Trump voters sent a wrecking ball to Washington. And he's wrecking.

April 29th will mark the one hundredth day of the Trump Family Presidency. That's what we might call the White House power nexus, because you couldn't slide a 'Benjamin' (that's a $100 bill) between El Don, Ivanka and Jared. Yes, people, it's family time every day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A recent report by Freedom House, a non-governmental organization that researches global trends in political liberty, states that 'among countries to watch', because they 'may be approaching important turning points in their democratic trajectory' are: South Africa, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Zimbabwe and the United States. To which we would have to add Putin's Russia.

Stunning, no? That the USA could be thrown in the same leaky bucket as that clutch of kleptocrats. Because some of you may have noticed that America is now on its way to being run by a dynastic kleptocracy - unqualified in every way except how to make money.

South Africa may have its 'state capture' by the Gupta family, but can the US be far behind? The nepotistic trio of Don John, Jared and Ivanka are working hard to capture dividends from the richest nation on earth.

As Sarah Kendzior, writing in De Correspondent B.V., points out, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have never been elected to anything. Yet here we have a thirty-six year old privileged white male posing as a shadow secretary of state and charged by his father-in-law to: bring peace to the Middle East, reform the Federal Government and generally, with the specificity we recognize as Trumpian, 'fix things.'

Not far behind, and certainly not in Jared's shadow, comes his wife, handbag designer Ivanka - now known officially as the 'First Daughter' (you know, the 'hot' blonde her dad once said he'd 'like to date.') Last week, while daddy shot rockets into Syria, Ivanka charmed Chinese premier Xi Jingping over 'beautiful chocolate cake' at Mar a Lago. That conversation, we can assume, helped the First Daughter to win profitable marketing patents across China in the following week.

This week, Ivanka is in Germany at the invitation of Angela Merkel. Angela is angling for a special trade deal with the US; who better to court than the young woman who is said to 'rein in' the vulgarian tendencies of her father? And yet, and yet, Ivanka - when asked this week at a Berlin conference about her real role in daddy's government - could only offer that she was still working it out. Want to know the sound of one hand clapping? That was the audience's response.. 

After all this, is it surprising that fifty-three percent of Americans (WSJ/NBC poll) disapprove of Trump's job performance? No US president in modern times has had an approval rating so low. 

But Wall Street seems to love him. A London friend met with some New York bankers last week. They reported great satisfaction with Trump. What's not to like? The Donald is about to take his wrecking ball to the Dodd-Frank Consumer Protection Act, passed by Obama on 2010 as a means of reducing risk in the US financial system; the same risks that contributed to the 2008 recession. Obama's successor is poised to cut the corporate tax rate from thirty-five percent to fifteen percent at a cost to the government of two trillion dollars. And Trump also wants to cut personal income tax for high earners...'bigly', as he would say. 

So much for the urban elite that he - and those that voted for him - derided. So much for 'draining the swamp'.

But Trump's base of support - that is 'the forgotten people' who swept him to the White House (with a little help from Moscow and the FBI)  - is cement hard. And this credulous crowd must be the core of the 42 percent who believe Trump is doing a good job.  Even impartial commentators are saying that, thanks to his immovable base, DT is likely to win a second term. One of his closest advisers says that Trump has already picked his slogan for 2020: 'Keep America great!' That kind of presupposes the first four years will deliver 'mission accomplished.' This is a man never crippled by self-doubt.

Let's reflect on Trump's supporters, the people living along country roads in America's vast interior: in the last election, the cities thought the Republican candidate an embarrassment but the hinterland embraced him, wanted him to blow up the system. And this Spring, even though their neighborhoods are drowning in unprecedented deluges of Biblical proportions, many of them - when asked about it as they survey their underwater trailers on their sodden land - still contend that global warming is 'just a bunch of hooey'; anyway, who needs those nerds at the Environmental Protection Agency...you're fired!

So: do Trump voters still retain their belief that this man, whose hair color is not found in nature, will miraculously transform their lives? 

Well, the faith of Trump voters in their job-savior is still as immovable as that of monks at Mass. These good folks are still convinced that The Donald will bring in: coal, jobs, and manufacturing. And he will keep out: Mexicans, Muslims. ISIS and assorted 'bad hombres.That's what he promised, right? And he'll get Mexico to pay for 'a beautiful wall.' Right?

Actually, wrong. Trump has just stepped back from his demand that Congress vote him $1.5 billion for a down-payment on the wall. The bill for the wall, if it ever gets built in the way Trump wants, will land in the mail boxes of American tax-payers. Trump talks vaguely that  'Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall.' Well, if you believe that, I can introduce you to a TV reality star who thinks he can be president of the United States...

As Robert Kennedy once said, 'every society gets the  kind of criminal it deserves.' But Swami Vivekananda  qualifies that: 'Society does not go down because of the activities of criminals. But because of the inactivity of the good people.'

Maybe we should do more than think about that.


Brian Clewly Johnson
Amagansett
April 2017