As Seth Meyers said, the last few weeks of Donald Trump’s Presidency have felt more like a few years, as he’s tried to do too much without really thinking any of it through. Trump came in with big plans to go guns blazing (literally) to Capitol Hill and shake the whole political system up and tweak it in his own favour, but even for the President of the United States, there are rules to follow, and it doesn’t seem like he read the rulebook.
Trump wants to rewrite the rulebook
Trump has banned any lobbying for five years, meaning all reason and conflicting arguments and “Miss Sloane” type characters have been thrown out the window, bringing him a little bit closer to getting his way every time.
He’s approved construction on a bunch of pipelines that desecrate sacred Native American land, which Barack Obama had previously blocked from being built. And he’s made many more mistakes in addition to these.
As much as he might not want to, Trump is going to have to operate within the restrictions and limitations put in place by the US Government. They’re there to stop him from making these mistakes, and so far, they’ve been doing a good job of that.
When Trump tried to ban Muslims (and, as it just so happens, everyone else in the Muslim-majority countries) from entering the United States, despite their valid travel documents, airlines and customs officials paid it no attention and let them in anyway while the federal courts worked to have it blocked.
When they had it blocked and the White House appealed the block, the court of appeals rejected them, and the ban was pretty much lifted. Then Trump angrily told Americans to blame the federal court system for any future terrorist attack that took place on US soil. What a bold leader.
Trump’s policies require legislation
Everything Trump thinks he can just go ahead and do is going to require legislation.
He can’t just get rid of the Affordable Care Act. He can’t just spend a ton of money to build up America’s infrastructure. He can’t just cut taxes without thinking about how he’s going to handle having less money. He can’t just beef up the military. He needs coalitions and he needs Congress to like them. Right now, Congress think that Trump’s tax cuts will never work if he also plans to increase spending, which by the way, he does.
Trump’s angry rants aren’t helping either. Obama calmly and powerfully took down the Supreme Court in a fantastic State of the Union address in 2010. Trump tweets in all caps that allowing Muslims into America is the same thing as allowing terrorists into America. The next step is Trump following in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s footsteps with a plan to pollute the Supreme Court with like-minded Justices to get his politics through the system.
Trump is not open to compromise
Trump’s biggest problem and his most fatal flaw is that he is not open to compromise. Trump will continue to take big losses if he isn’t willing to compromise, but if he was willing to go for slight compromises like Obama was, he could achieve small successes, which isn’t exactly what he wants, but at least it’s something.
