Trump Changed the Presidency, but It Has Also Changed Him

By PETER BAKER 12:09 PM ET

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• In his first 100 days in power, President Trump has reshaped the nation’s highest office in his own image.
• Yet Mr. Trump is not the same as he was on Day 1, when he was determined to make nice with Russia, make trouble for China and make war on elites.

Donald Trump’s election strategy relied to a degree on the image of an anti-establishment billionaire who could fix a broken DC. Instead, his actions in office have been aligned with the policies of the same special interests he used to speak out against.

Some of Trump’s critics say he was dishonest from the start. Others, like Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, believe he has been "broken" by the US establishment, which would not tolerate a president that wanted to improve relations with Moscow or stop America’s perpetual wars.

Either way, the 45th US president has proven himself consistently inconsistent during his first 100 days in office. Here are some of the issues Trump has done a 180 flip-flop on since taking the Oval Office.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/386537-trump-100-days-president-promises/

United States President Donald Trump may have skipped the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, but he was still the target of its jokes.

Mr Trump was the first incumbent president to skip the usually celebrity-filled black-tie event since Ronald Regan, who was recovering from an assassination attempt, in 1981.

The President instead attended a rally marking his first 100 days in office.

"We've got to address the elephant that's not in the room," headline comedian Hasan Minhaj told the audience.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-30/trump-target-of-jokes-after-skippi...

See toon at top...

The man who has found himself on the United States president's bad side this week bears the quaint name of William Horsley Orrick, a 63-year-old who -- in his frameless glasses and side part -- has the classic look of a civil servant. Orrick is a District Court judge in San Francisco and on Tuesday, he blocked Donald Trump from penalizing those cities that provide immigrants special protections, such as making it more difficult for them to be deported. Trump had ordered that federal funding be withheld from these so-called "sanctuary cities." But with his ruling, Orrick has slapped a temporary stay on the order.

It was just the most recent defeat in the courts for the president, following the suspension of his travel ban targeting the citizens of several Muslim-majority countries -- and it didn't take long before the president went public with his rage. The ruling, Trump wrote in one of his early morning Twitter eruptions, is "ridiculous." He added: "See you in the Supreme Court!"

Trump has never made a secret of his intense disdain for the institutions that are necessary for a vigorous democracy: an independent judiciary, a critical press and a healthy opposition. Essentially, Trump would be happy to do away with all of that, or at least marginalize it. Following the ruling from San Francisco, he indicated that he is broadly dissatisfied with the federal judges there and threatened to curtail their power.

The president's anger with people who contradict him and institutions that stand in his way does not fade with time. On the contrary, the more resistance Trump is faced with, the harder he fights and the more deeply he believes that he is right. But in a democracy, it is necessary to establish alliances and build coalitions. The president, too, must defer to these constraints: He is reliant on Congress, his power over the states is limited and judges are independent.

Democracy lives from the ability to forge compromise, but that is a skill that Trump appears not to possess. As such, his first 100 days in office can be interpreted as an attack on the foundations of American democracy.

The independent organization Freedom House, which monitors the state of democracy worldwide, recently criticized the U.S. in its annual report due to the erosion of democratic ideals. Trump's approach to fundamental human rights, such as the freedom of opinion, was of particular concern to the researchers.

read more :

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/trump-100-days-the-erosion-of-...

see also:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/trump-and-the-new-york-time...

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The problem with this has been that the MEDIA had been sweet-talked by the previous administration and the MEDIA had fallen in love with Hillary. Having been scorned by the electors, the MEDIA is doing all it can to claim the righteous side of the road, when it has always lived in the gutter.

Obama's hypocrisy is now shown by the MEDIA because he speaks for cash on former public office holders' tours -- of which Blair is one of the most infamous orators... Both tell porkies the size of industrial pigpens. No real mention was made of Obama's mad foreign policies, nor those of Hillary which rate far worse than erratic Trump's who to say the least has spoken with Putin on the phone about the future of this planet... and tries to make a hard sell on NK, by talking to the other mad guy. On other subjects, such as environment, Trump is more loony, but that's the way democracy works: the guy got elected by DEFAULT by a cynical suicidal public, despite the MEDIA (most -- apart from Murdoch's media) and the US Democratic party having CONSPIRED to get Hillary elected.

see also: 

entertainment after dessert...