For Trump supporters, the true test of their leader, their idol now starts. How will he handle all of the promises he made in the 2 1/2 months between winning the election and being sworn in? Will he try to tone down their expectations with more moderate rhetoric? Will the Senate, Congress and Supreme Court be able to discharge their statutory duties without undue interference from the 47th President of the United States?
There is no doubt – not least because of the flood of Executive Orders that have poured out of the White House in the bare few hours that Mr Trump has been the 47th President – that he intends to push his agenda as hard and as far as he can. What will be found out in the coming days, weeks and months is how much stomach the various branches of the U.S. Government have for Trumpism, before reality pushes back. Will – for example – they tolerate the assault that is now underway against the transgender community, by way of his definition of gender as male or female? Will the State Department tolerate the imposition of tariffs on every country around the world and the resulting backlash that their staff, their representatives at conferences?
Will the U.S. at large tolerate the Executive Orders that have been signed, which affect a broad array of Biden policies and directly countermand Executive Orders that Biden signed in the last few days and even in his last few hours? The list below is just a snapshot of the policy territory that the Trump E.O.’s cover:
- Electric vehicles – pushing back against Biden era green policies including half of all new vehicles being electric
- Defining gender – going forward the U.S. Government only recognizes MALE and FEMALE
- Reclassifying Federal employees to make them easier to sack – something many of his supporters have demanded
- 78 Biden era Executive Orders – taken against a range of targets including the transgender community and racial reconciliation
- A National Emergency now exists on the U.S./Mexico border – the U.S. military can now be deployed at the border to stop illegal immigration
Mr Trump’s second Presidency has already fallen afoul of New Zealand, which split the atom in 1917. Mr Trump made a claim that America did it, when in fact Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand physicist born in Nelson, achieved the feat in Manchester whilst conducting research there. He would go on to lead the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge University, where under his watch the neutron was discovered.
Another nation where Mr Trump’s inauguration did not land on the right foot, was Panama which vowed that the Panama Canal would remain under Panamanian control.
Perhaps the most surprising was from Palestine, where Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Palestinian nation would welcome a state solution where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side. Given that the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu said a year ago that there was no place for Palestine in his view of the future Middle East, it will be interesting to see what happens. When one considers that Mr Trump himself moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, despite being warned against it, Mr Abbas’ conciliatory tone, whilst welcome, might be misplaced.
And so, the second Donald Trump Presidency begins. Despite promising to solve or act on a bunch of problems on Day 1, Mr Trump has raised almost as many questions as he tried to answer. And unfortunately given his erratic nature, past Trumpism is not necessarily a reliable guide to knowing what future Trumpism will look like.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 