Trump the number one salesman

WHAT was to have been a watershed moment early in a new Donald Trump White House has turned into a public relations nightmare lurching from one comedic goof to another in a space of 10 days.

Trump’s extraordinary reality television Survivorstyle win of the White House has Americans, well at least half of the country that is, scratching their heads in bewilderment following a trail of confusing executive orders, rambling Twitter tirades and bizarre television appearances.

Barely hours into his presidency at least a million women took to the streets in protest and a few days later a travel ban imposed on seven Muslim countries evoked international outrage with rolling protests – both overshadowing a White House victory with Americans in their thousands standing side by side in solidarity with the Muslim community denouncing what they conceived to be an unconstitutional order.

While the ban is likely to stumble through the courts with differing and conflicting views in which one state, Massachusetts, ruled in favour of the Trump administration while a higher federal court judge in Washington State ruled hours later against – is indicative of the confusing and complex litigation to follow.

At least 100 000 visas that were revoked following the ban only to have it rescinded after the Washington judge’s ruling effectually killing the Trump executive order – in other words restraining the White House from carrying out the order pitting the judicial branch against the executive branch of government.

But while the bickering shows no signs of abating the good news, however, allows families stranded at airports to legally travel to the US easing their travel concerns even if it’s just temporarily.

Airlines and customs officials said the “banned visas” would be reinstated and that the travel ban alerts were ordered to be scrubbed from websites.

Of course the White House, as expected, filed an appeal which was dismissed on Sunday as the court believed the executive order was favouring one religion against another and again this not only cast another bout of uncertainty and anxiety but also shines the spotlight at an administration racked in chaos and confusion in its infancy.

In fairness and in irony, or should that be ironic fairness, the flamboyant penthouse living Trump sold his candidacy to a food stamp minimum wage base electorate eager for change with a classic populist “I’m with you” message that he was no politician and as an “outsider” he would “drain the swamp” of the “Washington insiders” who he said were putting their own interests first ahead of “the American people”.

An eager follower of American politics, it was easy to see what the number one salesman was onto: he latched onto a segment of the population that was so eager for change that any fallacy, mess up, blunder or incompetence would be regarded as a “learning curve” and thus would be summarily dismissed as such.

One can argue: is it fair to attack the early blunders? But surely the counter argument should be since Trump prides himself in hiring and surrounding himself “with the best” the early missteps should be minimal or at best not at all?

Is Trump all bluster, shootfrom-the-hip-take-no-hostages politician? He has been accused of that and, judging from his utterances, how is one to disagree?

Before we dig any deeper into the latest political fiasco into Trump’s “Muslim travel ban” – his inconsistent view of Muslims needs to be reviewed again.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” he said on CNN.

He previously called for surveillance against mosques and said he was open to establishing a database for all Muslims living in the US, CNN also reported.

Trump later tweaked this following the fallout, rather calling for a somewhat partial ban or monitoring… of certain countries, eventually leading to some Muslim countries to finally seven countries who have zero terror insurgents operating or had conducted any attacks on the US.

One has to question his motives. Is the media savvy Trump merely pandering to the base to which he promised to take care of while campaigning?

He said he would do away with president Obama’s signature affordable health care and would work at getting rid of federal regulations – all signature rallying cries to a base that was yearning for change.

White House defeat

Trump’s latest assault deriding the federal judge who ruled against his travel ban, calling the judge “a so called judge”, was equally concerning.

Washington State attorney general Bob Ferguson, rejoicing late Friday following the White House defeat, said the ban was adversely affecting his state – a state which Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and others hire IT engineers from countries slapped by the ban.

He said these companies filed court declarations on how the travel ban impacted on their organisations and which was submitted to court. The judge agreed.

The ban affected travellers in real time not just at airports but in the air as many had no idea that they would and could be told they would not be welcomed into the US – most having sold everything to start a anew in a country they had initially qualified to travel or emigrate to.

And as I write this on my tablet and occasionally switching to my iPhone, I marvel at the thought that I accomplish all my writing on devices created by the son of a Syrian immigrant.

Yes, Steve Jobs’s dad, Abdul Fattah Jandali, would have been turned away had Trump been president when Mr Jandali decided that America would be his future home.

My media research is conducted on the very devices and which takes me to the World Wide Web where I discover that symbol of hope and diversity, that beacon of human kindness, that iconic statue welcoming new immigrants to the US – Lady Liberty – or commonly referred to as the Statue of Liberty was originally to have been draped in Arabic garb.

At the bottom of Lady Liberty a plaque reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

The huddled masses fought back Trump’s ban and won, for now… tired they are not. They wait another day in which to fight…