[AsiaTimes] January 20 will mark the end of the first year of the administration of Donald Trump in Washington. President Trump was nominated for and then elected president contrary to the almost unanimous opinion of the media, the pollsters and the political talking heads that those outcomes were impossible. He was also elected to the office by the Electoral College despite having received almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent.
| Efforts on the part of the conspiratorial opposition to characterize the NSS as incendiary and incoherent are meaningless babble. It is nothing of the kind, and any such descriptions are simply manifestations of political malice |
Since taking office on January 20, 2017, he has been the object of the unremitting hostility of all the forces that were arrayed against him in 2016 ‐ the Democratic Party, a substantial minority of Republicans, academia, minority voting blocs, the media, most of the federal bureaucracy, and the commentariat. In the face of this massive counterattack, the president has governed with many turns and tumbles, demonstrating his lack of political experience as well as his personal style, which resembles that of a whirling dervish.
His administration is still far from complete ‐ many important posts remain unfilled, partly because of the obstructionism of congressional Democrats. His lack of political experience and that of a network of congressional supporters have meant that he has suffered serious defeats in attempting to forge his domestic programs. He has also supported and signed into law a budget bill that violates not only his own fiscal promises during the campaign, but also, and massively, the presumed dedication of the Republican Party to fiscal responsibility, adding, as it does, more than a trillion dollars to the federal debt. |