Lecture for Today: How to Erase History by the President and Founder of Trump Empire

Run the Country Like Business for Name, Fame, and Fortune

 Step 1: Erase Enemies Anyway Possible - Take No Prisoners 

              Step 2: Repeat Step 1

The main story is from here right in our face.

INTRODUCTION: Brick by brick, the demolition job has begun: since taking office less than a year ago, Donald Trump has launched an all-out assault on the legacy of Barack Obama.

Whether it's climate accord, free trade deal, health care, immigration, foreign policy – the 45th US president has set about undoing just about everything done by the 44th.

All new presidents, of course, break with their predecessor once in the Oval Office (see more on this below) and especially if they come from a rival political party.

But what is striking is how systematic the hammer blows to Obama's legacy have been.

And rather than throw his weight behind new policies or projects, Trump has shown a willful desire to unpick, shred and erase everything his predecessor accomplished.

It's worth noting that each time he buries one of the reforms of the man who sat before him at the “Resolute desk,” Trump sounds more like a candidate than a president.

So, Trump is out to erase everything Obama, but this is not a new thing in the presidency as reported on here – a good read for sure.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND – stated by Barbara Perry, the director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, saying:  

“These tensions in the American psyche go all the way back to the revolution. I don’t even know if Donald Trump has an ideology since he, as a person and personality, seems so unpredictable, it’s really difficult to say anything with certainty.”

(I note: That is about how he would or could or even try to erase everything Obama). 

Thus, seeing presidents repudiate their predecessors is not anything new.

For example:

1.  By the time he won the White House, the populist slave owner Andrew Jackson (president from 1829 to 1837) had earlier in his life killed a duelist, invaded Florida and battled the British two weeks after the War of 1812 had ended.

He in fact succeeded the privileged, charmless John Quincy Adams, who studied at Harvard, crusaded for abolition and helped end the wars Jackson fought. 

They hated each other on principle and more.

2.  Trump can and did move quickly reverse some policy, like immediately rescind Obama’s orders on immigration and the Dakota Access pipeline.

That would be just as Obama reversed a ban on abortion funding that had been restored by George W. Bush, revoked by Bill Clinton, and created by Ronald Reagan.

But, Trump’s powers are not limitless, just as Obama found when he ordered the closure of Guantánamo Bay.

3.  Presidents have always chipped away at their rivals, but usually over decades. 

Reagan eroded the Great Society, Clinton ceded ground to Republicans on welfare and justices hollowed out the Voting Rights Act. Conversely, Nixon supported environmental safeguards and justices ruled in favor of healthcare and affirmative action.

Even with Congress behind him, Trump cannot simply undo all regulations. The EPA’s findings on greenhouse gases, for instance, went through a long regulatory process.

A very long process of internal action, notices, proposed rules, public comment, etc. To change final regulations, the agency would have to return through the steps. Trump could, however, suspend guidelines and tentative regulations.

Republicans do not have a filibuster-proof majority, meaning that Trump will also have to deal with stubborn lawmakers and civil servants. His administrators could intimidate, reshuffle and put pressure on them, but laws protect federal employees.

“Every president winds up feeling like the executive branch employees and cabinet secretaries are not as effective as they’d like,” said Ken Mayer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a book on executive power. 

But, Trump will have more leeway on foreign policy, as Obama did when he steered the US away from Bush’s unilateral actions abroad. “We are looking at the potential for really radical changes,” said Paul Musgrave, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, adding: “In that case, it’s not necessarily what America does as what it does not do. Even ‘run of the mill’ crises – an eruption between Palestinians and Israelis, a global pandemic such as Ebola, or more aggression from China and the Philippines and Taiwan – create real dangers of misunderstandings, miscommunications and even of intentional escalations.”

Continue at the links above or here – excellent historical review.

I conclude: We all need to stay tuned and sharp about what Trump is doing, at least in my view.

All he is doing and pledged to do, is more than precedent or historical right as outlined above but of hatred, raw hatred for Mr. Obama his desire to erase everything about him to please his racist base, or so it seem w/o him directly saying so.

Thanks for stopping by.