According to a new bombshell report in BuzzFeed Donald Trump is so incompetent at operating the U.S. government that many of his employees are ignoring him, especially when he gives apparent orders to them using Twitter.
Trump is reported to be so inept at achieving the most basic functions of his office that he has no idea what actions he needs to take through official channels. Instead, he thinks that by sending a tweet he has taken an official action, but that’s not working out for him because most of his tweets are being ignored by everyone in the government.
An example given by Buzzfeed was Trump’s recent announcement that he had decided to withdraw the United States from the joint communique agreed to by the leaders at the G7 summit in Canada in June.
At the summit he had initially signed on to the communique and told the leaders of the other countries that he was on board with it. Then, in a shock to everyone, he sent out a tweet while riding home on Air Force One, saying that he had decided to pull out because Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was mean to him.
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According to Buzzfeed:
“Since Trump’s tweet, however, there has been no formal or official follow-up by the US on the president’s demand, the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.”
“The White House and State Dept. are actively ignoring the tweets of the president. It’s like there’s a reality TV president, in his own bubble, thinking he controls stuff. It’s like The Truman Show.”
The end result of this particular situation is that Trump’s initial agreement to the joint communique from the G-7 still stands. His tweet got a lot of media coverage but it had no actual effect on anything.
The same thing happened when Trump announced on Twitter that he was banning all transgender people from serving in the military. This created a media furor, and sent shockwaves through the Pentagon, as Trump had conferred with no one in military leadership about this action.
Although the administration later issued an official memo concerning the policy announced in the tweet, implementation of the order was blocked in court. The judge ruled that the government hadn’t provided any indication that the “ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effective on the military at all.”
And in that case no action was ever taken by anyone in the U.S. military or Department of Defense to implement Trump’s announced policy. It was ultimately ignored completely.
In another, more recent example Trump this week tweeted an order to Attorney General Jeff Sessions telling him to put an end to the Mueller probe. This tweet led to hundreds of hours of discussion on cable TV stations but by all reports has been completely ignored by the Attorney General.
This new report from Buzzfeed makes it seem that Donald Trump really is play-acting at being president. He likes to tweet and fly around on his big plane to campaign-style rallies, but he doesn’t like to do any actual work.
This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that actual adults working in the U.S. government have the good sense to ignore Trump’s most ridiculous orders. The bad news is that he is being used by far-right powers in the government whose agenda he is implementing, such as tax cuts for billionaires, trashing the environment, eliminating government regulations, and destroying the social safety net.
Donald Trump thinks he is playing a president on TV, but it is now far past the time when he should leave office so our country can get a real president who will do things to really help the country.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
