Well, this week closed out the “Trump First 100 Days”. Bigly. Really bigly. Actually, his first 3 months were noteworthy only for bombast and Executive Orders directing his Cabinet to “do stuff”.  The Trump administration passed no significant legislation during his initial 100 days and failed miserably in repealing Obamacare or building an ill-advised, unnecessary wall – the cornerstones of his campaign (along with hate, lies, and bigotry). Maybe assessing the achievements of a new administration over the first 100 days is not the best metric of a President’s effectiveness, but that initial period does represent the critical  time when that President has the most political momentum and capital and should be able to move policies into actions. Particularly when this President repeatedly stated during his campaign that his first 100 days would be “amazing”, “best first 100 days of any President in history”, and so on. Not quite, Donny.

What happened this week?

Tweeting Replaces Diplomacy – North Korea is a tinder box right now. The heavily armed country is led by an unstable tyrant suffering from megalomania with a deep hatred for the US and South Korea. North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons and missile systems capable of delivering armaments for far greater distances than could realistically be needed for defense. The official US position is to work through China to put pressure on Kin Jong-un to behave as a normal tyrant, but he continues to behave as a madman, domestically and internationally, including launching  a long range missile this week that failed.

These are the situations which require careful behind-the-scenes diplomacy that seeks to defuse the circumstances while allowing leaders to “save face”. What does our leader do?   He tweets the following: “North Korea disrespects the wishes of China and its highly respected President when it launched, though unsuccessfully, a missile today. Bad!” This is what passes for careful diplomacy in this administration. Reminded me of the Cuban missile crisis. If only John Kennedy had twitter! None of us might be here today.

TrumpCare Redux – In a desperate attempt to salvage Trump’s first 100 day report card, the administration began a fevered push to resuscitate the dead on arrival Trumpcare bill. Vice President Pence took some time off from denying women rights to lobby members of the House Freedom Caucus to change their vote on the Obamacare replacement bill. You remember this group of charitable Americans. These Freedom Caucus members were not happy enough with the fact that TrumpCare would drop 22 million poor people from health care coverage and gut Medicaid, they would not vote for a bill that required insurance companies to provide essential health benefits like maternity, preventive child care, and emergency room coverage. Why do poor people need those things, anyway? Pence, that negotiating genius, got them to support the new bill by allowing states to charge a higher premium to people with a riskier health history.  In other words, to eliminate the Obamacare requirement that insurance carriers had to accept people with “pre-existing conditions”. I’ve written on this health insurance requirement previously. Coverage of “pre-existing conditions” is one of the most popular elements of Obamacare and the electorate won’t accept a substitute without this coverage. Allowing individual states to charge greater premiums for people with “pre-existing conditions” and to set up “high-risk pools”, essentially removes this insurance coverage. Health insurance will be no different under this bill than it was before Obamacare. Don’t let Trump or the administration and congressional spin doctors fool you. There will not be coverage for “pre-existing conditions” in any states that choose to set up high risk pools. That was why Paul Ryan did not bring TrumpCare II up for a vote. He couldn’t even get moderates from his own party to support this legislative abomination. Interesting to note that these conservative stalwarts exempted themselves and their staffs from any TrumpCare requirements.

EPA and Climate Change You may not know this, but last week the Environmental Protection Agency removed ALL of its climate change material from their websites. Wiped out hundreds and hundreds of scientific findings and facts in one fell swoop. The reason, according to EPA’s spokesman, J.P. Freire, is to “reflect the views of the leadership of this agency”. Let’s be clear, information on tax payer funded website of the Federal government is to reflect facts and reliable data, not leadership views. Government websites are meant to provide factual information, not political positions, to interested citizens. We need to keep track of what is happening to the US government websites. Recently, a State Department agency website published a long article about the history of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. The article was also posted on sites for US embassies around the world. Only after the press asked about why a government agency would have what amounts to an advertisement for Trump’s private club on its website was the post taken down.

If the EPA, Labor, Education, Housing, and other US government websites begin to sneak in political misinformation, combined with contrived stories from alt-right sites like Breitbart, then we’ll know exactly where this administration is attempting to take this country. And I’m not being an alarmist. I think we are now at the point where we need to worry about the future of our democracy. Right now. Not at the end of this term or even at the end of this year. That speech in Harrisburg was a fascist’s, rabble-rousing speech continually attacking one of the pillars of our democracy (the press) in a mob environment reminiscent of one of Hitler’s early Nazi rallies. Led by the President of the United States. Nothing like that has ever happened in our history. Bear in mind, all democracies throughout history have failed. Every one.

See you next week.