A White House Devoid of Integrity

http://time.com/4654658/trump-white-house-no-integrity/

A White House Devoid of Integrity
Elise Jordan
4:04 AM Eastern

Elise Jordan is an NBC News/MSNBC political analyst. She has worked for the Department of State and the National Security Council.


At the dedication of his Library, President Ronald Reagan, then 80 years old, reflected on the pendulum swings he had seen in his lifetime, such as the rise of big government and totalitarianism. “I also remember a time when America was advised to keep a low profile in the world as if by hunkering down and muzzling her deepest beliefs she might avoid foreign criticism and placate her enemies,” Reagan said.

Just a week into his infant presidency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that affirmed his deepest beliefs loudly to the world: He will rule an incompetent, huge government dependent on fear-mongering, which (for starters) means banning lawfully admitted immigrants based on their birth nationality. It could mean a wall on our border with Mexico, whether it's a new tax on Americans or diplomatic fallout over who picks up the $40 billion tab. It may mean reversing protections for LGBT government employees.

As we witness daily public panic caused by a White House possessing not enough professionalism and a toxic abundance of narcissism, a crisis of character is quickly becoming a crisis of the American experiment.

Operating in a command climate of Trumpian instability, the most senior and public White House officials are party to profoundly destabilizing acts. The most consistent characteristic of senior officials charged with communicating the goals of the Trump administration has been a flagrant disregard for the truth, though a more charitable interpretation would be that the new policies are so dysfunctional that no one in the administration understands them. Which petrifies you more: willful lying, or gross incompetence?

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The ideologues were too busy gobbling up the goods to bother with sound policy and common sense. According to press accounts, chief strategist Stephen Bannon and speechwriter and policy aide Stephen Miller took it upon themselves to invent a solution to a problem that doesn’t even exist, since the chances of an American being killed in a terrorist attack by a refugee are about one in 3.64 billion per year. No matter.

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http://time.com/4654658/trump-white-house-no-integrity/