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Trump kicks off presidency with authoritarian zeal

It’s been almost two weeks since Donald Trump took the oath of office.

After a bleak day with a depressed inauguration turnout, President Trump and his newly formed alliance of Washington outsiders stormed the halls of the White House, ready to get down to business.

Taking unilateral action, President Trump signed a flurry of executive orders into law in the first five days.

Some of them were cheered by the public — pulling out of the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership — and some were downright weird.

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President Trump arrogantly proclaimed Jan. 20, his Inauguration Day, the National Day of Patriotic Devotion.

Nothing says “authoritarian” like proclaiming a day in honor of people ogling over you.

But it was his late-night rendezvous with the presidential pen that drew sharp criticism from the media and the American public.

Ignoring any detail to his decisions, President Trump ordered: all government agencies (except military) to freeze hiring; the immediate construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines (which he has financially invested in); a ban on refugees and immigration from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Libya; a freeze on all federal regulations; a formal waiver for Obamacare; construction on the wall between the U.S. and Mexico; allowing the use of torture; and a ban on federal funding for international organizations that practice or promote abortion.

President Trump has also ordered for an investigation into the routinely debunked lie that three to five million illegal immigrants voted, which would explain his loss of the popular vote to Sec. Hillary Clinton.

While all of these executive orders may please those who lie squarely in his base, the Trump Administration has simultaneously declared war on anything and everything related to science, which affects everyone.

Trump has issued a broad gag-order against federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the National Park Services. The gag-order states that scientists working in these federal agencies — with particular emphasis on climate change — may not share any scientific information or data to the press, the media or on social media outlets that monitor the changing climate. They also may not publish any internal blog entries detailing their studies or findings, effectively putting in place a scientific blackout.

When the National Park Service’s twitter defied the order and posted statistics regarding climate change, the White House ordered the Interior Secretary to remove their official Twitter accounts, thus blocking their factual data from reaching the public.

And to make matters worse in this Orwellian nightmare, Trump is back to tweeting on his personal account. He referred to CNN as “fake news” while lauding Fox for their inauguration coverage. Then he turned his attention to Chicago, where he threatened to “send in the feds” if the city did not bring its high levels of gun violence back down to historically low levels.

That’s right, the President of the United States threatened to impose martial law on a city unless it magically fixed a problem overnight it’s had for decades.

Rest assured, Trump’s little “send in the feds” threat would be illegal and thus an impeachable offense.

Then there was the debacle at the CIA headquarters, where President Trump quipped that the agency will “have another chance” to invade Iraq and take their oil.

And last but not least, everything decent and human that was featured on the White House website is gone. Any and all references to LGBT rights, voting rights, climate change and so forth has been expunged and replaced with promotional ads for Melania Trump’s jewelry (which has since been deleted). The White House operating system’s comment section, in which the people may call to voice their concerns, has been disbanded.

So aside from unconstitutional executive actions, scientific blackouts, threats of martial law, an impending war in Iraq over oil (again), Melania’s jewelry line and an advisor who cites “alternative facts,” I’d say the first few days of the Trump Administration are going quite well.

Heck, give it two more weeks and we’ll be at war with China in no time and Fox News will become state-run media.

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