President Trump’s First Week
January 27, 2017
On January 20th, 2017, Donald J. Trump became the 45th president of the United States of America. At the inauguration were former presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Carter along with their respective wives including Hillary Clinton.
Trump spoke about his vision for the country. In typical Donald Trump fashion, his speech was unconventional. Despite this, he received praise from his supporters and some for addressing more Presidential issues. They praised him for stating the obvious; so he can now get to work. However, Trump did have his critics; many in the media and on the left criticized him for painting such a negative portrayal during his address — a speech which they say is normally supposed to be optimistic and uniting.
Another debate was over the size of Trump’s crowd. People on social media compared the 2009 and 2013 inauguration of Barack Obama to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Starting January 21st, the new White House and the media got into a huge debate over how many people attended the inauguration. Meanwhile right outside were hundreds of thousands of protesters in DC and millions around the globe. The group was called the Women’s March on Washington which demanded equal rights for women, the LGBT community, immigrants, and minorities. Furthermore, they demand that Trump acknowledges that climate change is real.
On Monday in Congress, senators began to come up with a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. While no plan has been approved there is a clear clash of ideas. The staunch right wants Obamacare completely gone. While the hardcore left will do everything it can to keep their former leader’s significant legislation. The hurdle for the Trump administration will be getting a bill to Trump’s desk that repeals and replaces Obamacare. Although Republicans have a majority, they only have control over 52 seats but will need 60 votes to repeal Obamacare. A few centrist Republican senators believe they can get some Democrats on board with a compromise that will allow states to determine whether they want to keep or repeal Obamacare. A few of the more partisan senators from both parties completely rejected the proposal for polar opposite reasons. However, Senator Susan Collins, who helped write the bill, is optimistic that they can get bipartisan support from some of the more moderate senators from both parties and make their way to 60 votes. It is unclear if Trump would support this.
Donald Trump has signed a few executive orders so far including the authorization of constructing “the wall” along the US-Mexico border. He will still need congressional approval to fund the project. Trump has proposed paying for the wall with a 20% tax on imports. The executive order has angered Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, and has canceled his meeting with the new president which was supposed to be January 31st.
After one week, one thing about America that is very clear: America is deeply divided and Trump will likely have to address this at some point.
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