“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Why Trump’s con can’t last forever
From the start of his short, truculent and unabashedly populist inaugural address, President Trump called out the Washington establishment: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.”
He painted a dystopian picture of the United States and promised: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Trump is about to discover that he can’t simply order up the change he wants. In his first two days in office, Trump has appalled the CIA’s professionals and declared open war on the media. His inauguration sparked some of the largest women’s demonstrations ever in the nation’s capital and across the world. Only two of his Cabinet appointees joined him in office, the rest struggling to overcome questions about financial conflicts of interest, ideological extremism and simple competence.
Dean Baker: The Trump Cabinet: Strangest Show On Earth
As we start the Trump presidency, events just keep getting more bizarre. At his first and last press conference as president-elect, Donald Trump boasted about his divestment plan in which he was “sort of, kind of,” turning over the management of his business enterprises to his two adult sons. He displayed a table full of documents which were supposed to indicate the extent of his divestment, but the documents were not made available for the press to examine.
Furthermore, in spite of claiming that he was stepping away from his business enterprises, Trump was still boasting about being offered a $2 billion deal from a Dubai business man. While Trump assured us that he turned the deal down, the obvious question is why he was discussing it in the first place.
Insofar as Trump is actually stepping away from his business, this is very far from the sort of blind trust arrangements made by presidents of both parties for the last half century. The public can never be sure that his actions as president are not motivated by a desire to fatten the profits of Trump enterprises. Nor can we be assured that actions by foreign governments won’t be affected by their country’s dealings with the president’s business empire.
Eugene Robinson: Trump inspired a movement, all right
It matters that the crowd for the Women’s March on Washington was far bigger than that for President Trump’s inauguration. The new president often boasts of having started a great movement. Let it be the one that was born with Saturday’s massive protests.
If size is important, and apparently to Trump it is, there was no contest. The Metro transit system recorded 1,001,613 trips on the day of the protest, the second-heaviest ridership in history — surpassed only by ridership for President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. By contrast, just 570,557 trips were taken Friday, when Trump took the oath of office.
Those are the true facts, not the “alternative” ones the administration wants you to believe. A president obsessed with winning began his term by losing. [..]
But whether Trump’s ostentatious pique about the not-so-historic size of his inauguration crowd is real or feigned, the fact that so many more people came to town to protest Trump’s presidency than to celebrate it is important. The new administration ignores the passion we saw on Saturday at its own peril.
Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer: We broke the Panama Papers story. Here’s how to investigate Donald Trump
Donald Trump is now president. This challenges many of us, not least members of the press. Countless reporters are still shaken and stunned by how he singled out a CNN reporter, one of the most respected news outlets in the world, to attack and humiliate him during his first press conference since winning the elections. Worryingly, none of his fellow journalists in the room stood up for him at the time.
This wasn’t Trump’s first attack on the press, and it certainly won’t be his last. The first White House press briefing, held on Saturday, featured bullying, threats and unproven claims. That is why a new level of solidarity and cooperation is needed among the fourth estate.
American journalists should stop him from dividing their ranks – however hard their professional competition may be. They should do the opposite: unite, share and collaborate. Even if doing so would mean embracing something quite unfamiliar and new to American journalism.
Donna M. Nagy: Tom Price’s stock controversy shows an urgent need for a new law
President Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), held stock in dozens of companies in the health-care, biomedical and pharmaceutical industries even as he was voting on, and often sponsoring or promoting, legislation that could affect the value of his investments. Some of his stock purchases have sparked concerns under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (Stock) Act of 2012, which makes clear that the insider-trading prohibitions arising under the federal securities laws apply to members of Congress. I testified in Senate and House hearings on the act. As then, I believe it did not go far enough.
Even if Price’s stock purchases were permissible under federal securities law, his sizable investment portfolio nevertheless places his legislative judgments into question: Did personal stock holdings influence his legislative activity? That very question points to the urgent need for new legislation to guard against the possibility — or even just the appearance — of self-interested decision-making by members of Congress.
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