Promises Made, Promises Broken

The gap between what Trump promised on the campaign trail and what he's done in office is wide enough to rival the Grand Canyon. And it's getting wider.

We’re a bit past the somewhat artificial “first 100 days” time period which somehow became a standard measurement for the early accomplishments of a presidency. But, in the case of the current resident of the White House, we knew well before the 100 day mark that this President would be known far more for what he destroyed in the initial days of his term than for what he accomplished.

Not only have Donald J.’s signature campaign promises failed to materialize, he’s also manage to destroy agencies and institutions that are vital to the nation’s well-being.

The destruction continues apace. No matter what aspect of American life one examines, one is guaranteed to see the destruction.

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The Ukraine War

On the campaign trail, Donald J. promised that he could end the war in Ukraine in a single day. So limitless was his hubris that he even boasted that he’d end it before he was even in office. He claimed that his singular ability was due to his superior negotiating skills coupled with his tight relationship with Vladimir Putin.

It hardly needs to be mentioned that the war did not, in fact, end on the first day of his term nor did it end on the 10th day or the 50th day or the 75th day, nor has it ended at all.

Instead, he has made made the situation in Ukraine much worse, inflaming tensions between Russia and Ukraine, attempting to humiliate President Zelenskyy in an embarrassingly shameful White House meeting, and halting military support for Ukraine. Donald J. evidently believed he could badger the Ukrainian president into submitting to his will; instead he made the already steely Ukrainians even more determined not to allow the ceding of territory to Russia.

Ukraine is now using drones that they themselves are manufacturing to fight on the war’s eastern front, killing many thousands of Russians while limiting their own casualties. Europe has picked up some of the slack in terms of military aid, but the European allies can’t single-handedly shore up the Ukrainian military indefinitely.

Donald J.’s arrogance has made things worse — for Ukraine, for Russia, and (of course) for the U.S. by destroying our diplomatic credibility in the world and alienating us from our European allies.

Nice work, President Hamfist.

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DOGE

Elon Musk and DOGE were perhaps the most public defining factors of Donald J.’s first 100 days. Donnie and Elon became BFFs, and Elon was going to “save America” with all those efficiencies he was going to find. Instead, he’s destroyed long-standing institutions which have provided necessary services to U.S. citizens for generations.

Elon and his DOGE twits soon came face to face with the reality that the chainsaw that Elon loved to prance about with couldn’t cut down a metaphorical sapling. Simply stated, they had no real understanding of the functions of the various departments and agencies they had set out to “save.”

But that didn’t stop them from blustering their way into agencies, tampering with the functioning of everything from our medical and scientific research to our food supply to our education system.

(It’s worth mentioning that much of the “progress” that DOGE has boasted about has been halted or stalled by the judiciary, which seems to be the only branch of government that hasn’t entirely succumbed to the whims of the Toddler King and his minions.)

In recent days, Elon apparently has been “quiet quitting.” He is as noticeably absent from the public eye as he was previously omnipresent in the White House inner circle. He’s been retreating to his business ventures which, not coincidentally, are faltering because of Elon’s eagerness to trot out his incompetence in plain sight. It also hasn’t helped his business that he’s used up any accumulated good will by supporting the autocrat in the White House and by parading his own white supremacist views for all to see.

The promised $2 trillion in cuts and savings soon got reduced to $100 billion, and independent analyses found that even that number was wildly exaggerated. It’s virtually guaranteed that, when a final accounting is done, DOGE will not only have destroyed some of the nation’s most necessary institutions but it will also have cost the United States far more than it purported to save.

Ironically, I’m sure there’s fodder for a whole other post for the many ways Elon Musk has benefitted to the tune of billions of dollars from his association with this administration. But I’ll defer that excoriation for another day.

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Tariffs

According to the delusions of Donald J., tariffs were the panacea that somehow miraculously going to fix everything that was wrong with the United States, both real and imagined. At various times on the campaign trail and after the election, Donald J. claimed that his big, beautiful tariffs were going to:

• Stop fentanyl traffic

• Punish unfairness in trading

• Restore worldwide respect for America

• Return manufacturing to the United States

• Make America wealthy again
  (Will someone please direct me to the time when American was universally wealthy?)

His tariff “plan” consisted of two factors: his own complete lack of understanding of how tariffs work and his reliance on an AI-generated formula for applying tariffs that one of the DOGE bros concocted. Throw in Donald J.’s complete willingness to implement and change tariffs based on his whims and you have a formula for disaster.

Moody’s has already downgraded the United States’ creditworthiness. The stock market has had wild dips and swings. Imports from China have plummeted, leaving our west coast ports languishing. Retailers large and small are struggling to keep goods on the shelves and keep customers in stores and in their online sites because consumers are forced to tighten their belts due to rising costs.

Worse still, we haven’t yet experienced all of the inevitable consequences of such a half-baked method of implementing the tariffs. We’ll see small businesses fail because of their dependence on foreign goods. We’ll likely see the tax base of some municipalities shrink. We’ll see unemployment rates rise and job creation fall.

And guess what? Unsurprisingly, none of that ever-changing litany of reasons that Donald J. touted for implementing the tariffs will come to fruition.

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Deportations

It’s hard to know where to begin with the multiple failures of Donald J.’s deportation tactics.

For some ungodly reason, his campaign promises about deportations were very appealing to his base. But even by the most generous criteria, the deportations have been an unlawful collection of failures.

According to law, immigrants suspected of being undocumented are entitled to a judicial hearing to determine their immigration or citizenship status. In his zeal to enact the most draconian deportation measures ever, due process has been almost entirely ignored, resulting in legal residents and people whose immigration hearings were pending have been separated from their families, possibly never to be heard from again.

In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Trump and his cronies have defied orders from the SCOTUS. Having finally acknowledged that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, they’ve refused to take any action to return him to his family and his life in Maryland.

That’s hardly the only horror of Donald J.’s deportation. Local newspapers and TV stations regularly report of botched ICE raids, sweeping up people who are legal residents or who have citizenship hearings pending. There’s even the occasional white MAGA supporter who gets caught unjustly in ICE’s nets.

The administration announced plans to deport undocumented immigrants to Libya and Rwanda. Those plans were temporarily halted by a federal judge in Boston, but given the administration’s record, it’s questionable whether that order will be obeyed.

We’re also now learning of immigrants from Myanmar and Vietnam being sent to Sudan, once again defying a SCOTUS order. Sudan is a country for which our own State Department issued a Level 4: Do Not Travel warning. As has been said, the cruelty is the point.

To make matters worse, the officials currently in charge of deportations seem to have no understanding of the laws around detention and deportation. The cabinet-level head of the Department of Homeland Security (which is charged with overseeing the deportations) regularly ignores due process and shockingly couldn’t describe what habeas corpus meant during Congressional questioning.

If you choose to measure the success or failure of Donald J.’s deportation purely on metrics, he fails even on that front. This administration’s numbers are roughly on a par with or fewer than the deportations during the Biden administration. But using that metric masks the most serious failure — the failure to treat people with basic human decency.

The administration’s willingness — lust, really — for big, showy, illegal, and cruel deportations is perversely contrary to actual American values.

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This is just a sampling of the failures of this administration so far, despite increasing disapproval numbers increasing and shrinking approval numbers. What hasn’t waned yet, however, is the MAGA fever that has infected virtually every Republican in Congress. Their willingness to abdicate their responsibilities of checks and balances and give up their own power out of fear of offending the Toddler King continues to defy reason.

But the decisions Republicans are making now will not be able to be swept under the rug when midterm elections roll around in November of 2026. The question persists, however, whether the republic will remain intact by then.