I Decided To Give Donald Trump A Chance, But I Was Wrong

When Donald Trump was elected president, I tried to sort through my shock and decided to be optimistic and give him a chance, but I was wrong. I may have been deluding myself when I thought that perhaps with his massive ego he would do everything he possibly could to prove people wrong and make popular decisions for the good of the United States, but this was faulty logic on my part.

Perhaps many of us thought that the mad ramblings of Donald Trump on Twitter would cease when he assumed his role as leader of the free world. But again, those of us who thought that were wrong. No other president has immediately rushed in to the White House and caused such irreparable damage and with such gusto as Donald Trump.

Take Chicago. Less than five days after Donald Trump assumed the role of president, he shot straight from the hip on Twitter and told officials there that he would “send in the feds” if the city didn’t get their murder rates under control.

“If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!”

Chicago is admittedly having some problems with 2016 seeing its worst violence in 20 years, as NY Magazine reports, but the issues with violence there call for more strategic thinking which won’t be helped by sending in the National Guard. This points to one of the most extreme problems with Donald Trump, and that is that he reacts first without thinking, and appears to be fueled mainly by emotions rather than intellect. He is reactive, not proactive.

While we are all aware that Trump believes global warming is a conspiracy theory thought up by China, which he said when he tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” one would imagine that even he might, just might, care something for the environment. Wrong. One of the first executive orders he has signed was to give the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines the go-ahead and simultaneously remove Barack Obama’s environmental protections.

It is worthwhile noting that Donald Trump was once an investor in one of these pipelines and he may still even have holdings in the other, as the Huffington Post reported.

“In May 2015, according to campaign disclosure reports, Trump owned between $500,000 and $1 million worth of shares of Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s lead developer, but had less than $50,000 invested when he sold off the remainder of his shares this summer, according to The Washington Post. As of last May, Trump had at least $100,000 invested in Phillips 66, which owns a quarter of the oil line, according to the AP.”

Signing orders to move forward with the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines in the Oval Office. pic.twitter.com/OErGmbBvYK

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2017

President Donald Trump has also taken it upon himself to reinstate the global gag rule on abortion, which basically bans any and all support for foreign organizations that provide not just abortions, but abortion counseling for women around the world, as Alternet reports via Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood.

“This means that if a clinic receives even $1 of U.S. foreign assistance for family planning, its doctors and nurses are limited in what they can do to help their patients. They can’t counsel a woman on the full range of health options legally available to her, refer her to another provider for specialized care or even give her a pamphlet with medically accurate information. That’s why we call it the global gag rule, because it prevents doctors from talking to their patients and providing services that are legal in their own countries — and in the U.S. — and it keeps people from participating in the democratic process of their own countries. This means clinics closing their doors, more unintended pregnancies and more unsafe abortion.”

This new rule goes far beyond abortions, however. It means that billions of dollars that would have been conducted on medical research around the world that could be lifesaving will now be stopped. We are going back to the Dark Ages when it comes to the medical profession today.

One of the first moves Donald Trump made also hurt new homeowners in a massive way. Trump has now signed an executive order that ended Barack Obama’s mortgage cost reduction. There would have been a .25 percent cut to federal mortgage insurance which would have saved new homeowners quite a lot of money, but Donald Trump has ended that with one swift stroke of his pen.

Donald Trump has also put a hiring freeze in place for the majority of government positions. In a memo, it was written that, “No vacant positions existing at noon on January 22, 2017, may be filled and no new positions may be created,” with the only exception to this being the military, national security personnel, and those who work in the field of public safety. This conceivably means that the hiring freeze will affect millions of nurses, engineers, and scientists, as Quartz reports.

And last, but certainly not by any means least, Donald Trump is still intent on building a wall along the border of Mexico. He’s not concerned with the cost of the wall and has no real plan, nor does he consider the fact that it is wholly impractical. After all, ladders are a commonplace household item today and people can simply tunnel underground if need be. A hugely expensive wall along Mexico that taxpayers will pay for is probably one of the most foolhardy of Donald Trump’s ideas, but there are plenty of others.

For these reasons and many others, I feel bad that I ever thought for even a second that Donald Trump should be given a chance.

[Featured Image by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images]