To any sane observer it ought to be increasingly obvious that Der Trumpenführer lives in a fantasy world with himself at the center of the universe. If facts do not support the fantasy, deny them and call anyone reporting the truth a liar guilty of peddling "fake news." The problem is that reality has a way of catching up with the most frenetic making of would be myths and sooner or later all but the most ignorant and or gullible will realize that the reality TV image is untrue. A piece in Politico looks at the harsh reality that is colliding with Trump's fantasy view of himself and his regime. To me, the wonder is that anyone sane could have expected anything but the failure we are already seeing after only one month. Here are excerpts:
President Donald Trump touts “incredible progress” in his first month in office. But the frenetic period that opened with an inaugural address about “American carnage” and ended with a raucous campaign rally has brought a spotty record that falls short of his promises.
Despite dizzying sound and fury, the president failed to halt immigration from Muslim countries, to label China a currency manipulator, to deliver a serious plan for funding his border wall or to repeal Obamacare—all among his many promises during last year’s campaign.
The Muslim travel ban, Trump’s most consequential and controversial executive order, one of 23 signed so far, lies dead in the courts. He has achieved no noticeable progress on tax reform. The White House is already facing multiple investigations by a Republican-controlled Congress while the intelligence community investigates possible collusion last year between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Trump has appointed just three of the 15 required deputy secretary Cabinet positions; fewer than 40 of the 700 key administration jobs requiring Senate confirmation have been filled.
There's no precedent in the modern history of the presidency for what we've seen over “the last month,” said Republican operative Steve Schmidt. “If you combine the dishonesty, the sloppiness and incompetence, the result is deep concern and anxiety across allied capitals, glee in the capitals of foreign enemies, and an American public that regard him one month in with the lowest levels of support in the modern era. We’ve just never seen an American administration collapse from a credibility perspective as quickly as this one has.”
According to Gallup, Trump’s 40 percent approval rating after one month is 21 points below the historical average rating for new presidents in mid-February and 11 points below the lowest mid-February rating for any other new president.
“He’s beginning to understand where his power truly lies. Washington is not a safe space for Trump,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP consultant.
If the scoreboard, aside from a healthy stock market, does not seem to reflect much winning just yet, Trump has an easy explanation — that he “inherited a mess,” a notable shift from his promise last July that “I alone can fix it.”
Trump blames the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for striking down his travel ban, which was hastily signed without thorough vetting by legal experts and the agencies directed to implement it. He blames the intelligence community for leaking damaging information about Flynn and other investigations rather than the former adviser, who admitted to misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador. He blames nameless staffers for giving him false information and, more than anything, the media for its reporting stories he has taken to dismissing as “fake news.”
Despite those attacks on the media, Trump’s own credibility has been weakened by a torrent of falsehoods coming from top surrogates, his Twitter feed and his mouth: unsupported or easily disproved assertions about the inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, claims of fraudulent voting even though he won the election, the size of his Electoral College victory and, on Saturday, a passing statement about a recent terror attack in Sweden. (There wasn’t one.)
Doubts are growing, for instance, among national security experts in both parties about the new administration’s preparedness for its first serious geopolitical test.
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, were far more optimistic a month ago about realizing the potential of a governing moment in which they control both houses of Congress and the White House than they are now.
Again, to me the surprise is that anyone expected anything different - especially those Republicans that sold their souls to a morally bankrupt narcissist .
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