Trump Administration, Week One: Alternative Facts and Muslim Bans

These are things that have happened this week. We will remember.

1. President Trump’s Inaugural Address included the words “carnage,” “bleed,” and “tombstones.” No other President ever found it necessary to use these words in an Inaugural Address. The President later threatened to “send in the Feds” if Chicago didn’t fix its “carnage.” This was a response to a segment on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show, indicating that the media has unusually large influence on Trump’s policy statements and emphasis.
2. Trump’s speech also included the phrase "When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.” This is dangerously flawed reasoning. The love of country as an abstract ideal is very different from the implicit bias against blacks, Muslims, or overly entitled rich white men. It is also chilling, in that “true patriots” will use it to insists that they cannot be racist in thought, word, or deed simply because all that love of America has left no room for hate in their hearts. Historically, ultra-patriotic groups have found abundant space to squeeze in their malice, their bitterness and contempt for the “other.
   
   
   
   
   
3. "The resistance to Trump is being led by Teen Vogue, Badlands, National Park, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary.” - Kitty Chandler 
4. The top two petitions on the WhiteHouse.gov site ask for the President to release his taxes and show compliance with the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and to either divest his assets or place them in a blind trust. Every other U.S. President for 50 years has dealt with these issues in advance of taking office (exception being Ford, who did not release his taxes - of course, he wasn’t elected either). 
   
   
5. A large crowd attended the Inauguration. An even larger crowd showed up the next day for the Women’s March. This was the largest protest event in American history, with the original march in Washington, DC and sister marches in every single U.S. state, Guam, and Puerto Rico, and dozens of other countries. Totals for the march are in the range of 3.2 to 5.2 million people in the US. You can find crowd size estimates (detailed and totals) in this Google spreadsheet.
6. The first (but “unofficial”) press conference of the Trump term featured a Press Secretary upbraiding the press for their accurate reporting of crowd sizes, the introduction of verifiably false information by the Press Secretary, and him walking out at the end without taking any questions. The followup on-air discussions notably included Kellyanne Conway’s use of the term “alternative facts” to describe some of this false information. This truly Orwellian moment occurred one day into Trump’s term and already has its own page in Wikipedia.
7. The Trump Administration then confirmed its obsession with size by insisting that 3-5 million cases of voter fraud occurred. This number bears an interesting similarity to the margin by which Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton (just shy of 3 million votes). I cannot possibly improve upon Jake Tapper’s response to this on CNN. 
8. Jared Kushner was cleared by the Justice Department to serve as an adviser to Trump, with an office in the White House despite concerns over anti-nepotism statutes, and unknown business connections both within the US and in multiple foreign countries. This kind of appointment is a time-honored tradition in authoritarian regimes, where a leader surrounds himself only with people he trusts and views as extensions of his will.
9. The White House has shut down the ability of important government departments to communicate with the public, including the Dept. of the Interior (later lifted), Health and Human Services, and the EPA. The Dept of Agriculture was also briefly affected. The attempt to prevent important scientific information being provided to the public crystallized concerns with the science community, and a March for Science on Washington is now being planned.
10. This happened.
11. The House Select Committee on Intelligence has opened a bipartisan investigation into Russian cyberattacks and influencing of the election.
12. Trump has stopped all immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries - unless immigrants are Christian. The ban excludes countries where Trump has business interests, creating the appearance of conflict of interest. This is something the Office of Government Ethics has warned about (and attempted to engage with the Administration in order to resolve). Late Breaking: A mosque in Victoria, Texas was set ablaze last night.
    
13. The ban explicitly stops Syrian refugees from entering the US - these are the people most in need. This action was taken on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is a clear signal to Nazis and anti-semites. It prompted the creation of a twitter account that provided names and pictures of hundred of Jews who were turned away in 1939. They reached the US onboard the St. Louis, but were denied entry. They later perished in concentration camps in Europe. The Cato Institute published data showing that there have been zero American fatalities caused by terrorist from these countries during the period 1975-2015. See the report for other useful information.
14. Additional point. No one has ever heard an American President speak to his country like this: