If Donald Trump has done nothing, he's convinced me that almost no one these days stands on principle…or, at best, one. That's the principle that says that if our side does it, it's great and perfect and honorable and even legal…and when the other side does it, it's evil and incompetent and dishonest and they should be behind bars.
And even when you can't spin it as a capital crime or a screw-up that's going to harm or kill millions, you at least spin it as an example of sheer wrongheadedness. Barack Obama was insensitive and lazy to spend so much time playing golf, which he did once in his first hundred days. Trump is such a fine executive that he got everything done — brilliantly, his fans might add — and has had time to hit the links between 13 and 16 times so far, depending on which source you believe.
Sigh. It's like that for everything these days. Here are some links of the non-golfing variety…
- Trump keeps signing executive orders and seeing them overturned by judges. This, of course, prompts him to throw tantrums about the judges being crooked or biased or something and to threaten to use the power of the presidency to stop these outta-control men and women who somehow think they have the power to enforce laws that Trump doesn't like. Dahlia Lithwick explains that before Trump screams that the game is rigged, he oughta try learning how it's played.
- Trump's greatest strength, some said, was his skill as a great negotiator. Seth Stevenson runs down the list of botched negotiations of his first hundred days. And many pundits are now suggesting that it isn't that Trump's bargaining skills in his private business don't apply to the presidency. It's that his bargaining skills in his private business were never very good even there.
- Jonathan Chait on how the Trump Administration is trying to sell its tax cut that would mainly benefit people like Donald Trump. It involves changing the subject any time anyone asks about how it would mainly benefit people like Donald Trump.
- Frank Rich says Trump's triumph-free first hundred days are a triumph for America. Yeah, but he's got 1,360 more to do damage.
- Daniel Larison on yet another way the Trump Administration is being ineffectual: Not properly staffing the State Department.
- And the food industry is counting on the Trump Administration to do away with all those silly rules that force them to tell us what's in the food they sell us. I understand why this would be a good thing for the companies that sell not-the-healthiest food but I have yet to hear even a bogus explanation of why this would be good for us.
I probably won't watch the White House Correspondents Dinner this weekend, though I assume the remarks of featured comedian Hasan Minhaj will be quite available online. Wonder how many people turned it down before they went to him. I will be watching Samantha Bee's competing show…and I think it's a shame they didn't get her.