When President Donald Trump returns home to America, he may well wish that he had stayed abroad as even these “goodwill” trips, that other presidents have taken, have not resulted in favorable ratings. In, fact a recent Gallup Poll revealed that he has a job approval rating of only 39 percent, not far from his average in the previous two weeks. Only 56 percent of those polled approve of his presidency.
While the tanked ratings have much to do with his agenda, one driven by campaign promises, except cutting Medicaid, which he said that he would not do, his legislative agenda, mostly in a budget proposal has been focused on wealth transfer from the low-income to the the working poor to the very wealthy. He has included himself as he purposes to drop a longheld tax plan that would allow him to pay even less taxes; which he bragged about during the campaign.
Add to that pile, a House vote that would approve of taking health care benefits from at least 24 million Americans, has not done his reputation much good, and as the trend grows to include such draconian cuts to traditional programs such as SNAP, previously known as food stamps, and children’s health programs, the sky above the White House grows darker.
Trump’s travel ban is also once again, stuck in appeals, despite modifications to it that deleted references that seemed to give preferential treatment to Christians, over Muslims, and those who held valid visas and green cards.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that “The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th Circuit is the first appeals court to rule on the revised travel ban unveiled in March. Trump’s administration had hoped it would avoid the legal problems that the first version from January encountered. A second appeals court, the 9th U.S. Circuit based in San Francisco, is also weighing the revised travel ban after a federal judge in Hawaii blocked it.”
As usual, the president’s late night tweets, and his unbridled tongue, have held his agenda hostage to the checks and balances provided by the Constitution. And while the Supreme Court would likely hear the case if asked, (as they most always do when a lower court strikes down a federal law or presidential directive), “a central question in the case before the 4th Circuit was whether courts should consider Trump’s public statements about wanting to bar Muslims from entering the country as evidence that the policy was primarily motivated by the religion.”
Hovering in the background is the investigation into the alleged communications both before his inauguration, and afterwards with the Russians, the most notorious being a closed door meeting with them, that was barred to the American press. Also, in that meeting Trump revealed classified information, according to a Washington Post blog, that was denied by the White House.
Then he revealed classified information from the British government in the aftermath of the Manchester bombing, resulting in a tart admonishment from their prime minister, Theresa May.
With accusations that the president obstructed justice by asking former FBI head, James Comey, to abandon the investigation of former National Security head Mike Flynn, in a meeting where he asked both Vice-President Pence, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to leave, have prompted serious discussions about impeachment. But, most observers feel that with the GOP in power after a nearly decade long absence, that their consent is nil.
Presidential families have always held some oddities, from a perennially unemployed brother in law, to old school chums, like LeMoyne Billings, of JFK’s, and perpetual house guest, so that Mrs. Kennedy complained to the White House chief usher, “Oh, Mr. West, he’s been a house guest of mine ever since I’ve been married!”
But perhaps no president has had a son-in-law that has been subject to an FBI investigation, which has Jared Kushner, under investigation, for proposing to the Russians, before the election, last December, to use their secure line of communications, to the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, who, himself, was itchy about granting access, and risking the line’s security, to an American, reported The Washington Post.
The risk would have also been great for Kushner, and Trump, if discovered by our intelligence; but, Kushner, ever the neophyte, seems to not have known, or perhaps not even cared.
These pitfalls, some say landmines, that the Trump campaign team, and administration officials have stepped on, is precedent shattering, and the admixture of power and ignorance, from within, have exposed the country to greater hazards, than from without.
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