Trump one year in: American Dream turned nightmare
On November 8th 2017, we passed a very big political milestone in our politics. It was the one year anniversary of the 2016 US Presidential Election, in which we saw the former Apprentice star and businessman Donald J Trump beat the opinion polls by winning the Electoral College over Democrat Hillary Clinton in what was considered to be one of the most controversial and heated Presidential Elections in modern US history.
Trump was shortly after inaugurated and sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States of America. Here is the thing though, what we have seen over the course of the last 365 days since that very election, is that Donald Trump has, quite frankly, accomplished absolutely nothing as President.
A report came out last week from the Independent newspaper showed that, since Trump was sworn into office on January 20th, he has managed to achieve a grand total of zero major legislative accomplishments.
The man had made so many bold and fantastical claims between the start of his election campaign back in 2015 and his inauguration this year. His motto “Make America great again,” gave American voters something to look on and follow with.
He has completely failed to get his agenda put through. District and Federal courts have presented Trump in introducing his executive order on the Muslim travel ban, Republicans are breaking ties with the President by completely rejecting his major tax reforms and Mexican/American relations seem to be at an all time lowest with Trump wishing for their neighbours to pay for the costly wall that is dividing the two nations.
Even though he has achieved very little of what he has set to have accomplished, has has still found the time every day to log onto his Twitter to voice his own opinion. In fact, Trump has Tweeted and re-Tweeted over 2,400 times since being sworn into office.
In addition, Trump has seen over 9 high-profile resignations and sacking, with this White House revolving door continuing to see figures walk in and out of the door of Trump’s administration. Steve Bannon, Anthony Scaramucci, Sean Spicer, James Comey…the list goes on.
As you can see, it has been a pretty disastrous year for Trump and if that was not enough, he is now in the centre of an investigation into whether his campaign team had ties with Russia and whether they may or may not have swayed the result of the vote back in 2016.
The only thing the Republicans and Trump supporters can wave their hat on is appointing hard-right Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch. But frankly, any Republican could have appointed a judge like Gorsuch so in retrospect, it is an immoderate statement to for Trump to claim this as a ‘victory’.
How to conclude Trump’s first year being announced as the President elect? It seems pretty reasonable to say that Trump administration has so far been extremely inefficient and unsuccessful. It may be far too early to say he has been a failure because, at the end of the day, we have at least another three years of Trump in office. The thing that worries me though is what will the next three years look like. There are so many more answers that are needed in this ongoing story; North Korea, China, the Mexican border, the Middle-East, healthcare, immigration, the economy, tax reforms and more.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States and she said that “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” For Trump however, that ‘American dream’ is seeming less of a reality.
