[Guardian] Now twice as long, his tweets are half as good. The early-morning dispatches from the iPhone of Donald Trump, often sent while he lies in bed, propped up on a pillow, lack the poison punch they packed in the 140-character era. They ramble a bit now, losing focus. But they still command attention and dominate the news to an extent no one on the planet can match.This week it was Trump’s swipe at Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York senator who had called for the allegations of sexual harassment made against Trump during the 2016 election campaign to be investigated. Trump called Gillibrand a "lightweight" who used to "come to my office ’begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them)".
That parenthesis was a misogynist smear, implying that a senior female politician had offered Trump sexual favours in return for cash. It duly dominated the US news cycle for 24 hours.
On other days, it’s not Trump’s tweeting habit that fills the airwaves, but the newest twist in the continuing saga of alleged collusion with Russia to tip the last election. The latest on that is the concerted work by Trump’s Republican enablers on Capitol Hill and beyond to prepare the ground for the firing of Robert Mueller, the former FBI director now serving as special counsel in the Russia investigation. Never mind that Republicans hailed Mueller only a matter of months ago as an unassailably neutral public servant, or that removing him would be a Nixon-level abuse of power, they are doing what they believe their party interest demands. Both these things matter. Trump’s tweets trample daily on the norms that underpin a democratic society, as well as trafficking in the most inflammatory racism and sexism. The Russia question could not be more grave: to collude with a hostile, authoritarian foreign power in subverting a free election is an assault on democracy itself.
The trouble is, they keep us looking the other way. Just as they consume Trump’s energy, they divert ours, preventing us from paying attention not to what he says via Twitter, or what he may have done with Moscow, but what he’s doing right now from his desk in the Oval Office.
On that score, it’s tempting ‐ and fair ‐ to assess his first 11 months in office as a failure. He has failed to fulfil so many of his signature promises, from building that wall to repealing Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms. Today Republicans hoped to unveil a bill that would cut the taxes of the very richest, but even if that gets passed next week it will be the only piece of major legislation Trump has managed to get through a Congress where his party enjoys the rare luxury of a majority in both chambers.
And yet, he has not done nothing. On the contrary, bit by bit and in ways that rarely command the front pages, he has done a lot to shape the way Americans, and others, will live for decades to come.