Watch what the president doesn’t do
President Donald Trump often boasts that he has done more than any other president. “Nobody has even come close,” he told reporters outside the White House last month.
And there’s no question, he has been a very busy fellow.
In the past week alone, Trump lobbied Israel to bar visits by two Muslim members of Congress; railed against his hand-picked Federal Reserve chairman for not lowering interest rates enough; floated the idea of buying Greenland; delayed tariffs on China to clear a path for cheaper Christmas toys; and obsessed over the size of his rally crowd in New Hampshire.
Whew, that’s a lot. Except — there’s plenty that Trump didn’t do last week. Or any other week of his 2 1/2-year-old presidency, for that matter:
❚ He didn’t keep his presidential campaign promise to erase the deficit and pay off the national debt. The deficit — the difference between what the federal government spends and what it brings in — is projected to hover around $1 trillion this year, and the U.S. debt has ballooned to a record $22 trillion.
❚ He failed to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, instead sidelining a legislative proposal for desperately needed repairs and improvements to the power grid, highways, bridges, water systems and broadband.
❚ Despite a rash of mass shootings, he hasn’t endorsed even one major gun control law, slavishly deferring to the gun lobby over the 90% of Americans who favor, for example, universal background checks for firearm purchases.
Where Trump has truly been missing in action is on climate change, even as last month was the hottest in recorded history.
Not only has he ignored what has become an existential threat to the United States and the world as global temperatures rise, but under the vaunted rubric of deregulation, Trump has all but worked to promote climate change.
He has started pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord; worked to ease proposed emission limits on vehicles and carbon-pollution restrictions on power plants; weakened the popular Endangered Species Act of 1973; and sought to open up the Arctic wilderness for offshore drilling.
Meanwhile, he has done nothing in response to the consensus among federal agencies and international scientists that major steps must be taken soon to control greenhouse gas emissions, or risk rising temperatures that could create catastrophic changes in the decades to come.
Climate change isn’t some distant threat; it’s here and now. A Washington Post analysis published last week shows how 34 million Americans live in regions of the lower 48 states where average temperatures have already risen by or near 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit), creating profound seasonal changes.
Richard Nixon’s first attorney general famously advised the press to “watch what we do, not what we say.” For Trump and his appointees, it’s just as important to watch what they do.