Summing Up Donald

As the days go by the toll Trump has placed on American life keeps growing. The looming effect of all his machinations are becoming huge.

We can include here these items:

• Russian contacts during the election campaign by campaign leaders
• Russian contacts after inauguration by White House staff
• Gen. Flynn’s flawed appointment to White House Security staff
• Trump’s firing of Comey in an attempt to kill the FBI probe of White House wrong doings including contacts with Russia
• Trump pressuring his intel chiefs to push back against the FBI probe
• Selling strategic oil reserves to pressure gas prices down when they aren’t that high in the first place
• Mixed signals toward North Korea’s missile tests raising war threat unnecessarily
• White House attempting to block inquiry into ex-lobbyists appointed to White House staff
• Trump proposed budget slashes aid to poor, offers huge tax cuts to the wealthy
• Trump’s manipulation of relationship with Israel that blocks peace with Palestinians
• Trump’s arms deal with Saudi Arabia that inflames Middle East tensions further
• Trump’s business deals totaling $360 billion with Saudi Arabia may be in exchange for ending the 9/11 law suit waged by 9/11 victims’ families
• Trump’s misappropriation of the term Religious Freedom to return discrimination against currently protected classes of people often discriminated against
• Trump’s major military budget increase at the expense of social service programs for the elderly, handicapped and poor
• Appointments of cabinet chiefs with views directly opposed to their assignments: Energy, EPA, Education, etc.
• Cutting funding for alternative energy research
• Cutting funding for the National Institutes for Health
• Cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts
• Pressure on economic advisers to raise interest rates so investors can gain higher earnings; forget that trillions of surplus cash abound in savings accounts and corporate treasuries
• Cutting tax rates which will benefit the wealthy the most and create huge federal budget deficits AND a large increase in the national debt 

There is more to add to this list. But the direction and tenor of the actions are clear.

The Trump White House is all about entrenched wealth and industry. Oil, military and banking are the favorite industries. The average US citizen will not benefit from such largesse. Only the white, Anglo-Saxon, wealthy will benefit. Last time I checked that accounted for a very small portion of our nation’s population.

Furthermore, those citizens who aspire to the upper 5%, let alone the top 1%, will have a more difficult time of it. If the top is favored by huge tax benefits, those who have will get more, and those who don’t have will get less. The challenge to move up is made more difficult, not easier.

I think the Trump voter pool may be seeing a view of their candidate that is now more clear. It is a perspective that does not favor their values. In fact it is just the opposite.

And those opposed to Trump knew this all along. What we feared during the campaign is now becoming a reality. Very few people benefit; most of us will lose.

It is up to the Congress to change this. Blocking a lot of Trump initiatives would help. But the best action would be to reverse the entire Trump era by impeaching him and removing him from office.

While they are at it, they should include the Vice President as well. This would place Paul Ryan in the unenviable position of rising to the presidency totally unprepared, but then we have been there before. We will endure.

But first, impeach; then remove.

Thank you for your kind attention!

May 26, 2017