Lara Trump and the Women's March

Hmm. So Lara Trump (Daughter-in-law of the President) has several “proofs” as to why participants in last Sunday’s Woman’s March actually had nothing to complain about.

1. "Melania is incredible" Well, the last we heard of Melania's cyber-bullying initiative was in September and the last I heard, no one from the community that deals with that subject had heard anything from her in terms of her seeking any advice from them. So it's hard to give her any credit when she's invisible on her chosen issue.

2. "Democrats, they are okay with all women as long as you have their same opinion on things." Is Lara suggesting that wearing a skirt is sufficient reason for feminists/Democrats to support a woman? Certainly, Mike Huckabee has suggested that. He thinks that because his daughter (Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Press Secretary) is female, she should get support from feminists.

3. "the Women's March wasn't just about women. It was more of a hateful, anti-Trump protest" Yeah, that was kind of the whole point of it. As a participant in both this years and last years marches, I agree that our disagreement with the President was a very major reason for both marches.

4. "He has a woman as the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Education"

   4.a. The National Review had a headline on Kirstjen Nielsen "Left Fails to Praise Trump's Nomination…" (See point 2 about Mike Huckabee) But Neilsen was apparently amazed to hear that Norway had mostly white people in it. She's also never met a Dreamer. She was in the room for President Trump's "shithole" comment but gee, just can't seem to recall the word he used. These and many more details at this link.

   4.b. As to the Department of Education, yes, we've gone over and over Betsy DeVos. She tries to present herself here as a daring and innovative outsider. Her results though, have been less than impressive.

[DeVo] has yet to fill senior staff positions, and it’s widely known that numerous prominent Republicans having turned down offers. She has struggled to acclimate to the proverbial big ship that turns slowly. Perhaps most significant, she failed to persuade the committees of jurisdiction in Congress to approve her and the department’s budget request, which would have slashed funding to other initiatives in the name of expanding DeVos’ pet cause, school choice. It amounted to an embarrassing repudiation of a president and a secretary in their first year, when there is traditionally the most political capital to spend—especially considering Republicans control both the House and Senate.

So yes, Trump has appointed women to high-level positions, but are those appointees anything for feminists to feel pride in?

5. "He had the first woman run a successful presidential campaign, with Kellyanne [Conway]" Yeah, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into how much of Trump’s “successful presidential campaign” was the result of good campaigning and how much was Russian influence, how much was white-collar crime and how much was cyber crime.

6. "Women's unemployment is at a 17-year low right now" When an economy does well or poorly at the beginning of a presidential term has a great deal to do with what happened in prior years. A big national economy is like an oil tanker. It’s a really big and hard-to-steer ship which takes a lot of energy to move. Changing course is difficult. It’s far from clear that Trump deserves much credit for economic good news. When does a president deserve credit? The Obama stimulus is a good example. Nearly $800 billion was pumped into the economy in short order and the economy very quickly became a success story. Eventually, Trump will be able to claim credit, but that will take awhile.

So, the big, final, ultimate conclusion that Lara Trump reaches is: "And, yet, these women out there are so anti-Trump. And I don't even think they know why. They just think that's the thing to do." Yeah, Twitter had a field day at that, many users asking who Lara even was.

Why did I march? The event that caused me to completely give up on the President and to conclude that he simply didn’t stand for American values was his reaction to the alt-right, torch-lit march in Charlottesville. By defending the march, Trump made it clear that he stood for Third Reich values.

President Trump’s war on climate change science has resulted in a staggering amount of straight-out censorship. As to the current effects of climate change:

We are now seeing the impacts of climate change everywhere. None of us thought that we would find huge changes taking place in the oceans, which have been largely ignored. But the range shifts [migration of plants and animals] there are 10 times that of land. Also, we are seeing diseases coming from ocean systems, like outbreaks of vibrio poisoning [bacteria that occur naturally in warm coastal areas]. We think of these as being tropical but we are now seeing outbreaks in colder waters like the Baltic and Alaska.

"Trump talked big about the opioid crisis, but he's failing to lead on that, too" “He did appoint a commission. I think those people did a pretty good job. They were smart, they listened, they came up with a lot of good ideas. And they’ve been ignored entirely.” There’s plenty of agreement on what to do, but spending money that way conflicts with the big Republican tax cut that was passed in December.

Vice President Pence was warned that Trump’s abrupt, unilateral decision to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Jordan sees nothing positive in that decision and much to be concerned about. It was announced in December that "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced Wednesday that the Palestinians will no longer work with American peace negotiators...”

It’s only when people get all of their news within the right-wing bubble that Trump’s presidency looks like a success.