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Keep delegitimizing Donald Trump, it’s working.
Trump has been president for five days now, but he’s still stuck in an election that ended three months ago. On Monday night, he met with members of Congress and once again thought it fit to re-litigate an election he lost by nearly three million votes. Here’s The Washington Post on the meeting:
Days after being sworn in, President Trump insisted to congressional leaders invited to a reception at the White House that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes, according to people familiar with the meeting...
Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the start of the bipartisan gathering rehashing the campaign. He also told them that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote.
There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that millions voted illegally—there isn’t even evidence to support a claim that hundreds voted illegally. Recounts in key states have shown no statistically significant evidence of voter fraud.
Trump is fixated on the result of the election because he seems to be obsessed with his own legitimacy as president. This fixation not only further damages his presidency by showcasing Trump’s pettiness and narcissism, it also ties him up—it damages his political capital and distracts him from pushing his destructive policies. Obviously this won’t stop Trump from doing a lot of damage, but reminding the country—and Trump himself—of his historic unpopularity is still a winning political tactic. Let’s keep it up.
Heh, he mad.
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Ben Carson finally has something to do with his hands again.
On Tuesday Carson woke up from a nap and was notified that he had been officially appointed to lead HUD. Carson’s entry into the Trump cabinet was particularly surprising given their tumultuous history together. When Carson briefly caught up to Trump in the polls in November of 2015, Trump compared him to a pedophile. Referring to Carson’s (possibly fabricated) history of violent outbursts as a young teen, which he recounts in his memoir Gifted Hands, Trump said, “It’s in the book that he’s got a pathological temper. That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that … as an example: child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological: there’s no cure for that.” Carson repaid the favor by being Trump’s worst surrogate.
In his book One Nation, Carson—who was a pediatric neurosurgeon—wrote: “A job as a school bus driver taught me to be extremely cautious around small schoolchildren.” Just think how much he’ll learn as secretary of HUD!
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Trump calls himself an “environmentalist,” while pledging to cut auto regulations and approving oil pipelines.
In a meeting with the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler this morning, Trump claimed, “I am to a very large extent an environmentalist, I believe in it.” This came almost immediately after he asserted that his administration would reduce “unnecessary regulations” for the auto industry.
Trump is also planning to sign executive orders this morning approving construction of both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, fulfilling promises he made during his campaign.
Both the pipeline approval and Trump’s anti-regulation stance are boons for big business. For a self-proclaimed environmentalist, it’s hard to imagine Trump doing more to damage the environment, in a single day no less. But hey, it’s still early.
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Trump’s EPA is going to be a disaster for science and the environment.
For all the talk about Trump’s populism, his cabinet picks and many of his own proposals, particularly on taxes and regulations, are in line with the ideology of the radical right. Trump’s domestic agenda is one that dramatically favors the ultra-rich at the expense of nearly everyone else, except perhaps coal workers.
Axios Presented by Bank of America has a first look at Trump’s plan to gut the EPA and it is unsurprisingly disturbing if you happen to care about things like scientific research and clean air and water. The Trump administration plans on cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the EPA’s budget. It plans to stop enforcing Clean Air Act greenhouse gas regulations for new and existing coal and natural gas power plants, fuel economy standards, sections of the Clean Water Act, and plans to clean the Chesapeake Bay. It will also cease to fund scientific research and challenge federal and state permit decisions.
Given Trump’s plan to blow up the Paris climate accords and a congressional plan to give away millions of acres of public lands, Trump’s administration is on track to be even worse than George W. Bush’s when it comes to the environment. What’s perhaps most notable, given Trump’s populism, is that environmental regulation is still widely popular.
This post was edited by Skinned on Jan 24 2017 10:43am
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