He Is Who We Thought He Is
Readers who have been following the NFL for the last two decades (or more) are probably familiar with the
rather legendary meltdown
of then-Arizona-Cardinals-coach Dennis Green in 2006, after a loss to the Chicago Bears. Although the Cardinals weren't
very good, Green felt he had developed an excellent game plan for the matchup. And yet, the Bears won 24-23, after a big
comeback. Speaking to reporters, a very disappointed Green barked: "But they are who we thought they were! And we let
'em off the hook!"
We could not help but think of this as we reviewed the litany of (largely unpleasant) news stories yesterday.
Yesterday marked the one-week anniversary of the commencement of Trump v2.0, and he's spent most of his time
reminding everyone of what kind of president he is, and plans to be. That is, a president who is interested
substantially in praise and adulation, and also in score-settling, but not in governance. A rundown of the
most egregious illustrations of this:
- Victory Lap: When a new presidential administration commences, the fellow in the
White House can go slow and steady, crossing the t's and dotting the i's, if what they want is for their
initiatives to have staying power (and, in particular, to survive the inevitable legal challenges). Alternatively,
they can come out of the gate like a bat out of hell. This is a short-term play, aimed at garnering flattering
headlines, fawning coverage on Fox, and lots of positive mentions on eX-Twitter, Gab, and Parler. It's not a great
choice for a president who wants to make sure their XOs and other policies stand up.
Trump, of course, favors Option #2. And just to make sure everyone knows where he stands, the White House
released a memo yesterday
that was chock-full of Trumpy braggadocio. Under the subject line "WEEK ONE: The Wins Keep Piling Up," the memo declares:
President Donald J. Trump's first full week back in office was the most significant in modern history, punctuated by
strong, swift action to correct course after four years of disaster.
In just one week, President Trump took more than 300 executive actions, secured more than a trillion dollars in U.S.
investment, oversaw a significant drop in illegal border crossings, deported criminal illegal alien rapists, gang
members, and suspected terrorists, and restored common sense to the government.
In just one week, President Trump has done more to usher in the Golden Age of America than most presidents do over their
full term. As the New York Post put it, President Trump "is already hitting the ground running as his first 100 days in
office are off to a historic start"—and the best is yet to come.
Move over Franklin D. Roosevelt. After just one week, your first 100 days have apparently been relegated to second
place.
- DoJ "Housecleaning": Early yesterday, the White House
advised
the dozen or so lawyers who worked with former special counsel Jack Smith that their services will no longer be
required, and that they are all out of a job.
These firings serve no just or useful purpose. First of all, these attorneys were just doing their jobs. If you work for
the DoJ, and the DoJ tells you to investigate [X], then you investigate [X]. There is no risk to Trump of these folks
continuing their Trump investigative work, since the Trump investigations are over, and most certainly are not going to
be re-launched while he is in office. And there is no chance that firing a bunch of attorneys on January 27, 2025, is
going to stop the next Democratic administration from investigating Trump, if there are things to investigate. So, the
only thing that was achieved by kicking a bunch of government employees to the curb yesterday was to satisfy Trump's
thirst for vengeance, while also upending the lives and careers of these newly unemployed folks.
- Trans Soldiers: Yesterday, the White House confirmed something that everyone knew was coming:
Sometime soon, probably today, Trump
will issue
an executive order in which he grants the fondest wish of newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, banning
trans soldiers from serving in the United States armed forces.
This has been studied carefully, often by people who are not at all trans-friendly. And the conclusion has invariably
been that trans soldiers do absolutely no harm to the armed forces, and do nothing to undermine "readiness and
lethality," although the Trump XO will certainly claim otherwise. At the same time, trans Americans are a useful source
of new recruits. Some very promising folks who are trans are interested in getting away from hostile environments, and
perhaps with getting financial support for hormone treatments and/or transitioning. So, it's a win-win for both the
armed forces and the recruits.
If you want a more in-depth treatment, the right-leaning site The Bulwark had an essay yesterday headlined
"We All Lose in Trump's War Against Trans Americans."
The evidence is clear that with his various anti-trans maneuvers, Trump is not achieving the things he says he's
achieving, and that he's actually doing harm. Going back to the armed forces example, if the President is
successful at expelling trans folks, he will deprive the military of roughly 15,000 experienced soldiers.
That makes America less safe, not more so. The only thing he'll actually be achieving here is to communicate
to the base that he's "doing something" about those durned queers.
- Let 'em Die, Part I: As long as we are on the subject of Trump trying to Make
America White (and Straight) Again, yesterday the FDA
scrubbed
all material from its website related to ensuring that clinical trials are conducted on people of different ethnic and economic backgrounds.
Undoubtedly, the person who made this choice was: (1) endeavoring to execute the administration's anti-DEI agenda, and
(2) to be blunt, a fu**ing idiot. The requirement that clinical trials have a diverse sample of participants has nothing
to do with DEI, and everything to do with the fact that medicines often work differently with members of different
populations. To take a historical example, one standard treatment for malaria in the mid-20th century was primaquine.
However, it did not work well with patients who were Black, or who were of Mediterranean heritage (for example, people
of Greek, Arab, or Sephardic Jewish descent). It turns out—and it took until the 1960s to nail this down—the
problem was due to those groups generally having a Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency.
To give a more modern example, reader J.G. in San Diego, CA, who also merits a mention in the
item below about the 1/6 convicts, is a physician who is involved in several clinical trials. And the hospital where
J.G. works has a partnership with an institution in New Zealand, as that is the only way to get the necessary number of
Pacific Islander participants, so as to make the results of the trial valid.
So, yet again, we have a policy choice that is achieving nothing useful, except to convince the MAGA crowd that Trump is
fighting "wokeness." Meanwhile, it throws a giant wrench into government-funded medical research, while also sending the
message that if you're not white, who really cares if medicines work for you?
- Let 'em Die, Part II: Trump
has also frozen
the distribution of a bunch of federal funds
earmarked for foreign aid and/or for various research and other products. This is ostensibly to give time for a 90-day
review of government spending. It also looks an awful lot like illegal impoundment to us, but nobody seems to be talking
about that, so maybe we are wrong.
In any case, one of the things that is now "on hold" is all PEPFAR funding. Every single bit of it. That means that there
are quite literally
boxes of AIDS-fighting medicines, sitting in clinics in Africa, and those medicines cannot be administered. Needless to
say, this is a real problem, because the course of treatment is not designed around the possibility of an unexpected
90-day pause.
Yet again, this policy decision serves no useful purpose. The entire PEPFAR program costs $7.5 billion a year, which is
a tiny drop in the giant bucket that is the federal budget. Needless to say, 90 days of that is considerably less than
$7.5 billion—something more like $1.75 billion, which is an even tinier drop. Further, remember that a bunch of
the medicine is already there. It's already been paid for.
Unfortunately for the people who need the medicine, they live in sh**hole countries, and they benefit from a program
created by George W. Bush, who failed to give his full-throated support to Trump (and who has passively made clear that
he finds Trump to be distasteful). Halting, or killing, PEPFAR allows the White House to stick it to brown-skinned
foreigners, and also to poke Bush 43 in the eye. What's not to like?
- Him? Really?: When the Trump administration began conducting anti-immigrant raids
this weekend, the officers were accompanied by lots of cameras. The cameras serve no governance-related purpose,
of course. As David Axelrod observed over the weekend, Barack Obama deported more people than Donald Trump has,
and Obama "didn't bring camera and film crews with him to mark the occasion."
No, it could not be clearer that the deportations are primarily theater for the benefit of the anti-immigrant base.
And if there was any question about that, well, the federal officials who conducted the first raids in Chicago
this week were
accompanied by,
of all people, Dr. Phil McGraw. The reality TV star, whose qualifications in his actual field are less-than-stellar
(he's a psychologist, and one who no longer bothers to keep up with the field, or to renew his license), has no
background in law enforcement or in immigration policy. And yet, there he was, interrogating alleged undocumented
immigrants for the benefit of the cameras.
Dr. Phil is a right-winger, and a fellow who knows a few things about creating entertaining TV. That's why he was
there; it makes for better footage for Fox and Newsmax, and the footage is the point. Presumably, Phil Robertson
of Duck Dynasty will be joining a raid in the near future.
The damn thing is, this list isn't even exhaustive. There were plenty of other Trump maneuvers yesterday that
spoke to his motivations being things other than good governance. For example,
freezing
the Justice Department's civil rights division, in anticipation of dismantling it. Or
canceling
the security clearances of 50 long-serving national intelligence employees because those employees have been deemed not
sufficiently loyal. Or
firing
all three Democratic appointees on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
We received a question, not too long ago, that essentially boiled down to: "Do you think you will struggle to fairly
evaluate Trump's policies because you don't agree with them?" As with much talk of bias, we think this kind of misses
the point. Most bias emerges from dynamics that have little or nothing to do with ideology or politics.
In the case of Trump, a much greater barrier, at least for us, is that such a huge percentage of what he does is
self-serving, mean-spirited, and without any purpose that serves the general good, we could very well miss something
that is more positive than it appears. That said, we think that our assessments of all the maneuvers above are on
target, and that we are on firm ground in believing that none of this has anything to do with good governance. (Z)
This item appeared on www.electoral-vote.com. Read it Monday through Friday for political and election news,
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