Sunday, April 23, 2017

Count backwards from 100....


I'm going to paraphrase this run down of what Trump has done with his first 100 days (10 to go!  Never too early to celebrate!)  from Slate, because it is so good.

a)  still not even a bill on health care reform, and Ryan is now telling the House to focus on not shutting down government by Friday.   Which means:

b)  tax reform?  Not so much, and no time soon.

c)  Rollback Dodd/Frank?

I got my hopes up that I'd have something to cover when I saw that Trump had signed some executive orders relating to the rollback of Dodd-Frank financial regulations. But it turns out those orders, which the president made a show of signing, were just instructions to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to "review" the regulations.
d)  North Korea?  China's problem.


And of course,

 the powerful Navy armada he'd bragged last week about sending to the Sea of Japan to intimidate Kim Jong-un turns out to have been 3,000 miles away from the Korean peninsula at the time. So the U.S. isn't really doing anything in that area right now either.
e)  NAFTA?  Let it be.  China a "currency manipulator"?  See North Korea, above.

f)
The Russian hacking/cybersecurity report that Trump said would be done within 90 days of his taking office is not only not done, it hasn't even been started and it doesn't seem like anyone knows who's even supposed to be doing it.
g)

The "major investigation" into voter fraud that Trump said Mike Pence was launching two months ago has never been heard from again.
h)
The Iran nuclear agreement—whose dismantling Trump called the "number one priority" of his administration—remains intact. But—and stop me if you've heard one this before—the administration just announced this week that it would launch an "interagency review" of the Iran deal! It "did not say how long the review would take," Reuters reports.
i)  Remember the "wiretapping" of Trump by Obama?  Or Susan Rice spilling the beans and "unmasking" people?  Yeah, nobody else does, either.

j)

Israel/Palestine, the opioid crisis, veterans' health care and a number of other issues have been assigned to Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, who has no policy or political experience and reportedly developed a foreign-policy position during the 2016 campaign by looking up the word "China" on Amazon.com and calling one of the authors whose names came up.
k)  The Muslim travel ban?  Over to you, General Sessions!

And the cherry on the sundae:

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he wanted Congress to vote on “both” a spending bill and revised health care legislation by the end of next week.

“I think we want to keep the government open, don’t you agree?” Trump said. “I think we’ll get both.”

On Friday, however, Trump walked that timetable back, saying there was “no particular rush.”

“It’ll happen. You’ll see what happens,” he said. “Doesn’t matter if it’s next week. Next week, doesn’t matter.”
It's the weekend.  He needs to play some golf.  Maybe next weekend, too.

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