A Regime That Leads By Misleading

Just over a month ago, Michael Grunwald, writing for Politico noted that Trump's executive orders are mostly theater. With much flourish-- and not much impact-- he's signed more executive orders in his first 100 days than any president since FDR. The vile and detestable Señor Trumpanzee "clearly enjoys signing orders at his desk as the cameras roll-- he holds up the signed documents to his left, center and right to give photographers better angles-- and he has an obvious political interest in exaggerating their importance. His critics on the left often exaggerate their importance, too, hoping to fire up grass-roots opposition. The liberal activist Van Jones tweeted that Trump 'just signed a death warrant for Planet Earth' with his order launching a review of the Clean Power Plan, which wasn’t even necessarily a death warrant for the Clean Power Plan. Last week, after Trump signed orders denouncing two provisions in Obama’s financial reforms-- 'That’s a biggie,' he crowed after signing one of them-- the group Public Citizen’s news release was headlined: 'Trump Executive Orders Signal Salad Days for Wall Street.' In reality, Trump hadn’t touched the provisions; he had merely directed his Treasury secretary to file reports on them within 180 days."

Getting stuff done in Washington is harder, way harder than the capacity of an incompetent and dysfunctional Trump Regime. "It’s much easier," wrote Grunwald, "to sign some paper and declare victory... Messaging isn’t the same thing as governing. Activity doesn’t always reflect accomplishment. But they often look similar from a distance, and Trump’s presidency so far amounts to a bet that most of the public can’t tell the difference."

And it's catching. Yesterday Glenn Kessler, reporting for the Washington Post reported how one of the worst of the Trumpist Regime liars, EPA head Scott Pruitt, lies as effortlessly as his boss. Sunday, on Meet the Press, This Week and Fox News Sunday, Pruitt claimed "we’ve added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector." That was a lie but there was no one on NBC, ABC or Fox to call him out for it. Reality: "In the first four months of the Trump administration, there has been a gain of 1,000 jobs." That's less than 50,000 jobs, something even some opioid-addicted Trump voters might be able to conclude.

Since Trump was elected there were nearly 33,000 jobs created in the mining-- though not coal mining-- sector. 30,000 of them were support jobs, not mining jobs and 75% of those involved oil and gas, the sector that's killing coal mining jobs faster than any government regulations. "The plunge," explained Kessler, "in oil prices that started in 2014 wiped out nearly 200,000 jobs in the oil and gas support sector by October, but a recent stabilization in oil prices has helped bring some of those jobs back. It has little to do with administration policy-- and nothing to do with coal mining."

[R]ather than the gain of 47,000 jobs touted by Pruitt, the reality is that 1,000 coal jobs have been added since Trump became president. For the month of May, the gain was 400 jobs, not 7,000.

The Post gave Pruitt's "misleading spin" 4 Pinnochios and pointed out that Trumpanzee Regime "officials such as Pruitt need to learn they increasingly have little credibility when they try to manipulate government statistics in service of a dubious talking point." Those who need to learn, obviously, starts at the top with the Liar-in-Chief.