TRUMP’S NOTHING-TO-SHOW LIST
The intended message is clear. President Donald Trump has nothing to show for seven months in office.
Here are just three summation clauses and sentences from The Associated Press, but they could be from The New York Times or Washington Post news services, or a variety of other mainstream publications:
› “Weighed down by a stalled legislative agenda, a cabal of infighting West Wing aides and a stack of investigations, Trump …”
› “After six months of infighting, investigations and legislative failures, President Donald Trump …”
› “Republicans have little to show for their first seven months of controlling the White House and Capitol Hill.”
No doubt, those who supported Trump hoped for more. Maybe they would have been more patient, knowing that complicated legislation takes time, but the president was the one who promised. So, so far, no repeal and replace Obamacare. No tax reform. No wall.
But nothing to show for seven months? Hardly.
The most recent weekend, for instance, saw a United States-drafted sanctions measure against North Korea for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile testing be passed unanimously by the United Nations Security Council. That means Russia and China, two countries delighted to upset any U.S. apple cart, went along.
The sanctions, which include a ban on the country’s exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood, could cost the communist dictatorship one-third of its $3 billion annual export revenue and is thought to be the harshest measure put on the country since its first foray into nuclear experimentation in 2006.
China as North Korea’s top trading partner has been unwilling until recently to put much pressure on its neighbor, limiting any options that oppose the missiles and frustrating the U.S.
The sanctions measure, according to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, took a lot of “arm twisting.”
“It was a gut-punch to North Korea, to let them know the international community is tired of it and we’re going to start fighting back,” she said on Fox News. “Every dollar of revenue that the North Korean government gets, they’re not feeding their people with it. They’re using it toward a nuclear weapons system. Going after these sanctions is going after their ability to build these missiles.”
Last week, Trump signed a bill that imposes penalties on North Korea’s shipping industry, and he previously signed — albeit reluctantly — sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies for their meddling in the U.S. elections last year.
Elsewhere, it’s hard for the media to overlook the most recent jobs report. Unemployment, at 4.3 percent, is the lowest since 2001. U.S. businesses added 209,000 new jobs in July, about 16 percent more than were expected. Analysts have said the repeal of Obamacare and the passing of tax reform ultimately could add 7.2 million jobs — numbers hard to fathom — but they also say the president’s reductions in regulations are partially responsible for the current growth.
About those regulations: Trump promised to kill two for every new one enacted, but he’s done much better than that. In his first six months, the ratio was 16 to 1.
He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate change agreement, which even critics have said would make little difference in global warming; he approved the Keystone XL and other pipeline agreements former President Barack Obama had killed or held up; he is dismantling his predecessor’s onerous Clean Power Plan, which would have hit the poor hardest; and he rolled back a ban on coal mining on public lands.
The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which had become almost a branch of government unto its own, has some 30 repeals of rules under consideration, according to the Atlantic.
Illegal immigration, through only the enforcement of current laws, has been cut drastically, and sanctuary cities are quaking in their boots that federal money might be kept from them for violating federal laws.
The Supreme Court has a new 49-year-old conservative justice in Neil Gorsuch, and other jurists of his ilk are being appointed up and down the federal judiciary.
The Atlantic, by no means a supporter of the president, titled its recent report: “Trump Has Quietly Accomplished More Than It Appears.”
Don’t expect the daily headlines of doom and gloom to disappear, though. That would defeat the narrative the president has done nothing. Sure, we’d all like to see the bigger accomplishments. Indeed, we’ll expect them in time. But know that while the words “infighting” and “failure” and “Russia” are continuously being thrown around, some of the agenda nearly 63 million people voted for in November is being accomplished.