As it is, he is now the world's most powerful man and set to enrich himself and become the wealthiest president in history, using the White House to do it. Don't talk to me about justice.
I gathered all I needed from reading the newspapers and social media. The second impromptu speech he delivered was clearly even more deranged than the official and scripted one, full of petty attacks on his political opponents. The president of the US spent his time railing about his predecessor and wallowing in victimhood. For a multi billionaire he complains about an awful lot. He is as mad as a hatter.
Which president in history used his inauguration speech to slag off the previous president while he was sitting alongside him? New presidents usually try to bring people back together after a bruising campaign. Instead, Trump used a sledgehammer to drive wedges ever deeper into American society. If you were intent on starting another civil war, you couldn't have done more.
Trump spent his first afternoon in office issuing a blizzard of Executive Orders (EOs). The Times has a list HERE. EOs by Presidents are legally binding orders and very common. Biden issued 160, Trump in his first term 220 and Obama 290 over eight years. Trump issued roughly 200 EO's, memoranda and proclamations on the FIRST DAY of his second term.
This is what he sees as governing. He doesn't do hard work, policy detail or even thinking.
However, these actions can’t override the law or the constitution. Within hours Trump was facing at least three lawsuits. One was over his attempt to remove the so-called birthright rule giving US citizenship to anyone born in America. This is written into the constitution and cannot be changed without a two thirds majority in both house of Congress. He doesn’t have either. Trump tried to repeal it with the stroke of a pen.
He has pardoned 1500 January 6 rioters, nearly all those who have been convicted or charged with serious crimes, and he ordered the Department of Justice to drop all future cases. Prisoners released included members of the extreme right wing Neo Fascist groups The Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers. He has given them a license for violence. They will feel immune to law enforcement and I would be worried about what they might do next.
Bizarrely, he also pardoned a drug dealer, Ross Ulbricht, who operated a dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold, sentenced in 2015 to two life sentences. Trump even called Ulbricht's mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son, saying on his Truth Social platform: "The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me,"
What was that about!!! Was he Trump's supplier? Why didn't he pardon him in 2020?
Among other things, he revoked the security detail that the government was providing for about 50 US intelligence officers. This included John Bolton, his former National Security Adviser, who had received death threats against him. Iran had even gone to the trouble of hiring a hit man to kill him! Trump first withdrew his security when leaving office in 2021, in an act of petty vindictiveness because Bolton had argued with him. Biden restored it and now Trump has withdrawn it again.
Don’t forget he promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours but actually spent his time on taking revenge on his perceived enemies, of which there is no shortage, and mostly for absolutely trivial slights. Trump is the thinnest skinned president in history as well as the stupidest, by some margin. He also took the time to rename the Gulf of Mexico and pull the US out of the WHO. You can see where his priorities are.
I expect many more lawsuits, most of which will take years to go through the judicial system and some, those with the deepest pockets able to fight the US government, will finally wind up in the Supreme Court. We will then see how the Republican majority on the SCOTUS acts. If it sides with Trump, America is lost to Trumpism.
To help understand how such a man ever got himself elected, a YouTube video showing two teachers in Kentucky who are now desperately worried about severe funding cuts, actually voted FOR Trump. Their schools relied on the federal government for about a third of their income. Trump spent the entire election campaign talking about closing down the US Education Department and cutting trillions of dollars from the federal budget. Yet they still voted him in!
Trump has created an entire department - the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE - headed up by the world's richest idiot Elon Musk specifically to slash federal funding and yet they could not bring themselves to vote Democrat.
Dismantling of the administrative state has begun. And don't think the squeals of protest will reach Trump or if they do that he will hear them. He cares nothing at all for the poorest in society, or indeed anybody else, it's only himself.
