Everyone has been dreading for our next break ever since school/work started after the Christmas winter break. However, 2018 has started off interestedly especially with the blue moon and the whole Tide Pod memes circulating around the internet… kids (or any adults, if necessary… I hope not), please stay away from Tide Pods.
In fact, my winter break was quite relaxing. I was able to fly back to California to spend some quality time with my family, especially with my older brothers. Throughout my entire break, I’ve noticed one topic that has brought controversy and distress to the dinner table and that was the topic of Trump. Donald Trump. What a party pooper, bringing the mood down during dinner parties. Just to answer the question in the back of your mind, my family back in California are indeed leaning towards to the left, Democratic side. They’re not the typical Republican’s majority you may find in the South of the US. Let’s go down memory lane to review how Trump’s year has been, to view his accomplishments and his… not-so-great-accomplishments (one may call them as “failures”).
Trump, the well-known detrimental maelstrom of a demagogue, has been in office for about a year now. Who could forget the 2016 U.S elections? I still laugh at the fact how the US has foolishly handed so much power into the hands of a businessman who’s clueless and lost in his own train of thoughts. Nonetheless, he’s endorsing religious bigotry, incites political violence, condemns equality and mocks the disabled.
We are all aware of Trump’s favourite weapon to use, which is also very popular social media platform that is used by billions and billions of others on this planet, is Twitter. Back in March 2017, President Donald Trump has decided to declare, on Twitter, that Barack Obama wiretapped his phones. However, Trump made this claim, on Twitter, without offering any evidence. This is just one of the many examples of what kind of attitude Trump displays on social media, such as Twitter, with his wild accusations and announcements.
But let’s not forget this other incident where Donald Trump has issued an unexpected tweet back in July. Trump has announced a ban, on Twitter, on transgender military members. As might be expected, this stirred an outcry from his critics and members from the LGBTQ community. This then caused transgender members of the military to sue Trump in court, and a federal judge rejected the ban on Oct. 30th. This did not happened on Twitter. Moreover, the White House official said that Trump will still take care to protect all Americans from discrimination, but now it seems impossible to place all of our faith into his arms.
Clearly Donald Trump is not the most popular present in this era, according to Gallup*, Donald Trump has received his weekly approval rating to be suffering at 39% (another poll had him at 37%, which is not any better!) after a year in position of power which is the lowest recorded of any elected president in his first term. Clinton had the previous lowest at 49% and he wasn’t the most popular president either. While the other presidents such as Barack Obama (50%), Bill Clinton (54%) and George W Bush (83%) were way higher at this point.
However, Trump has placed a lot of his focus on immigration enforcement. From the very start, the president has promised a Muslim travel ban, but luckily that was shot down by the courts. Enough of the bad, let’s look at the good things Trump has accomplished. Looking at the bright side, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has arrested more than 100,000 people who entered the US illegally, where 70% of them were already convicted criminals. In the last year, ICE has removed nearly 2,800 criminal gang members.
The U.S. emissions went down faster than much of Europe when George W. Bush pulled out of the disastrous Kyoto treaty; hopefully, the same will happen for when Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. He has also approved the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline which in turn will lead to the creation of 42,000 jobs. Hopefully, Trump is helping by steering America into a new age of energy development, even if the plans are on Twitter.
Nonetheless, let’s not forget about the incident of the government shutdown (it lasted for a couple of days, back in January) due to issues with the budget deal. But quite recently, just a few days ago, our beloved president calls for another government shutdown over immigration. It has only been three weeks since the last shutdown, why now? The Trump administration is planning to phase-out DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – which is the Obama-era program to protect young immigrants (known as Dreamers) who were illegally brought to the United States as kids. DACA has provided protection for roughly around 800,000 undocumented immigrants. Trump plans to offer a citizenship path to 1.8 million immigrants, however, he requests for new restrictions on legal immigration and 25 billion U.S. dollars in border security. The immigrants must meet certain criteria such as a number of years of education and they must agree that they could have their legal status revoked due to criminal behavior or national security threats.
As we can see here, a lot has happened in one year, but we still have to manage to survive with Trump in office for the next three years (or more… but let’s not think about that). So, buckle your seatbelt, open Twitter, and try to enjoy the next few years with Trump, it’s going to be a wild ride.
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Disclaimer: I apologize in advance if any information is incorrect or interpreted poorly, politics is hard enough to fully grasp, and the Trump administration has not helped. Please note that this is not everything that Trump has done over the past year, the list is far too long to fit into this article. Feel free to appropriately comment below any of your opinions and thoughts!
Written by Audrienne Ow
Edited by that one editor: Isaac
Works Cited
Binion, T. (2017). Commentary: 3 Things Donald Trump Did Right This Year. [online] Fortune. Available at: http://fortune.com/2017/12/20/donald-trump-2017-accomplishments/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2018].
BBC News. (2018). Global US approval ‘tumbles under Trump’. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38663043 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2018].
Riggins, N. (2017). It’s been one year since the US election – Donald Trump has done absolutely nothing since becoming President. [online] The Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-us-president-first-1-year-since-election-no-change-policy-white-house-a8041861.html [Accessed 3 Feb. 2018].
Thiessen, M. (2017). Opinion | The 10 best things Trump has done in his first year in office. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-10-best-things-trump-has-done-in-his-first-year-in-office/2017/12/27/c79ce93c-ea7e-11e7-9f92-10a2203f6c8d_story.html?utm_term=.59994eda9a93 [Accessed 4 Feb. 2018].
Thiessen, M. (2017). Opinion | The 10 best things Trump has done in his first year in office. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-10-best-things-trump-has-done-in-his-first-year-in-office/2017/12/27/c79ce93c-ea7e-11e7-9f92-10a2203f6c8d_story.html?utm_term=.e81b390a3dee [Accessed 3 Feb. 2018].
Kaplan, T. (2018). Trump Threatens Shutdown as Negotiators Close In on Budget Deal. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/us/politics/government-shutdown-trump-immigration.html [Accessed 4 Feb. 2018].
Jeremy Diamond, C. (2017). Trump’s baseless wiretap claim. [online] CNN. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/04/politics/trump-obama-wiretap-tweet/ [Accessed 3 Feb. 2018].
Abramson, A. (2017). The 7 Most Important Moments Since Donald Trump Was Elected. [online] Time. Available at: http://time.com/5011908/trump-election-2016-anniversary-biggest-moments/ [Accessed 4 Feb. 2018].
Miller, Z., Colvin, J. and Fram, A. (2018). Trump Plan Offers Citizenship Path to 1.8 Million Immigrants | RealClearPolitics. [online] Realclearpolitics.com. Available at: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/01/26/trump_plan_offers_citizenship_path_to_18_million_immigrants_136112.html [Accessed 4 Feb. 2018].
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