(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

Towards the end of 2017 we can start making up the balance of Trump’s first year in office.  We already know that the current US President lies on average five times per day, or once every four hours, and that is undoubtedly more than any president before him.  It is the only real record he holds, but not surprisingly the only one he doesn’t take credit for.  The records he lies about are made up.  Trump claims that he signed more bills in his first year in office than even Harry Truman, the record holder, while in reality he signed fewer bills than Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  He also falsely claims that the economy has expanded more, that more jobs have been created, and that the stock market has risen faster than under Obama, while in fact since Trump became president the economy, job creation and Dow Jones have grown somewhat slower than in the final months of Obama’s presidency.  Trump started his presidency with the lie that he had the largest inauguration crowd ever, something that could easily be falsified, immediately followed by the lie that 3.5 million illegal immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton.

Some of Trump’s lies are silly.  Before his inauguration he blamed Obama for having played too much golf and declared that he would have no time for that because the presidency would demand all his attention, but to date Trump has played golf 89 times, compared to Obama’s 26 times in the same period of his presidency.  He also said in an interview that as president he would go on Twitter only sporadically and show a lot of restraint in his tweets, and we know how that worked out.  Twitter is in fact the main tool with which Trump disseminates his lies, and occasionally he produces a tweet that is so absurd that you cannot even call it lying, like when he called the Pope ‘a modest man,’ and added ‘just like myself, maybe that’s why I like him so much.’ Trump got deeply in trouble when he accidentally tweeted the truth, namely that he knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI when he fired him, and his lawyer had to fall on the sword with a statement that he, not Trump, had written that tweet.  That, of course, was another lie, and it is a perfect example of how Trump makes everybody around him lie to protect the president.

With so much choice it is not easy to determine what has been Trump’s biggest lie so far, but I chose his statements about the tax bill that was recently passed by congress, because they are his most consequential lies so far.  Trump declared that the bill would be ‘not so good’ for him but that ‘that didn’t matter,’ and that his wealthy friends were very unhappy with him, while at Mar-a-Lago for the holidays he told those friends that he had just ‘made them a lot of money.’

And when Trump isn’t lying he is bragging. In a spontaneous interview with a New York Times reporter this week, clearly buoyed by the passing of the tax bill, he said that he understands tax legislation better than the best CPA, and that he understands health care better than almost anyone.   It shows how even minor achievements can trigger major insanity in a narcissist.

In the same interview Trump said that he could make the Department of Justice do anything he wants, but that he expected Robert Mueller to treat him fairly and therefore would not interfere with his investigation.  I predict that next year we’ll find out that that was another lie, hopefully the last one.

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

Last Wednesday Donald Trump finally got what he wanted: a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.  The passing of the bill was celebrated in front of the White House, with speeches by Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch.  Ryan praised the president for his ’exquisite’ leadership, McConnell said that never a president has achieved so much during his first year in office, and Hatch, who is clearly losing his marbles, said that Trump was everything he could dream of in a president, and that he probably would become the greatest president ever.  During a cabinet meeting in the White House Mike Pence did all of them one better,  by, at Trump’s invitation, praising the president in language that in Evangelical circles is normally reserved for God the Father.  Trump took all the praise that would have made any normal person say ‘stop, please’ – and that would have made even Kim Jong-un blush – in stride, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  The usual insanity was dripping off his face, and in his own speech he repeated all the lies he has been telling about the tax bill since its first inception.

Instead of being a Christmas gift for the American people the tax bill is a scam.  The bulk of the benefits goes to the richest one percent of the population, while the working poor and the middle class get some crumbs that fell off the table – and that only temporarily.  Not surprisingly the bill is very unpopular, but Republicans hope that when American workers see a small increase in their after-tax wages they will start appreciating it.  They misjudge the situation, however, as do the pundits who believe the bill is simply unpopular because Trump is so unpopular.  Republicans think that people only look at what is in it for them individually, and if they get a raise, no matter how small, they’ll be satisfied, but in an elegant theory formulated in the 1960s J. Stacy Adams showed that workers are very aware of the balance between their own efforts or ‘inputs’ and rewards or ‘outcomes,’ and compare that balance with the balance of other people’s inputs and outcomes, a comparison that will determine if they’re satisfied or not.  Therefor, when someone with a middle class income receives a minimal raise while a retired investor gets a windfall, dissatisfaction is the inevitable result.

So while the tax bill won’t generate public support it succeeded in destroying some reputations in congress.  Susan Collins was bamboozled by McConnell, who promised her that Obamacare subsidies would be secure while they are not, but voted for the bill anyway, with as result that she’ll never be taken seriously anymore when she pretends to take a principled stand.  ‘Deficit hawk’ Bob Corker accepted a $1.5 trillion increase of the national debt in exchange for a golden handshake for his real estate business.

And Trump may pretend to be happy about the tax bill but Robert Mueller’s investigation must be keeping him awake at night.  More proof is emerging that the president knew Flynn had lied to the FBI before he asked Comey to go easy on Flynn, and there are signs that next to collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice Mueller is also investigating money laundering by the Trump organization.

Flynn’s guilty plea and cooperation with Mueller started a host of overt and covert attempts to discredit the FBI and the Department of Justice, as a prelude to eventually fire Mueller.  Mark Warner gave an impressive speech on the senate floor warning for the constitutional crisis such an action would result in.

 
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(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

Apparently right after his inauguration Donald Trump told staffers that they should consider his presidency a reality show with a new episode every day, and it looks like he meant it.  He started the week with robocalls on behalf of racist and child molester Roy Moore, and on election day issued a statement that voters in Alabama would do the right thing and elect Moore to the senate.  After Moore lost Trump claimed nevertheless that he had been right, because in the primary he had supported another candidate than Moore, sitting senator Strange, and he tried to bury the fact that after the primary he had thrown his full weight behind Moore.  With regards to the child molestation charges against Moore the White House had the peculiar position that the Alabama voters should decide about their validity, just like the 2016 election had decided about the sexual assault accusations against Trump.  Unfortunately for Trump, in the current #MeToo climate he cannot get away with that.  Megyn Kelly interviewed some of his accusers on national television and one hundred Democratic congressmen demanded an investigation.  Six senators asked him to resign.

Trump decided to attack one of those senators, New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, with a tweet in which he suggested that she had been willing to give him a blow-job in exchange for a campaign contribution.  Elizabeth Warren called it ‘slut-shaming,’ and it not only reinforced the president’s reputation as a sexist and a misogynist, but also propelled Gillibrand to the frontrunner’s position for the Democratic nomination in 2020.  And she was not the only one who incurred Trump’s wrath.  With Robert Mueller focusing on the first eighteen days of his administration and getting closer and closer to the Oval Office Trump decided to join the Fox News/Freedom Caucus chorus calling for an investigation of Mueller and the FBI, stating that the reputation of the FBI has never been worse than at this point in time.  Meanwhile Trump continued his bizarre public disagreement with Rex Tillerson, who said that the US would be willing to engage in talks without preconditions with North Korea while the White House declared that talks would be pointless unless North Korea changes its course.  Tillerson is expected to step down soon.

While he was feuding with his Secretary of State Trump found the time to continue his bromance with Putin, who praised Trump in a press conference for the performance of the US stock market under his presidency.  Trump called Putin to thank him, and simultaneously it was revealed that in Trump’s daily national security briefings information about Russia he might consider too negative is hidden in a stack of papers he’ll never read, while it is omitted in the oral presentations.

And then there were the departures, current and upcoming.  Omarosa had to be pulled out of the curtains in the Roosevelt Room and announced a tell-all book, and Paul Ryan may soon leave the House.  If Ryan wants to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024 he can no longer afford to be associated with Trump and be partly held responsible for the expected electoral disaster in 2018.

The poor condition of the administration and the GOP is best illustrated by the fact that they try to pass a hugely unpopular tax bill that most Americans understand to be a scam on behalf of corporations and the wealthy, and celebrate it as their only legislative achievement this year.

(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)

There is a video lecture from the 1970s in which the late, great Russell Ackoff speaks about democracy and Iran, at the time a hot topic: “In most countries of the world you have God at the top, then the Constitution, and then the Head of State. But in Iran you have God, then the Shah, and then the Constitution. So when the Shah has made a decision the only appeal is prayer, and that is not very effective.” Trump must have had something similar in mind when he had his lawyer declare that the president cannot obstruct justice, because he is the chief executive of the country and therefore ultimately in charge of law enforcement.  Other sources of inspiration may have been Papal infallibility and Richard Nixon’s ‘when the president does it that means that it’s not illegal,’ but Iran seems an appropriate model because Trump also expressed a desire to have his own, presidential secret service, operating independently from the CIA, FBI and NSA.  Hitler of course had the Gestapo and Stalin the NKVD, and considering Trump’s habit to only compare himself with the truly historic greats and to try and outdo them they may have been on his mind too.

The issue came up when Trump released a tweet saying that he knew Michael Flynn had lied to both the vice-president and the FBI when he fired him.  Since Flynn was fired one day before Trump asked James Comey ‘whether he could see his way to letting Flynn go,’ the president’s attempt to obstruct justice was fairly obvious.  The White House’s defense was as old as it was lame.  In a new version of ‘the butler did it’ Trump’s personal lawyer fell on the sword with a public statement that he had written the tweet, and mistakenly mentioned Flynn’s lying to the FBI. Not even a dimwit like Sarah Palin would believe that a lawyer would write a tweet like that, and things got worse when Paul Manafort violated the terms of his bail by contacting one of his Russian associates and was put back on house arrest, while Billy Bush wrote in an Op-Ed that the voice on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was indeed Trump’s.  The president tried to regain his mental balance by opening up two national parks in Utah for industrial destruction and going all in for Alabama child molester Roy Moore, forcing the Republican National Committee to follow suit.

Subsequently, by way of an early Hanukkah present, Trump gave a speech announcing that the US was recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would start preparations to move the embassy there.  This was as much a gesture towards Evangelicals in the bible belt as towards Israel, but Trump probably doesn’t know that the former support Israel only because its existence is a condition of the prophesy that all Jews must ultimately convert to Christianity or else perish.

During the speech Trump began slurring his words, which led to speculation about his mental health. Answering questions from reporters Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump had just been thirsty, but also that he would have a complete physical at Walter Reed Hospital early next year.  The good news for Trump is that commercial real estate is the industry that benefits the most from the new tax bill.

The low point of the week came when Sarah Sanders lectured Congressman John Lewis, who had his skull broken when he marched with Dr. King in Selma, for not honoring the sacrifice of civil rights leaders by not attending an event in Mississippi where Trump will also be present.  For that alone she’ll go to hell, if there is one.