Trump's first month: Shock and 'Aww (expletive)!' But how is your life better? | Opinion
If your kink is watching liberals wail and gnash their teeth at the swift erosion of democracy and government agencies that help people, I'm sure the month has been a gas. But it hasn't helped a soul.
If your goal in voting for President Donald Trump was to “own the libs” and make fellow Americans you’ve decided to hate feel scared or miserable, then congratulations. The first month of the nation’s first-ever convicted-felon president has been a massive success.
If your goal in voting for Trump was to make your own life better, perhaps by lowering the cost of eggs and other groceries or entrusting a Republican to fiercely battle inflation, I have bad news for you. You were conned, along with millions of others, and Trump’s first month in office has demonstrated how little he cares about you or your day-to-day existence.
I realize facts are debatable things these days, but I'll share a few, regardless.
Trump has already broken his promise to lower prices
Let’s start by considering a number of promises Trump made both before and after he was reelected.
Last August, Trump said on the campaign trail: “Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”
Less than a week later he said, “Prices will come down. You just watch. They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast.”
Three days after that he said: “Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down and we will make America affordable again. We’re going to make it affordable again.”
Trump promised voters the world – and delivered nonsense
Last October, Trump said: “Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. We’ll do that.”
In November: “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.”
And on Jan. 7: “We’re going to have prices down. I think you’re going to see some pretty drastic price reductions.”
We have not seen drastic price reductions. In fact, we’ve seen no price reductions.
Egg prices are at record highs, and grocery prices jumped 0.5% in January. Inflation jumped to 3% in January, a seven-month high.
He's only a month into his presidency, of course, but these issues don't seem to even be on his radar. In fact, he's doing things that will likely make the problems worse.
Tariffs and the Gulf of America and paper straws
Rather than moving heaven and earth to lower prices, Trump’s focus has been elsewhere. Like on his bizarre obsession with tariffs, targeting China as well a number of our allies with tariffs that will invariably cause prices to rise for U.S. consumers.
Rather than "fixing" the economy that he and Republicans dishonestly told us was driving America to ruin, Trump seems to just be coat-tailing former President Joe Biden's economy while doing all he can to radically redefine America without doing anything to help Americans.
Here are other things Trump has done during his first month in office. With each, I’d ask you to consider the question: How has this made your life any better?
The president renamed the Gulf of Mexico, demanding it now be called the “Gulf of America.”
He ordered the government to stop buying paper straws.
From 'blatantly unconstitutional' orders to declaring himself above the law
He issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the Constitution. That order has now been blocked by four federal judges. One judge said flatly: “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
Perhaps in response to all the judges who keep telling his administration it's doing illegal things, Trump posted on social media: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Later the official White House account on X shared Trump’s post. One would think a king could more easily lower grocery prices, but who knows?
Trump did absolutely nothing to help voters by granting clemency to the rioters of Jan. 6, 2021, effectively signaling that an occasional attack on the nation’s Capitol is no big whoop under his administration.
Does dehumanizing transgender people make your life better?
Via executive order, he has done everything possible to make life miserable for transgender people and the families of transgender children. Earlier this month, he signed an executive order barring transgender women and girls from female sports.
The NCAA told the U.S. Senate late last year there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes in all of college sports. So good job dehumanizing an entire swath of Americans for virtually no reason whatsoever.
Does that make you, the Trump voter, feel like your life is better? Is the suffering of others a salve for the pain of high grocery prices?
Trump made himself chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, addressing something most Americans weren't concerned about.
He has blithely talked about ethnic cleansing, suggesting Palestinians should all be displaced from Gaza while America comes in and turns the region into some kind of seaside resort. He keeps talking about Canada becoming a U.S. state and about America talking control of Greenland. No polling anywhere showed these issues even existing in voters’ minds, particularly when Trump kept promising “America first.”
Pardoning crooks and accidentally firing bird flu experts
Trump pardoned disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and had the U.S. Department of Justice pressure federal prosecutors to end the prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
That latter move led to at least seven prosecutors to resign rather than follow the transparently corrupt order.
The president has unleashed unelected billionaire Elon Musk on the federal government, leading to the demolition of federal agencies and the firing of thousands of federal workers, the legality of which remains an open question.
The recklessness of Musk’s work has shown up in myriad disturbing ways, from the accidental firing of key bird flu personnel at the USDA (that’s no way to get egg prices down, folks) to the accidental firing of hundreds of key workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration (oops!).
The firing of the nuclear folks led NNSA Deputy Division Director Rob Plonski to write on LinkedIn: “Cutting the federal workforce responsible for these functions may be seen as reckless at best and adversarily opportunistic at worst.”
They’ve also been firing Federal Aviation Administration workers in the wake of a deadly plane crash in Washington, D.C., and a series of other alarming crashes, leading to a drop in confidence in the safety of U.S. air travel.
Putin's our friend, pronouns are bad and federal workers get dumped
Migrants are being hauled off to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Trump has fully sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine, and federal workers have been ordered to remove their pronouns from email signatures.
Trump halted work at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ‒ you know, the thing created to protect the public following the 2008 financial crisis. He banned Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the news organization won’t use the term “Gulf of America.”
I’ll hand it over to the AP to describe the type of people presently being fired from the federal government:
“Those potentially losing jobs include medical scientists, energy infrastructure specialists, foreign service employees, FBI agents, prosecutors, educational and farming data experts, overseas aid workers and even human resources personnel who would otherwise have to manage the dismissals.”
Firing federal workers is a scam, like everything else Trump does
I’ll note that 80% of the federal workforce works outside of Washington, D.C., and these job losses will spike national unemployment numbers and put strains on communities across the country. To what end?
In 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “the federal government spent roughly $271 billion to compensate” its civilian employees.
But the federal budget in 2023 was more than $6 trillion. So if Trump and Musk were to do away with the ENTIRE federal workforce, it would only amount to trimming about 5% of the federal budget.
And, it’s worth noting, the CBO reported that 60% of the money spent on federal workers goes to “the three departments that employ the most workers: Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security.” So good luck getting rid of those three.
The point here is not that Trump hasn’t done a lot in his first month. He has. And if your kink is watching liberals wail and gnash their teeth at the swift erosion of democracy and government agencies that help people, I’m sure the month has been a gas.
But if you care about things that impact you ‒ things that might, perhaps, improve your life or lower your cost of living ‒ this month has done nothing to make your world better.
But it has shown you, with great clarity, that Trump’s priorities have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with him.
Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk