Trump Trumps Himself by Derek Wyatt
Published in KCWToday April 2017
If you run China, India, Japan, Brazil, Iran or Germany - even Britain - you must look across the pond to what is happening in Washington, DC and allow yourself a little chuckle. Four months into his Presidency and Trump is sinking.
It started with all those rash promises he made during the election.
A new wall between Mexico and USA; the end to immigration from some Middle East states but not all (not where Trump Inc had a presence) and most of all the end to Obamacare putting upwards of 20 million citizens into a position of being unable to afford health care. Above all else in a mature democracy the President of America, president of the largest economy in the world, has a duty of care to his people. Or not.
The wall is such a ridiculous idea. The Mexican border is 1900 miles long (the Berlin Wall was 96 miles: the Great Wall of China is 13,000 miles). The estimated cost is $2.4 billion and we all know what happens to estimates. Of course by a magical twist of his baton President Trump is expecting Mexico to pay for this which defies any sort of logical reasoning.
The immigration ban which is much more complex than has been admitted is having a devastating impact on the view of America outside of America. You can hear the laughter closer to home especially in the Bay Area of San Francisco which houses Apple, Yahoo, Google, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Facebook and dozens more global digital companies. You can hear it at the UNO, in NATO, at the OECD, the World Bank the IMF and even the EU. I suspect deep down Downing Street simply cannot fathom the man and is already regretting that State invitation to him which has distressed Buckingham Palace.
These are serious errors at the beginning of anyone's presidency and has seen President Trump's ratings continue to fall: they are quite the worst ever recorded for an incoming president. But it is worse than we can imagine. The cost of a trip to his condo in Florida is $1m. He goes most weeks. The cost of securing Trump Tower in New York is estimated at $1m a day when he is there and $450k a day when he is not. Then there is his family to think about. All told it looks as though security will cost the American nation $4billion over four years! That's going it some when we have yet to see his first budget where he has said he will slash Government spending.
My sense is Trump is struggling to understand the role of being President; he thinks it is like being the head honcho of a top Wall Street company. It decidedly is not. And into this bubble in which he lives he can still find time to tweet online. It would be surreal if it was not true.
There are really only two ways for President Trump to go. Upwards by learning the political ropes especially on The Hill or downwards to irrelevance and resignation. I can still hear those chuckles.