Trump's Superpower

President Donald Trump has done quite a few highly questionable and condemnable things in his lifetime, and even in the short period that he has held the highest office in the world. However, despite his hundreds of controversial quotes and actions, he still holds that office, and seems to come off squeaky-clean. It seems he can get away with anything. In a way, the man is invincible. If we were to take a glance at the first three months of his presidency, we would find countless atrocities which the President has either knowingly witnessed or perpetrated himself, and yet there has been no official talk or movement towards impeachment. Very soon after Trump was inaugurated, pages on the White House Website were actively removed on critical issues that it had formerly addressed: climate change, civil rights, health care, LGBTQ rights, and immigration, as well as the Spanish translation of the website that suddenly failed to work. These social issues are typically ignored by the right-wing, so it seemed fitting that they would just be erased as important White House business. However, it was still chilling to see those pages vanish.A month-or-so into Trump’s presidency came his Muslim-ban, which, although he persistently denied it, was an effort to keep immigrants from majority-muslim nations out of the country; it directly attacked and targeted an entire religion. Remarkably, the Muslim-majority nations where Trump had businesses were not targeted in the same way. Even though he retracted the executive order after it was blocked by a court of appeals, his controversial proceedings on the matter caused people to start watching Trump more closely, keeping a close comparison with Trump’s executive orders and the Constitution. However, his unconstitutional efforts are still in the works. He signed a new executive order early in March that was only a slightly-revised version of the first one banning Muslims. This one took Iraq off the “banned” list, but kept the ban on all other of the six countries. While it was perceived that this new ban is somewhat less harsh, Hawaii sued on the same grounds of the ban being unconstitutional. On March 15th, his travel ban was struck down again, this time by a federal court in Hawaii. Despite the positive actions of many powerful people in our legal system, Trump is making continuous efforts to contradict the Constitution, which is despicable.Another questionable action Trump has taken since the beginning of his campaign, and especially now as President, is declaring the different parts of the media as his enemies.  Though his complaints are warranted, given that some media outlets have been poised negatively towards him and present very biased reports around his presidency, openly criticizing and deeming certain news organizations “fake news” is simply inappropriate. He acted improperly at his first official press conference, in which he targeted Buzzfeed News, a news organization that leaked an unverified source containing claims of Trump’s involvement with the Russian government. He was childish in the conference, acting as if he was playing a school game and was picking his team’s players based on their news networks’ favorability towards him. Although this was mocked in a “Saturday Night Live” skit, there has not been enough talk of this biased and unequal treatment of the media. He has successfully negatively-stigmatized the press, the very source that helps us hold him accountable for his actions, the very purpose of a free press in a democracy. Not only do his cabinet appointments can speak to his outlandish, inappropriate behavior, they also speak to a certain unreliability. The White House is said to be in turmoil because of disagreements caused by extremely differing views on current social issues among cabinet members and high-ranking members of his staff. In addition, their loyalty is questionable when their actions make one wonder if they are really pushing their own agendas instead of listening to the president himself. A rather serious event involves Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn, who perjured himself when he denied having contacts with the Russian government that were later proven to be significant.  Flynn’s discussion of sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak. Kislyak was discovered, and he resigned as the National Security Advisor. His actions are arguably worthy of jail time, but of course, it has been swept under the rug, not giving anyone any time to discuss the seriousness of the problem and the concerns over Trump’s relationship with Flynn and possible connections to Russia. What came of the Flynn problem is a very vivid illustration of how well Trump can manipulate the media and sidestep pressing, problematic issues involving him or his team. Very soon after the news about Mike Flynn was publicized, Trump made a public statement on Twitter saying that Obama had the “wires tapped” in Trump’s campaign headquarters, “just before the victory.” This allegation is highly controversial in for several reasons. First, his go-to source for communicating with the public is very vague, informal, and short-tempered way of releasing information. There has been talk, that at the time, the CIA and FBI were investigating Trump’s campaign due to concerns over his possible connections with Russia.  However, the president does not have any power over FBI investigations, so Obama would have taken no part in this, therefore making his accusation of the former president immature and misguided. Though this is not necessarily an impeachable act, if his research was true, he was sharing findings of a classified case over Twitter–illegal and also uncalculated. However, this kind of tweet was a perfect media-vacuum at the time. When he tweeted this information, the media had been increasingly discussing Trump’s possible connection to Russia. Trump heard something provocative that he could use to draw attention away from the real controversy at hand, and went with it. Of course, it worked perfectly. The media swarmed around this flurry of unproven tweets and the Mike Flynn issue slid into the background for a little bit. It also gave Trump a reason not to have to publicly address the Flynn problem. Later, he was somehow exonerated for his unnecessary Twitter outburst and never retracted his statement, despite being exhorted to by the FBI and key members of the Senate and House. Recently, I feel as though I have become normalized or numb to the barbarity of Trump’s actions. The outrageous tweets seem normal. His over-generalizing statements and vague updates seem normal; the overly-expensive golf outings and trips seem normal, even though none of it should. Aside from this, looking closer at the Commander in Chief’s vulgar and inhumane actions just makes me believe further in Donald Trump’s invincibility. Although I am always hopeful, I cannot help but feel desperate and helpless when I think about these things. If that same Access Hollywood tape had been released but instead with Barack Obama talking, his political career would have been over in an instant. If Barack Obama had alleged-rape cases going into his inauguration, he would have been receiving so much less support and protection. Trump, however, got away with all of it. And he is not done. I cannot help but think that he will just continue to sidestep morality and political correctness without any type of repercussions. I fear his invincibility will only get stronger with each escape from consequence for his actions. If what he has done already was not bad enough, what will be? When will our most powerful representatives finally muster up their courage or come to their senses enough to say,“enough is enough?” I continue to be positive, but Trump’s slew of inexplicable actions throughout his campaign and presidency have taken a toll on my optimism. My hope, I’m afraid, is dwindling.  What can we do? We can do our best to write to representatives and keep our political forums going. Most importantly, we have to continue to support the press. They are the ones whom we need the most during this time so that we can continue to call out our commander in chief on his reckless absurdity.