“What do you mean it’s only been three weeks?” I said to the computer screen when I read a line of a newspaper article. I was astounded, it seemed like much longer and full of new adventures from the occupant of the Oval Office who has taken us down roads we did not expect when #Donald Trump won on November 8th last.
Ring-a-round the world's leaders
Just look at what President Donald Trump did with the other world Leaders after he told us he would take a new approach to diplomacy. That is exactly what he did, but not in the way any of us expected.
Even before being sworn in he took a phone call from Taiwan’s President that upset the Chinese and only this week he returned to the One China policy that he previously thought was a “bad deal”.
Trump reshaped our international alliances by insulting the Prime Minister of a friendly country by hanging up the phone on him and then Sean Spicer made it worse by mispronouncing his name a number of times in a press briefing. He then lectured to France’s François Hollande about the stingy Europeans having to pay more for NATO, only to be lectured by Angela Merkel about international duties to refugees.
The Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled a visit to the White House over the Border wall.
In compensation Donald Trump was invited to Britain by Prime Minister Theresa May only to have the Speaker of its House of Commons applauded by the other politicians for refusing to allow the American President to address a joint sitting of Parliament.
Finally a leak told us that in his phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin he stated that the latest NEW START Agreement signed by Barack Obama was (once more) a “bad deal” and had to be renegotiated.
And this was just the beginning my friends.
Lawyers for free
He managed to unite wide groups of women who attended the Women’s protest in Washington and they ended up outnumbering the attendance of the Inauguration the day before. That began a war of numbers with the Press about what he saw as the Universe’s biggest ever attended Inauguration, but only after ordering Government Departments to no longer release photos of the Inauguration with groups of people amongst the empty spaces.
And then it only got stranger.
After years of lawyer jokes, he managed to get a groups of them applauded by the public for working for free. The signing of the #immigration ban saw teams of lawyers descend on airports around the country to assist green card holders and other travelers affected by the order on a pro bono basis. This then began the court actions that many expected even before the election, but nobody thought would start so early. In this we were wrong, but not by much.
Ethics issues
And then the conflicts of interest that Donald Trump thought resolved with an announcement by a lawyer at his first press conference raised its head when Sallyanne Conway defended Ivanka Trump’s clothing line with an advertisement on television after the President had tweeted his disgust that a store had dropped her line.
Strangely this seemed to have led to a rebuke according to Sean Spicer who since last Saturday has been mistaken a few times for Melissa McCarthy. We are now awaiting developments of the future relationship between these two White House Staff members.
At the same time as I followed debates in Facebook regarding political issues I was kicked out of online groups for daring to be an Australian living in Italy and thus, according to some of the users, not permitted to have opinions on the President of the United States. Little did they know that since November 8th the world has been talking little else.
Now my computer has to be repaired because over the last three weeks (are we sure it’s only been three weeks?) I have worn out five keys writing articles on the world’s hottest topic. These letters were T-R-U-M-P.
It’s gonna be a LONG four years…(!)