#29 - 100 Days of Solitude

Much has already been said and written about Trump’s first 100 days, in large part because during his Presidential campaign, he touted all the steps he would take during this time to make America great again.  Trump, the avid well-read historian that he is, has declared it one of most successful in all of history.  The Liberal scum media, and some renowned presidential historians have a decidedly different take.

No matter what your position is on promises delivered or opportunities lost, I think the underlying story line that is missed by all the political pundits on both sides of the aisle is just how lonely President Trump has really been feeling during these first 100 days.

In the 1984 movie, The Lonely Guy, Steve Martin and Charles Grodin are so lonely and socially inept that they throw a party with good-looking, life-size card board cut outs as party guests.   In their search for love and acceptance, their judgement suffers, and so…. they get a little desperate.  While we feel sad for both of these lonely guys, there is actually something to be said for their invited guests.  They don't drink all the booze, they don’t spill red wine on the oriental rug, and most importantly, when their host says something stupid, obnoxious or patently false, they won’t call him out.

Several of the card-carrying members of the Trump administration are not much different than those cardboard cutouts, and in following their leader they have vocalized numerous “Oh, I can’t believe that actually came out of my mouth” moments themselves.  Mr. Trump is very accepting of those members, in part because of the pride he feels, knowing that he has taught them well, but also because their presence allows Mr. Trump to feel loved and accepted, and provides a moment’s respite against the inherit pangs of loneliness that permeate his soul.  But for Mr. Trump their real value-add is that they are ready and willing, at the drop of a hat, to remind Mr. Trump how just how great he really is, which comes in handy when his sense of loneliness enters the danger zone (that feature costed extra).

And just in case, President Trump’s hired cardboard cut-outs aren’t up to the job, he brought in daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared to bat clean-up.  They have had years of experience bowing down to Trump’s super human talents; it is a skill they have honed and refined, in part because of their pure love for this great man, but more because of the over-sized inheritance they will receive upon his passing.   So, it’s no surprise that Mr. Trump has made them a critical piece of his political team.  Let’s face it, if you are the leader of the most powerful country on the planet, you want to surround yourself with the best of the best.

And with the administration's first 100 days now behind us, Trump’s own cardboard cutouts have been moving at light speed all week long trying to justify they own accomplishments.  Reice Priebus, Sean Spicer, Kelly Ann Conway and other lesser known talking heads, armed with lists of all good things Trump, have been let loose on the media to remind the liberal scum just how great this president is and how far we have come in Making America Great Again.

But if you look at Mr. Trumps so-called accomplishments, it’s not much more than a list of executive orders, which, when issued by President Obama, was something that he railed against prior to his election.  But now, Mr. Trump claims those executive orders have made his first 100 days, the best of any presidency, ever.  Ah, right, too bad several Presidential historians are already calling it one of the worst ever.  One thing we have all known about Trump, and this includes his supporters, was that he was never going to be in the running to claim the moral high ground, and he has not disappointed on this one.

Probably his biggest executive orders, not including the one naming his favorite poem, the Snake, the official poem of America (including that other one down south), were the ones that flopped before they even got out of the gate.   His “No Trespassing” Immigration Bans, version 1.0 and version 2.0, were summarily rejected by the courts which have questioned the constitutionality of the ban.  And as I have previously written before, NT 1.0 was so horribly conceived that included on Trump’s banned list of bad hombres were all Iraqis, one of our most important allies in the Middle East, and Green Card holders, the most heavily vetted group of foreign arrivals, and it required implementation 24 hours after signing.  I just hope that the incompetence oozing out of Trump’s White House, isn’t contagious.   

His most recent order to defund sanctuary cites was again put on hold by the courts.  Notice a theme here?  Mr. Trump still thinks he is running a family business and that everybody will be beholden to him and will just roll over and accept his almighty wisdom. Somehow, Trump, the historian, missed the fact that it doesn’t quite work that way in a real democracy.

Listed as his biggest accomplishment was the selection of Neil Gorsuch to take the slot vacated by the untimely death of Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.  Please, this is an accomplishment?  My dog could have pulled this off.  She’s cute and fluffy, but not the brightest pooch you ever met.  Really thanks to Mitch McConnell’s willingness to hold up government…. again, and delay the consideration of Obama’s selection for 10 months, this accomplishment was a done deal before Trump set foot in the White House.  VP Pence, representing conservative Republicans put a list of 12 names in front of the Donald and said “Pick One”.  Wow, talk about heavy lifting.

Absent from Mr. Trump's list of accomplishments were the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, tax reform, an infrastructure bill, and the building of the wall, all major theme's he pushed throughout the campaign.  Granted, maybe it was too much to ask that any or all of these would be accomplished within the first 100 days, but what is truly disappointing (if you are a Trump supporter) or laughable (if you are not) is that there appears to be no consensus, no framework for an agreement on any of these topics just within the Republicans themselves, who, in case you missed it, control the House, the Senate and the White House (well, on paper anyway).

On Obamacare, he can’t get the Freedom Caucus (the Far Right Republicans) and the Tuesday Group (the sane ones) to align on an approach.  One of the most recent changes in a bill winding its way through the House would permit the removal of pre-existing condition rule at the state level, something Trump himself said several times during the campaign was a non-starter.  You mean, you actually believed everything he said when he campaigned, and you said he was different from all the others?  Well, yes that part is certainly true, he certainly is different. 

On the wall, the Trump administration has already pulled back from making this a requirement in the upcoming spending bill, so now it will have to wait until the fiscal 2018 year, but near as I can tell, the Mexicans haven’t yet offered to pick up the tab on this one. I don’t know, but maybe they took offense at Trump’s “murderers and rapists’ comment, which was really just blown out of proportion, after all Trump did clarify his position by stating, “that some of them, I suppose are good”.  Maybe if he had just said that some of them are definitely good, they would have been happy to pay for it all.

As for tax reform and an infrastructure bill, both of which were supported by the Obama administration years ago, but which were held up by the Republican leadership who refused to give Obama anything resembling a victory, they are no closer to realization then at any point in time.  Oh, and don’t get me started on Trump’s formal push for the removal of the estate tax which will personally save Ivanka and Jared a few billion dollars. I already have half of a blog ready and waiting on this one.

And all throughout the first 100 days, Mr. Trump has continuously worked to relive the past and bath in the glory of his surprising election victory. Despite the fact that the election was almost six months ago, the Donald just can’t let go of the moment, so rather than govern, he spends his time holding campaign rallies, when he's not jetting off to Mar-a-Lago to play golf, which he said he wouldn’t have time for when he got into office.  He did it again Saturday night, when he skipped the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.  Qualified psychiatrists would tell you this fits the profile of typical lonely guy. His behavior is clinical.  The lonely guy lives in the past, and he needs to remind others and by extension, himself, just how great he really is, because he just doesn’t want to acknowledge the sad truth.  And Mr. Trump has taken living in the past to extreme levels.  When the past isn’t good enough for his massive ego, he just re-writes it.  His inauguration ceremony was the biggest ever. Period.  End of sentence. He won the popular vote, when eliminate the votes from all the green Martians who cast votes in multiple blue states.  The former President personally tapped Trump Tower, because he secretly wanted to hear the passionate love making between Trump and his beautiful wife, who dutifully has learned to walk 10 paces behind her great man.

The best CEO's in America focus on making the lives better for all of their constituents.  This includes their customers, their employees, their shareholders, and even their venders.  They understand the enormity of the role, the trust that so many people have placed in them, to nourish, to guide, to protect, and to lead.  They are motivated by their own inner drive not to let their constituents down. They must listen and think and strategize. They are motivated to shepherd their company into the future.  They are motivated to serve.  They are motivated to serve others.

If they do these things, if they succeed, they also know that good things will accrue to their own personal benefit. But for the CEOs who make it all about themselves, it truly is lonely at the top, perhaps because no one wants to be there when they fail.