congress, by a conversation with a German golfer.
If Trump’s
character is immutable, however, his executive actions may not be.
His orders have the power to guide the conduct of federal agencies
and officials, but cannot contravene existing law.
Woolley said: “The
question always is – and this is a real question for Trump –
whether the president is going beyond the scope of the law, whether
he’s infringing on congressional power, and whether he’s
infringing on the divides between national, state and local power.
“There’s going
to be a festival of lawsuits about almost every controversial action
that he takes.”
Next week, Trump is
scheduled to address a joint session of Congress and announce a
nominee to fill the vacancy on the supreme court.
Here’s what he got
done on week one.
Immigration
The most famous
promise of Trump’s campaign was that he would build a wall on the
2,000-mile southern border and make Mexico pay for it. The policy
represents a sharp break with the view of Obama’s top homeland
security official, who often said: “You show me a 50ft wall, and
I’ll show you a 51ft ladder.”
Nevertheless, Trump
issued an executive order on Wednesday calling for “the immediate
construction of a physical wall on the southern border, monitored and
supported by adequate personnel so as to prevent illegal immigration,
drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism”.
Initially, the
project will draw on previously appropriated funds. But for the
project to be completed, Trump will need to retain the support of
Republican congressional leaders who have said they are willing to
put up the money. One Senate leader estimated the border wall would
cost between $12bn and $15bn “upfront” – a possible sticking
point among soi-disant fiscal conservatives.
Trump’s own
estimate of the costs of the wall is significantly smaller. “That
wall will cost us nothing,” he said this week, on the same day the
Mexican president vowed that the wall would also cost Mexico nothing.
Trump also moved to
deny federal funds to “sanctuary cities” – the more than 400
cities and counties in the US that offer some form of safe haven to
America’s 11 million undocumented migrants.
On Friday, Trump
signed an executive order implementing what he called “new vetting
measures, to keep radical Islamic terrorists out”. The order
included a 120-day suspension of the US Refugee Admissions Program;
the indefinite suspension of the admission of any refugees from
Syria; the capping of refugee numbers admitted in 2017 at 50,000; and
to severely limit immigration from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya,
Somalia and Yemen, all Muslim-majority countries.
According to draft
policies leaked to the media, Trump is also preparing executive
actions to limit legal immigration and to judge immigration
applications on the likelihood that a prospective immigrant would
draw in any way on US social welfare programs.
In a final draft
immigration policy, Trump would strip immigrants who arrived in the
US as children, known as Dreamers, of protections against deportation
extended to them by Obama. The reversal could directly affect 1.2
million American residents who may have little or no knowledge of
their origin country.
“I do have a big
heart,” Trump said of the policy. “We’re going to take care of
everybody.”
Style of government
Trump has brought to
the job the same leadership style he applied to his campaign:
aggressive, reactive and, most of all, improvisatory.
His slew of
executive actions has been unleashed before the agency heads and
deputies essential to carrying them out are in place – a majority
have yet to be named. His justice department has yet to install a
head of the office of legal counsel, which past presidents have
relied on to protect their unilateral actions from court challenges.
He reportedly did not bother to run his revised torture policy past
his CIA and defense department appointees.
It remains to be
seen whether Trump is a coalition-builder, in the style of Ronald
Reagan, or whether he will keep his distance from Congress,
physically and emotionally, in the style of Obama. Trump’s paranoid
streak, obsession with leaks and penchant for conspiracy make another
president, Richard Nixon, his most natural style touchstone.
Trump’s style is
sufficiently original as to render quaint a series of conversations
during the Obama years about presidential “firsts”: the first
president to participate in a Reddit AMA (“ask me anything”), the
first president to sit for an interview with YouTube stars. Trump is
the first president to threaten martial law in a major American city
on Twitter.
In further contrast
with Obama, Trump tweeted his threat to “send in the Feds!” from
an account whose wallpaper photo features him signing a document
surrounded by seven top advisers – all white men. Whatever Trump’s
leadership style is, it is not inclusive across lines of race and
gender.
The
attention-seeking side of Trump’s style has made him relatively
accessible to the media, so far. He sat for television and print
interviews in his first week and held his first press conference,
alongside UK prime minister Theresa May.
Environment
In one of his first
meetings as president, Trump told executives from the country’s
biggest automakers he would loosen environmental standards,
regulations and taxes if they would help him bring back “Made in
the USA”. Trump’s promise was quickly ratified in multiple
executive orders pertaining to oil pipelines and other infrastructure
projects.
The main thrust of
Trump’s environmental policy – or anti-environmental policy –
may be carried out by his pick to head the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, a scathing critic of environmental
regulations. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt repeatedly sued
the EPA and coordinated his selection of cases with fossil fuel
interests. If confirmed by the Senate, Pruitt’s oversight may be
exceptionally lax.
Trump’s executive
actions contained two major and symbolically important moves against
the cause of renewable energy. He reopened construction of two oil
pipelines, one held up by a federal permit denial and another
rejected by Obama. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry tar sand oil
from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf coast, while the Dakota Access
pipeline would carry crude oil from a field in North Dakota to a
processing hub in the midwest. The Dakota project foundered after
months of protests by Native American groups, who said the pipeline
crossed sacred ground and threatened their drinking water supply.
Trump has also
imposed a freeze on new federal regulations, including environmental
regulations.
National security
Trump’s first
sallies in national security policy have been highly controversial.
He has spoken about and is expected to issue an executive order that
would create a pathway to restoring the detention of terrorism
suspects at facilities known as “black sites”. Such an order
would reverse Obama’s 2009 order to close the US military prison at
Guantánamo Bay and open the way to a resumed use of torture
techniques by US operatives on terrorism suspects.
In an interview with
ABC News, Trump repeated his belief that torture works, “absolutely”,
and he said that the US should “fight fire with fire”.
“I’ve spoken in
recent days with people at the highest level of intelligence, and
I’ve asked them: ‘Does torture work?’ And the answer was ‘Yes,
absolutely,’” Trump said. On Friday he backtracked, not on his
own belief in the efficacy of torture but in saying, at his press
conference with May, that he would defer to his new defense
secretary, James Mattis, who has said torture does not work.
A majority of
private and public scholarship and Trump’s pick to run the CIA also
say torture does not work. US law bans security agencies from using
so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
Manufacturing and
trade
“The hour of
justice for the American worker has arrived,” Trump said in a
speech to Republican members of Congress on Thursday. His recipe for
making it so includes withdrawing from trade agreements, loosening
environmental regulations and other regulations on manufacturers, and
taking smaller steps such as requiring that new oil pipelines use US
steel.
In one of his first
presidential memoranda, Trump directed the US trade representative
(who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate) to “withdraw the United
States as a signatory to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), to
permanently withdraw the United States from TPP negotiations, and to
begin pursuing, wherever possible, bilateral trade negotiations to
promote American industry, protect American workers, and raise
American wages”.
The memo was
followed by an offhand description by Trump of how US trade deals
would work from now on. “They’ll be one-on-one, they won’t be a
whole big mashpot,” he said. If a US partner reneges on any deal,
Trump said, the US would send out 30-day notices of impending trade
deal termination.
A separate
presidential memorandum directed all heads of government departments
and agencies to expedite “reviews of and approvals for proposals to
construct or expand manufacturing facilities and through reductions
in regulatory burdens affecting domestic manufacturing”. Officials
are directed to solicit comments from the public for 60 days about
how to streamline the permitting process for domestic manufacturers.
Healthcare and
abortion
One of the first
pieces of paper Trump signed as president was an executive order that
began to dismantle Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
A full dismantling
of the act, which conservative analysts estimate has provided health
insurance for more than 10 million people who otherwise would not
have it, would require action by Congress, which the Republican
leadership has expressed eagerness to deliver.
Trump has ordered
agencies and officials to avoid imposing penalties on individuals and
others who do not obtain health insurance, a crucial plank in the law
known as the “individual mandate”. Without it, participants in
health insurance markets may decline in number and skew less healthy,
driving up costs for insurers and potentially derailing the system.
In a separate memo,
Trump restricted funds for global health assistance groups that
provide abortion services. The memo reversed a directive that Obama
signed upon taking office, which in turn reversed a memo signed by
George W Bush. Trump’s memo directs the secretary of state to
“ensure that US taxpayer dollars do not fund organizations or
programs that support or participate in the management of a program
of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization”.
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