How America’s 45th president wreaked wrecking-ball havoc in his first week in office
At 4:42 pm Eastern Time on Friday, January 27, 2017, Donald Trump uncapped his pen to sign yet another executive order.
One can well imagine the frowning face, improbably aglow with midwinter ‘sun’, and the lips pursed in concentration. What a week it had been! From the moment of his inauguration (“the biggest crowd ever”, Trump had crowed, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary), the multiple bankrupted real estate manipulator and media ‘star’ had barely relinquished his pen.
Detonating order after order from his Oval Office redoubt, Trump set about belabouring every target he had identified for attack during his election campaign. Women’s access to free contraception under Obama Care? Vaporised! Peer-reviewed scientific Information on climate change? Removed with a scratch of the pen from the website of the Environment Protection Agency. The blocking of the Keystone Oil Pipeline? Lifted in a flash! Initiatives by cities such as Seattle to establish themselves up as sanctuaries for refugees? Slash their federal funding! Limitations on coercive interrogation techniques (otherwise known as torture)? Terminate!
As salvo followed salvo, the American mainstream media struggled to keep up. The news organisations, broadcasting networks and big-gun journalists whose attachment to Trump’s clickbait-ready pronouncements had played no small part in his ascent now jerked into action, issuing lists of the executive carnage across its ever-widening front and giving space to critical commentary. As if bemused by the reality of Trump in power, they seemed to scratch their heads in collective puzzlement.
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to editor@madrascourier.com
