Playing by the Rules

It has been a little more than a hundred days since the start of the Trump Administration, yet it seems like a hundred years.

Much has been attempted but little has been accomplished and there is a reason for that.

Much of what they have attempted to do goes against the grain of our basic core values.

They led with the travel ban on Muslims only to find it blocked by the courts that correctly recognized it as discriminating against an entire religious sect.

One would have thought that some of the humanitarian horror stories that grew out of its initial implementation would have given them pause.

Indeed, one of the individuals who became a plaintiff in the law suit contesting the ban had served as an interpreter for American troops in Afghanistan and had been hunted by Al-Qaeda and Islamic State killers.

Rather than withdraw the ban, the Trump Administration doubled down on it and issued a second modified version of the ban which also was enjoined by the courts.

From there, they moved on to the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act. That one fell flat too.

Every time they tried to satisfy the “Freedom Caucus,” a collection of far right Tea Party members, by restricting coverage and benefits, they lost votes from the “Tuesday Group,” a group of more moderate and main stream Republicans.

Much to the consternation of the human amoeba, Paul Ryan, the legislation had to be withdrawn and twenty-four million Americans kept their health care coverage.

Ryan’s anguish at having to withdraw the legislation was fueled by the savings that would result from denying Americans their existing health coverage and would have made huge tax cuts for the wealthiest possible.

As George Bernard Shaw once wrote; “The government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul.”

Paul’s dreams of paying Paul will have to wait.

Unable to accomplish anything legislatively, the Administration had to fall back on Executive Orders that gutted environmental regulations that prevented the Oil, Gas, Mining and Timber industries from polluting, strip-mining and clear-cutting.

While all of this was unfolding The Administration was confronting repeated ethical questions.

Kelly Ann Conway plugged Ivanka Trump’s fashion line on the Morning Joe Program and had to be “counseled,” whatever that means.

Donald Jr. and Eric Trump spent millions of dollars in taxpayer funded travel to go to South America and pitch hotel deals.

Jared Kushner’s sister pitches a family real estate project in New Jersey to potential investors in China by offering visas to anyone that could invest $ 500,000 in the project. She also told them that her brother, a senior adviser to his father-in-law, the President, was a big supporter of the project.

When word of this promotion got reported she quickly backtracked and said that she didn’t mean to be influence peddling.

Maybe she’d been “counseled” too.

Foreign dignitaries are wined and dined at Mar-a-Lago, the Trump club in West Palm Beach, Florida and stay at the newly opened trump hotel, which was a former post office in Washington, D.C.

The Administration declares, with a straight face, that this patronizing of the President’s hotels is not meant to curry favor or influence its decisions in any way.

We are told that it is purely coincidental that in the days after Ivanka Trump dines with the President of China, that she obtained valuable copyrights from that country for her products.

There is a clear message in all of this.

The Trumps believe that the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to them.

Why shouldn’t they believe that?

Donald Trump was very clear in the days before his inauguration that the laws governing conflicts of interest don’t apply to him.

Clearly the Trump progeny are convinced that, by extension, they don’t apply to them either.

Like any three ring circus, there were still more side acts to follow.

Even before the inauguration, there has been suspicions that the Russian Government meddled in the election to aid Trump’s candidacy.

President Obama imposed sanctions on that country and Trump’s National security designee, Michael Flynn, discussed lifting them with the Russian ambassador before Trump had taken office.

Flynn supposedly lied to Vice-President Pence about having this discussion which ostensibly led to his firing.

Flynn wasn’t fired however until after “the lie” was published in the Washington Post, despite the warnings of the Acting Attorney General that Flynn had opened himself up to blackmail by the
Russians.
The subject of Russian interference and Flynn’s conduct has now become the subject of multiple congressional investigations and another by the FBI.

Whether Flynn actually lied to Pence remains to be seen.

Nonetheless, Trump is sufficiently concerned about Flynn’s future and fate that he attempted to persuade the FBI Director, James Comey, to drop the investigation.

He fired Comey when he didn’t fall into line.

Whether this amounts to Obstruction of Justice will be determined by the special prosecutor, former FBI Director, Robert Mueller.

Mueller was appointed despite Trump, Attorney General Sessions and the Republican leaders of Congress declarations that a special prosecutor wasn’t warranted.

Finally, the nation and Donald Trump will find out whether the rules apply to him.