My own review of President Trump's first 100 days.

There are myriad 100 day reviews flying around the interwebz at this moment, so seeing as I have a blog myself, I'll go ahead and throw mine into the mix, despite being a little late. This post was started on February 1st, initially as a list of Trump's moves for me to keep straight and comment on, and now as a final review post. I'm coming at this from the same angle as my other posts, which is a Liberty based angle, and I am just as skeptical of big government now as I ever was, so expect a mix of criticism and praise. I am significantly more prone to criticize the federal government and of all its branches than I am to give praise. Keep that in mind.


- Constant friction with MSM outlets: I blame this mostly on the MSM themselves. Originally Trump was nothing but a joke to them. Now that he's in the White House, they're doing everything they can to work against him. With that said, his interactions with them amount to childish bickering in most cases. Guess what? That's what they want. Childish bickering is not beneath the MSM, but it's supposed to be beneath the President. What I would say to Trump, is "we already don't believe anything the media says, so you may be best served ignoring them when they try to bait you. That means dialing back the Twitter wars.

- US exited TPP: Great move, and executed quickly (immediately) just like he promised. How many of these large, international trade deals result in a net positive for the US? Almost zero of them.

- US trying to renegotiate NAFTA: Another international trade deal that, in my opinion, has resulted in a moderate positive result for Canada, a big positive result for Mexico, and at least a slight negative for the US. We need to realize that the US does not need Canada and Mexico like they need us. But now Trump is softening his approach on NAFTA. If you want to leave it in place, fine. But it needs to renegotiated to favor the US more than it does now.

- Signed EO to block funding for all foreign abortion providers: Good move. Funding abortion providers here is bad enough. We sure as heck don't need to be funding it overseas. But why are we funding anything overseas?

- Immigration from seven "terrorist" countries temporarily blocked, rewritten and blocked again. Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Syria. Court blocks EO: His efforts are positive and he seems to be steadfast in it, but the courts have been stacked with anti-American, left wing activist judges by the previous administration. Everything he does is subject to being blocked by some random lower court judge.

- Continued involvement in sending military hardware to some random ass groups in Syria: Our continued involvement in the Syrian conflict is puzzling. He needs to either turn our guns against ISIS and AQ, or get out of the country altogether.

- Trump signed EO to cut business regulations: Anything to reduce regulations of business in the US is a positive. Regulations on American businesses over the last eight years are best described as punishing. I see no scenario where Trump increases regs.

- Chose Neil Gorsuch for SCOTUS: Some conservatives have some minor reservations about this pick, but Trump seems to have made a concerted effort to replace Justice Antonin Scalia with someone who will interpret law in the same manner. I think he probably got this one right.

- Froze federal regulations and hiring: The federal government is bloated with thousands of jobs that produce nothing or are worth nothing. Part of being too big is having too many people in do-nothing jobs. Freezing hiring and cutting federal jobs is the right move.

- Encouraged Trans-Canada to resubmit the application for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and announced support for the Dakota Access Pipeline: As of right now, Trump seems to recognize that green energy is more of a political football than an actual practical direction. The political demand is far outpacing the ability of the technology to produce the necessary power. Pipelines are more efficient and much safer than tanker trucks and trains. The jobs produced by the construction of the pipelines will do well for those local economies.

- Unpresidential use of Twitter: I've already touched on the Twitter fights he gets into. At this point, people are baiting him into it because no matter what happens, he ends up looking the fool. Use Twitter to broadcast positive messages to your constituents, not to fight with someone who hurt your feelings. 

- General Flynn's resignation: Michael Flynn was Trump's National Security Advisor, and was going to be driving his decision-making on everything related. He was set to have a large amount of influence, and he was taken down by the left and the MSM. Investigations are pending to find out about any wrongdoing. This obvsiously was a black eye for the Trump White House.

- Sessions recusal from the Russian tampering investigation: There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that AG Jeff Sessions needed to be recused from anything relating to any Russian investigations. This was a tap out for the left, and it made Trump and Sessions look bad. Weak.

- Failure to repeal 0bamacare and threats to fight the Freedom Caucus: Trump and the House Republicans had been pushing a healthcare bill, nicknamed by some "0bamacare lite" or "0bamacare 2.0". There weren't that many differences between the bills and the House "Freedom Caucus" balked at the offer and Trump threatened to "go after them" in the next round of elections. It had to pulled from the floor and it made everyone look like fools. Why rush this 0bamacare-esque bill? I suspect they just wanted to claim a repeal and spike the football. Since then, the House has drafted a somewhat better bill and passed it through the House. Now he Senate is taking up the bill, and have stated they will be rewriting a lot of it. Maybe they can give us something better. It's clear that Trump simply wants to get SOMETHING passed so he can claim victory and move on. Unfortunately, it seems we are stuck with a healthcare law that allows the federal government to maintain its control over the healthcare system. Government has no place in healthcare.

- Missile attacks against Syria: Again, I'm not sure why we are bombing Syrian airfields. The mess in Syria is so tangled and complicated, there is no one we can attack and still avoid assisting ISIS and AQ, besides ISIS and AQ themselves. We may not like Assad, and we don't have to, but attacking him helps the people fighting him. And who is fighting him? ISIS and AQ, among others.

- ICE deportations on the rise: It seems that the culture of Trump's administration has allowed ICE to actually do their jobs. Good.

- Sean Spicer is a moron: I'm sorry, but he has to go. He looks and acts like a sniveling fool. How many gaffes has he had so far? He's the spokesman. The White House has two faces, Trump and whoever the spokesman is. Get someone smart, without a visit tube streak, and someone who doesn't immediately strike people as a sniveling weasel. Someone in the mold of Dana Perino or Tony Snow. Sean Spicer strikes me as someone who would be a good pick for the 0bama administration.

- Tensions with North Korea: This is a problem. I spent my time in South Korea collecting and analyzing intelligence and deconflicting intelligence sources. I was there when KJI died. Tensions were high then, but they're REALLY high right now. Trump's position so far is that the bullcrap stops now. He seems willing to take action. What action? I don't know. But I suppose if you tell me "North Korea has had enough time to stop being the literal worst country on earth that they've been for roughly 60 years, and now it's time to deal with them.", I wouldn't disagree. They are within a couple years of having an ICBM capable of reaching our mainland and possibly only a few more years from being able to mount a nuclear weapon on it. They're threatening to get to that point and then use it on us. If that's not a legitimate national security threat, then nothing is.

Bad "Omnibusl budget bill: So in April, the republicans passed a budget bill that Trump signed off on. The Southern border wall is not funded, but Planned Parenthood is. In fact, democrats pretty much got everything they asked for in his bill, and republicans got only one thing, an increase in defense spending. That was it. The republicans are saying that they HAD to avoid a government shutdown and that this bill is just a holdover for the big budget bill that they'll draw up in October. Problem with that is that that's what they told us last time, in December, when they passed a crappy budget as a holdover for when Trump took office and the republicans could get their agenda bill passed in April. Well now we got April's bill and still a democrat win. All the same old crap got passed and democrats are happy with it. Almost every democrat in congress voted for it. Most of the congress members who voted against it were members of the conservative Freedom Caucus. What does that tell you?

There are obviously a lot more things that could be discussed, but I feel like I've hit on my of the important subjects. We'll see how it goes from here.