Brand new year; same old Trump
“President Trump has made 1,950 false or misleading claims over 347 days.”
– Washington Post Fact Checker’s headline, Jan. 2, 2018
President Trump made lots of wild claims about his presidential prowess since he’s taken office.
Hardly any of those claims are true.
The only area in which Trump clearly excels is his capacity to tell lies.
From his first hours in office (that stuff about the size of his inaugural crowd) until today, his daily statements have kept a small army of fact-checkers busy.
The Washington Post, for instance, has calculated that Mr. Trump has, on average, made 5.6 false claims a day since taking his oath of office.
No matter how many times he tells his adoring followers that Obamacare is dead, for instance, (he’s said that in one form or another 61 times) Obamacare is still very much alive.
In fact, even though the Trump administration tried hard to scuttle the Affordable Care Act with cuts to advertising and for outreach, 8.8 million Americans signed up for it before the Dec. 15 deadline anyway.
And that includes one million people who signed up for it for the first time.
You’d think that Trump would tire of having people call him a liar, so he might make a New Year’s resolution to start telling the truth in 2018.
Fat chance.
On Jan. 2, just hours into the New Year, he went on a 16-tweet binge.
Among the 16 was another a doozy.
“Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news — it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record,” he tweeted at 6:13 AM.
Fact-checkers were quick to point out that nothing the president has done has been responsible for 2017 being the “best and safest year on record”.
And further, there have been “Zero deaths” involving U.S. registered commercial airlines since Feb. 12, 2009.
Trump surely knows, at least by now, that taking credit for airline safety, when he’s had nothing to do with it, carries the danger that he’ll get blamed if a commercial jetliner falls from the sky.
But we have a president who thinks no further into the future than his next tweet.
During that 16-tweet tirade, he leveled unprovoked attacks against President Obama, the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton and her aid Huma Abedin, Democrats (in general), his own Justice Department, Palestinians, North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un.
It is a brand-new year, but we have the same old Trump.
It’s twelve days before the first anniversary of his presidency.
He’s not exactly grown into the job — at least not gracefully.
His childish behavior perplexes many Americans who take politics seriously, and confounds world leaders all over the planet.
And 2018 doesn’t look promising.
On the third day of the year the entire Trump White House was hit with a bombshell.
Writer Michael Wolff released excerpts from his upcoming book “Fire and Fury, Inside the Trump White House”.
It reveals a presidential administration inhabited by a bunch of back-biting, neophytes in service of a president who’s not quite up to the job.
Much of the furor generated by the book’s excerpts is attributed to Steve Bannon, Trump’s ex-Senior Counselor.
Bannon didn’t hold back.
He’s quoted as having claimed (among other things) that a June 2016 meeting involving Donald Trump, Jr., and a Russian attorney was both “treasonous,” and “unpatriotic.”
Of course, Trump took the bait.
He couldn’t resist firing back at his old confidant.
Within hours of the release of the excerpts Trump sent out a terse official statement with a first sentence that left no doubt that Bannon had gotten under his paper thin-skin.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” he wrote.
Stay tuned.
This could get real nasty.
The most powerful man on the planet vs. his disgruntled ex-employee.
Smart money, though, is on the disgruntled ex-employee.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.