Donald Trump’s campaign slogan: “Make America great again.” But he only vaguely said how he was going to do it if at all. He generalized his appeals to the average middle class particularly blue-collar workers.
“Jobs, jobs, jobs” – “America first” – “Drain the swamp” were his battle cries.
Well here is how he’s doing it.
- Scott Pruitt, EPA Chief. anti-environment and climate change denier. He’s rolling back clean water regulations which curtailed mining companies from dumping toxic wastes in our rivers and streams.
He stocked his cabinet with billionaires and cronies.
- Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, his hardline views on immigration and other issues often kept him outside the locus of decision making. But it made him a favorite of the right, and especially its ascendant nationalist wing, where he found common cause with Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News to fight the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013. Sessions was one of Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks, with civil rights groups accusing the then-Alabama senator of having made racially-offensive comments and Democrats accusing Sessions of being compromised by Russia ties. Source: NBC News
- Secretary Of State, Rex Tillerson, Rex Tillerson has been running a global quasi-state for a decade and has dedicated pretty much his entire adult life to that quasi-state (he’s worked at ExxonMobil since 1975). Tillerson cut a huge deal in 2011 with the Russian oil company Rosneft. Putin himself was at the ceremony. The men have known each other for years. How will this affect Secretary Tillerson’s view of Ukraine, the Baltic states, NATO? It’s mind-boggling.
- Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, former CEO of OneWest Bank which foreclosed on more mortgages than the devil.
- Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, anti-labor. Wants to curtail any increases in a federal minimum wage and extra pay for overtime. Trump’s first pick for Labor was Andrew Puzder who withdrew after intense criticism from both sides of the aisle. Puzder would have been worse than Acosta.
- Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, Clueless.
- Enegy Secretary, Rick Perry, During his run for POTUS, couldn’t remember the name of the department he wanted to get rid of. Now he’s running it.
- Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Ben Carson, who once said. “poverty is a state of mind.”
- Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, staunch Repeal and Replace. (MSNBC) Virulently anti-gay; during the BP oil spill, Price sided with the oil giant; and in 2011, he helped create Congress’ Tea Party Caucus. (A year later, Price seemed confused about the meaning of the word “compromise.”)
- Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, made a fortune purchasing bankrupt businesses and flipping them for a profit.
- Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, 55, has consistently voted against environmentalists. He scored a rock-bottom 3 percent on the League of Conservation Voters’ ranking. Zinke’s voting record earned him a spot on the “anti-parks caucus,” a group of lawmakers identified by the left-leaning Center for American Progress as dangerous to the future of the nature preserves. Zinke had called Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan with a warning that Murkowski’s vote (against Repeal and Replace) “had put Alaska’s future with the administration in jeopardy.” – Source: Huffington Post.
Other Cabinet-Level positions. FYI, EPA Chief Pruitt falls in this category. I put it at the top of this piece because he’s the most dangerous.
- United Nations Ambassador, Nikki Haley, no foreign affairs credentials (or any other national security credentials, for that matter).
- Small Business Administration Administrator, Linda McMahon. Really? Her husband is Vince McMahon, head of and majority stock holder of WWE. That’s right, World Wrestling Entertainment. He’s the guy in the video that Trump slammed. In the recent and highly controversial iteration, HanAssholeSolo superimposed the CNN logo over McMahon’s head.
Non-cabinet level appointment
- United States Department of Agriculture Chief Scientist, Sam Clovis, (OMG,WTF, You’ve got to be kidding) (Politico) He’s not an agricultural scientist, nor is he an agricultural economist, nor does he appear to be qualified for a position that, by law, must be drawn from “among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education and economics.” Senate Democrats, activists deeply concerned about climate change and left-leaning science groups predictably seized on Clovis’ weak credentials to attack his selection as yet another sign the Trump administration rejects science-based policymaking and endangers the integrity of federal research.
“Job, jobs, jobs”
- (Newsweek) Robert Murray, founder and chief executive of Murray Energy—the nation’s largest privately held coal mining company—told the Guardian that many mining jobs were lost to technology and competition, rather than regulation. Trump can’t really change that, Murray said.
“America first”
- (Huffington Post) Donald Trump wanted to market a line of men’s clothing that would bear his name. He told people working with him to help find a company known for producing quality merchandise on a mass scale. In the end, Trump signed on with Phillips-Van Heusen, a manufacturer of affordable shirts produced in factories in 85 countries. He still does to this day.
- He hires foreign nationals to work his country clubs and golf courses.
- The women who make garments for Ivanka Trump’s line of clothing are paid so little they can’t afford to live with their children. At a factory in Subang, Indonesia, that produces Ivanka Trump-branded clothes, employees there earn the equivalent of $173 a month ― the lowest legal minimum wage in all the provinces in Indonesia. One worker, Alia, said she lives in a dusty boarding house near the factory, an hours-long drive from her children, and can only afford to visit them at their grandmother’s house once a month.
Trump’s agenda seems to favor the rich and big business, not the people he promised to help.
Good luck.