The resistance to Trump is big, diverse and ferocious

Just one full week into Donald Trump’s presidency, the dizzying pace of news has left many of us feeling a sense of political vertigo — and dread.

The new administration began with a poorly attended inauguration that led a wounded Trump to lash out at the media in a bizarre speech at the CIA’s headquarters. As millions of women and men marched in Washington and cities around the world, press secretary Sean Spicer summoned reporters to the White House briefing room and, defying clear evidence to the contrary, brazenly and falsely claimed that Trump drew “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration — period.” A day later, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway went on national television and rebranded Spicer’s bald-faced lies as “alternative facts.” Later in the week, White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon launched a calculated strategy of open war on the press, saying the “elite media” should “keep its mouth shut.”

All of this established the tone for Trump’s full-blown, Orwellian assault on reality. After scrubbing mentions of global warming from the White House website, Trump imposed gag orders on the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies. Attempting to rewrite the history of his election, Trump doubled down on his widely debunked claim that he lost the popular vote only because of massive voter fraud and promised to launch a “major investigation” into the alleged crimes. In an interview with ABC News, Trump reiterated his belief, contradicted by intelligence experts, that torture “absolutely” works. The problem with these “alternative facts” is not just that Trump is either pathologically dishonest or completely divorced from reality; they could be laying the groundwork for pernicious policies such as a systemic attack on voting rights or the reinstatement of CIA “black sites” overseas.

Add to that a string of controversial Cabinet confirmations and an ever-growing list of executive actions — on issues including the Affordable Care Act, the “global gag rule” on abortion, the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, the Mexican border wall, and the grotesque Muslim ban — and it’s hard not to be sickened by it all.

However, Trump’s cascading attacks on the body politic, including instigating a potential constitutional crisis by firing the acting attorney general for ordering Justice Department lawyers not to defend his un-American travel ban, cannot erase the fundamental truth that he does not represent a majority of the American people. The incredible turnout for the Women’s March, which turned out to be the largest single day of mass political action in U.S. history, made that much clear. The resistance to Trump is big, diverse and ferocious, and it’s not going away.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-resistance-to-trump-is-big-diverse-and-ferocious/2017/01/31/b0d89e52-e710-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.bd078e4607ec