From the beginning of Trump's presidency, many have seen what appeared to be round-the-clock "amateur hour" or chaos and disorganization of the President while he was assigning officials to their designated roles in the government. This was also the view of the first executive orders to come out of the White House, the dysfunction of the National Security Council and other blatantly controversial decisions made along the way. Now in his 70 days, these issues can now be seen as what they actually are, a deconstruction of the administrative state, which Steve Bannon -- Trump's chief strategist, admitted to during the CPAC conference this year.
Blasting News has reported on these views based on the fact that there was hardly a functioning State Department to the budget proposal which revealed that President Trump does not see a functioning government as a priority and is more for a militarized state. In an article by The Guardian titled: "Small hand of government: Trump's aim to shrink the state pleases conservatives," shows that while many conservatives feel that Trump is anything but a Republican or a conservative, that his policies in action are more like those of President Reagan. The article refers to conservative activists who are pivotal movers and shakers in right-wing circles who set agendas for conservative thought such as Grover Norquist and Matt Schlapp.
Deregulation and weakening the state
According to the Guardian article, Norquist feels that Trump has been phenomenal with deregulation. As a candidate, Donald Trump promised that for every regulation he would roll back two. His latest move was with signing an executive order which targeted President Obama's Clean Power Plan which -- according to Blasting News -- he might be able to do by targeting the Environmental Protection Agency, which he started on early in the year by appointing Scott Pruitt as the EPA director.
Norquist confirmed this when he was asked by the Guardian saying that those who were appointed by Trump are "all people who understand the costs of the regulatory burden and are committed to ruling back the over-regulations of both George W. Bush and Obama”. Even more, this is also confirmed as ProPublica reported early last month in an article titled: "Meet the Hundreds of Officials Trump Has Quietly Installed Across the Government" that the Trump administration has placed aides for each department to make sure that their directors did not stray away from the whatever agenda the White House set.
War among conservative legislators
The White House operating within its own bubble is one thing. But as seen when republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act; Norquist provides a view among conservatives that the extreme right-wing Freedom Caucus didn't like Trump being the center of attention for their brand of conservatism. It's been widely reported that the the Freedom Caucus did not fall in line with the rest of the Republicans saying that the replacement bill for the ACA, the American Health Care Act, was either not good enough or it was too much like a bill they were trying to replace. Much of this is also covered in a Blasting News article titled: "'The art of not making a deal': blame President Trump's political ignorance."
The division among conservatives appears to be set with the policy and agenda, because even those conservatives who opposed the recent health care bill are still sold on President Trump as a placeholder to be better able to manage their agendas.
If anything, conservatives are largely supportive of the President. In terms of the recent failure to pass the health care bill, there was discussion as to whether they should reach out to Democrats. But Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan who attempted to push the bill has said that he will not reach out to Democrats and it's guaranteed that he's speaking on behalf of his party. The Guardian did not ask Norquist or Schlapp about the controversy surrounding Trump's connections to Russia.
