Well, score one for Team Trump. They said their guy would blow everything up, and that’s just what he is doing. Take a look at the headlines:
• Refugee Ban Causes Worldwide Furor (Washington Post)
• Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos and Outcry Worldwide (New York Times)
• Donald Trump’s Immigration Order Sparks Confusion, Despair at Airports (Wall Street Journal)
I suspect there are 63 million arms pumping away over all this turmoil. After all, one person’s furor, chaos and despair is someone else’s sweet sound of a draining swamp. Yet, as it has been written – or should have been if it hasn’t – any fool can light a fuse (or drain a swamp); the hard part is replacing the ruins with something better. On that end, there has been only a bewildering mixture of wanton hyperbole and silence.
This administration is not high on details. If it had been, Trump might have a chosen a date other than Holocaust Remembrance Day (Friday) to sign an order suspending all refugee admissions for 120 days, indefinitely barring Syrian refuges and blocking citizens of Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Politico reported that a Twitter account methodically posting names of Jews refused asylum in the United States and subsequently murdered in the Holocaust was retweeted thousands of times on Friday.
According to nonstop news accounts, Trump’s order provoked pandemonium at airports where numerous legal residents were denied admission from foreign trips. An Iraqi interpreter who served in the U.S. military for over a decade, was put in handcuffs at New York’s JFK airport and detained until a judge ordered his release. According to a Politico report, an Iranian scientist on her way to Harvard Medical School to work on a cure for tuberculosis, was not allowed to board her plane.
Trump’s executive order drew intense criticism from world leaders, a number of Republicans, representatives of most major religions and the CEOs of nearly every Silicon Valley high tech corporation which employs foreign nationals. The White House was anything but contrite. The president’s senior advisor, Kellyanne Conway tweeted Saturday night: “Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact. Promises made, promises kept. Shock to the system. And he’s just getting started.”
Nobody from Trump’s office, of course, even attempted to connect the dots between the hastily and sloppily drafted executive order and the goal of protecting Americans from terrorism. None of the 9/11 terrorists were from the seven countries named in the order. Other countries that have produced numerous terrorists, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were untouched by the order. The result is a cruel illusion of security at the price of keeping law abiding foreign nationals from entering the country. The National Basketball Association is hardly a hotbed of political activists, but the Milwaukee Bucks made a point of starting Thon Maker, a Sudanese immigrant, Saturday night as a protest over Trump’s xenophobic order.
The problem with all of this, for the country and for Trump, was captured in Kellyanne Conway’s tweet: “. . .he’s just getting started.” These people are still in campaign mode. They are pushing the narrative of Trump the Superhero, the guy who can singlehandedly “Make Gotham Great Again.” What they are ignoring is the reality that a four-year term is a marathon, not a sprint and, despite the campaign lore of Trump’s invincibility, he can’t go it alone.
He’s been in office less than 10 days and Republican congressional leaders are struggling valiantly to keep a lid on their dismay over their party’s president. Several key lawmakers broke the vow of silence over the weekend and publicly criticized his immigration order. Consistent with superhero fashion, it was drafted and released without consulting Congressional Republicans.
As former president Barack Obama can attest, you can only go so far with executive orders. Trump was dealt a winning hand last November: Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. But the president’s solipsism is not conducive to making that legislative advantage work for him. According to a secret recording from last week’s Republican meeting in Philadelphia, there was considerable angst voiced over Trump’s lack of any details concerning a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) “That’s going to be called TrumpCare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.” The colossal disaster of Trump’s immigration rollout this weekend did nothing to lower the anxiety level of House Republicans.
Instead, the president managed to throw even more energy into a growing resistance movement with spontaneous protest rallies across the country. There is widespread anger over the harm inflicted on innocent immigrants and foreign nationals, with no persuasive evidence that the plan will do anything to reduce terrorism. Most speculation, as a matter of fact, leans in the opposite direction, that anger over the move will be used as a terrorist recruiting tool.
For the moment, however, the White House is content to cling to the campaign fiction that Trump’s superhero powers, alone, will win the day and eradicate evil. For those who no longer read comic books, the time will soon come when measurable, quantifiable results will determine the success of this presidency. Right now, all indications are that such a test will be Trump’s kryptonite.