President Donald Trump’s tenure as president throughout his first couple of months has been a tumultuous roller coaster mired by legislative failure, legal challenges, controversy, and potential scandal. From authorizing and implementing his travel ban to his seemingly never-ending conflict with the press, these first 2 months have been a disaster for Trump and this current administration. One might wonder if he’ll be able to actually do anything or implement any meaningful policy in the relative short term. It will be interesting to see if the Trump administration will be able to do something with all these obstacles in front of them.
Clearly the defeat that stands out in all of this is healthcare. The healthcare debacle and subsequent collapse began with lofty campaign goals that Trump made to effectively repeal and replace Obamacare with something that was “much better.” Then during the transition period, President-elect Trump vowed on live television to keep many of the more popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which in turn didn’t fly over too well with more conservative members of Congress. After an arduous messy month and a half of negotiations, the Republican leadership came up with this regurgitation of a healthcare plan that involved and included grossly misrepresentative refundable tax credits, health savings accounts (which are counterproductive for the poor), fixed block grants to cover Medicaid not based on percentages, and severely underfunded high risk pools for the sick. The Congressional Budget Office(CBO) came out with a report stating that 24 million people would lose healthcare if it were implemented. Ultimately, this plan was a rushed and poorly-conceived disaster. Had it been passed into law, the AHCA would have been touted as a victory for Trump and that’s really all that Trump cared about. This has also created a rift within the Republican Party, and Trump’s actions on twitter have only contributed to the rift.
Then we have the issues with Trump’s travel plan. In late January, he banned refugees from 7 Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States under the guise of national security. While not a Muslim ban purely by name, it certainly implied that the ban was at the very least based on religion. The implementation of such a ban was swift and poorly handled by homeland security throughout the country causing many protests across our nation’s airports, and within days two judges blocked the ban. Public opinion was unanimously against the ban. The Trump administration came out with a revised version of the ban (which only excluded Iraq from the original 7) that was also blocked. Trump has vowed to file an appeal in the coming weeks and this will most likely head to the highest court in the land. Ultimately, Trump simply underestimated the power of public opinion.
Last but certainly not least of things that are hindering Trump’s domestic agenda right now are the multitude of seemingly endless scandals that the administration has had to face, and lie about. From the FBI investigating Trump campaign ties with Russia, to false claims that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign and the many distractions that Trump has thrown throughout the entire process.
All of this leads one, like myself, to question how Trump might be able to push his policies forward. Well, I think that he’ll have to change his tune a little bit. If he wants to actually get things done, he needs to stop whining about miniscule things that in the long run aren’t very important, like getting into twitter wars with other Republicans. Now whether or not he’s capable of doing something like that is clearly up to debate and another matter entirely. If he continues to act in this reckless, knee-jerk reactionary way, he risks losing key allies in upcoming battles like tax reform. He’s truly the most unconventional president in modern times, but he’s going to need to tune it down a notch. One option for Trump, if he does in fact alienate fellow republicans, is to work with Democrats. The main issue with this is that Democrats are still reeling from a huge electoral defeat and will do anything to spite Trump. They’ve also been invigorated by a sweeping progressive movement that’s been charged up ever since Trump’s victory. So any type of collusion with Trump will be seen as a betrayal. The one thing I could see both Trump and Democrats work on is infrastructure policy, but that’s really it.
Ultimately, I think it’s going to be really difficult for Trump to push his populist agenda and keep those promises that he made to his base and those who voted for him. Those who voted for change. Trump may have broken through Hillary’s blue collar firewall, but he’s up against a much more formidable wall–political reality.
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